#federal outsourcing

[federal21]

How do I move to Portugal with my family?

Moving to Portugal with your family is an exciting opportunity that involves careful planning and organization. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you through the process:

1. Choose the Right Visa: The first step is to determine the appropriate visa for your family. If you plan to work, the D7 Visa is a popular choice for non-EU citizens, particularly for those with passive income or freelancers. If you’ve secured a job in Portugal, you’ll need a Work Visa. Family members can apply for a Family Reunification Visa to join you.

2. Gather Essential Documents: Ensure you have important documents such as passports, marriage and birth certificates, financial proof, health insurance, and accommodation details ready for the visa application.

3. Find Accommodation: Research and secure suitable housing in cities like Lisbon, Porto, or the Algarve. Consider factors like schools, transportation, and community amenities.

4. Enrolling in Schools: If you have children, you’ll need to enroll them in a school. Portugal offers both public and international schools.

5. Accessing Healthcare: Portugal has an excellent healthcare system. Once you obtain residency, you can access public healthcare services.

By following these steps, your family’s relocation to Portugal can be smooth and enjoyable.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"In mid-1920, the Pennsylvania started to contract-out some of the repairs of locomotives to the giant Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia. In all, 200 locomotives were sent to Baldwin, yet an Interstate Commerce Commission investigation found out that the railroad had paid "$3,173,000 or over $16,000 per locomotive more than it would have cost to do the same work in its own shops." The investigation further found that the Pennsylvania, in fact, had the required shop capacity to do the work but reduced its work force by 10,000 men. For Frank Walsh, the attorney representing the shopcrafts, the explanation for the situation was simple; "the men in control of the bankers and railroads believed it was easier to make money through equipment companies than through the railroads." The Pennsylvania management was "hostile to organized labor and that part of the conspiracy was for the purpose of causing unemployment among the railroad shop crafts."

...

With the Pennsylvania setting the course during 1920, numerous other railroads clamored to contract their work out. The Erie Railroad was one of the first to take advantage of this loophole when in 1921 it leased its Hornell, New York, shops to the Hornell Repair and Construction Co., and its Marion, Ohio, shops to the Railway Service Company. The contracts stipulated that the Erie would retain ownership of tools, could take over the shops on demand, and retained the right "to decide who can be employed." Finding this arrangement successful, the Erie went one step further and signed a contract with the Wagner Construction Co. of Jersey City, New Jersey. What was strange about this contract was that the offices of this company were "operated by the Jersey City Horse Manure Co., with Charles Wagner as President." This arrangement with a "dummy contractor" led one union "operated by the Jersey City Horse Manure Co., with Charles Wagner as President." This arrangement with a "dummy contractor" led one union observer to note caustically:

I will leave it to the reader to figure out for observe the connection between the two lines of business, as I have been unable to come to any logical conclusion why a dealer in horse manure unable how to handle locomotive repairs.

At least forty-four Class 1 railroads engaged in contracting out.

Erie Railroad shopmen discovered that once they were under new ownership their wages were cut, consequently, they walked out on strike at the end of March 1922. The general chairman of System Federation no. 100 called the strike and argued that "the men were sick and tired of being fed up on the law." This chairman then went on to say that there had been innumerable strike votes taken but that "nothing had ever been done." The frustration of the Erie men with their cautious national leadership, and with the bureaucratic constraints of the RLB [Railroad Labour Board], was leading to a breakdown in control. When RED [Railway Employee’s Department of the American Federation of Labor] representative Frank Paquin tried to convince the men to go back to work, the strikers labeled him a dupe of the contractor:

The men were very much inflamed against my presence in the city and they exhibited no modesty in expressing their opinion of me in the worst terms of profanity.

The RED was thus faced with the angry Erie Railroad shopmen; contracting out was spreading; and an unfriendly railroad board was handing down a series of decisions undermining hard-won gains. The approaching Chicago convention of the RED promised to be a lively affair. Set for April 10, 1922, the convention promised to propel the shopcrafts into an aggressive stand against any further attacks, either from the railroads or the RLB.

In a convention hall decked out in exhibits showing the interlocking directorships of railroad owners and managers, with tables showing the degree of bank control of both railroads and equipment companies (contracting firms), Bert Jewell almost immediately found himself defending the actions of the RED. The major criticism voiced was that union leaders had ignored the members' strike vote. Jewell remarked that he couldn't understand this point, because the advantages of holding a strike ballot had been to go "back in [to the RLB hearing] and get a further concession. "

In any event, Jewell argued, the shopcrafts "could not... finance such a strike for any length of time we know how long it has taken by previous experience [Illinois Central and the Harriman strikes) for a shop craftsmen's strike to be effective." Peter Conlon of the IAM [International Association of Machinists] countered Jewell's argument by stating that localized strikes were disastrous, while a national strike would make it difficult for the railroads to find scabs:

I can't conceive where they are going to get enough scabs to fill every position in the shop crafts throughout the length and breadth of our land and I believe it will make the issue short and snappy.

The delegates agreed with Conlon's call for action. One explained he was tired of "getting trimmed at every turn of the road." Another angrily observed, "I feel that the roads are gradually eating into the vitals of our organizations. "

With the bulk of delegates in a fighting mood, a strike ballot was ordered regarding the issues of contracting out and piecework. The question that remained for the convention was how to finance the strike? The leadership pushed for the acceptance of a fixed assessment on the membership, but after a vigorous debate it was decided to call for a voluntary "donation" of 5% rather than an assessment. The more angry delegates had ignored their leaders' pleas for financial preparedness. The convention finished its business on April 22, and the decisions made there profoundly shaped the response of the shopcraft leadership to further attacks by the railroads and the RLB. The members had made clear their intention to strike if contracting out and piecework were not discontinued."

