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Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
- avalys 2y agoWhat is this supposed to be? It's a link to a bunch of posts on some kind of social media platform that all say "uspol science funding". Am I missing something?
- cherioo 2y agoThere is a “show more” button
- mh- 2y agoWhat a strange UI/UX.
- klardotsh 2y agoThis is because a bunch of us use the Fediverse (Mastodon, etc.) as a general purpose social media network and really don't care to have the entire timeline be doom and gloom about how bad the world currently is, but want to read the other things folks have to say. So a bit of etiquette has built up over the years to stash those things under a CW (think of it like a subject line) so you can read it when and if you have the spoons to do so, and can happily ignore it and wait for something else from that person, say, cat pictures, without having to unfollow them. In a more elegant world, Mastodon/Fediverse would have the concept of topics, and I'd be able to follow `@mh+cats@example.com` without following @mh+uspol@example.com`, but we're not in that elegant world. Mastodon (nor Pleroma, nor Pixelfed, nor any of the other Fediverse software) doesn't offer anything like that, short of multiple accounts, which comes with other big problems.
- spelunker 2y agoHave the spoons to do so...?
- jazzyjackson 2y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory
- mh- 2y agoOk, that's actually very cool. And I deeply share this sentiment: > don't care to have the entire timeline be doom and gloom about how bad the world currently is .. > In a more elegant world [..] the concept of topics, and I'd be able to follow [..] One can dream. I used to regard the idea of filter bubbles as a negative thing, but I'd be perfectly content with being able to craft my own right about now.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoYeah. As with many things, having a bubble is not wrong _if_ you are aware of it and _if_ you control it and you chose it. As Technology Connections recently said, it's worrying that people have had hostile bubbles built around them and not noticed.
- adfm 2y ago""" I have been informed that everyone at NSF who was overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation (PAWR)[1] project is gone. This program has been providing testbed environments to help drive forward wireless networking, including mobile/cellular networks at locations in Harlem NY, Salt Lake City Utah, Ames Iowa, and Cary North Carolina. One of the explicit goals of the program is to keep the US competitive when it comes to both wireless technology development and training the workforce needed for leading-edge wireless networks. I do hope that the program will continue with new leadership - some PAWR contracts are still active, and some platforms, including ours[2] have funding outside of PAWR. But the loss of institutional knowledge will seriously hurt these programs, and is definitely not "efficient" [1] https://advancedwireless.org/ https://advancedwireless.org/ [2] https://www.powderwireless.net/ https://www.powderwireless.net/ """
- monero-xmr 2y ago[flagged]
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- readthenotes1 2y ago[flagged]
- georgemcbay 2y ago> Everyone whose funding is cut/questioned says it's wrong Everyone who made billions off the internet is too busy smelling their own farts to recognize that none of this waves hand in the general direction of basically all modern technology would exist without the sustained government funding that built ARPAnet and NSFNET.
- CobaltFire 2y agoI think you miss a critical fact: They absolutely understand that. They also see money/power as a finite resource and absolutely do not want any new competition to emerge via anything that could be created or funded by anything they do not control.
- georgemcbay 2y agoYou're certainly right in some cases, though I do think its a mix of truths. Some of them do realize the actual situation and are ladder pulling, but mixed in with that there's also a pervasive offshoot of hyper narcissistic survivorship bias that in my experience a lot of modern tech entrepreneurs suffer from where they really are actually shockingly blind to the build-up of everything that they then built on. Like the Internet existing for them is taken as just a given like the earth and the seas being here, but "taxi cabs you hail through the internet"... that's the real invention!
- bagels 2y agoIt's shortsighted because they are asking China to take over.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- apsec112 2y ago
- tomrod 2y agoWhat a horrible outcome! NIST is, for most of its services, a self-funded agency and they define the acceptable standards for new tech. This makes no sense. Edit: Too much time on screen today. My apologies for muddying the waters!
- IAmGraydon 2y agoWho said anything about NIST?
- n8henrie 2y agohttps://semiwiki.com/semiconductor-services/semiconductor-advisors/353373-chips-act-dies-because-employees-are-fired-nist-chips-people-are-probationary/ https://semiwiki.com/semiconductor-services/semiconductor-ad...
- knowknow 2y agoSad to say but this will be the norm for the next 4 years, don’t expect any federal organization to come out intact. I’ve basically ruled out working as a federal employee as there’s no assurances about anything.
- baggy_trough 2y agoThat's really the key idea behind this, IMO. Make it more scary to work for the feds or nonprofits since a Republican president can boot you every 4/8 years.
