So the essence of the complaint here is that some project maintainers (many of whom are primary authors) wrote and published exceptionally insecure code (as measured by bug reports) that was adopted by a very wide user base, and now they want to be paid to fix their own bad code?

If their license/copyright didn't disclaim things correctly, liability becomes a question. I'm not advocating for that. I'm just saying that open source licensing can carry perils like any other software licensing.

That doesn't seem like the right question. It seems like the right question is: why did the US sit on its butt and not take steps to ensure access to the semiconductor supply chain (including materials).

The answer is: this isn't something that followed from a long-term plan. The alleged rationale was technology leakage, and there's plenty of evidence that is actually going on in major ways. But it also is a response to a long-term Chinese industrial espionage and industrial sabotage campaign. In the US, response to that campaign was unconscionably slow outside of the intelligence community, until the day it abruptly became a political hot button. Following which a ban was put in place without much consideration of or planning for consequences.

So yes, the execution here was egregiously stupid. That said, continued reliance on China is not a viable path for the United States or Europe. Battery technologies are overdue for a chemistry change. Gallium has other global sources (and significant domestic production that can be ramped). Substantial germanium is produced in the US as a side effect of Zinc refining. What we lack in the US is germanium refining capacity. Thankfully, Canada has that capacity.

Relevant recent study on gallium supply chain from CSIS: https://www.csis.org/analysis/de-risking-gallium-supply-chains-national-security-case-eroding-chinas-critical-mineral

BTW the proposed tariffs from Trump are even less well evaluated and will have even worse consequences. On a bright note, when the incoming administration is done wiping out the entire middle class, our need for precious metals from China will be sharply reduced.

Every single one of the major antivirus vendors is now owned by a single, Russian parent company...

There appear to be a significant number of key platforms right now where Chinese bad actors are creating the appearance of policy violations in order to get both private users and business users banned from the platforms. Any chance that is what's happening here?

But let's not apply it too narrowly. The top 2%-5% in a *lot* of fields are substantially better than the next 10%. I see a lot of people here complaining about H1B abuses, and I agree that's real, but I think that attracting the top 5% would broaden opportunities for everyone. The catch is to do it in a way that aligns the incentives with the objectives, and I think there's a simple way to accomplish that:

Any company that pays an H1B employee at or above the 95th salary percentile for *domestic* labor can have an H1B that doesn't count against the annual visa quota. At least five American workers in the same band at the same company have to certify under penalty of perjury that the band level for the job is appropriately selected. That way the incentives match the objectives.

Folks: losing your job to an underpaid foreigner who is basically getting treated as slave labor is bad for both of you. Bringing in people who will open up opportunities to create new products or manage new groups is one way to stimulate demand. If they have to be *paid* at the 95th percentile, they won't get brought in willy-nilly.

Oh. Requiring those certifications would also put a fast end to the "captive Indian contracting company" practice, and would save a lot of visiting workers from slave trade types of abuses.

Of course it's a cluster. It runs on his microwave, his refrigerator, and his lawn sprinkler controller.

iPod storage is advertised in terms of "song" and "movie" because normals don't know (or care) about bytes!

Apple sold their "inferior" device to zillions of people who don't care about how it's technically "less good" than other options, because they value things other than specifications - ease of use, style, etc. Those are valid selection criteria, even if *you* don't value them, obviously the market *does.*

Consumers on the whole will never understand nor care about "data". They will care about music and movies and other entertainment.

Remember "amuse" means
"a" - not
"muse" - think

We love our amusement.

Your post indicates that heavy object movement over roads is a solved issue. I respectfully disagree. It may be legal to carry heavy things on roads, but it's STUPID to do so.

Heavy trucks are the things that destroy the roads!

The weight and stresses aplied by cars are substantively less than those freight trucks. Of course, freight trucks pay more than you and I do in road use taxes, but not commensurate with the damage they do.

We need to fix the freight rail system to allow heavy things to transit via rail. This is what the rail beds were designed for (and our roads were not!) Unfortunately the rail system is mismanaged and @#$@#$#@ expensive!