- Colin J. Davis, Power at Odds: The 1922 National Railroad Shopmen’s Strike. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997. p. 52, 57-59.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

America’s richest Medicare fraudsters are untouchable

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/13/last-gasp/#i-cant-breathe

"When you're famous, they let you do it": eight words that encapsulate the terrifying rot at the heart of our lived experience, a world where impunity for the powerful trumps the pain of their victims.

"Populism," is shorthand for many things: rage, despair, distrust of institutions and a desire to destroy them. True populism seeks to channel those totally legitimate feelings into transformative change for a caring and fair society for all. So-called "right populism" exploits those feelings, using them to drive a wedge between different groups of victims, turning them against each other, so that elites can go on screwing the squabbling factions.

The far-right parties that are marching to victory through a series global elections are different in many ways, but they all share one trait: they appeal to mistrust of institutions, claiming that the government has been captured by elites who serve them at the expense of the governed. This has the benefit of being actually true, and while the fact that far-right parties are owned by these government-capturing elites might erode their credibility, the fact that so many "progressive" parties have stepped in to defend the institutional status quo leaves an open field for reactionary wreckers:

https://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/02/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-slogan-219908

Why would voters turn out to support a "Department of Government Efficiency," run by a bully whose career has been defined by abusing the people he is in charge of? Maybe they're turkeys voting for Christmas, but they also have personal, traumatic experience with government departments that protected the abusive corporations that preyed on them.

Today on Propublica, Peter Elkind tells the incredible story of Lincare, the nation's leading supplier of home oxygen, a repeat-offender fraudster and predator that has made billions in public money without any real consequences:

https://www.propublica.org/article/lincare-medicare-lawsuit-settlements-oxygen-equipment

Lincare has been repeatedly found guilty of defrauding Medicare; in this century alone, they have been put on probation four times, with a "death penalty" provision that would permanently disqualify them from ever doing business with the federal government. In every case, Lincare committed fresh acts of fraud, but never faced that death penalty.

Why not? Lincare is far too big to fail. In America's bizarre, worst-in-class, world-beatingly expensive privatized health care system, even public health provision (like Medicare) is outsourced to the private sector. Lincare has monopolized oxygen, a famously very important molecule for human survival, and if it were disqualified from serving Medicare, large numbers of Americans would literally asphyxiate.

Lincare clearly knows this. Too big to fail is too big to jail, and too big to jail is too big to care. They are the poster children for impunity, repeat offenders, multiply convicted, and still offending, even today. Lincare has been convicted of fraud under the administrations of GW Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden, and they're still in business.

What a business it is! Elkind takes us to the asbestos-poisoned town of Libby, Montana, where more than 2,000 of the 2.857 population suffer from respiratory diseases from the open-pit mine that operated there from 1963-1990. The elderly, dying population of this town rely on Medicare and Medicare Advantage oxygen concentrators to draw breath, and that means they rely on Lincare.

That means they are prey to Lincare's signature scam: charging Medicare (and 20% co-paying patients) to rent an oxygen concentrator every month, until they have paid for it several times over. This is illegal: under federal rules, patients are deemed to have bought their oxygen concentrators after 36 months and contractors are no longer allowed to charge them. Lincare doesn't give a fuck: the bills keep coming, and Lincare patients who survive long enough have paid the company $16,000 for a $799 gadget.

When Brandon Haugen, a local Lincare customer service rep, noticed this and queried the company's home office in Clearwater, Florida (home to Scientology and the Flexidisc), he was given the brushoff. After multiple attempts to get company leadership to acknowledge that this was illegal, he quit his job, along with his colleague and childhood friend Ben Montgomery. Between them, Haugen and Montgomery had 14 children who depended on their Lincare paychecks. Despite this, they both quit and turned whistleblower, with no job lined up. Eventually, Lincare paid $29m to settle the claim, with $5.7m to the whistleblowers and their lawyers. For Lincare, this was part of the cost of doing business and the fraud rolls on.

Lincare doesn't just defraud Medicare, they also have a high-pressure commissioned sales force that has repeatedly been caught defrauding Lincare customers – overwhelming sick, poor, elderly people. Patients are pressured to accept auto-billing, then Lincare piles medically dubious gadgets onto their monthly bills, as well as useless, overpriced "patient monitoring" services. Customers with apnea machines are mis-sold ventilators by salesmen who falsely claim these are medically necessary.

Salespeople illegally auto-shipped parts and consumables for Lincare machines to patients, then billed them for it. To satisfy the legal requirement that they telephone patients before placing these orders, sales agents would call patients, put them on hold, then part the call until the patient hung up.

Salespeople are motivated by equal parts greed and terror. Make quota and you can get up to $8,000 per month in bonuses. Miss that punishing quota and you're out on your ass (which is why one salesperson ordered a medically unnecessary ventilator).

Lincare also habitually ignores requests to pick up medically unnecessary equipment, because so long as the equipment is on the patient's premises, they can continue to bill for it. As one Ohio manager wrote to their staff: "As we have already discussed, absolutely no pick-ups/inactivation’s are to be do[ne] until I give you the green light. Even if they are deceased." Execs send out company-wide emails celebrating regional managers who have abandoned pick-ups, like a Feb 2022 "Achievement Rankings" email that touted the fact that most regional centers had at least 150 overdue pickups.