- thrfedsci022425 2y agoFederal scientist here. The situation is dire, and this is only the beginning. We've lost all employees with < 1 year of service, which has halted the new projects they were hired to work on. Leaders of 100 employee offices were booted since they had less than 1 year of federal service--back to another interim director. Those of us left are hamstrung since all travel has been canceled, and our credit cards will have $1 limits starting tomorrow. Who cares if you had a recurring charge on it that was maintaining the cell service on an instrument monitoring a volcano. We waste time in hastily scheduled team meetings trying to figure out how respond to DOGE's latest demands, only to learn as more info comes down from above that, no, we're no longer required to address their ultimatum messages. Make no mistake—their objective is to dismantle and destroy government functionality.
- late2part 2y ago[flagged]
- rfw300 2y agoIs it "sensible oversight" to shoot first and ask questions later—to shut down all payments on a whim and then implement a review process (assuming it actually exists) afterwards which will be immediately overloaded? You might as well starve prisoners and then say sensible calorie management is not in and of itself foolish.
- robomartin 2y ago[flagged]
- _carbyau_ 2y agoThe point is the people are gone. So who's going to provide the data you want?
- mikeyouse 2y agoThe thing is, the team that fired all these researchers doesn’t have that data either. So it’s extremely easy to be critical of their haphazard cuts since they’re made completely arbitrarily with the only consideration so far being the ease of firing them based on their probationary status. The process and detail you’re asking for would be the responsible way to shrink the government and is the polar opposite of what’s happening.
- cavisne 2y agoNon-probationary employees can't be fired (and even voluntary resignations are rate-limited by the Iron Mountain mine shaft elevator). So every day that process takes lowers the number of employees that can even be fired. Once it gets to a year (very easily) they would all have come off probation so nothing could be done. Everyone saying "oh something should be done but just do it slower" is actually saying do nothing.
- alabastervlog 2y agoThey couldn’t do what they did to the probationary employees, either, but they did. There’s a layoff process, and they didn’t follow it. Your reasons aren’t a good justification for what they did, because they’re breaking the rules anyway.
- mikeyouse 2y agoOf course non-probationary employees can be fired, don’t be so credulous. OPM has a whole process for a RIF, which is actually what is happening, DOGE is just lying on the separation paperwork blaming individual poor performance, because following the law and treating employees like they’re human beings is hard and it’s easier to falsify some paperwork.
- polairscience 2y agoThis is true for many programs for reasons that will be hard to understand if you aren't a scientist. The NSF program managers are often pulled out of academia for brief periods of their career to do various tasks as experts. This means they are often probationary. This is the only way to hire people with deep expertise on the topic-du-jour. The trump administration fired in wide swaths many probationary employees at NSF with total disregard for what they were doing or why. Not evaluated efficiency cuts. Just thrashing about. Science in the US will be chaotically torn apart by this and a host of other decisions. https://www.wired.com/story/national-science-foundation-february-2025-firings/ https://www.wired.com/story/national-science-foundation-febr...
- abirch 2y agoIn addition to these scientists, I heard from my friends in academia that they will be taking fewer PhD students because they're unsure of the funding. We may be looking at a lost decade.
- polairscience 2y agoWe'll be very lucky if it's a lost decade. One of the many factors that made the US a technical powerhouse were the long threads across disciplines where people could do focused research. you had to reapply for grants but generally could be sure that important programs would stay in place. This breaks all of that. It seems poised to break research as we know it. As one of the many researchers that will likely lose their career to this, I will be forced to choose between stopping work that benefits both the public and industry or moving abroad to one of the many nations that do appreciate such effort. We are about to not only lose our future efforts but also hemorrhage current talent. I'm surely not the only person who's inbox\phone exploded with messages after the news broke with collaborators abroad offering to help me start a lab at their institute. Europe will gladly do take backsies on their WWII brain drain.
- peterlada 2y agoChina is not losing this decade, the scientific gap will add to the growing chasm of future outcomes between the two superpowers.
- markus_zhang 2y agoWonder who informed the author? And how did the DOGE thing go exactly?
- Kindra 2y agoNotwithstanding the other awful aspects of all of this, there’s a certain vibe of, “people who don’t understand how a system works attempting to act like they know how the system works and are too cowardly to admit they are breaking everything.” This just reads like “Character Limit” except replace Twitter with the federal government.
- tart-lemonade 2y agoIt's like an internet argument spilled out into the real world, with all the posturing and bravado to increase perceived expertise. Except it's gambling with an entire nation's fortune, instead of likes/votes/reactions.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoTo repeat popular quotes, there's a lot of walking up to fences gaily and then tearing them down, and a lot of "Government doesn't work, vote for us and we'll prove it" Not much to say. If anyone is truly on the fence, please remember this and vote against it in 2026. Vote early, vote often. Vote local. I promise that killing trans people and defunding science is not going to make gas cheaper or anything.
