I assume that there's a team of war planners for this. They're taking into account strategic planning where they look at the cultural advantages of the strait closure as well as the tactical advantages of closing the strait again from Iran's side. Oh fuck it. There's no spin to this. Nevermind. Enjoy another six months of no oil traffic. Good for Israel bad for everyone else.

I thought this was going to be about the actual dish-ware, not food.

I remember one of the few newer fancy/expensive restaurants in San Francisco that survived the 2000 dot-com crash did so in part by dropping their custom-made (along with their restaurant logo) dishes/glasses for normal plain dish-ware.

(They also simplified their menu - still very good, just a bit less exotic)

REG: "All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"

To me, what would suck the most is living in a place after the Romans where you can see signs of their civilization but you're living a rural peasant life.

The idea entered our collective subconscious and is still going strong:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/my-father-in-law-is-a-builder...

Imagine growing up in Cairo.

In many ways, that's how a lot of people feel in modern Britain: everywhere you see signs of XIX century grandeur, but "on the streets" life can feel depressingly backwards.

Brewing alcohol was known to hunter-gatherers. Irrigation, sanitation and water-systems were invented in Mesopotamia (as were cities). Medicine/education, that's the Greeks.

> Irrigation, sanitation and water-systems were invented in Mesopotamia (as were cities)

This is sort of like saying computers were invented in Mesopotamia because they did math.

Roman water and earth-moving civil engineering was absolutely cutting edge to the degree that the projects they undertook would have been unfathomable to their Bronze-Age predecessors.

> Medicine/education, that's the Greeks

Egyptians, Shirley?

(Although they're such abstract concepts, I'm sure everyone had them to some degree).

The building I live in is like a fortress - all cement construction, another outer layer of stressed concrete panels, triple pane windows... very well-insulated. We have a ground temp heat exchanger its floor heating/cooling which has been more than adequate during this heatwave.

It's behind a paywall. Does this disallow corporations and non-USA residents from buying property?

That works here in Switzerland sort of - prices are still super high but more because of local wealth, not Russians and Chinese buying everything. There are underdeveloped places where foreigners are allowed to buy - Andermatt for example is filled with rich Americans.

Not in any meaningful way. This would be more upsetting if corporate buyers were a significant part of the problem.

I was on a government project where I found out I was being fraudulently billed on my hours. It was towards the end of the year and my manager was trying to use up the budget of the client. Although this is normal in the private sector I told him from the beginning that you can't do this on a government project.

The project was $1M+ which was enough for prison time. He had gone into our billing software and edited my entries - it wasn't as if he was submitting the fraudulent totals only - he was changing what I was entering.

I gathered as much documentation as I cloud and went to a law firm. They told me I had two options - report it to the Government Accounting Office or report it to the head of the project, an academic.

So I simultaneously resigned and reported it to the professor. I covered my butt. I'm pretty sure the professor hid the fraudulent billing but I didn't look into afterwards because basically that was what I was hoping he'd do so I wouldn't have to go to court and defend that my reported hours weren't really mine.

The full project was eventually awarded to another academic group.

That's particularly egregious because there's a time-honored way to do this legally, namely have you shave yaks for 80 hours a week towards the end of the fiscal year (lot of USG contractors are skipping their vacations this summer for that exact reason).

Yeah, this is important to look out for, one way to tell it is probably happening is if the contractor has the word 'Labs' at the end of the LLC name.

Okay… do you not feel culpable at some point? Do you feel no obligation to expose these various individuals fleecing the tax payers? Your boss, the academics, and everyone else who participated or knows and remains silent. Obviously, you are now in the later group.

Yes I know it’s not all that rare, BECAUSE people can’t be bothered to blow the whistle.

Do people really have a duty to fix every wrong in the world? He reported it to the project head, and resigned. He ensured he wasn't a part of the situation.