Lincare represents a deep, structural rot in American society. They are too big to punish, and too powerful to regulate. A 2006 law meant to curb oxygen payments was gutted by industry lobbyists. Today, Congress is weighing legislation, the SOAR (Supplemental Oxygen Access Reform) Act, which will allow Lincare to bill the public for hundreds of millions more every year, raising rates and eliminating competitive billing. The bill is supported by patient advocates who are rightly interested in getting oxygen to patients who have been locked out of the system, but the cost of that inclusion is that Lincare will be even more firmly insulated from its corruption.

The Trump Administration will doubtless crack down on some of America's worst companies, and the furious voters who elected the only candidate who campaigned on the idea that America was rotten will cheer him on. But Trump has made it clear that he will select the targets of his administration based on whether they are loyal to him or stand in his way, without regard to whether they harm his supporters:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/12/the-enemy-of-your-enemy/#is-your-enemy

Companies like Lincare, repeatedly caught paying illegal kickbacks, know how to play this game.

Image: p.Gordon (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Smoke_bomb_with_burning_fuse.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[twofeetonthedashboard]

WHO AM I VOTING FOR - AND WHY?????

That moment when someone says, "I can't believe you would vote for Trump.”

I simply reply, “I'm not voting for Trump.”

I'm voting for the First Amendment and freedom of speech.

I'm voting for the Second Amendment and my right to defend my life and my family.

I'm voting for the next Supreme Court Justice(s) to protect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I’m voting for the continued growth of my retirement and reducing inflation.

I’m voting for a return of our troops from foreign countries and the end to America’s involvement in foreign conflicts.

I'm voting for the Electoral College and for the Republic in which we live.

I'm voting for the Police to be respected once again and to ensure Law & Order. I am tired of all the criminals having a revolving door and being put back in the street.

I’m voting for the continued appointment of Federal Judges who respect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I’m voting for keeping our jobs to remain in America and not be outsourced all over the world - to China, Mexico and other foreign countries. I want USA made.

I’m voting for secure borders and have legal immigration. I can’t believe we have actually have flown 380,000 illegal immigrants into our country.

I am voting for doing away with all of the freebies given to all of the illegals and not looking after the needs of the American citizens.

I'm voting for the Military & the Veterans who fought for this Country to give the American people their freedoms.

I'm voting for the unborn babies that have a right to live.

I’m voting for peace progress in the Middle East.

I’m voting to fight against human/child trafficking.

I'm voting for Freedom of Religion.

I'm voting for the right to speak my opinion and not be censored. I am voting for the return of teaching math, history, and science instead of indoctrination of our children and pronouns.

I'm not just voting for one person, I'm voting for the future of my Country.

I'm voting for my children and my grandchildren to ensure their freedoms and their future.

What are you voting for? Trump/Vance2024

[anonymous-dentist]

Honestly? I think everything goes back to the night Cellbit found out that he and Bagi are siblings, because several things happened that night:

Cellbit admitted that he killed Maximiliano the Worker and that he liked it

Cellbit found out he’s missing 11 or so years of his life and that he could’ve had a happy childhood with an actual family who loved him if the Federation hadn’t sent him away

Bagi told Cellbit that she’d be there for him even if he started killing again

Cellbit got confirmation that Bad kidnapped that missing worker

Cellbit also made a very important point: the Federation is spreading itself thin trying to find this missing worker

Cellbit told Bad that his proposed revolution would not exclude regular Federation workers unless they betrayed the Federation because, if they don’t, then they’re complicit in the Federation’s wrongdoings

And now we’re here with four dead Federation workers and a Federation clearly struggling to keep things under control, and I think that that’s the point. The Federation has spread itself too thin.

We saw this even in Cucurucho’s presentation during the Mini-Me event when it basically admitted that the Feds have no idea what happened to the president. And then we have the Mini-Mes themselves: they’re clearly meant to be protection of some kind for the workers because they can fight at certain levels, and they’re at least meant to be assistants. This was before the killings started, but it was after the Federation’s lower-rank workers started legit just not doing their jobs because they were too scared of getting kidnapped.

Cellbit has a history of taking people’s plans and adapting them to make them his own. His Regret Arc and subsequent Federation infiltration was directly inspired by hearing Quackity try and join the Feds and then Quackity telling him that to beat the Federation, you have to think like the Federation. And now we have Cellbit and Bad talking about how the Federation is creating openings in itself by expending so many resources trying to get the missing worker back, and we can already see the effects of the murders kinda making the Federation even weaker because, and no offense to Foolish, but they’ve legit had to outsource their murder investigation to him instead of using their own staff of A Rank investigators and Security Guards.

If this is Cellbit killing these people, he’s doing it to try and break the Federation to the point of the island’s rebels being able to actually hit the Feds where it hurts and try and take them down. He said himself that he already had an idea as to how to get an opening for his little revolution idea, and he told Bad that it would happen within a week of their conversation. The first body appeared four or five days later.

Cellbit is tired. We know this. He says that he wants to spend time with his family, but he’s also got one hell of a martyr complex going on where he thinks he’s better off dead than he is alive if it means helping people. We’ve seen this in him for months between him running for president to die for Forever, him legitimately banking on getting killed by the Federation during a hypothetical custody trial to get everyone to see how bad the Feds are, him blowing himself up to prove a point, him taking all the fall for the Mini-Me infiltration and accepting the punishment that’ll go with it, and maybe now we’re seeing it in him killing these workers and leaving clues pointing towards it being him.

Cellbit could be killing these workers to start a revolution that he’ll never see finished because he might be expecting to die before the end of it.

