I've been involved in DoD level platform sign off. One of the companies I used to work for had a platform X, that was closed AF, to spite my objections. The DoD has us do a live demo of it in Virginia in a closed meeting. We had to submit the platform for a ton of security testing, BUT, we never had to submit source code. I had to bring the platform with me, on a CD, and show it running on a server they provided, but again, never had to hand over source. I sat in the testing room, with the testers, and everything was above board.

I don't doubt your account, I'm sure it is accurate, I just know they didn't always require it, and if they do now, that's great, they should. Everything should be open source, across the board.

There is a serious problem with having mangers, on mangers, on team leads, that just break any ability to communicate at scale. If anyone remembers that phone game, where several people stand in a circle, and you tell the person next you X, and they tell the next person X and so on, until it come back to you. It's the same issue, and well, I think his double speaking nonsense is annoying, and I don't believe him, there are some benefits to cutting the abstraction layers.

How many times can you recall where a person in the middle, made an issue more difficult, by either misunderstanding something, or, relaying incorrect information? Cutting out managers can resolve this issue, especially if you can report something or receiving something directly. The other reality is fewer managers = less project management = less time waste. How much nonsense PM stuff do you have to deal with? I'm not saying all project management is useless, but the over reliance on meetings to plan meetings to plan the planning meeting is ridiculous. Then you take all those outputs, sanitize them into some document system, with an inaccurate document, and you've just wasted 10, 20+ hours per week.

If I honestly thought this was his goal, that would be spectacular, but I don't. I think he's doing it for costing cutting and AI funding reasons because everyone knows that AI is 10 employees in value (joking).

That's effectively the same thing, you'd somehow discredit the administration more than they're already discredited, which granted is hard.

They should demand open source, as should most companies. If a company is willing to provide the evidence they're above board, and can show verification that what they're showing you is what you're going to get, then there is no downside.

Yes, but that's a different issue, and if you can show that using the government's baseless methodology, you can probably cause a good amount of change. From TP Links side, there isn't a downside to this, they can prove reliability, safety, security and privacy, and shut the government up.

There's no real hardship here, just open source the hardware, software, designs, and then spin this around and force the US government to prove there's anything to be concerned about. Secure chains of trust are available, so everything can be validated, signed and audited, so really there is no good argument against doing this, unless you have something to hide! Keep in mind going open source does not mean giving away everything for free, it just means you're being accountable.

Microsoft Office is a terrible reference to pick, regardless as to my personal feelings, it's objectively, slow, bulky, lacks proper platform support, invasive with AI, and has a completely broken licensing system. If they want to innovate gaming, to make it like Office, just throw your game console in the trash, have someone kick you in the nuts, then demand payment for painkillers, and that might be a better overall experience.

I have never used a delivery service, like Uber Eats or Door Dash. I know many people who do, and love them, but what are you getting for the increased fees?

Let's fairly extract those with disabilities, who can't really go out to eat, as they have a good reason for using Uber Eats or Door Dash.

What about people who are just lazy? Uber Eat, which on going is going to represent all delivery companies, is the new Drive Through. The Drive Through on its own is an idiotic concept, and it changed restaurant life enough to be an annoyance. If I go to my local McDonald's, and order some food, they will ignore everyone in the restaurant, and just focus on Drive Through, and Uber Eats. I have stood in our local McDonald's for 40+ minutes waiting for my order, while they fill every Drive Through order, and every Uber Eats order with hast. Generally, you have to complain to get your order if you didn't use Uber Eats or the Drive Through. It's gotten to the point you can get free food just by going in to order because, they will make you wait long enough, they'll hand out coupons for free meals, for your wait.

The food was “fresh” when you ordered, but now it goes into an unseal “insulated” bag, to go on a journey. The Mc-Doubles are tasty when “fresh”, but 10, 20 or 30 minutes later? Even if you didn't pay extra, who wants cold food? You do have to pay extra, and a lot, it's not cheap so not only, are you getting cold food, you're getting excessively priced and tipped cold food, all so you don't have to what? Seriously, what? What can't you go out for?

Before someone asks in a comment, do I get delivery Pizza? No, do you know how much delivery is? I used to get delivery but fees + tip, and you're in $25 on top of the meal, and all you got for that $25 was essentially nothing, and the meal was probably under $50, so why are you paying 50% extra?

Uber Eat has changed the industry, but what problem did it solve? Let's not get into grocery delivery, which again, I think is stupid. What is this obsession with finding ways to be lazy, and accomplishing what otherwise is a simple and easy task? Restaurants don't even have an option because if they don't allow Uber Eats, their customer base will be non-existent.

On a little rant, the people who complain the loudest about Uber Eating causing issues, or not getting food, are the same group who complain it's “Sooooo difficult to lose weight.”. When you can't bother to walk into McDonald's, what are you really complaining about? When it comes to fees, I know families, and couples, who spend hundreds of dollars to have food delivered, when the drive to pick up the food, or go out to eat, would be 10-minutes. Uber Eats is a confusing but successful business model, it's solving a problem almost no one had, at a cost no one can defend.

Okay, but, the problem isn't that we're some cluless "head-in-ass" style company, I'm in charge of IT, and I'm more then competient enough to standup the service. I told them that, and offered the server to them. I didn't want them hosting it, they insisted, but, couldn't explain why it was required to be hosteed by them.

That's a fine argument, that you can get your turn over covered quickly, but is the quality present? Going back to the example of the training, there was no need for them to host it. They rambled on about security and privacy, but got 99% of what they said wrong, or, wrong by association. On top of that, you can't recommend a product that costs X when another is free, without giving a very good defense, can of course they couldn't. Why couldn't I use Moodle? Why? Oh, because their people didn't know to set it up or configure it, or, stand up a Linux server and administer it. So because they're functionally retarded, I should pay them a lot of money to host something for me?