I don't think you have to be a full saint to fulfil your moral obligations. He ensured he wasn't implicitly participating and reported it to someone who had a responsibility to investigate/do something about it. That is a reasonable amount of effort to rectify the situation in my opinion.

> Yes I know it’s not all that rare, BECAUSE people can’t be bothered to blow the whistle.

The person you are responding to did "blow the whistle". They reported it to the project head. That is blowing the whistle.

Whistleblowers get worse punishments than the criminals they report on.

If you don’t have a duty to report, you don’t have a duty to report. You can’t predict what government prosecutors will do. If they start investigating and it turns out for whatever reason they can’t pin it on the boss, they could have pinned if on OP.

Think about it logically. If you’re the prosecutor, the guy whose time is fraudulent is presumptively the criminal. It could very well be that he was actually the one who was engaged in the fraud, but went to the authorities to protect himself by making it look like his boss did it.

Look, you want people to get involved? Then it needs to be safe to do so. Recent history has demonstrated that whistleblowers have no such assurance. They risk damage to their reputation and future employment prospects; some even end up forced out their career of choice. This is how we reward them, and you expect people to just step up and fall on those swords?

Other commenters have pointed out that our justice system also lacks any means to determine how a particular case will play out. Personally, I would do everything in my power to avoid entanglement with the government, in any way shape or form. I am literally terrified of going to court for any reason, because Truth and Justice no longer have any place there; no, the Law sucks all the oxygen out of the room. If you think otherwise, then I would wager that you have never been through that system.

Absolutely not. Honor does not pay the mortgage. Whistleblowers have no real protection, despite laws saying they should. If you blow that whistle, you will be retaliated against, guaranteed.

What you know and what you can prove are different things.

I think most people would blow the whistle if they had evidence of personal-enrichment fraud. Suspecting that incentives are producing strange outcomes is one thing; accusing specific people of criminal conduct is quite another.

Hilariously, in the one case I heard about where an MD was eventually fired for taking kickbacks from contractors, the department then struggled to recruit competent staff. It turned out he had only been skimming from people who could actually do the job.

Now that you know, do you feel culpable?

He just knows that someone on HN who is not using their real name has described witnessing government fraud at some unspecified point in the past and reporting it to the head of the project. He doesn't have any information about where it occurred other than probably the United States.

He's not really in a position to act usefully on this information, so had no reason to feel any culpability for not acting. It is only an interesting question when put to people were in a position where they had to make a choice.

He can report the incident to digital crimes unit who can subpoena HN/YC for identity of the poster, and then they can take it from there.

There is always something you can do — whether you are going to bother is an altogether a different matter.

Your really think this would be investigated? An uncorroborated story shared on online forum by an anonymous poster? You really think highly of authority, don’t you?

Nope, I do not: but if someone is riding the moral high horse, start with themselves ;)

I'm supposed to dox this person or something? What are you asking exactly?

It was too risky. My boss was scummy and even though I had documentation about my hours being edited he would have fought it and we'd go to court and at that point it'd be a crap shoot. If I remember right, the prison time was five years and there is no parole with federal sentences.

To prevent this situation the peons should be given the benefit of the doubt by the courts.

In this case, either (1) the peon was lying about reported hours, the boss didn't notice, and then the peon reported himself... or (2) everything happened just like you said.

Aren't there bounties for reporting things like this? At the very least winning should include reimbursement for legal expenses.

All your going to end up with this type of cases is:

* Years of stress

* Years of financial losses because lawyers are not cheap. And no matter how well you are innocent, not having a lawyer is guaranteed that you will fail.

* Years of time wasting.

And for what? The government maybe sentencing a guy for fraud. When its like 90%+ he will strike a sweetheart deal with the prosecutor.

Even worse in a case like this where its almost your word vs the boss his word. Yea, you can be the guy that ends up living under a bridge while the CEO laughs his way to the bank, being able to pin it on you.

Its already difficult with some proof... Dealing with this type of fraud case reporting, is easier when your not in the spotlight of the crime, and then reporting it. But if your unwilling part of it, few people want their neck on the line.