[tomorrowusa]

We need to face the fact that there's a real life James Bond villain, assisted by a Russian dictator, manipulating a weak president-elect of the United States.

Sperm Boy Elon wants to do to the United States what he's done to Twitter over the past couple of years.

His pitch for his federal "efficiency" department sounds typically self-serving.

Musk’s efficiency department is seeking volunteers for ‘tedious’ work with no compensation

How do we know that he won't try to outsource the work to Russia?

The accelerated decline of the US plays directly into the hands of America's autocratic enemies.

[thespectrehauntingfodlan]

I feel like a lot of people, and this is really more for Usamericans than those from other countries who don't have any exposure to the internal affairs of this particular nightmare country, truly do not grasp the scale and significance of the problems and horrors here?

Literacy will be mentioned and downplayed, but a full 20% of people living here are illiterate to a degree where they cannot interact with even basic writing. That's one in five people, or almost the population of the entirety of the United Kingdom. And that's only the population that either cannot read any words at all or cannot parse sentences, an equally large amount of people can only read at a very basic level, and can't interpret and extrapolate information from text that's not direct. This is not some cry about media literacy, this is about basic functioning in society and how many are left behind from a society that increasingly isolates and diminishes them.

Manufacturing will be mentioned, and the thought most will have is that American production has been gutted and outsourced (usually leading to hostility to places like China or Vietnam), which has some truth but much of American industry has been transfered from "free" workers to prison slave labor, with some states not paying prisoners forced to work at all and the most ""generous"" states paying them a seventh of the already laughable federal minimum wage, and with the government actually subsidizing this by giving corporations a $2400 tax credit per prisoner they "employ"

Prison will be mentioned but the sheer inhumanity and brutality will never be grasped even when people recognize elements of it (usually for what passes as comedy) the totality of it will never register. One out of five of all people incarcerated on Earth are in prison in America, subjected to conditions which regularly and frequently kill them or break them, and there's not even a consistent reporting measure for people who die in prison or jail, to say nothing of the police killings which dwarf the amount of people executed by the state, which has even less of a standard for reporting. One county was simply burying the people they killed in unmarked graves nearby and never reporting it or recording it, only being discovered after years almost on accident.

Homelessness is rampant but the numbers and methods for assessing the size of the unhomed population are pitiful at best and laughable at worst, regularly undercounting and diminishing the severity because those who are homeless are barely considered people to not just the government but in the perception imposed by society.

And none of that is touching on the scale of the imperial war machine which ravages the rest of the world, how there's no way to even know how many bases the US even has, how many people it kills, how many wars it fights, who it even supports. None of us touching on the non-military methods of support and control the US provides to its proxies and cronies who prop up its hegemony.

The scale of it all is just mind breaking and I have seen excellent writing and interrogation of parts but I don't feel like the overall picture is ever even glimpsed.

[jangillman]

WHO AM I VOTING FOR - AND WHY?

That moment when someone says, "I can't believe you would vote for Trump.”

I simply reply, “I'm not voting for Trump.”

I'm voting for the First Amendment and freedom of speech.

I'm voting for the Second Amendment and my right to defend my life and my family.

I'm voting for the next Supreme Court Justice(s) to protect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I’m voting for the continued growth of my retirement and reducing inflation.

I’m voting for a return of our troops from foreign countries and the end to America’s involvement in foreign conflicts.

I'm voting for the Electoral College and for the Republic in which we live.

I'm voting for the Police to be respected once again and to ensure Law & Order. I am tired of all the criminals having a revolving door and being put back in the street.

I’m voting for the continued appointment of Federal Judges who respect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I’m voting for keeping our jobs to remain in America and not be outsourced all over the world - to China, Mexico and other foreign countries. I want USA made.

I’m voting for secure borders and legal immigration. I can’t believe we actually flew in 380,000 illegal immigrants into our country.

I am voting for doing away with all of the freebies given to all of the illegals and not looking after the needs of the American citizens.

I'm voting for the Military & the Veterans who fought for this Country to give the American people their freedoms.

I'm voting for the unborn babies that have a right to live.

I’m voting for peace progress in the Middle East.

I’m voting to fight against human/child trafficking.

I'm voting for Freedom of Religion.

I'm voting for the right to speak my opinion and not be censored. I am voting for the return of teaching math, history, and science instead of indoctrination of our children and pronouns.

I'm not just voting for one person, I'm voting for the future of my Country.

I'm voting for my children and my grandchildren to ensure their freedoms and their future.

What are you voting for?

Trump/Vance2024. 🙏🇺🇸🙏🇺🇸🙏🇺🇸🙏🇺🇸

Copied from another post but it embodies my thoughts as well

. Feel free to copy and paste on your page or anywhere else. This is how we all feel.

[starseedpatriot]

That moment when someone says, "I can't believe you would vote for Trump," I simply reply:

"I'm not voting for Trump, I'm voting for the First Amendment and freedom of speech.

I'm voting for the Second Amendment and my right to defend my life and my family.

I'm voting for the next Supreme Court Justice(s) to protect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I’m voting for the continued growth of my retirement 401K and the stock market.

I’m voting for a return of our troops from foreign countries and the end to America’s involvement in foreign conflicts.

I'm voting for the Electoral College and for the Republic in which we live.

I'm voting for the Police to be respected once again and to ensure Law & Order.

I’m voting for the continued appointment of Federal Judges who respect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I’m voting for our jobs to remain in America and not be outsourced all over again to China, Mexico and other foreign countries.

I’m voting for secure borders and legal immigration.

I'm voting for the Military & the Veterans who fought for this Country to give the American people their freedoms.

