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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

#311

Post by imgabe »

autoexec wrote: post #289
imgabe wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The richest companies do the most business. If you have a billion transactions a year and 0.1% of the time something goes wrong and a customer is pissed off, that's a million pissed off people writing angry reviews online. That makes it seem like they are "universally hated", but you don't hear anything from the 99.9% of people who had perfectly fine, unremarkable experiences. In my lifetime I've gone from paying a f…

> If you have a billion transactions a year and 0.1% of the time something goes wrong and a customer is pissed off, that's a million pissed off people writing angry reviews online. That makes it seem like they are "universally hated" The most hated companies tend to be the ones who have been causing harm for years if not decades and impacting vast numbers of people: Purdue Pharma, Nestlé, BP, Facebook, Monsanto, Comc…

Purdue Pharma is not one of the richest companies anymore. They have been sued into oblivion. The fact that some terminally online redditors like to farm karma by posting "Fuck Nestle" every time they're mentioned because of a 40 year old scandal is not really representative of them being "most hated". To 99% of people Nestle is chocolate chips and candy bars. Most people do not care about any of this, except maybe Comcast, and that is a case of regulatory capture.

Yeah, things can spy on you to target ads. If this bothers you, block ads. They can target all the ads they want at me, I'll never see them.

Call audio quality might have been better, but video quality was nonexistent. My mom can see her granddaughter from the other side of the world and that was simply not even possible 20 years ago.

You can still root your phone and most computers are still your own, if this is important for you. For the vast majority of people, they don't even understand what the settings mean and it is a relief that they don't have to deal with them. The average consumer experience compared to editing autoexec.bat and fiddling with .ini files to get a game working on Windows 95 is a vast improvement.

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

#312

Post by johnnyanmac »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #310
johnnyanmac wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, so we have 3 options. 1. Make the taxpayer care and properly have them vote in not corrupt people. This can be from awareness campaigns, stronger community identity, or more frequent town halls as a start 2. Establish an ombudsman who can care and root this out of blatant corruption happens. So you don't feel like talking to a wall when trying to expose corrupt. 3. Blame the government as an entirely and shut i…

Some mix of all the solutions depending on how bad it is. At some point the net social benefit becomes negative. When that happens incremental reform is not preferable to tearing it down, exploring alternatives (e.g. 501c(3)s), and rebuilding as government if and only if a reasonable mechanism for accountability can be created without the meddling of the people who messed it up before.

But can we afford to tear it down? The decision sounds just as radical in the private sector as the public sector. You don't just shut down your core product without there being a very swift handover process.

The example here was doctor reimbursement. So, can we afford to just not reimburse doctors as we architect a new solution to solve corruption? That strategy seems to be what people whope to achieve with Social Security. Put it "on maintenance" for a few years to "weed out corruption".

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

#313

Post by imgabe »

joquarky wrote: post #282
imgabe wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of privately funded museums. Museums are not going to disappear. “International development” is mostly rich failsons with politically connected parents getting funneled taxpayer money via NGOs and/or a front for the CIA. Good riddance.

Citations needed, especially for your conspiracy theory about the CIA.

> Foreign governments have long accused the U.S. Agency for International Development of being a front for the CIA or other groups dedicated to their collapse. In the case of Cuba, they appear to have been right.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/03/cuban-twitter-and-other...

I don’t think Foreign Policy is considered some crackpot conspiracy theory rag.

USAID was run by the State department, which is known to provide cover for the CIA (every embassy has CIA officers working out of it). This is not a “conspiracy theory”. The CIA does exist and they do spy on other countries.

What do you think the CIA does? Do you think they go to other countries and open an office with a big sign saying “Hello, this is the CIA”?

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

#314

Post by throwawaymaths »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #312
throwawaymaths wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some mix of all the solutions depending on how bad it is. At some point the net social benefit becomes negative. When that happens incremental reform is not preferable to tearing it down, exploring alternatives (e.g. 501c(3)s), and rebuilding as government if and only if a reasonable mechanism for accountability can be created without the meddling of the people who messed it up before.

But can we afford to tear it down? The decision sounds just as radical in the private sector as the public sector. You don't just shut down your core product without there being a very swift handover process. The example here was doctor reimbursement. So, can we afford to just not reimburse doctors as we architect a new solution to solve corruption? That strategy seems to be what people whope to achieve with Social S…

You are arguing from this bucket

> conversely if we delete funds nominally allocated to X or Y it means we don't care about X or Y

I am saying you can't assume that because money was allocated for something it went to the critical thing you wanted. Like 45 billion for rural broadband.

> The example here was doctor reimbursement.

Yes. If the doctor reimbursement is improper you don't pay it out. It is the hospital's job to get things right when asking for money. If the hospital sent an invoice for a procedure the patient did not actually get (this was a large amount of the waste), you REALLY DO NOT PAY, if you pay then you are signaling to the hospital that it's OK to keep overcharging the VA.

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

#315

Post by strogonoff »

joquarky wrote: post #270
strogonoff wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Efficiency is often at odds with Wu wei. I think if humanity strived more for the latter, we might align ourselves better with sustainable prosperity and contentment.

What particular meaning of the term “wu wei” do you have in mind?

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

#316

Post by linkregister »

imgabe wrote: post #196
linkregister wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 8 month severance package Is there any reporting of employees who actually received this, or are you referring to nebulous promise in the "Fork In the Road" email?

As of right now, workers who took the first buyout offer are still getting paid: https://www.axios.com/2025/04/02/federal-worker-buyouts-trum... There is another offer coming up.

So in other words, none of the fired workers.

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

#317

Post by AStonesThrow »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #300
AStonesThrow wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the workforce is fired every time a new party comes into power What if the workforce is never fired, and government jobs acquire a reputation for ingrained incompetence, promotion from within for the unqualified, and a management so frustrated by their inability to turn over poorly-performing workers that nearly nothing productive gets done anymore? What if the workforce is full of appointments by the Old-Boy ne…

What if we just arrested every person who broke every tiny archaic law we can think of? What if we run out of prisons and decide to outsource them to foreign counties? What about this sort of criminal system? I don't know why we are talking in such extreme what ifs. If you really think the government let's anyone with a pulse in you never applied for a government position. At least not one in a medium-large city. You…

What you mean “we”, White Man?

Internet comments really need to get pronouns & antecedents under control. Use the Scientific “we” if we’re a tenured professor or scholar with credentials.

But the GP is perhaps not a police officer, a department of corrections administrator, or legislator, so please, leave AStonesThrow out of your speculative, hypothetical scenarios and TDS bloviations?

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

#318

Post by loktarogar »

AStonesThrow wrote: post #317
johnnyanmac wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we just arrested every person who broke every tiny archaic law we can think of? What if we run out of prisons and decide to outsource them to foreign counties? What about this sort of criminal system? I don't know why we are talking in such extreme what ifs. If you really think the government let's anyone with a pulse in you never applied for a government position. At least not one in a medium-large city. You…

What you mean “we”, White Man? Internet comments really need to get pronouns & antecedents under control. Use the Scientific “we” if we’re a tenured professor or scholar with credentials. But the GP is perhaps not a police officer, a department of corrections administrator, or legislator, so please, leave AStonesThrow out of your speculative, hypothetical scenarios and TDS bloviations?

I think you should give the HN guidelines (specifically under comments) a re-read. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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