>It's one of the few segments in IT where you're not directly at constant risk of being replaced by an H1B.

Truth. One of the reasons why I keep gravitating back to defense work. Only since around 2004 or so; there's now this "government shutdown" nonsense, which is a bit of a vicious circle, because programs get fucked over, then you have to roll off the contract and find work on another. And sometimes, there isn't any. (happened to me at Lockheed), so some people have to cycle back into the private sector for a few years (which isn't a bad thing; because THAT is where you pick up new skills, to be honest). Then when some asshole "businessman" crashes the business and does layoffs (to replace you with H1B's), you're back on the street again, and you end up back in the "safe" sector: defense. Oh, and if your Clearance expires while you're in the private sector, then the contractor just pays the $10k (or whatever it is now) to re-do your investigation. This has happened to me twice now.

The way that the US Navy operates nuclear reactors.
It's not been accident free, but has been much safer. Because it's not operated on a for-profit basis.

yeah, but the risk is borne by innocent bystanders.

Not shareholders.
Not board-members.
Not idiot operators who don't vet the authenticity of replacement parts (or otherwise cut corners to save their costs).

>n that environment, a "safer" reactor just means they can get away with more cost-cutting to line their own pockets. Until we figure out a way to eliminate that, I'm not at all confident that even the most theoretically "idiot proof" reactor would actually be substantially safer in practice than the reactors we have today.

It's really THIS.

And we already have a way to eliminate that. Just not in the Civilian world. As soon as you try to run a nuclear reactor as a for-profit business where the costs are borne by others (like the people who live in the town that gets shut down after the plant explodes; they will not get their land back in their own lifetimes, but shareholders don't give a fuck) - it's a recipie for disaster. But operate a nuclear power plant as part of an Navy vessel; these folks mean business, and they do it right. And it's nowhere near profitable, compared to other means of electrical generation. (this is why the commercial industry is leaving nuclear power: it's not profitable unless the government gives them shitloads of money).

And the prevailing Milton Friedman attitudes of running business and informing Government Policy is what is responsible for the NRC being no longer able to do their jobs.

It's like the voice of millions of auto mechanics cried out and were silenced.

Only nobody ever expected a GM product to last more than 1023 weeks.

If they're suffering from problems, they should solve them.

For the corruption, maybe institute an actual justice system that punishes actual corrupt people, taking bribes, or using extortion. Rather than just jailing political opponents.

For the sanctions, they might consider honoring the treaty they signed to not invade or threaten Ukraine, or Crimea.

Things would be going much better for them, and their space program.

But it becomes vanishingly unlikely; to produce certain alloys with certain isotope ratios; outside of a clean-room. There is so much environmental contamination from various sources, (including nuclear testing; also nuclear accidents, and also natural volcanism) - that it's almost a science to be able to determine the age some materials were manufactured, purely by analyzing the isotope content).

I think that there tend to be simpler explanations for things like these, and it's not likely what most people think it is, (aliens). But on the other hand, I think it's fascinating, and definitely bears much deeper examination.

Yes; and the problem is that this is made VERY clear in Article I of the US Constitution concerning copyright, whose purpose is spelled out clearly: "To promote the useful arts and sciences".

If it does not promote the useful arts and sciences, then copyright interdiction of material is actually unconstitutional, (no matter what some paid-off judge says on behalf of the media monopolies).

lol - yeah, I could comment; having owned several VW's and BMW's and an Mercedes.

The Mercedes was a diesel, and that generation were pretty much bulletproof-reliable; I bought it with 300k miles, and did most of the work myself for the 3 years I owned it, and recouped my $5k investment when I sold it.

The classic VWs I've owned - is pretty much an apples-to-oranges comparison, and the modern one I owned, a diesel jetta, honestly was a complete pile of crap. The transmission and motor (ALH) was great, and I rebuilt it at 200k miles after someone I loaned it to let it overheat. Every other part of that car was flaky garbage, including the electronics, the coolant hoses, and ESPECIALLY the vacuum lines (which I ended up replacing in their entirety to get back to some semblence of reliability). I feel like I was lucky to have conned someone into paying $4000, and I threw in a flatbed trailer with that. (wish I hadn't).

The two BMW's I've had were/are also VERY reliable, though you really need to stay on top of engine-seals, suspension bushings, and coolant hoses. You do that, and these cars will take VERY good care of you. You neglect it, and you're going to regret it. I'll qualify this to exclude the models after 2006; when they started using turbocharged direct-injection engines which are VERY fiddly, and the turbos also don't last. Keeping these in shape becomes VERY expensive, (the direct injection models need you to pull the cylinder-head and bead-blast out the soot build-up inherent in that design). I think some of the later models after 2015 or so are much more well dialed-in, but I haven't owned one of those.

TBF; my previous employer used Solarwinds, and the product we used had nothing to do with TFTP, DHCP etc. we used it for database monitoring and performance analytics. And it wasn't really about incompetence, it was about being a small operation, and not wanting to hire the expertise (part of the reason I left), and frankly, living in a job market where that kind of expertise is fairly difficult to find (at any price - but I'll be first to admit they were just cheap).

The minute they took off their identifying patches, they became a criminal gang.

And that's what the Russian government, their military, and APT 29 are. A huge, organized crime gang, with the resources, and none of the legitimacy of a nation state.

That's an ethical problem, and your boss should have given you guidance about how to fill that sheet out.

From my days at a defense contractor; (Lockheed Martin), we had a yearly training video (15 minutes?) detailing how to properly fill out timesheets and bill time, and the practice of billing non-project time to projects, while seemingly rather benign, is actually very illegal. (AFAIK; the bigger problem is: when the company does not spell this out in their policy, or take an effort to make sure employees know this policy - if people actually just make a mistake, or are sloppy, it's not considered as big a deal. However: if someone's looking for a reason to DING you on something, you're giving them an excuse to do it).

Just because we also do it to them, doesn't mean we're supposed to roll over and expose our backsides.

When they SAY they're going on vacation, they're really invading Ukraine.