I'm voting for the unborn babies that have a right to live.

I’m voting for the continued peace progress in the Middle East.

I’m voting to fight against human/child trafficking.

I’m voting for Freedom of Religion.

I'm voting for the right to speak my opinion and not be censored.

I'm voting for my children and my grandchildren to ensure their freedoms and their future.

I'm not just voting for one person, I'm voting for the future of my Country.”

Are you?

[cyberstudious]

An Introduction to Cybersecurity

I created this post for the Studyblr Masterpost Jam, check out the tag for more cool masterposts from folks in the studyblr community!

What is cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is all about securing technology and processes - making sure that the software, hardware, and networks that run the world do exactly what they need to do and can't be abused by bad actors.

The CIA triad is a concept used to explain the three goals of cybersecurity. The pieces are:

Confidentiality: ensuring that information is kept secret, so it can only be viewed by the people who are allowed to do so. This involves encrypting data, requiring authentication before viewing data, and more.

Integrity: ensuring that information is trustworthy and cannot be tampered with. For example, this involves making sure that no one changes the contents of the file you're trying to download or intercepts your text messages.

Availability: ensuring that the services you need are there when you need them. Blocking every single person from accessing a piece of valuable information would be secure, but completely unusable, so we have to think about availability. This can also mean blocking DDoS attacks or fixing flaws in software that cause crashes or service issues.

What are some specializations within cybersecurity? What do cybersecurity professionals do?

incident response

digital forensics (often combined with incident response in the acronym DFIR)

reverse engineering

cryptography

governance/compliance/risk management

penetration testing/ethical hacking

vulnerability research/bug bounty

threat intelligence

cloud security

industrial/IoT security, often called Operational Technology (OT)

security engineering/writing code for cybersecurity tools (this is what I do!)

and more!

Where do cybersecurity professionals work?

I view the industry in three big chunks: vendors, everyday companies (for lack of a better term), and government. It's more complicated than that, but it helps.

Vendors make and sell security tools or services to other companies. Some examples are Crowdstrike, Cisco, Microsoft, Palo Alto, EY, etc. Vendors can be giant multinational corporations or small startups. Security tools can include software and hardware, while services can include consulting, technical support, or incident response or digital forensics services. Some companies are Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs), which means that they serve as the security team for many other (often small) businesses.

Everyday companies include everyone from giant companies like Coca-Cola to the mom and pop shop down the street. Every company is a tech company now, and someone has to be in charge of securing things. Some businesses will have their own internal security teams that respond to incidents. Many companies buy tools provided by vendors like the ones above, and someone has to manage them. Small companies with small tech departments might dump all cybersecurity responsibilities on the IT team (or outsource things to a MSSP), or larger ones may have a dedicated security staff.

Government cybersecurity work can involve a lot of things, from securing the local water supply to working for the big three letter agencies. In the U.S. at least, there are also a lot of government contractors, who are their own individual companies but the vast majority of what they do is for the government. MITRE is one example, and the federal research labs and some university-affiliated labs are an extension of this. Government work and military contractor work are where geopolitics and ethics come into play most clearly, so just… be mindful.

What do academics in cybersecurity research?

A wide variety of things! You can get a good idea by browsing the papers from the ACM's Computer and Communications Security Conference. Some of the big research areas that I'm aware of are:

cryptography & post-quantum cryptography

machine learning model security & alignment

formal proofs of a program & programming language security

security & privacy

security of network protocols

vulnerability research & developing new attack vectors

Cybersecurity seems niche at first, but it actually covers a huge range of topics all across technology and policy. It's vital to running the world today, and I'm obviously biased but I think it's a fascinating topic to learn about. I'll be posting a new cybersecurity masterpost each day this week as a part of the #StudyblrMasterpostJam, so keep an eye out for tomorrow's post! In the meantime, check out the tag and see what other folks are posting about :D

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Judd Legum, Rebecca Crosby, and Noel Sims at Popular Information:

Elon Musk, the world's richest man, has been appointed by President-elect Donald Trump as the co-chair of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Despite its name, DOGE is not a department or part of the federal government. But it appears that Trump will look to Musk and DOGE to determine what government programs are essential and what should be eliminated as unnecessary. So it is notable that, on Tuesday, Musk posted on X that homelessness is a "lie" and a "propaganda word." He suggested that most unhoused people are "violent drug addicts" who cannot be helped.

Musk was commenting favorably on a post that claimed providing shelter to unhoused people was counterproductive. The post ostensibly cited a San Francisco Chronicle article published in April 2022. The article does not support the contention that providing shelter to people who need it is fruitless or that all unhoused people are criminals. Rather, the article details how the converted hotels in San Francisco were "underfunded and understaffed," leading to substandard living conditions. The city outsourced the management of the buildings to non-profit groups, but failed to provide any oversight. The safety issues resulted from inadequate maintenance and "a small group of tenants who do not receive the support they need." If Musk is going to advise the president on government spending, he should educate himself on the reality of homelessness. These are five key facts to get started.

[...]

17% of unhoused people are children

A reality that Musk did not mention in his post is that a significant percentage of unhoused people are children. According to the 2023 report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), on a single night in 2023, “roughly 186,100 people” or almost “three of every 10 people experiencing homelessness” was “part of a family with children.” The same report found that in a single night in 2023, 17 percent of unhoused people were children under the age of 18, amounting to 111,620 unhoused children.

