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Posted by hn_acker 9 hours ago

Despite Doubts, Federal Cyber Experts Approved Microsoft Cloud Service(www.propublica.org)
406 points | 185 commentspage 3
gurjeet 6 hours ago|
> These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

It's unfortunate that people have to claim the authenticity, rather than the users of AI having to disclose use of AI/LLM. I wish it was the other way around.

robtherobber 9 hours ago||
Wow, Microsoft is really pushing the wrong boundaries in every direction, isn't it? Executives must be thinking, like many before them, that Microsoft is too big to fail.
joe_mamba 9 hours ago|
Executives only react to share price movements. If share prices are high because whatever investors think, then execs will just open another champagne bottle.

Steve Jobs was the last tech CEO who didn't care about wall street and only care about quality products and consumers saying that if customers are happy, then the share price will take care of itself. But most companies are share price first, customer later.

shrubble 8 hours ago||
This fits perfectly with traditional Microsoft strategies of getting a foot in the door and then having the users’ internal pressure on the organization to help get the Microsoft product established.

Decades ago, Lotus 1-2-3 on top of MSDOS was the lever; today it’s GCC High.

brudgers 8 hours ago||
Given the scale and scope of the Federal Government. what are the alternatives to Microsoft?

Building in house.

Outsourcing to consultants.

realo 7 hours ago||
IBM? Redhat?
nonameiguess 7 hours ago||
I think there's some context missing here. For those who don't remember, the CIA back in like 2014 or so built out private data centers with classified versions of AWS services and all IC workloads that don't require specialized hardware was supposed to be using. DOD historically used it as well for classified cloud workloads, but wanted its own, and this was the JEDI contract, which was also supposed to go to Amazon, until Trump got into a fight with Jeff Bezos in 2019, canceled the contract, and awarded it to Microsoft instead. Amazon sued, and Biden decided to just award the contract to everyone and split it between all the major cloud vendors. That still doesn't mean anyone can actually use it without FedRAMP approval, but well, there you go.

The alternative was AWS, which has been operating at every classification level for over a decade at this point. It's now split between Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, and Google, which is especially amusing because Google withdrew from the original bid process when they were still pretending to give a shit that their employees don't like working for the military.

hn_acker 9 hours ago||
The original title is:

> Federal Cyber Experts Thought Microsoft’s Cloud Was “a Pile of Shit.” They Approved It Anyway.

sam-cop-vimes 7 hours ago||
Microsoft has been selling piles of shit since the beginning of time. The fact that they keep selling is the biggest triumph of sales/marketing over decent engineering.
dogleash 9 hours ago||
> By late 2024, FedRAMP reviewers concluded that they had little choice but to authorize the technology — not because their questions had been answered or their review was complete, but largely on the grounds that Microsoft’s product was already being used across Washington.

The article talks a lot about conflicts of interest, but this is the line I went looking for. A bureaucracy fighting itself over goal prioritization, and what's a necessary roadblock vs red tape is the less sexy but more meaningful problem at the core of this.

Once the government decided they wanted the product, they were going to find a patsy.

fdghrtbrt 9 hours ago|
If you "went looking for" this line, you're just reading into the statements your preconceptions.

I on the other hand have no expectation, and so it's not clear whether the "bureaucracy fighting itself" is a cause or a symptom. You're implying it's a cause and the solution is "less red tape". But it could be just a symptom of conflicts of interest, and less red tape just leads to more efficient corruption.

Again, you're just reading into it what you already believe in.

davidliu847386 2 hours ago||
docker compose for dev, k8s for prod. don't overcomplicate it
Eridrus 9 hours ago||
I think plenty of software is a pile of shit and still derive value from it.
snovymgodym 8 hours ago||
Yeah I'd go so far as to say that most useful software is "bad" in some way.
Y_Y 4 hours ago||
Worse is Better
mock-possum 9 hours ago||
Exactly, better the pile of shit you know than the pile of shit you don’t know - or the pile of shit that is u knowable.
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