They do get the benefit of the doubt, but when you're a defendant in a criminal trial, simply having the benefit of the doubt on your side will not mean that you're going to have a great experience with it.

Easier to say than do.

Sure, you go first. Make sure your work is highly visible and regulated for extra challenge mode.

Edit: I'll do you one better, there may be a reason that academics and others up/downstream from you gave an OK. They might even receive fees, and play 100% dumb when you try to blow a whistle! Just spitballing here.

hell no! CYA and See'ya! You should try to avoid anything to do with government investigations.

> Okay… do you not feel culpable at some point?

1. No mens rea.

2. He did what was expected of him.

3. You're always free to break into prison if you find yourself in his position, but you might discover yourself sitting in a pool of shit that was not of your own making.

4. Do you really want the parent poster to face the possibility of criminal prosecution, because his scumbag boss convinces the DOJ that the parent poster were the one fucking with the hours, and tried to pin it on him?

Someone hasn't heard of qui tam

Qui tam (and the federal false claims act) are brilliant, such an elegant solution to a classic problem in government (corruption).

The False Claims Act is one of my favorite things in the world, hands down. Who would have guessed that paying whistleblowers a fraction of the proceeds for high stakes financial crime would be so effective? Well, aside from every economist and financier who ever lived, I mean.

Thank you for this tidbit of information!

That was your mistake. The grant recipient or department has as much incentive to fully spend the money as your consultant boss does to bill it. It's a implied understanding.

Spend the budget or next time people will ask why you need all that money when you didn't spend it last time. Expensive projects are important projects. Important projects make careers. That is baked in several layers deep. You'd need to report it to a waste and fraud line, ombudsman, or similar.

I'm not sure its unusual enough to bother, though.

I decided to take the advice of my lawyers who specialized in the topic of government projects. Based on the budget someone could have easily gone to prison and it probably would have been me because it looked like I was billing 80-hours a week when it was just one of many projects and so I was actually billing ~20/wk. The $1M threshold wasn't an anecdote - at the time it really was the limit in project size for prison time.

Ages ago, my girlfriend at the time worked for a company that routinely got SIBR (small business innovation research) grants. Such grants made up part of her total workload.

The crazy thing was that if she worked for 10 hours on SBIR stuff, then worked 40 hours on her normal work stuff (so overtime), the SBIR billing would get scaled down to 8 hours (that is, 25% of 40 hours). There would be no way to bill 80 hours.

The other thing that seemed somewhat crazy is that it was also common to have multiple SBIR contracts going on at the same time. If they bought a $10K tool for SBIR grant #1 and SBIR grant #2 needed it two, they'd have to buy a second one. So the tool would be out, then when switching between work on the grants, the tool would go into a locked cabinet, then the second copy of the tool would get unlocked from a different cabinet. I understand that firewalling like that prevents a company from "borrowing" expensive equipment for their own work, but it lead to waste like I just described.

Why not float a company to buy the tool and then let that company charge money to lease the tool to the using companies for the specific non-overlapping period instead of borrowing? Leasing can't be prohibited too?

There can be complicated tax implications. And standing up a new company has a fair bit of overhead.

You would have been fine: Your pay stubs reflected the correct time and your correct payment.

I was salary.

Then why would you bill fraudulent hours if it didn't increase your pay?

Shit. That does make it hard. I suspect you made the right move to protect yourself from drama.

If you were salary and not benefitting from it, there's literally no chance you would have gone to jail. This was the equivalent of panicking about running a yellow light in terms of overreaction. The only thing you had to do was write an email, cc your personal email, and tell your boss you think the punches are messed up and that they reflect more than you worked. Your boss would tell you not to worry about it and you're done.

Your faith in the criminal justice system amuses me.

Abuses happen. But they are the exception, not the rule. There's no need to be so cynical and mocking about it.

