kinematicgps99 (u/kinematicgps99)

kinematicgps99 commented on US State Department has budget line for 'Armored Teslas' worth $400M electrek.co/2025/02/12/us... · Posted by u/ketlag

legitster · 7 months ago

Not a budget line. This is a procurement forecast. The department is listing all the things they might be interested in so that a small business/vendor has an opportunity to try to sell the government something. AKA this is the government's way of doing window shopping.

If you look up the attributed code DS/C/DEAV, DS stands for "Bureau of Diplomatic Security" and DEAV stands for "Defensive Equipment and Armored Vehicles Division". So these are armored cars for diplomats security details.

The same person put in the following orders:

- Armored Tesla (Production Units)

- ARMORED SEDAN

- ARMORED BMW X5/X7

- ARMORED EV (NOT SEDAN)

- R&D

The NAICS codes are wrong, but the numbers were clearly pulled out of thin air. Luckily, the Acquisition stage is only "PLANNING".

All this information is publicly available https://www.state.gov/procurement-forecast

kinematicgps99 · 7 months ago

That's a relief. I hope big ticket tickets have to go through an RFP/RFQ competitive bidding process. Furthermore, I would also hope that realistic projected fleet TCO based on data from other owners is one of the big factors in the decision-making process when it comes time to choose a vendor and negotiate pricing.

kinematicgps99 commented on Leaking the email of any YouTube user for $10k brutecat.com/articles/lea... · Posted by u/brutecat

defrost · 7 months ago

The USofA is the bizarre exception here:

  The United States has a rather unique way of writing the date that is imitated in very few other countries (although Canada and Belize do also use the form). In America, the date is formally written in month/day/year form.

They don't use metric, still use First Past the Post voting, elect a mini monarch with effectively unchecked powers, ... it's an odd place.

kinematicgps99 · 7 months ago

Also, the US military used/uses DDMMMYYYY format, i.e., 15JAN2025, where MMM is the month abbreviation, which is similar to one of the formats used in Romania. This has the benefits of unambiguous parsing and no need for component separators but lacks lexicographical sort-ability like ISO 8601. A format like YYYYMMMDD might some of the advantages of ISO 8601 by keeping items of the same year and month together at a minimum. (ISO 8601 is the most proper date format though. ;)

kinematicgps99 commented on Leaking the email of any YouTube user for $10k brutecat.com/articles/lea... · Posted by u/brutecat

OhMeadhbh · 7 months ago

Don't oversell the place. It also has it's down-sides.

kinematicgps99 · 7 months ago

Mass shootings, out-of-control police, bankruptcies from for-profit healthcare and expensive medications, Bibles and Creationism in public schools, widespread ignorance about the world and just about everything, and millions (vastly undercounted) of homeless people.

But seriously, America is awesome for rich people if you don't mind living in a poor, third-world country that still believes it's a first-world, exceptional country.

kinematicgps99 commented on 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows spectrum.ieee.org/5g-band... · Posted by u/saigovardhan

kinematicgps99 · 7 months ago

What we really need is pervasive low data rate backup systems for text messaging and low fidelity emergency calls that don't kill handset batteries. If this means "Starlink" and/or lower frequency bands (<400 MHz): the more options, the merrier for safety. Perhaps there may come a time where no one needs an EPIRB/ELT because that functionality is totally subsumed by smartphones offering equal or superior performance.