Tens of thousands of unhoused people are veterans

Veterans also make up a significant portion of unhoused people. According to the HUD’s 2023 report, on a single night in 2023, “35,574 veterans were experiencing homelessness,” or “22 of every 10,000 veterans in the United States.” But, according to the report, the “actual number of veterans experiencing unsheltered homelessness could be larger than reported.” Black veterans were disproportionately affected, and “comprised 36 percent of veterans experiencing sheltered homelessness and 25 percent of veterans experiencing unsheltered homelessness,” despite making up “only 12 percent of all U.S. veterans.” Veterans experience homelessness at a higher rate due to multiple factors. Frequent and extended deployment can make finding and maintaining stable, affordable housing more difficult. A large number of veterans also live with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and struggle with substance abuse.

[...]

Unhoused people are much more likely to be crime victims than perpetrators

In Musk’s post, he calls unhoused people “violent.” But, in reality, unhoused people are more likely to be a victim of a violent crime than to commit a violent crime. According to the Washington State Department of Commerce, an unhoused person “is no more likely to be a criminal than a housed person,” with the exception of camping ordinances, as unhoused people “break that law merely by being homeless.” In 2023, the New York Times reported that it is "relatively rare” for “homeless, mentally ill people” to commit a violent attack.

Many people lose housing to escape domestic violence

While Musk implies that homelessness is the result of a moral failure by people with a mental illness or substance abuse disorder, the facts show that there are many factors contributing to homelessness that can affect anyone. One of those factors is domestic violence. Each year, more than 7 million people in the U.S. experience domestic violence and among those people, 500,000 need to find new housing as a result. It can be difficult to accurately track how many victims of domestic violence end up experiencing sheltered homelessness because shelters that exclusively house domestic violence victims do not report information about their clients.

[...]

Affordable housing is scarce, even for people with jobs

Another factor driving homelessness in the U.S. is a severe shortage of affordable housing. For people making extremely low wages (either at or below the federal poverty line or 30 percent of their area’s median income), there are only 34 affordable rental options per 100 families in need of housing.

Elon Musk is so clueless about the issue of homelessness and unhoused people.

A sizable chunk of the unhoused are veterans who served our country with honor, being a victim of domestic violence is another condition that leads to homelessness to escape to safety, and a sizable chunk of unhoused children identity as LGBTQ+ were evicted from their homes due to familial rejection.

[federal21]

How to Sponsor Your Family While Working in Jordan

Eligibility Requirements

▸Must hold a valid work visa or residence permit in Jordan. ▸Proof of stable employment with a Jordan-based company. ▸Meet the minimum income threshold to support family members financially. ▸Provide proof of adequate housing/accommodation for family members.

Who Can Be Sponsored

▸Immediate family members, including spouse and children. ▸Some cases allow sponsorship of dependent parents.

Required Documents

▸Valid passports and residence permits of both sponsor and family members. ▸Employment contract or proof of sufficient income. ▸Marriage certificate (for spouse) and birth certificates (for children). ▸Proof of housing in Jordan (rental agreement or property ownership).

Application Process

▸Submit a family sponsorship application to Jordan’s Ministry of Interior. ▸Pay the required processing fees. ▸Provide translated documents (preferably in Arabic) as per official requirements. ▸Processing times vary; the application can take several weeks to months.

Important Tips

▸Ensure all documents are accurate and up to date. ▸Check for any changes in sponsorship regulations. ▸Follow up regularly on the application status with the authorities.

For more information:

[mariacallous]

Shortly following reports of an apparent second assassination attempt against former US president and 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Elon Musk decided to speak up.

“And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala 🤔,” Musk, X’s owner, wrote in a now deleted post, in response to another person asking, “Why they want to kill Donald Trump?”

After deleting the post—which could be interpreted as a call to murder President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent in the US presidential election—Musk indicated that it was merely a joke that fell flat given the context. “Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on 𝕏,” he wrote, adding, “Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text.”

The incident was the latest in a long line of increasingly incendiary political posts from Musk, whose substantial defense contracts with the US government may give him access to highly sensitive information even while he makes potential threats against the sitting commander in chief. And they point to the more pressing risk that Musk’s recent rhetoric has posed: the potential to inspire further political violence.

While Sunday night’s post is gone, it appears likely that Musk could receive some attention from federal law enforcement, if he hasn’t already.

The United States Secret Service declined WIRED’s request to comment on Musk’s post. “We can say, however, that the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees,” USSS spokesperson Nate Herring tells WIRED.

“In my experience, the Secret Service would take such a comment very seriously,” says Michael German, a former FBI special agent and a liberty and national security fellow at NYU School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice. “Typically, agents would go out and interview the subject to ensure that there wasn't an existing threat, and to make the subject aware that the agency takes such statements seriously.”

German notes that it’s possible the FBI could also launch an investigation. However, it’s unlikely that Musk would face any charges for his post. “On its face, the tweet would not meet the ‘true threat’ test, in that it wasn't a direct threat to do harm to the vice president, so it wouldn't likely proceed to prosecution,” German says. Still, “it would create a record of the investigations.”

The FBI declined WIRED’s request to comment on Musk’s post. X did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

Both Biden and Harris have released statements condemning the apparent attempt on Trump’s life and political violence more broadly. In a statement to ABC News, the White House condemned Musk’s post. "Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about,” the statement says. “This rhetoric is irresponsible."

Where things get dicier for Musk is his role as a major contractor for the US Department of Defense and NASA. According to Reuters, SpaceX signed a $1.8 billion contract in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office, which oversees US spy satellites. The US Space Force also signed a $70 million contract late last year with SpaceX to build out military-grade low-earth-orbit satellite capabilities. Starlink, SpaceX’s commercial satellite internet wing, is providing connectivity to the US Navy.