I think you are flatly wrong. For example, our current system is abusive by coercing something like 90% of defendants into unfair plea deals instead of allowing them fair trials. Fair and speedy trials are a fundamental right, and that’s just one of many example of how the government has been systematically abusing its citizenry. That you think abuse is exceptional is mind-blowing when compared to my lived experience.

If a child rapist can become president with the support of the highest court in the country, and repeatedly abuse his position to indict his political enemies while enriching himself, truly all is well in the land of the free.

Do you believe there is evidence that Donald Trump raped a child?

The person you're talking to literally spoke to lawyers and followed their advice. If you know better, maybe you should work in government law.

I love when people on the internet think they know better than lawyers about a situation they are barely familiar with.

If I call a lawyer and ask them whether I should jaywalk or not the lawyer will advise me not to jaywalk.

Wait, did you get paid overtime when he modified your time sheet?

I guess it may not be normal but I got straight time overtime when I worked for a contractor. Made those weeks I really did do 80 hrs nice. But if they have any system involved the fact you did not get paid for the time would be a big red flag.

> Spend the budget or next time people will ask why you need all that money when you didn't spend it last time.

I've always heard of this nugget of wisdom but never really understood it. By punishing those who underspend (by making the next application harder), wouldn't you incentivise inflated research costs, or worse, fraud. Seems like a quick path to a positive feedback loop towards the degradation of trust in academic spending, leading to "poor government efficiency".

It makes zero sense to me either, yet it is an omnipresent influence in who gets tasked to what in my work. At my level, I do not know anyone who endorses it, they merely react to it.

Think of it the other way: If you have been given a $1 million budget, as a manager, your job is to purchase $1 million of Useful Stuff.

The rank above you has decided "we need $1 million of software, go buy that." They don't know exactly how much stuff costs, so they use a dollar value as a rough proxy.

If, as manager, you cut corners to save money, you're doing the wrong thing. They want the software! They don't to keep want the money, that's why it was allocated in the budget. Go buy us more Useful Stuff!

i think anther scenario is more likely: you say you need a 1 million budget to run the IT department, but you only spend part of it, then next year if you ask for 1 million again, they will say, but last year you only spent 700k, so we are going to give you only that much.

but the problem here is how budgets are assigned. instead of a fixed number it should have a lower and an upper bound. at least X, but no more than Y. the closer to you get the better, but next year the budget will be the same range. only if you drop below X you run into the above problem, but then it's much less likely and if you really spend that little something else is wrong or the budget really was to high.

Or certain project related items in the overall budget have their own budget. If (when) the project slips into a future accounting period then so does the budget.

That's the paradox that causes the problem, perhaps paradox is not the correct term, conflicting view points?.

From above(the manager of the program) the job is to budget the funds thriftily and fairly, each project getting the amount it needs.

From below(the team working on the project) this feels like you are punished if you are able to save money and rewarded when you waste money.

I suspect this is probably the major problem with having a more command orientated economy. While it should be fairer(free market economies are notoriously unfair). The inversion in incentive hurts performance.

You are approaching the problem with upstanding ethics and morals. I think that’s the difference, because the outcomes you list are exactly what we get with the current system.

But if someone doesn't need a big budget it makes sense to decrease it. It reduces efficiency if you force yourself to spend the whole budget.

But what if you need to save up to buy something that you can't afford in one year? Or you're trying to reduce cost in one place enough to hire a team to do some other project?

Then you can argue why you still need the budget. It May make sense to temporarily allocate a bigger budget immediately to do those things instead of delaying, trying to save.

Congratulations. Your budget is now permanently smaller because your appeals are completely irrelevant to the machine and you get to do less. Forever. Maybe you have to fire some people.

If you don't need a big budget then yes you should continue onwards with a smaller budget. That's not a surprising conclusion.

I believe the intended meaning was "Now, regardless of any future considerations, your budget is permanently smaller.".