- calvinmorrison 2y ago[flagged]
- ziofill 2y agoThat's a very short sighted pov.
- eviks 2y agoThe people eliminating are stealing more than what they're eliminating.
- Spooky23 2y agoDon’t worry, they’ll be printing more to buy off the idiots who actually believe this.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoSorry but you've been lied to
- ashton314 2y agoYou seem to be oblivious to the fact that you can type that comment in a web browser and post it on the internet is due in large part to decades of people funded by the NSF and then making the knowledge they discovered freely available.
- calvinmorrison 2y ago[flagged]
- bagels 2y agoYou think this NSF money was stolen? Where's your evidence of that?
- timewizard 2y agoWhy shouldn't the three monopoly cellular players in the US do this work themselves? Is there some reason the NSF is doing industry research for them? Are we /honestly/ afraid of "falling behind" in cellular technology if the government doesn't do basic research?
- dboreham 2y agoAh yes the Verizon protocols were such a good contribution to standards.
- devmor 2y agoWhat US centered industry has continued to innovate new technologies in their fields that have benefits other than increasing shareholder value at all costs?
- snowwrestler 2y agoHow is it saving money if the cost is just shifted elsewhere? Why does it matter where the work is done except for empty ideological signaling?
- xyzzy123 2y agoThe cost would be borne by the consumers of Telcos / wireless services rather than by all taxpayers. The Telcos would allocate funding / resources based on their financial position and their needs. I dunno, tbh maybe the government can do a better job at right-sizing the service and running it efficiently than the private sector could? Maybe! But it feels like most arguments along these lines would also apply to the Telcos themselves, i.e, if government can do a better job why not nationalise the Telcos?
- mixermachine 2y agoCompanies develop closed source technology that benefits them (as it is expect). This is done X times (where X is companies that offer services). A government agency does preferably develop open source or atleast nationally available knowledge/solutions. This will raise prices
- sneak 2y agoConsent matters. There is no worse tyranny than to force someone to pay for something they do not want to buy, simply because you think it would be good for them. I am vehemently pro-research and pro-education, but these tax-funded programs are not it. There must be some meaningful connection to the delivery of value, otherwise this stuff is just public-private wealth transfer. This seems obvious to me. Why should this research be subsidized? Why should government subsidies exist in general? This isn’t crazy stuff. We would like a smaller federal government. Why is everyone acting like the sky is falling when an elected official does the things people voted for them to do? (Note: I did not vote for this administration, but I am happy about some of the policy decisions that are being made (and unhappy about others).)
- arrobbiato 2y agoIf you require taxpayers to consent to every single line item, voting is going to become rather cumbersome.
- sneak 2y ago[flagged]
- digitaltrees 2y agoYou can migrate and renounce citizenship. Staying and benefiting from the spending is tacit consent no?
- sneak 2y agoThere is no such thing as tacit consent.
- acdha 2y agoThe fact that there’s a term for it which we all know suggests otherwise. It’s literally in textbooks, too, so you’d have a better argument if you explained your conceptual disagreement rather than trying to pretend the concept doesn’t exist.
- dqv 2y agoInteresting approach to competing with China on wireless technology. I would have thought the US having a competitive edge over China in terms of research and development would be important to Republicans.
- devmunchies 2y agoThe federal govt can’t be the majority of technological innovation. If we’re lucky this vacuum will be filled by an even larger private sector innovation hub like Xerox park and bell labs.
- only-one1701 2y agoOh my god dude, who do you think is the major subsidizer of private industry research?
- devmunchies 2y agoI didn’t say I was in favor of axing all govt positions and grants, dude.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- malcolmgreaves 2y agoIndeed you did.
- pjc50 2y agoYou didn't say that, but you're supporting the guys who did.
- devmunchies 2y agoThis is the first thread ive commented on since trump was inaugurated and it’s sad to see HN has turned into Reddit. emotionally charged, bad faith assumptions at the smallest whiff of independent thought.
- yalogin 2y agoThis is inline with “take down anything that shows expertise and competence” approach by this administration. Following the pattern of extremely biased and subservient to the president appointees, I am not sure what it looks like for this specific organization, may be they are fired and that’s it
- wnevets 2y agoDon't worry about it Elon hired 19 year old criminals to run the agency's description through grok and it turned out that isn't important.