Funny enough they were showing me a demo of the platform after ranting about how serious they take security, and privacy, but had it hosted on a public URL. During the demo I ran scans against the server and it was not configured correctly, I would have failed a high school student for doing that poor of a job. They got really upset about that, and claimed I had no right to run a scan on their infrastructure, but, either put up or shutup.

That's a fair argument, again, but it's all about what you get out of it. Lets assume it takes one day to setup a server and Moodle. It takes one day to setup a course, badges, users, and other associated work, and, two days to write the training. That's four days of work, we'll round up to five, to make it a week. Accenture would charge at least $25k+, you'd pay a senior employee $1500 / week (after tax). In this example is your output 83% better in a qualitative fashion? Lets assume the weekly rate was $10k, at what point is the output going to justify the cost?

Perfect example, no argument.

Yes, AI is going to quickly change the consultancy market, and well AI can't replace true skill, talent, and knowledge, as a consultant, you need to be able to explain why you rate is worth it. I'm going to go back to: What do I need to pay another company for, to get me Cybersecurity training? In my experience, a lot of consultants aren't worth the paper of the invoice.

Right off the bat, not all consulting is a scam, not all consultants are scammers!

I've known people who worked at Accenture, the daily cost you had to pay Accenture to hire them was 5k+. What did they do that could possibly justify that? I don't know, but 5k / day would be $625 / hour. Did they value add $625 / hour? No, hell, they didn't add $100 / hour, I would be hard-pressed to say they added $50 / hour of value. Let's assume $50 / hour of value add, if Accenture charges double, $100 / hour, that would be $800 / day, or with extras, $1k / day. Where did the other $4k / day go?

Have you tried to hire a consultant to manage IT, or Cybersecurity? My company recently hired consultants to build training and cybersecurity documents, why? The cost for them to build a CS training module, and host it was something outrageous, $20k+. ChatGPT can generate a suitable CS training course, and if you host that with Moodle, on a VPS for $5 / month, what does it really cost to make CS training, let assume $100 / hour, for a suitable employee, $800? Where did the other $19k come from? The other training was something you could produce internally, so another $800, they were knowingly overbilling us by $18k, and that was reasonable!

IT consultants? You want me to pay $200+ / hour for you to assign me an Office 365 license, or add a VM in Azure / AWS? If you're in critical industry, maybe, like Government where security should (but doesn't) matter? Okay, let's get 1 or 2 IT consultants, but for 99% of companies, that's not required.

If consultants are worried due to AI, they should be! Think of where consultants are really required, can you defend most of them?

My problem with Outlook is that it doesn't handle email correctly, objectively. I don't want to use Microsoft email, I want to use email, and that's why Outlook is terrible because at every possible avenue Microsoft will do something to make Outlook functionally handicapped.

If you would like to know what I'm using on this computer, Betterbird, is it perfect? Nope, but it's email, it's not Mozilla email, or Insert overriding company email, it's just email, and it works just like basic, simple, standard email needs to work. Do people run Outlook, sure, but do those same people cause issues, headaches, and make the world a worse place when all you need is email? Yes!

To be honest, I don't mind what you use for an email client, providing it handles everything correctly, without custom protocols, and without inserting junk or reformatting into a standard that's not an open email standard. Off-topic, but the problem compounds if you start using Exchange, and don't understand with great experience on how to set it up.

Outlook has become the catch-all term for poorly designed, poorly executed, feature lacking, functionality lacking email clients. No serious professional would ever use Outlook, it's lacking basic standards, for instance, why can't you see the “reply to” header? It's missing, there is no official way to enable it, except it's a critical header. Why isn't PGP / GPG built in by default? Why does Outlook using a proprietary format? Why does the interface make sure you guess on what you're trying to do? Why does it lack cross-platform support? Can anyone defend running Outlook in 2025? If you want to hate email, more than you already hate email, Outlook is a great option. If you don't have unlimited time to waste, need to get work done, and have to use email as a tool, Outlook will never be able to fill that need.

What is AI going to add? If the platform is crippled to the point Outlook is, adding AI can't fix anything because the base of the product is functionally unusable as a tool. Alpine, is a more feature rich, and usable email client in 2025, than Outlook. Why doesn't Microsoft just worry about building a functionally useful email client?

Yep, I'm not concerned for my daughters (mid-aged teenagers), their kids, are screwed. Small examples to show the scope of the issue, Amazon overnighted something to my house, that came in a box, nested in a box, filled with packing material in both boxes, and what was this highly sensitive / fragile package? A container of Tide Pods, which I didn't need overnighted, but didn't have another option, and didn't need multiple boxes, with packing protection.

You can fairly ask why I Amazon'd Tide Pods. We require a paper trail of receipts, since my wife is a travelling nurse, and the CRA requires the paperwork, so, we use Amazon because I get a trackable order history. That being said, they could have just slapped a label on the Tide Pods, and dropped them at the door, any time in the next two or three weeks! They have done that before, hence why I know they can.

I can support all of that! My point is, no one in power is going to do anything to combat / tackle climate change as a hard goal.

No one with the power to do anything, will take it seriously, that's been proven over decades. There is no debate to be had about climate change, there wasn't decades ago, but at least for the last decade it's been absolutely irrefutable. I don't understand what anyone is hoping for any more, effectively those in power adopted an Agile / Lean methodology so they could act as if they were seeking progress, well, not doing anything, and feeling empowered.