freeman

was likely announced prematurely,

It was announced 5 years ago and there’s still no release date. You can drop the “was likely”, it’s a definitive. It was.

The product was announced 5 years ago. 5.

They the. Said nothing for half a decade. Now starfield is coming out and is shipped from their perspective so he’s on to his next sale. Simple as that. See you in another 5+ years

I mean. My dream job would be to run infra/ops for a place like this, or really anything at nasa.

My skill set is generally running infrastructure with the basics of security (I did netsec for a bank for a while).

But I wouldn’t be able to be paid my salary and benefits, even though I take a much smaller stake than I could working at non profits. It would be even less in these fields.

Even for a place like nasa the jobs are really hard to come by and the hiring is no where near straightforward. And there’s a lot of regulatory capture that has contractors handling a lot of it with grift and generally poorer benefits as a result.

I would bet IT Department is just one of the lead scientists that happens to be decent with computers. A LOT of these folks already have to know python etc. And yes, I understand that its a totally different field from infra/ops/ and even security, but to these folks, its good enough sometimes. Having worked IT for a research institution, they can be fun to deal with, and take great personal ownership over their projects, data etc.

Not that I blame them to some degree, many of them are funded on grants that are highly scrutinized. They want to put every grant dollar to work on advancing research. Some even will personally handle/transport the datasets. For example you can see Shep Doeleman, the Director of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), do exactly this in the documentary "The Edge of All We Know" about black holes on netflix.

Honestly the only thing I can think of is the competition recently to hack a satellite, maybe has drawn the ire of some script kids, or rather interest. [1][2][3] I LOT of educational and research stuff is quite open, and often very resistant to change as they value access/transmissibility over security in many cases where theres no real grounds (ie: its not national secrets etc). Some of these datasets are quite large.

Even still basic things like firewalls, key based access etc should be setupo. Heck if its a multi-million dollar instrument airgapping is probably worth its time. But i dunno. Just conjecture on my part.

The competition definately brought some attention [4]

• [1] https://www.newsweek.com/eight-teams-hackers-will-compete-breach-us-satellite-space-1808270
• [2] https://www.afrl.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3341747/hack-a-sat-competition-highlights-on-orbit-hacking/
• [3] https://www.space.com/satellite-hacking-hack-a-sat-competition-winners
• [4] https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/08/national-intelligence-office-issues-cyber-warning-government-and-commercial-satellites/389671/

Would agree. I think what is more at issue is the level of indebtedness. Like the % of people that can’t afford a 500 dollar emergency.

And this isn’t because of inflation.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/most-americans-cant-afford-a-500-emergency-expense/

Inflation of course has made it worse. But when covid hit and the government started just handing out money and suspending loan payments it became a real problem. Many of those people with the loans took that money and continued spending and acting like the loans were just going away.

Even if the US just wiped all outstanding consumer debt off the table, it’s not going to fix the issue. Because it’s cultural and behavioral. And frankly it’s worrying in that I don’t really see a fiscal or policy that can make it better. People won’t chnage and it means we are heading for more pain (financially).

Even anecdotally it’s shocking to me when people ask how we paid for xyz emergencies but still get into 1000 dollar a month car loans or buy iPhones on credit.

It seems silly but it’s happened most of my adult life. And it’s never not been shocking.

Would agree 100%

Financial independence isn’t necessarily never work again. Though some definitions include that.

Even still, the article is talking about financial freedom, which even they recognize as a sliding scale

Half of Americans describe "financial freedom" as being comfortable, but not necessarily rich, and 49.3% say it refers to meeting financial obligations and having some money left over each month. About 54.2% define it as living debt-free, and 46.2% believe it means never having to worry about money.

I would be more in the latter part of saying it’s living mostly debt free. Or more depreciating debt free. Aka not house poor and able to manage finances.

Unfortunately the US (at least, I can’t speak to other parts but it seems Europe can be grouped in here too) has abysmal financial education. So many people by into consumerism at such a deep level that they impoverish themselves in it. I’m not totally free of unnessecary spending, but I don’t buy into so badly it puts me in a bad place or in debt.

We have debt. Mainly in our house but we still live below our means and always have. Places that loan you money aren’t looking out for you. And Society looks down on people that set boundaries or take the time to understand the full scope of a contract (such as a mortgage. I have seen it first hand).

Better education and better cultural norms that didn’t prioritize “things” and consumerism would go a long way. And that starts with parents, not schools or teacher. It’s a parents job. We have a lot of lazy parents and it’s now a generational issue.

Availability of credit wasn’t nearly as widespread in even the 80s but now we have a generation of people living in credit debt that haven’t taken the time to teach their kids either. Heck I’m partially at fault too (though my kids aren’t really of age to understand money quite yet)

FWIW he says this in the beginning of the video.

Windshield regulations are also done at the state level.

I’m not really interested in getting into a giant pedantic argument about the specific crack conditions you can and can’t drive with. It’s not really even the point nor is it what I stated (and let’s be serious you know what was meant). And if it makes you sleep better, whatever, you win. Your a DOT genius.

As to the windshield question. I have gotten multiple tickets for it, in my younger years when I would muck around in my shitty jeep wrangler. But im not really that invested to go digging through all the intracacies of DOT, nhtsa and state laws on the matter. Because I don’t really care.

Have a good day

The same ones that also say you cant drive with a cracked windshield.