NASA, meanwhile, has increasingly outsourced its spaceflight projects to SpaceX, including billions of dollars in contracts for multiple trips to the moon and an $843 million contract to build the vehicle that will take the International Space Station out of commission.

The US government’s heavy reliance on companies controlled by Musk has repeatedly raised the hackles of national security experts. Concerns at the Pentagon came into stark relief last September after Musk denied Ukraine’s request to enable Starlink in Crimea, a disputed territory bordering Russia, so it could launch an attack on Russian troops. (Starlink was not under a military contract when he denied the request.) In response to previous WIRED reporting, Musk asserted that “Starlink was barred from turning on satellite beams in Crimea at the time, because doing so would violate US sanctions against Russia!”

Neither the Defense Department nor NASA have responded to WIRED’s request for comment.

Even Musk’s October 2022 acquisition of Twitter (now X) had some experts worried about the national security risks it could pose to the US, given his business relationship and communications with the Chinese government, his alleged outreach to Russian president Vladimir Putin (which Musk has denied), and Saudi Arabia’s continued investment in Twitter following Musk’s buyout. Others raised concerns that China may have leverage over Musk, due to his relationships with Beijing related to Tesla, his electric car company that has a factory in Shanghai. And all that was before Musk—a citizen of South Africa, Canada, and the US—reactivated the accounts of conspiracy theorists and white nationalists, and began heavily pushing his own right-wing political narrative. Immediately following the first attempted assassination of Trump in mid-July, Musk endorsed Trump and reportedly pledged $45 million per month to support a pro-Trump PAC, a funding vow he said he did not make.

Musk’s deleted Sunday night post further complicates matters. The CEO reportedly has security clearance given his companies’ work on classified US government projects. While there are many rules around who gets security clearance, such as abstaining from cannabis use, the designation is awarded and maintained on a risk-vs-reward basis for the US government. Given that Musk is perhaps the world’s richest man and most famous chief executive, it may be tricky to pull his security clearance regardless of his flippant discussions of political assassinations.

“This is where Musk's status might have a greater effect,” says the Brennan Center’s German. “It would be hard for managers to revoke the security clearance of someone in a position of power, whereas they could be expected to take quick action against a regular employee who engaged in similar conduct.”

The most concerning aspect of Musk’s post is its potential to further inflame extremist threats in the US, says Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, who calls the post “merely the latest example of right-wing incitement that has become concerningly mainstream in recent years.”

“That the owner of a major social media platform—and US government contractor—is opining on the assassination of political opponents should be alarming for Americans across the political spectrum,” Lewis says. He warns that “culture war narratives and thinly veiled racism” have already had effects on the real world, which could be exacerbated by the far-right’s willingness to answer calls to arms.

“These extremists are waiting for the justification to engage in violence,” he says, “and rhetoric like this provides the perfect excuse.”

[pub-lius]

do you know how hamilton felt about the madison-hamilton fallout? just realized everything i know about it is from madison’s perspective

oho boy do i

This has actually been a subject of interest of mine since I read The Three Lives of James Madison by Noah Feldman (great book, highly recommend). In the study of Alexander Hamilton, this is a crucial event that would define his proceeding political actions.

For some background for those who may not know what anon is referencing, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison were colleagues and "friends" (if you could call it that) from their time in the Confederation Congress until Hamilton submitted his financial plan to Congress, which was all in all about a decade. In that time, they lobbied for a convention to revise the Articles of Confederation, worked together in the Constitutional Convention, and wrote The Federalist papers together in defense of strong federal government together. The Federalist was like the manifesto of the Federalist party, which placed Hamilton at the head of that party, and, arguably, James Madison as well, until he switched to the Democratic Republican party.

Hamilton's experience was far different from Madison's, just in general, but especially when it came to close friendships between men. The closest relationship he had before James Madison was with John Laurens, who we know died tragically in 1782. Although we are all aware of my feelings on rat bastard Ron Chernow, I thought that this excerpt of his biography of Hamilton described this point very well.

"[Laurens'] death deprived Hamilton of the political peer, the steadfast colleague, that he was to need in his tempestuous battles to consolidate the union. He would enjoy a brief collaboration with James Madison... But he was more of a solitary crusader without Laurens, lacking an intimate lifelong ally such as Madison and Jefferson found in each other," (Alexander Hamilton, Chernow 172-73)

As Chernow mentioned, James Madison was already closely associated with Thomas Jefferson, who he kept well appraised of the circumstances in America while Jefferson was serving a diplomatic position in France. In my personal opinion, I think it was largely due to this that Madison began to attack Hamilton later on, since as soon as Jefferson arrived back from Paris, Madison suddenly had severe moral oppositions to Hamilton's plan, rather than just rational apprehension.

I also want to touch on Hamilton's perspective in their friendship, along with their fallout, specifically when it comes to The Federalist. Hamilton put such a high value on his work, and he held himself to a very high standard. There are a couple instances of him outsourcing his work to other men he admired, such as his last political stance, that the truth of an accusation can be used in libel cases. He asked several men to help him in writing a larger treatise on the matter than what he was able to make (due to yk the bullet that got put in his diaphragm), but these weren't just his friends. These men were very crucial figures in American law, which shows that, unlike men like Jefferson, he was very selective in who he chose to associate with when it came to his work.

This wasn't any different in 1787. When he chose John Jay and James Madison to assist in writing The Federalist, his reasons for both had nothing to do with their personal relationships. Jay was one of the most successful legal minds of the new country, and James Madison, was not only a Virginian, but was an absolute genius and fucking workhorse. If you like him or not, or if you like the Constitution or not, its undeniable that the Virginia Plan was absolute fucking genius, and Hamilton knew that.

