Nationwide ground stop

[JordanD]

Oh, and accountability across the government for vendors. The number of corporations making bank on contracts that don’t deliver, and then making more bank on top to fix them, is where the real fraud waste and abuse is. Not some new hire forest service biologists or park rangers or weather forecasters.

I hate that every time I visit a national park the feeling that sticks around after is anger because some people will never see the value in it other than making money.

 

[Minuteman]

None of what we're talking about are fundamentally unsolved problems: robust and secure VoIP with multiple redundancies & fallbacks, a whole buffet of implementation methodologies, and oversight & program auditing.

But I think there are too many beltway middlemen and only a few hundred people who can 'see the whole elephant' for a multi-billion dollar budget. I don't mean to come off as "rrreeeeEEEEED tape!!" because the alternative is no-bid sole-source contracts that don't have to be subject to much inspection. It would be worse to end-up with a half-baked system that can never be fully deprecated because there's FAA management that is cowed from sticking-up and anyway is planning to make bailing & sustainment of that their second career once they get their 20.

In this case I'm up here in the peanut gallery, far away from the people who can see what needs fixing, but god if we could get an ATC 'czar' who everyone trusted and wasn't a Nazi, I think there could be incremental progress towards at least getting a foundation of reliable comms. Maybe even something that lasts 10 years, which would be long-enough to build something else on top of.

 

[🦈💜]

Who updates software on Friday afternoon?

It really depends on the shop. The "never release on a Friday!" thing mostly just comes from IT sorts. Production infrastructure (on the large-scale ISP side) typically has a change management cycle, 24x7 NOC/SOC, 24x7 engineering staff, etc. That said, Friday releases are definitely discouraged for most workloads. (I did work at a place one time that had their weekly release scheduled on Friday at 15:00. Some idiot had in his head "work all week, then release!". No bueno)

 

[nabbyfan]

Even just physical infrastructure wise. Most of the ARTCCs were built in the early 1960’s and it shows. Look at what other countries have and how their ATC is run. It’s honestly embarrassing.

I joke often that if you blindfolded somebody and took them inside an F.A.A. Center, they would assume they are in a 3rd world country, not the United States. We’re talking busy big name facilities where the plumbing doesn’t work, the HVAC doesn’t work, the water isn’t potable, the stairs to get up to the tower don’t work. It’s just honestly a joke that this is the best the United States can do.

 

[Cherokee_Cruiser]

We could cut the military by 1/3 and still be the only global superpower. And we could have universal healthcare (that’s a joke, we’d spend less on healthcare if we did that) and not have massive deficits and runaway inflation.

I’ll take my unpatriotic ramblings to communist Canada or something…

I’ve always wondered why we, The Peopl don’t demand that and get it changed.

The same way I’ve wondered why and how we continue to allow actual physical labor to be charged far higher on paycheck jobs, while capital gains get charged at 15% cap gains tax.


It’s like We The People want to inflict self pain while protecting the ultra rich.

 

[Minuteman]

See I already fell into a trap above. I didn't mention sustainment. Keeping equipment sustainable as COTS stiff requires continuous re-engineering of those solved problems.