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After 'coding error' triggers firings, top NIH scientists called back to work

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Re: After 'coding error' triggers firings, top NIH scientists called back to work

#151

Post by kelnos »

Freedom2 wrote: post #75
foobarbecue wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's worse than that. Appears to me that the methodology here is intentional sabotage of the government. When your platform is explictly anti-government (also, explictly anti-empathy, and implictly anti-expert), and someone hands you the government, you smash it, along with the lives of all those losers who dedicated themselves to public service.

Don't forget to say "See! Government doesn't work, we've been right all along!" after you've smashed it.

Yes, this is the GOP playbook in a nutshell.

1. Rail against the idea that any social program can work, or that the government can do a good job administering it.

2. Fight for amendments to bills around it that reduce its funding or scope in key, critical ways.

3. Let the new thing fail, because you crippled the bill that authorized it.

4. Crow about how you were right all along, that government can't do this or that, and that these social programs are doomed to fail.

Re: After 'coding error' triggers firings, top NIH scientists called back to work

#152

Post by 1659447091 »

hattmall wrote: post #111
wredcoll wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I feel like you might be aware of this, but what you're describing is literally PR and propaganda. Many millions of people get social security/etc payments every month from the federal government, but of course that doesn't count. "Keep the gov out of my medicare!" anyone? People have a real short memory and nobody appreciates the lack of mercury and arsenic in their sausages today, it's all about "what are y…

I'm speaking to the experience of dealing with the government. It's not propaganda, this is literally what happens. Everyone independently coming to the same conclusion based on their personal experience isn't propaganda. It's reality. Have you ever tried to deal with the government. I have unfortunately had a lot of dealing with Social security, medicare, medicaid, etc. From having to deal with aging parents. Yes, p…

> Everyone independently coming to the same conclusion based on their personal experience isn't propaganda. It's reality.

I am not discounting your experience; to say this is everyone's experience or even the majority of experiences fails to take into account the "reddit thread of lots of other people with similar or worse experiences" exist because people are more likely to post a bad experience than one that goes smoothly and without issue.

It makes it look as though dealing with government agencies is a completely broken total disaster, but it simply works for the majority of people. They only notice it being "broken" when they have an experience that ran into issues and did not go as planned. I imagine with all the random cuts to employees and entire departments, these experiences will increase.

> start getting copious amounts of automated nonsensical threatening form letters from the IRS

Have not personally encountered this or know of anyone else that has, and who also deals with taxes. I do get calls and letters from the "IRS" but they are scams. Again, not discounting your experience and you would know better than I who the letters are coming from, but "IRS" scams are a thing too.

Re: After 'coding error' triggers firings, top NIH scientists called back to work

#153

Post by arkh »

strogonoff wrote: post #118
jmward01 wrote: post #50

The obvious methodology at work here is 'fire everyone then hopefully re-hire only what is blindingly obviously needed'. There are many, many problems with this approach in a business setting but even more from a governmental setting. The first, and what should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of empathy, is that these are real people who's lives are being toyed with. It isn't like you are trying out a new business…

A slightly less obvious problem with trimming fat is that an amount of fat within any system is good to have if you think long-term. 1. Fat is useful leeway. In critical times, it can be trimmed without otherwise disrupting the operation. Once you have eliminated fat during the good times, you can’t do it in the bad times. 2. A lean system without any fat by definition is tailored to just the current situation. It ha…

In military term you'd call this "fat" the reserve: an unused percentage of your capacity which you can deploy to exploit an opportunity or to plug a hole.

Now, the difference between those reserves and what you usually get in most administrations is that you're keeping your reserve sharp and not just letting them socialize at the water cooler and on Facebook.

Re: After 'coding error' triggers firings, top NIH scientists called back to work

#154

Post by kelnos »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #90
jmward01 wrote: post #50

The obvious methodology at work here is 'fire everyone then hopefully re-hire only what is blindingly obviously needed'. There are many, many problems with this approach in a business setting but even more from a governmental setting. The first, and what should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of empathy, is that these are real people who's lives are being toyed with. It isn't like you are trying out a new business…

There's no methodology at work, it's just indiscriminate firings to cull as many people as possible. This is clear from other other departments where they fired everyone they could. "Coding error" is just a modern version of "the dog ate my homework". Lame but people will swallow it. They knew what they were doing, they just regret getting caught. Sadly, once the firings, rehirings, refirings, court cases, and compen…

> There's no methodology at work, it's just indiscriminate firings to cull as many people as possible.