- Animats 2y agoThat area will then be handled by Huawai, which developed the 5G spec. The US no longer has much of a telecommunications technology industry.[1] [1] https://itif.org/publications/2021/11/08/mapping-international-5g-standards-landscape-and-how-it-impacts-us-strategy/ https://itif.org/publications/2021/11/08/mapping-internation...
- gorbachev 2y agoThe trade war US and China has had for years sure is going to feel different in a few years time when China is the source of increasing amount of innovation and forbids the export of that technology to US and its allies.
- Animats 2y agoThat's already happened. China forbids export of rare earth processing equipment and technology to the US.[1] [1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-chinas-ban-rare-earths-processing-technology-exports-means https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-chinas-ban-rare-earths-pr...
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago> One of the explicit goals of the program is to keep the US competitive Competition doesn't matter to a xenophobe. That's what the tariffs are for. You admit that you can't compete, so you make it too expensive for people to buy the foreign things, forcing them to buy your (inferior/expensive) things, with the upside-down belief that that will make your economy strong. When actually the now-captive market is an incentive to make things worse and more expensive. You'd think the people who "beat communism with choice and competition" would get that.
- arunabha 2y agoThere are obviously strong emotions on both sides regarding the actions of the first few weeks of the Trump administration. Whether you believe the goals are worthy or not, one must acknowledge that the manner in which all of this is being done is deeply disturbing. Trump will be gone in a few years, one way or the other. However, the foundations that are being poured for legitimizing a strongman, authoritarian role for the executive and almost eliminating the role of the other two branches is deeply dangerous. If you believe the goals are worthy enough that the ends justify the means, think of the worst president ever(in your opinion) and consider whether you'd want them to have the same power? Because politicians never let power go willingly. They will certainly point to Trump's precedent as a means of legitimizing their actions. My fervent hope is that our institutions are strong enough to weather this assault and that enough people make it clear to the administration that there are lines they are not willing to cross. Whether that happens remains to be seen.
- rhubarbtree 2y agoI think it’s the end of US hegemony, and might be the beginning of a very steep decline. China is on course to lead the world, but I think it will be multipolar and the US will gradually descend to a middling power over the next fifty years. The reason, I think, is that a kind of social compact died. Powerful corporate interests neglected much of the American population, which bred resentment and anger now harnessed by Trump, Musk, et al. I don’t see a fix, I’m not even sure it can be fixed. It took decades to offshore so much of the American economy, but I don’t think anyone will be given decades to fix it. I wonder how history will judge the American era.
- mandevil 2y agoThe National Science Foundation funded the original research that became Google: https://www.nsf.gov/news/origins-google https://www.nsf.gov/news/origins-google That grant in the area of library science led directly to one of the most valuable companies on the planet, creating far more value (2.2 trillion is today's market cap) from that one Digital Library Initiative grant to Stanford Professors Hector Garcia-Molina and Terry Winograd (plus a NSF Graduate Student Fellowship that paid for Brin to be at Stanford in the first place) than everything that NSF has spent over it's entire history. This is why funding research is incredibly important, and incredibly unpredictable. No one would have looked at the DLI in 1994 and said "Ah yes, this one is the big payoff!" But it was. Basic research is like VC funding, it's a portfolio with a huge amount of misses (in the sense that the research doesn't change the world), but the winners pay off for all Americans and everyone in the world far more than the losers cost. And, unlike VC's and start-ups, basic research has less investment than is socially optimal, because most of the payoffs are far more diffuse and are much harder to capture inside a company that returns profit to investors (the Google example is unusual in how direct the link was between the research and the company). Which is why the NSF (and other agencies like DARPA, NIH, etc.) were created, to fill a hole that exists in a pure market. This really feels more and more every day like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_stripping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_stripping
- kortilla 2y agoTrying to tie Google to one single grant doesn’t make sense, nor does associating the market cap of that company to that one grant make sense. Google owes far more to TCP/IP research from DARPA than that particular library grant. But even then, the meta point is that you need lots of research pushing forward all edges of knowledge. It is very rare that any single grant can result in a massive successful business at this point. Pushing computing forward needs constant research in all directions to push forward hardware, networks, security, power conservation/generation, algorithms, storage, etc, etc.
- ellen364 2y agoThe grandparent article claims that Page and Brin were paid by NSF, working on DLI projects while researching PageRank and that the equipment for their prototype crawler was partly paid for by DLI. If that's true, I'd say they're very fortunate that the Digital Library Initiative existed and that they could put their research into the public domain to reuse it for free at Google. In another context, I'd call the DLI an angel investor and they'd have wanted a slice of that Google pie.