This also shows a great amount of trust in Madison. Hamilton was an incredibly untrusting dude. He kept most of his emotions and personality away from work, and really the only people who knew who he was entirely were close family, one or two family friends included. They were the only people who knew his background, which is directly tied into his work, which was the most important thing to him. Without his work, in his eyes, he would have nothing. So for him to trust Madison with something he and the world viewed as one of his most important contributions to American history, that was incredibly significant.

Also I should mention that Hamilton definitely knew how important The Federalist would be, and this is clear in his introductory essay, which is confirmed that he himself wrote.

One thing that any Hamilton historians will agree on is that he was so set in his ways. If there was a moral or philosophical question before him, he would think about it constantly, consult his books and his peers, and once he decided on his stance, there was little to no chance of changing that. The Federalist are, if not anything else, the basis of Hamilton's political thinking. Hamilton, being the arrogant bitch that he was, assumed that every other genius would be equally steadfast in their beliefs.

But James Madison was different in that regard. He was also very tied in with his state's interest, as well as that of the planter class. Hamilton also had a strong bias towards his state and class, but not with the same attitude as someone who was born into it.

Therefore, when Madison openly opposed his Report on Public Credit with a speech in the House of Representatives, Hamilton viewed it as a deep betrayal of his trust, his work, and his principles. Hamilton saw this as a devastating insult to everything he stood for by someone he thought he could completely rely on. This was the 18th century burn book.

That speech immediately kicked off Hamilton lobbying to oppose Madison's counter-proposal, which he won because, frankly, Madison hadn't been expecting Hamilton to immediately come at him with the full arsenal, but Hamilton didn't half-arsenal anything. It was after that that Hamilton was able to process what had happened. According to one of Hamilton's allies, Manasseh Cutler, Hamilton saw Madison's opposition as "a perfidious desertion of the principles which [Madison] was solemnly pledged to defend." Ouch.

The final break between them was on the subject of the National Bank aspect of Hamilton's plan. This is when Madison redefined himself as a Democratic-Republican with a firm belief in strict construction of the Constitution, giving Hamilton free reign to take out his hurt feelings on him through the art of pussy politics* and this entirely dissolved the friendship that had once been there.

*pussy politics (noun): a form of politics in which grown men act like pussies by only supporting the governmental actions that benefit their families/wealth/land/class/etc. and it is very embarrassing and frustrating to sit through

Hamilton would spend a large part of his career battling Madison, and talking a lot of shit about him, which is what has allowed me to paint this stupid ass picture of two grown men fighting over banks. The personal language that he uses in regards to Madison is very different to the accusatory tone he took with his other enemies, and that in it of itself says a lot, but I hope this was able to shed some light on why Hamilton felt the way he did and what exactly he felt. Again, I love talking about this, so feel free to ask follow up questions!

[racefortheironthrone]

Since governments generally have most or all of the data they need to assess taxes, what’s the point of having people file their own taxes? It seems like an unnecessary duplication of labor, since the IRS or equivalent bureau still needs to check and make sure that you filed correctly.

So see here and here:

So yeah, the reason is that there's a whole industry (dominated by Turbotax and H.R Block) that makes a lot of money by setting themselves up as middlemen, upselling people tax prep services that most of them don't actually need, and then lobbying the Federal government against cutting out the middlemen.

And this industry is politically allied with Congressional Republicans who believe that making people fill out their own taxes makes them more anti-tax and anti-government, and thus more likely to identify as conservative Republicans.

[collapsedsquid]

A few months ago, I bought a $60 toaster on Amazon that just would not heat up enough to toast bread. I wanted my money back. But repackaging the toaster and dropping it off at a post office seemed like too much of a hassle. So I did something slightly nefarious: I logged on to Amazon, opened the customer-service chat window, and told the outsourced worker on the other end that my toaster had never arrived. The agent apologized, asked zero follow-up questions, and immediately refunded me $60. I had committed a common, low-grade version of a type of fraud that has proliferated in recent years as massive online retailers flood the world with packages and offer customers frictionless returns. Often referred to simply as refunding, it involves finding ways to get money back for products people have not actually returned. A lot of refunding is perpetrated by sophisticated cybercriminals who trick retailers and shipping companies at scale, obtaining high-value products in bulk and reselling them online to customers who want watches, computers, or other expensive items for cheap. According to a December 2023 report from the National Retail Federation, retailers lost $101 billion from return fraud last year. Refunding first emerged alongside the early-2010s explosion in online retail and typically involved simple methods like buying items and claiming they never arrived (like my toaster). But as companies caught on, tactics evolved. In 2019, a fraudster who went by Bob published Bob’s Refunding eBook, which collected a number of methods that had been circulating on hacker forums and other underworld sites. (Nowadays, such tips circulate mostly on Telegram, the anonymous chat app on which much contemporary fraud is coordinated. The community is crass, like 4chan refitted for the zoomer mind: Refunding chat rooms with thousands of members host a flood of racist memes, slurs, cat GIFs, and extreme porn mixed in with advice on fraud methods.) Bob is credited in fraud circles with popularizing FTID — Fake Tracking ID, wherein the scammer returns an empty box to a retailer but edits the shipping label provided by the company to an address that is slightly different from the warehouse where returns are meant to go. The package gets scanned by, say, UPS when it’s picked up, allowing the customer to claim a refund, but it will never arrive at its destination.

New SBF just dropped