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“It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what."
It's a form of discrimination though admittedly not the most egregious form of discrimination. The HUD has explicit regulations and guidelines involving "Selective use of advertising media or content" and "Selective geographic advertisements".
The legal threshold for discrimination is set a lot lower for housing than it is in other scenarios For good reason too -- the consequences of discriminated, for example, at a coffee shop are far less impactful than being discriminated for what housing you can find and obtain.
I wonder why apple doesn't allow or support Linux? I would happily buy a Mac pro (trashcan) or a mbp if it had solid Linux support. I think their hardware is awesome. But I have no interest in learning MacOS. The dealbreaker for me is no ctrl key in the corner
I wonder why apple doesn't allow or support Linux?
I wonder if it might be possible somehow under Boot Camp. Or if on a machine as beefy as a Mac Pro if a VM would be good enough. I don't know enough about either to say definitively.
The dealbreaker for me is no ctrl key in the corner
What do you mean by "allow"? If the boot isn't restricted to signed OS X and Windows, you are "allowed". I've installed it easily on several older (2007-2010) Macs.
The reason they don't support it is likely because there's not the demand among their customer base, as most people who want a GNU/Linux OS on a laptop go for Thinkpad or Dell due to better compatibility and other reasons.
I wonder if you could compromise and use powdered concrete in a closed system? High powered fans could blow the fine powder upward in a silo so it would act like a liquid. Then large paddlewheels catching the powder could power a generator coming back down. I have no idea if powder going up a tube has less friction than blocks on a cable/pulley, however.
That's not a good idea. You would have turbulent airflow with dust, most energy would get lost, resulting in low efficiency. Weights on cables pulled by electric motors is as efficient as it gets. Not to mention dust bucking up the gears and sockets.
I think the reverse of what he said was true: that tuition has risen artificially because of all the free money. But yeah I'm also skeptical that tuition would decrease even close to the same way if the money were removed. I think they'd cut supply before they cut price. Especially with the all too common "but you need a degree" fallacy
Assuming 1 teacher making 100k teaching 20 students * 5 classes * 3 credit hour classes a semester ~= 333$ / credit hour. 128 credit hour degree ~= 43k over 4 years. And that's assuming relatively small average class size and ignoring adjuncts etc.
Yet, many schools are charging 4-10 times that much. The question becomes what are the 3+ other people doing if not teaching and can you get rid of that?
PS: And sure some professors make well over 100k and facilities are not free, but again many people even at expensive schools are pulling in less than that.
Quick Google suggests they were convicted for espionage (under the Espionage Act), not treason. Though it's really unclear to me why espionage against your own country and for another would not qualify as treason.
edit: Sibling commenter had a view on it: "Technically, this wouldn't be treason according to the US definition, because treason is only possible in the context of a declared enemy of the USA (i.e., war)."
So part of the reason is that since the end of WWII we have not technically been "at war" because that requires Congressional approval and politics gets involved.
Yeah it's barbaric what the Chinese do to spies. Next thing you know they'll be waterboarding prisoners or holding people without trial for a decade. Good thing we're superior westerners, huh?
That's a situation created by Congress, not federal agencies. Federal agencies with dire needs for high demand/high pay skills would love nothing more than to be able to hire full-time employees at market rates but it is very difficult for them to do so because of the federal pay scale and hiring guidelines.
It's part of the whole charade of smaller government. The number of actual government employees is reduced but then the government pays contracting companies 2x or 3x (or more) for contractors and ends up with same number of butts in seats.
The same "they" you are referring to. The ones writing the checks. I don't care about the precise technicality that enables wage suppression. I literally don't care. The constitution also says no spying on Americans, but somehow that precise word of law was elided. The bottom line is: they have billions, they suppress wages for employees, and they enrich billion dollar contracting firms. Nothing I claim is untrue.
No, it shows that unfortunately you don't know what you're talking about. Federal employee salaries are set by legislation and may not be changed. They can't get bonuses or anything else. Contracts are bid and are paid out of completely different budgets.
Yes, we actually can get yearly bonuses though they are minimal and tied to the performance rating process and tenure to the agency (at least at my agency). For those that are interested, I’d check out the General Schedule pay scales on the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) website. OPM is the agency responsible for providing guidance to federal agencies on all matters related to HR. OPM’s pay scales: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...