That is the methodology, though. Musk's biography (I believe) contains a bit about how one of his business strategies when trying to make drastic changes is to just fire, fire, fire, fire people. And if you don't realize afterward that you fired too many, and have to hire back at least 10% of them, then you didn't fire enough in the first place.

It's a terrible, inhumane way of dealing with people.

Re: After 'coding error' triggers firings, top NIH scientists called back to work

#156

Post by fastball »

Terr_ wrote: post #80
jmward01 wrote: post #50

The obvious methodology at work here is 'fire everyone then hopefully re-hire only what is blindingly obviously needed'. There are many, many problems with this approach in a business setting but even more from a governmental setting. The first, and what should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of empathy, is that these are real people who's lives are being toyed with. It isn't like you are trying out a new business…

Also, it's completely destroying an incredibly valuable asset: The reputation of being a stable long-term employer! (This is possibly their corrupt intent.) The immediate "savings" reduced workforce (even assuming the same level of work gets done) can easily be obliterated by the long-term damage of needing to pay more to attract equally-qualified applicants away from the private sector. Some quick napkin-math just t…

Do we actually want "I just want a stable job" people being a significant part of the federal governments workforce?

I generally wouldn't want those people to work for my company, so not sure why I'd want them to work in my government.

Re: After 'coding error' triggers firings, top NIH scientists called back to work

#158

Post by rafaelmn »

jmward01 wrote: post #50

The obvious methodology at work here is 'fire everyone then hopefully re-hire only what is blindingly obviously needed'. There are many, many problems with this approach in a business setting but even more from a governmental setting. The first, and what should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of empathy, is that these are real people who's lives are being toyed with. It isn't like you are trying out a new business…

>It is about total benefit to society, period.

Money is the best tool we have to measure that. Sure it has pathological cases, but overall it's the least bad version to assign value. In the government case it's much worse at this since it's not voluntary and measuring aggregate government services vs. tax. The consumption/price is completely unrelated, etc.

>I know of several people that are 'employed' but net negatives and society is way better off with that arrangement than having them on the streets.

If we are heading towards an economy with labour shortage (demographics collapse), taking up people from the economy and keeping them employed with a useless skillset is going to be a double negative.

Re: After 'coding error' triggers firings, top NIH scientists called back to work

#159

Post by shakna »

euroderf wrote: post #76
shakna wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're going to try and rewrite the IRS' Individual Master File, and not care if it changes the way it behaves.

As I understand it, the source for the Master File is lost to the mists of time. But a SoA A.I. can disassemble and comment it, yes ? Prep it for recompilation ?

The source hasn't been lost. It's just that the source was written in a combination of assembly code and COBOL, before COBOL was standardised. They can turn and recompile it any time. Doesn't mean that it's easy to modify or maintain.

There were successful efforts to translate it to Java, already underway (CADE-2). They were probably going to finish somewhere in the next two years. The efforts were for bit-for-bit identical reproductions. [0]

An AI will not help you here. Because this little piece of assembly was created for mainframes, not for computers today (AS/400s, I believe). Even the concept of paths don't operate the way systems do today - the drives were direct access, and tape-based.

There is not enough material to train a model on, to make it close to accurate.

[0] https://federalnewsnetwork.com/tom-temin-commentary/2020/10/...

Re: After 'coding error' triggers firings, top NIH scientists called back to work

#160

Post by kelnos »

cyanydeez wrote: post #22
the_snooze wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Its a trap. Trust is efficient. Lack of trust is inefficient. If someone untrustworthy like Musk fired me and suddenly wanted a do-over, I'd counter with a completely selfish arrangement like a $500/hr contracting rate with some non-trivial amount due up front.

The entire republican party setup a self-fullfilling prophecy of distrust, deep state, etc etc.

That's another standard bit of the GOP playbook: accuse the other side of a bunch of bad stuff (regardless of whether or not it's true; especially if it isn't) to distract from the fact that the GOP is already doing that bad stuff.
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