Miscellaneous News

[Overbom]

A WSJ exclusive story:

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SCMP also reports similar news (not citing WSJ btw)

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China orders government workers to stop using iPhones amid heightened tensions with US​

• Ministries with portfolios focused on investment, trade and international affairs received orders on the phone ban last month, sources say
• Measures are believed to be aimed at eliminating perceived national security risks from telecoms devices made by a US company

The measures were understood to be aimed at eliminating perceived national security risks from using telecommunication devices made by a US company, sources said.

A similar ban is believed to have been in place for years for some government bodies, but the latest order has expanded that ban.

 

[ACuriousPLAFan]

"How do you call sh1t that's high up in the sky?"
"HOLY SH1T."

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This is a biohazard issue,” a voice says on the recording. “We’ve had a passenger who had diarrhea all the way through the airplane, so they want us to come back to Atlanta.”

A great reminder to bring parachute onboard a plane next time.

 

[tygyg1111]

View attachment 118269



So nobody warned anybody the city was going bankrupt, until the city went bankrupt? Not even the city council's own leader??

View attachment 118270

So nobody warned anybody the city was going bankrupt, until the city went bankrupt? Not even the city council's own leader??

How did I go bankrupt? First slowly, then rapidly

Lmao what, an IT system for payments and HR for a city council really shouldn't balloon to some £100m.

But they need the GDP boost

 

[siegecrossbow]

Sullivan Doctrine in a nutshell — make Jai Hind style boasts only to hide his head in his ass when things don’t go according to plan.

Case in point:

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday the government wanted to know the precise composition of the processor in Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro, which a teardown conducted for Bloomberg News revealed was just a few years behind the current generation and made by US-blacklisted Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp.

Sullivan broke Washington’s silence after Huawei abruptly released its handset without fanfare last week while Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo visited China. State-backed Chinese media on Wednesday again called the revelation a breakthrough in efforts to reduce reliance on American technology. The Economic Daily said it embodied “China Essence” — a play on the very similar words for “chip” and “heart.”

“I’m going to withhold comment on the particular chip in question until we get more information about precisely its character and composition,” Sullivan said during a White House briefing on Tuesday. “What it tells us, regardless, is that the United States should continue on its course of a ‘small yard, high fence’ set of technology restrictions focused narrowly on national security concerns, not on the broader question of commercial decoupling.”

 

[measuredingabens]

"How do you call sh1t that's high up in the sky?"
"HOLY SH1T."

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A great reminder to bring parachute onboard a plane next time.

Can't say I envy any of the passengers. A confined space with fecal matter that can't be cleaned up (in flight) would become nigh-unbearable very, very quickly. Not to mention whatever caused the person to have diarrhoea could be a biosafety risk.

 

[siegecrossbow]

Even NYT has entered bargaining stage...

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[KYli]

More sanctions are coming as the US felt humiliated.

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[Engineer]

Lmao what, an IT system for payments and HR for a city council really shouldn't balloon to some £100m.

I can see how it easily ballooned to £100m. Here is my guess.

Everything needs a form to be filled to get an approval. The team that handles those forms is overworked, understaffed and completely out of their depth. You won't hear back that the form is being looked at until at least a month later. After that, a committee has to be formed to review the impacts on data protection and security. So for example, a five minute job of installing a Python package now get dragged out to five weeks. While the contractors are sitting there twiddling their thumbs, they still need to be paid. Any workarounds that one could think of out of this mess would involve extra budget. Since the extra expenditures are not in the original proposal, new proposals have to be submitted and will take more than a year to get approved... if they get approved. So the only course of action was just to keep on paying contractors to do nothing and wait for approvals.

 

[ACuriousPLAFan]

More sanctions are coming as the US felt humiliated.

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So back to the stage of anger it is...

Man, somehow I really pity the US - It seems outright impossible form them to get through the 5 Stages of Grief at once when it comes to China. Seems they got stuck in a never-ending circle.

 

[Michaelsinodef]

I can see how it easily ballooned to £100m. Here is my guess.

Everything needs a form to be filled to get an approval. The team that handles those forms is overworked, understaffed and completely out of their depth. You won't hear back that the form is being looked at until at least a month later. After that, a committee has to be formed to review the impacts on data protection and security. So for example, a five minute job of installing a Python package now get dragged out to five weeks. While the contractors are sitting there twiddling their thumbs, they still need to be paid. Any workarounds that one could think of out of this mess would involve extra budget. Since the extra expenditures are not in the original proposal, new proposals have to be submitted and will take more than a year to get approved... if they get approved. So the only course of action was just to keep on paying contractors to do nothing and wait for approvals.

I mean yea, my comment was more about how a 100m IT system for HR and payment is definitely a sign of problem(s).

Whether that be kind of like what you suggested or in other ways (such as even corruption, where there's people enriching their 'friends' or family). Or it's likely a combination of problems.

Tldr: There's plenty of ways to mismanage a project, and for that project to balloon in cost.

That the city council leader also "didn't know" makes it even more lol.