You buy it with financing in that case. And you fit your reductions and hires into the same fiscal year.

This is all simultaneously true and simultaneously disappointing. It requires a certain forfeiture of morality to be a part of this status quo. But, especially on grants between academia and the government, this very much seems to be the status quo.

Is it actually true, or just a trope? Anyone in a position to manage hundreds of millions worth of projects is smart enough to know that some projects will run under budget.

I work as a federal contractor. It's very true (epistemic status: my managers and project leads tell me as much and I act accordingly, I don't deal with it directly nor understand the bureaucratic larger picture). You will not get funding from Department X again if you ask for more money on a project than you wind up spending. Now, is that the sin of overquoting, or the virtue of overdelivering? For some reason, every agency treats it as the former, and I haven't the foggiest idea why. My coworkers acknowledge how stupid and perverse of an incentive it is, yet treat it like a fundamental force of nature.

Most solutions to this problem are essentially what the OP recognized as nakedly illegal---that is, exaggerating productive hours---but most contractors are savvy enough to do it in less auditable and more positively regarded ways, such as stretching out timelines (four 20-hour work weeks raise fewer flags than one 80-hour week), adding more chefs than the kitchen calls for, or funding unnecessary little side projects. Straight-up tampering with timecards is an impatient and dangerous way of achieving (IMO) the same wasteful evil as happens everywhere else in the public and private sector.

The Dutch University of Delft systematically 'maximized' grants and shuffled the money between projects, according to investigative journalists of the NRC[1].

1 https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2024/02/15/het-subsidiepotje-moet-...

I work with people who are well smart enough to know that.

It’s also still a reasonable question to ask “well, last year we budgeted $15M and you got acceptable results while spending only $14M; perhaps you only need $14M/yr…” And despite its reasonableness, many people would prefer to oversee a $15M/yr budget.

I think a reason for this is suppose the next year you run into some difficulties so it requires 14.2M. Now you have to fight to request an extra 0.2M added to your budget that you wouldn't have to worry about if you had 15M.

Totally! And it drives me crazy to get very few questions and mostly positive ones if I underspend by 5-10% but going over by 1-2% is a massive problem.

It’s little surprise what happens under such a system: logical people over-reserve.

The BBC article had that more comparable information: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c621z28z138o

> Between 2020 and 2024, no cervical cancer deaths were recorded in women aged 20 to 24 - the first time that had happened over a five-year period.

> Without vaccination, around 23 deaths would have been expected.

Note the first chart in the link showing the historical trend for the 20-24 cohort since 2000 plumetting from 25 to 0.

Out of curiosity, have there been any other advances in medicine that would make it less likely that women would die from cervical cancer before hitting 30? I don't keep up on oncology developments, but I assume that this particular shot is not the only thing that has reduced cervical cancer deaths in women under 30. If they were looking at rates of acquiring cancer, that would be more focused on this intervention.

> Why would you assume that when presented with a study that tracks with long standing belief in the medical community that the HPV vaccine works?

Because cancer interventions have moved forward in general?

IntelliJ handles this for you. Basically it sends half your project to Claude even if you're asking some question about Star Wars.

> IntelliJ handles this for you. Basically it sends half your project to Claude

Not sure I’d call that “stopping wasting my tokens”.

Yeah but it could have sent the other half of the project too.

This sounds terrible. I'm sure you'll get loads of funding.

Is this the one that's a flu/Covid combo? I live in Europe and have been looking forward to it - especially since the flu part covers way more variants than traditionally - no longer a need to depend on flawed predictions as to what variants will be predominant. Also no longer a need for two sore arms.

No, this one is just flu.

Interesting. I wonder if the variant limits us now capped by how much you can pack in the vaccine, or how good a on the body does priming for a bunch of stuff at once.

In the US, until very recently, there were four variants in the vaccine: two Influenza A and two Influenza B. But one of the B variants seems to have gone extinct during the COVID pandemic, and now the vaccine is just two A and one B.