Anyone who is a real full-stack, non-vibe-coder developer will be in roughly the same position as COBOL developers today:

"Please don't retire, you're the only one who understands this code enough to modify it."

NASA is odd compared to most federal agencies - the NASA administrator reports directly to the President, not like, say, NOAA which is under the Commerce Department.

IF NOAA closed its DC area headquarters, the stuff it does would be absorbed by Commerce, and the executive chain of command would still work. If NASA closed its Washington DC headquarters, the current administrators would have literally nowhere to go.

Bureaucracy aside, they do perform the important function of deciding what functions are performed at which NASA centers. Without them, Congress would have to do it directly in legislation. Which is how we got some of the current absurdities like Houston Space Center, which takes control of manned launches after they clear the tower (LBJ got Houston as his fee for getting the man-on-the-moon legislation through Congress).

Given that this is Y Combinator we're talking about, all the prompts were probably of the form:

"A system like X, except for Y"

where X = {Uber, Grubhub, Facebook, ...}
and Y is a niche currently-unmonetized domain.

I will believe it when even one of those applications gets any traction in the real world, and doesn't get immediately crashed or owned.

But, do you think the current administration will do anything better?
Or will they just do something just as screwy and inefficient, but with different corporate winners and losers?

The big telcos have outplayed the federal government every time a "broadband for all" program has been passed.

The worst in recent memory was the time the big telcos were given hundreds of millions to roll out broadband for all - they lobbied to get the definition of "broadband" at the time changed so ADSL would meet it, spent just enough to put near-useless ADSL everywhere, and pocketed most of the $$ without actually improving rural internet.

Any bets that right now Starlink is preparing to game whatever new program is created? They won't even have to lobby - Musk will tell Trump and his minions exactly what to put in the bill to maximize Starlink revenue.

Particularly the first conversation in this article:

Men are all alike.
IN WHAT WAY
They're always bugging us about something or other.
CAN YOU THINK OF A SPECIFIC EXAMPLE
Well, my boyfriend made me come here.
YOUR BOYFRIEND MADE YOU COME HERE
He says I'm depressed much of the time.
I AM SORRY TO HEAR YOU ARE DEPRESSED

I couldn't tell from the pictures, but unless there's a hidden back leg, that thing will fall over in a stiff breeze.

I picked up a Kickstarter extra screen for laptops that attaches with magnets to the back of the screen, and can flip to be visible on the same side as the laptop screen, or on the other side for presentations. A major flaw is that it weighs about as much as my MacBook Pro, so unless you flip it veery carefully, the laptop falls over.

comes great responsibility to remember your passwords.

Apple does not do end-to-end encryption by default, because for every person whose data was protected from bad actors, there are probably thousands who have forgotten or misplaced their Apple ID passwords.

If end-to-end encryption is on, those people are screwed, and will be pissed at Apple for "losing their data".

If you understand the trade-off and take the responsibility to remember your passwords, you can enable end-to-end encryption.

Except in the UK, where the government does not want encryption that is safe from EVERYONE to exist.

After all, there will never be a skills audit for any C?O position, not even CIO, CTO, or CFO where it would make sense for the occupant to be at least buzzword-familiar with the subjects.

Yes, there is a difference, but if the ads have beacons or other talk-to-the-mothership tech, they might as well have sold your data.

For quite some time, there were three obvious levels of evil/exploitation in tech:

Apple - we know things about you, but since we don't sell ads we are not obviously exploiting that data. We get our $$ from hardware and services.
Google - we know things about you, we target ads on that basis, this is why our services are free.
Meta - we know things about you, and we will sell access to your feed (ads, promotion of postings, etc...) any way we can.

For Apple, paid placement in search is a step towards Google.

I use Apple Maps most of the time (because it works better with CarPlay, and its voice directions are easier to understand).

I use Google Maps when I want to know more than the location about nearby businesses, like if they're open now, or how busy they are likely to be.

Apple, if you want to improve Maps, start with non-advertising feature parity with Google Maps.

I personally buy Apple phones and desktops because they don't sell my data and they don't show me ads.

Paid placement in search results is the first step on the slippery slope to ad revenue uber alles that Google has become. Don't do it, Apple!

when they made a similar request (special decryption tools for iPhones).

You think they'll acquiesce to the UK? Apple, a US company?

In real Calvinball, the players are playing a game, for fun, and playing with the rules, for fun. Either side can change the rules, at any time.

In our current system:

* the game is deadly serious
* the rules are weapons along with everything else
* only one side is the enforcer
* they can enforce or ignore the rules as they choose.

Or the next time the hospital gets sued for a procedure using the machine, the manufacturer gets included in the lawsuit, with no possibility of blaming the hospital for bad maintenance.

If they're responsible for the machine, they're responsible for the machine.

Remember the rest of it: never trust

A software engineer with a soldering iron
A hardware engineer with a keyboard
A manager with an idea

... if they have any data to support those claims, or if it is the usual:

* Upper and middle management is uncomfortable with remote work
* Our large investment in real estate and office space leases has to be justified somehow

?