Free speech rights are important. I think that definition of hate crimes and speech limits are slippery slopes which can turn out to have consequences far different than the original intent. I found Penn Jillette's incessant blasphemy during his Las Vegas show offensive, but should not be criminalized.

I have a friend who recently visited Kazakhstan.He tells me that the growing influence of Islam there means that there will be a significant restriction of religious freedom there, and that Christians are very likely to soon be oppressed by those in power who oppose their religious beliefs.

As much as I value my religious beliefs and desire not to have them attacked, it is critical that freedom of expression be defended, even when it offends me. (Within certain limits - not yelling fire in a crowded theater, kiddie porn, etc.)

I'm ignorant about the impact from a military perspective, but I can speak from a personal one. There were several large employers around my hometown. I applied for positions with them and was not offered a position with any of them. I spoke with a man who was employed with one of them, and he let me know that it was an "open secret" that only 30% of hires could be of a particular race (mine) due to affirmative action.

What did I do? Sue? Cry? Curse the darkness? No. I moved to where the number of employers was large enough that my skills were easily sold to the highest bidder. Thus launched my migration away from my family and into a pretty successful career.

Can I prove it was racial discrimination? Nope.

Do I believe that it was a factor in HR's decision? Yes.

Was it wrong to discriminate against me on the basis of skin color? Yes.

At the end of the day, unless you want to lose your mind, you need to accept that things are what they are and be like the internet "route around problems." There are consequences, but to live as a victim was not on the list of choices I found acceptable.

Just my 0.02

Anomaly

From an engineering perspective, we could significantly reduce the amount of taxes needed for road maintenance if we had the guts to do three things:
1. Fix the #$@#$ rail system - so bureaucratic and mismanaged that rail freight is not economical
2. Compel heavy items and large volumes to transit via rail. Heavy trucks are the things that destroy the roads! The weight and stresses aplied by cars are substantively less than those freight trucks. Of course, freight trucks pay more than you and I do, but not commensurate with the damage they do.
3. Be prepared to WAIT for products. This is the death knell. We're so impatient as a culture that the additional time it would take to manage freight efficiently over rail would mean that "air" shipments and "next day by 10:30" would likely be infeasible - unless we taxed their delivery a multiple of 10 or more to make up for the road damage.

As a geek who transitioned to management - and who has worked in Fortune 500 and small companies, I think that it's fair to say that you don't understand the motivations.

Caveats:
1) Some management people are evil - a small minority may be - a la Madoff, but generally they are not evil

2) Some management people are incompetent. The Peter Principle applies, and some management folk are nincompoops.

3) Some management people are led by nincompoops and can't do the sensible thing

Now that I've got that out of the way, I want to challenge some of the /. groupthink about management.

I know of a company making the choice between $free DB and $notfreeDB. At a point in the dev cycle when it was reasonable to select a new platform, the company opted to pay thousands of dollars for $notfreeDB.

A HA! Management must be corrupt/stupid/evil! Right?

No! The technology evangelist for $freeDB could not make a sensible argument about why the company should invest the time in retraining and purchase of tools to support $freeDB.

For what it's worth, the geeks most comfortable with $notfreeDB pushed HARD against a switch, and argued that a change was a risk to success due to it being an unknown, and it would cost time and slip the schedule.

All in all, IMNSHO, selection of $notfreeDB is sub optimal, but the geek could not make a case in business terms. That geek's thinking that $feee is inherently better than $notfree should be enough of an argument.

Silly.

Management values finding a way to monetize technology. This is NOT evil. It is what EVERY geek does. If geeks focus on technology, they miss the point. Failure to understand that there are levers other than "technically better" is the fauls and failure of the geeks, not the fault of management.

If you (the general you, not parent specifically) are unable to understand that - that would be YOUR fault, not the fault of management.

Think outside the technology box - find ways to monetize your brilliant ideas, and you will go much farther than the geek who blow out the candle then curse the darkness.