agressivelyPassive

I'm trying to justify that in my head, but the only idea that I have is that "old" hard drives couldn't handle the vibrations of a train. But flash existed even back then, and floppies aren't exactly known for their high capacity.

I think you don't understand. It's not about "physically reached the machine under the desk" it's "was processed correctly by a system". Operations can only tell if a technical error occurred, they have no idea what the data is supposed to look like. So dataport can do jack shit.

IT de facto already is outsourced, there's hardly any internal IT left, simply because the pay is shit. I'd get at least 1k less after taxes if I'd do the same work for the agency, not a contractor.

And if you think his joke is funny in this context, it's not. I work with these agencies everyday. They are structurally broken, but most people there are really passionate about what they're doing.

That won't change a thing, unfortunately.

My employer currently works with a bunch of agencies and I've been involved with some of them. I can deliver the best product ever with the best process and lightning fast deployment - if the client doesn't get its shit together, you won't deliver on time/in budget.

Anecdote I'm currently part of: an agency bought a new app, we're 98% done, we could go live on Tuesday. But there's one agency/department/guy (I seriously don't know) who has to confirm that the data of our staging system reached their system and was processed correctly. This agency however doesn't react. At all. And because it's something like 5mm outside of the jurisdiction of the agency that is our direct client, there's nothing we can do. So the system is just sitting there waiting.

I could go on and on. Dataport is a good idea, but if all their clients are overworked, understaffed or straight up incompetent, there's not much they could do.

You never worked with bureaucracy, did you?

From a technical standpoint, you are absolutely correct, but reality and bureaucracy don't always match.

I've had instances, where we had glaring holes in our security, but were not allowed to fix them, because the datacenter (operated by a public agency) only does deployment in a fixed schedule.

I've had officials of some sort who wrote in the contract, that each and every change has to be on the staging environment for at least one week for testing and signoff.

It's absurd and stupid, but realistically, you often can't change it.

I can see the appeal of a fully self-driving Apple car. Something like a sleek little electric car, that takes the burden of actually driving away from you.

And looking back, 10 years ago (when this apparently started) self-driving cars seemed to be just around the corner and a huge market. So I can kind of see the idea behind it.

5 isn't low, though. That's a full Pentium of risc.

As someone who works with government agencies as a software developer: they are absolutely awful.

You'll get no specification at all, those you do get will change at least three times and every stupid little decision needs at least 20 people from different states, cities or agencies to agree.

Yes, the bug is pretty bad, but I'm also very sure that what you're describing is not the whole story.

Mildew doesn't grow in 15min, it takes hours to even smell weird and days to grow fungi. It's literally been cleaned with soap and hot water, there's not much to grow left.

And I bet you it reduces reliability, because all those fancy electronics are absolutely crucial for it to work at all and brittle as a sand castle. So you'll end up with a white brick if the wifi module craps out or a capacitor gets too warm.

You don't really need an accurate timer. If it says 2:30, just set an alarm to 3h and you'll be fine most of the time.

They did lower prices several times, but even though Tesla may not see itself as a luxury brand, they're definitely in the higher priced range. And there they are competing with more and more compelling offers from other companies, including traditional car manufacturers.

Tesla at this point has no edge. It's not cheap, not well built, range is just okay, the only thing it has is brand recognition. But that can backfire, obviously.

Here in Germany, Tesla's image used to be excellent, then they built a gigafactory near Berlin and had to be dragged by courts and striking workers to comply with the law, and they still thought it would be a good idea to put a water thirsty factory in the middle of a stretch of land that is literally turning into a desert right now. And Musk just stood there and laughed his simulation of human laughter into the faces of journalists and the chancellor when confronted during the opening.

To be fair, there are no statistics. You can't just query Twitter anymore, at least not for a reasonable price. So the only source is Musk, which is sketchy at best.