silkroadtraveler

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 days ago

Be willing to bet they were greasing their profit margins to an insane degree. I used to work at one of the slimy defense contractors (second tier right below the primes). There is this law called TINA (Truth in Negotiations Act). Anything under $2.5M required ZERO cost justification. So managers / directors would bump price right up to the ceiling regardless. Even when the TINA threshold was crossed, they had a bottomless bag of reasons to juice their margins beyond anything reasonable. The thinnest justification would work because the gov knew there was basically no competition left thanks to mergers & acquisitions. If there wasn’t some conflated or exaggerated reason easily at hand, those directors in charge of approving the proposal would just say force majeure (covid) supply chain inflation OR knowingly avoid ever pressing a supplier to reduce their inflated margins. They knew they could present a component supplier’s price as a reason to cover their arbitrary and all the downstream suppliers’ arbitrary price increases. I never saw the gov (DCMA or DCAA- paper tigers) extract any meaningful price concessions. There were good people working there, but it was clear they were there only to prevent the grossest malfeasance in production, not any contractual price gouging. The whole supply chain was just a giant cesspool of greasy contractors from top to bottom. Number go up, more bombs forever. So glad I’m out of that parasitic, death merchant industry.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Be willing to bet they were greasing their profit margins to an insane degree. I used to work at one of the slimy defense contractors (second tier right below the primes). There is this law called TINA (Truth in Negotiations Act). Anything under $2.5M required ZERO cost justification. So managers / directors would bump price right up to the ceiling regardless. Even when the TINA threshold was crossed, they had a bottomless bag of reasons to juice their margins beyond anything reasonable. The thinnest justification would work because the gov knew there was basically no competition left thanks to mergers, acquisitions & consolidation (that politicians directly benefited from). If there wasn’t some conflated or exagerrsted reason easily at hand, those in charge of approving the proposal would just say COVID supply chain inflation OR knowingly avoid ever pressing a supplier to reduce their inflated margins knowing they could present it as a reason for price increases. I never saw the gov extract any meaningful price concessions. It was just one giant cesspool of greasy contractors from top to bottom. Number go up, more bombs forever. So glad I’m out of that parasitic, death merchant industry.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Great point about the relentless slaughter of Arabs. So easily forgotten how many innocents America slaughtered during this time period. America is morally rotten to the core, high on its own supply of hatred and cruelty.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Bitwarden’s last update made the iOS categorically worse and impacted the Pin unlock functionality on Linus desktop. Guess I’m migrating to Proton’s offering along with the rest of their suite. Hope they don’t go down the enshittification rabbit hole anytime soon.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Excellent suffering lol. I love the authenticity. So many of the YouTubers now are manufacturing unpleasantness, and it’s so easy to spot. Come on, there must be plenty of true travel disasters out there, but the algorithms don’t find them!

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 weeks ago (8 children)

I’m interested in this too now haha

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Just a warning on MS email services. I stopped paying for OneDrive and the DAY my sub expired they stopped allowing me to receive or send emails on my linked Outlook and Hotmail email addresses. Not sure whether this same policy applies to stand alone legacy Hotmail accounts, but it’s the same company running the service.

In terms of which company I detest more: I think it’s still Microsoft hands down. At least Google doesn’t suspend send / receive if you stop paying. MS is a dumpster fire of tax evasion, monopoly, and predatory behavior.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yes it happened. But for US Navy fanboys to be cheering this on and gloating is laughable. How about the Bonhomme Richard burning IN SAN DIEGO harbor? How about the loss of the USS Thresher? Blatant hypocrisy and attribution bias to say Chinese corruption and incompetence is at fault for the sinking of the sub, yet attribute no malice or incompetence to the US losses.

Oh and not to mention FAT LEONARD?!

Come on. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

(And I’m a US mil veteran who isn’t a fan of the CPC)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Anything in those categories from No Starch Press

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Seriously!! Not my smartest move.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Most EHS departments are like most HR departments. Perception management to benefit 1) the department and 2) the company. Any possible way EHS can use lax regulations (most places outside the EU) to avoid accountability, it will happen in nearly every circumstance.

I worked in EHS for a time. The amount of scab, toxic and corrupt behavior I saw made me NOPE out of that career field real fast. EHS got more people fired and swept more incidents under the rug than anyone else. Masters of gaslighting and virtue signaling.

Of course there will be exceptions, and I’m sure you’re one of them.

 

Huge shout-out to Kovid Goyal's Calibre! I've been expanding my use of Calibre for months and finally decided to try out the "Fetch News" functionality this past week. I was floored! I have over 50 news sources that auto-fetch every day. It took me awhile to refine the sources that work, but now I can read all my news natively in Calibre.

I've been working on debugging why some of the news sources fail to fetch to learn more about Calibre and to design my own fetching for custom news sources. But, I'm a programming newb so that will take me awhile

On a related note, another Calibre feature that has helped me organize my life is "Virtual Libraries". I was finally able to separate my library into 3 categories that enable me to stay focused. For me these were:

  1. Hobby Reading
  2. News & Magazines
  3. Study and Resources It takes almost no time at all to set up this functionality.

Thank you Kovid and everyone who contributes to this amazing OS project!

 

Iowa Speedway in Newton, Iowa is a .875-mile tri-oval with variable banking that drives like a much bigger superspeedway. With laps under 18 seconds, “The World’s Fastest Short Track” is exceptionally demanding physically and mentally on drivers. It was designed with the second generation of SAFER Barrier around the entire perimeter of the racetrack.

 

Iowa Speedway in Newton, Iowa is a .875-mile tri-oval with variable banking that drives like a much bigger superspeedway. With laps under 18 seconds, "The World's Fastest Short Track" is exceptionally demanding physically and mentally on drivers. It was designed with the second generation of SAFER Barrier around the entire perimeter of the racetrack.

 

Honor guards are to stop performing changing of the guard ceremonies around a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to avoid “worshiping authoritarianism,” the Ministry of Culture said yesterday.

Great news!! Never too late to stop idolizing brutal authoritarians.

 

Race discussion thread.

 
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Suspicious (lemmy.today)
 
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