- rights_reminder 2y agoI know these cuts make almost no difference to the massive federal spending, but they are putting a spotlight on our nation's dire financial situation. Most young people have no hope of owning a home or having kids and our federal government is "borrowing" money to pay for all of these things. Last year it added 1830 billion dollars to the national debt while paying 1126 billion in interest. Take a look at the dollar price of gold chart if you haven't recently. This is obviously not sustainable, maybe even in the short term. To continue steal from our children's futures to pay for decades of accumulated corruption, appropriated by Congress, is a crime. Can anyone see a reasonable path forward where we don't make drastic changes?
- nightfly 2y ago> decades of accumulated corruption, appropriated by Congress Is just something assumed by Republicans with no basis in reality. The amount of "facts" that conservative friends post on Facebook that can be trivially debunked that have still been circulating for years is insane.
- hedora 2y agoThe NSF funding last year was $9B. Cutting it will stop the US from continuing to have a growing economy in ten years. That’s stealing trillions from our children. Look at the republican budget. They’re adding $85B a year for better border security; half of which is to deploy the US military inside the US. The other half goes to the national guard and customs and border patrol. So, for every dollar they cut from the NSF, they’re spending $10 to deploy troops against American civilians. For every one of those dollars, they’re handing $10 out in tax cuts for the ultra wealthy. This is being paid for by cutting medicare, which we will all rely on, assuming we somehow manage to live through the inevitable pandemics, natural disasters, economic collapse and wars this jackass is going to start.
- mixermachine 2y agoCutting funding for research and development can be considered stealing from kids. Not the current generation but the next one. I'm from Europe and the current US politics discourages me from buying US products. I guess this will push a new Europe first movement on this side of the globe. Not the scenario I wished for because I quite liked the more open system.
- freen 2y agoModest proposal: hacker news is not the most left leaning of web forums, However, there seems to be a fairly consistent and relatively unanimous view that the actions of the current republican administration are deeply problematic. If you happen to be one of those people who thought that voting for the Republicans was in your best interest, yet you are shocked and horrified by what the Republicans are currently doing, I strongly suggest you reevaluate your political epistemology, and interrogate both your sources of information as well as your political stances. Unlike you, others fully expected this as the outcome Of a Republican Administration and Congress.
- pitaj 2y agoI really doubt they're the same people. I think when left-leaning people see a story like this one, they are far more inclined to participate in the discussion. And vice versa.
- pjc50 2y agoPeople will do the reverse: because they voted Republican, they will come up with increasingly complicated justifications for why things they previously held to be important should be destroyed to own the libs.
- fwsgonzo 2y agoYep, the amount of contradiction one can hold probably has no bounds when not subjected to some kind of deprogramming. I occasionally look at conservative messaging boards and most members are just asking for what to think not really asking why something (really bad) happened. Among endless examples, here is a Trumper begging to be educated on why Trump said he is king: https://old.reddit.com/r/Conservative/comments/1itkmen/explain_this_to_me_like_i_am_5_please/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Conservative/comments/1itkmen/expla...
- esbranson 2y agoI did not vote GOP, at least not the president and most offices. I fully expected this outcome, and support it. Despite your accusations, I ask you to consider that it is you who needs to assess your sources of information as well as your political stances. I was previously an avid watcher of PBS NewsHour but stopped due to the constant, obvious propaganda in the 2016 election cycle. WETA and NPR should get defunded first. When you have people who watched Lehrer say that: oopsies. As a Wikipedian, the entire left of center information space has become trash, no better than Fox News. WETA may have cleaned up their act, but alas it's too late for that. This is not a win for the GOP, this is a failure of the left and its thought leaders who still continue drinking the Kool-Aid. Trying to break out of your propaganda system will be extremely difficult and dare I say dangerous, so don't take it lightly.
- yawnxyz 2y agoMany are surprised by this, but if you think of it as Trump's getting paid to set the US back so others can catch up, then it makes a lot of sense.
- esbranson 2y agoJust who do you think is going to catch up? Germany? China? Wishful thinking in the extreme if you think anyone is going to fill the void.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gunian 2y agoany thing that leads to or could lead to decentralization will be exterminated smh zuck
- XajniN 2y ago[flagged]
- gorbachev 2y agoThe EU countries should be aggressively courting US based scientists. Shower them with money, if they must. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
- esbranson 2y agoWouldn't we all love it if some other country(ies) would contribute? Unfortunately, neither Europe nor China will in any appreciable amount, despite whatever the propaganda systems are currently saying. The US is the only game in town, and will remain so.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoChina will pounce on the opportunity to narrow its technical gap with the U.S. as US research decelerates.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoLooks like America First actually means America Second.