However, some agencies have gotten special permission from Congress to use another pay scale which was designed to allow agencies to pay for performance rather than guaranteed raises over time. Though I’ve heard that it doesn’t always work the way it was intended. I was actually initially offered a lot lower salary at another agency that used the pay for performance than my current agency that uses the General Schedule scale.
For general reference: GS-7: B.A./B.S. and GS-9: Master’s.
For all intelligence positions, you are required to pass and maintain a Top Secret/Special Compartmented Information clearance which takes about a year these days due to backlog. This hinders the agencies ability to recruit top talent. I recommend checking out the SF-86 Questionnaire for National Security Positions if you want to see what all is asked.
Right now, I could switch to the private sector and make a lot more than I am making now. But I stay because I believe in the mission and work of my agency. I get to do things that I would never get to do in the private sector. Maybe one day I will switch but for right now I am staying.
"I get to do things that I would never get to do in the private sector" well I know people who switched from NSA to private sector and pretty much keep doing the same things :)
So I guess it depends :)
I’ve been on both sides of the coin so to speak (contractor and Fed). I felt when I was working on site as a contractor, I was walking a delicate tight rope balancing allegiances between my contract company who paid me and the agency I actually did the work for. I only met my contract company supervisor twice for the entire year I supported that contract (1. Interview; 2. Dropping me off at my office) and technically Feds can’t fill that role so I was essentially my own boss. This sounds great but I didn’t have any support or advocate to help me progress in my career. As a Fed, I have opportunities to push my organization’s boundaries in ways I wouldn’t be able to do as a contractor because I can be frank and outspoken about issues. I am also not tied to a statement of work so I can pursue interests outside my daily tasks/assignments. The contract company I worked for was very stingy on training, but in my current position the government offers me a lot of training opportunities in my field. For me, being a Fed is a better fit at least for now.
The government has the money. As evidenced by their defense budget.
The government does not pay the money to their employees. As evidenced by NSA employees making less than high-grade truck drivers.
The government does pay billions to corporations such as Lockheed or Booz, etc.
SO let's recap: they have the money, they just choose not to pay it to their employees. But instead it inexplicably gets rerouted to rent-seeking gatekeepers.
Saying you don't know what you're talking about is not a personal attack when you seem to be going out of your way to prove me right.
"The government" is not a gigantic neolithic behemoth doing whatever it wants whenever it wants. You might be surprised to learn that there are in fact three branches of government in the United States. Congress has passed more than one law detailing the manner in which federal employees can be paid, and limiting how much each given position may be paid.[0] Similarly, Congress sets the budget for the Executive agencies. Because the Pentagon get billions of dollars does not mean that it's trivial to raise the salary of everyone at the Food & Drug Administration.
USG employees make significantly less than their private sector counterparts (usually) because they get quite a few benefits unavailable to the private sector:
* Generous paid leave in the form of sick time, vacation time, comp time, and scheduled holidays
* Accrued paid leave is paid out when you leave government employment
* Government pension
Ignoring the completely nonsensical "rent-seeking gatekeepers" comment, Lockheed and BAH receive government contracts through open bid procurement processes. You'll get no argument from me that often times these bids are written so only 1-3 firms in the world even qualify, but that's sort of the nature of the beast when the bid is to develop a new missile or something.
let's recap who are they? The Congress passed the pay caps if you show me any evidence that there is a broad voter support for removing those caps the "they" claim might have some merit otherwise "they"="we"
> even though a 280 attack will break somebody's AES-128 key out of a batch of 248 keys.
Yeah, "somebody's", but what does the average somebody have that's worth cracking their encryption over? It seems to me that most cryptanalysis threat models would be very specifically targeted: what is the President saying on his secure line? Where are the submarines being dispatched? What are the corporate earnings or fed rate decisions going to be?
Trawling thousands of encrypted connections and cracking one or two is a pretty cool feat,but probably not valuable enough to recoup the costs or yield anything of extraordinary value.
A nation-state actor that could read a random 0.0001% of another country's internal communications would have a decisive advantage. The number of big secrets flying around is enough that you'll get a few of them.
