We are using 4-6 times as much storage as we need to, and these are often not small files (on the order of 100 MB - 5 GB, several dozen times a day) but fixing this overuse is so far down the priority list that I don't think it survived the great Jira purge of mid-2024.
Because I can't fucking stop myself, I created a fantasy ISA and am working on an assembler and basic interpreter for said fantasy ISA.
All businesses above a certain size do that, because there's no other practical way.
These people are irreplaceable. And I know one of these forecasters very well, he's an old friend of mine. He is done with the federal government; even if they offer him his job back he's not going back, because his trust that his job as a meteorologist was safe is smashed to pieces. That's irreparable harm.
A billion here, a billion there, soon it adds up to real money.
Cutting the people without cutting the programs won't do much and is (IMO) a problem in that you should be able to access government services in a way that the writers of the laws (house/senate) have clearly agreed to. When you're cutting this widely, it's hard to believe you're not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
You can be mad about the government spending money on things you believe are unnecessary, and you can even want to fire the people related to that program! But across the board personnel cuts don't fix the appropriations issues and will waste money in inefficiency, waste and loss as the folks that are left have to pick up the pieces.
Does the federal government employ too many people? I dunno, maybe. Do we fund too many programs? Yeah, probably. But these cuts are _fucking insane_.