Thanks. I couldn't find anything in literature suggesting this case was previously worked on. I'm also a pure math PhD candidate so I guess I'm just coping..
There's incompetence in every major company including Oracle. PeopleSoft isn't known for being the most modern or secure thing out there. Less reliance on 3rd party software like this will be a good thing going forward.
Anyone that signed an Oracle contract has volunteered as a hostage, though, so you have to negotiate with both the hostage-taker and the hostages. Stockholm-syndrome-esque.
I think enterprise software in this vein used to have a quasi-monopoly due to the sheer work required to build software of its size (not enough engineers exist in the government to do so), and the difficulty for competitors to enter regulated markets and so pretty much 1-2 options to choose from.
AI now makes it possible to build this kind of software in-house, offering a 2nd choice, though it'll only be as good as the standards of the teams using it. Only time can tell.
Enterprise software is complicated mostly because of number of customers it can support.
Bespoke software can be orders of magnitude less complex. There are many reasons companies choose to use vendor solutions, but for large organizations it’s usually not “we literally can’t hire enough engineers to build it.”
> Bespoke software can be orders of magnitude less complex.
Not in government. For payroll/HR, we're talking about hundreds of pages of legislative mandates, union bargaining rules, Title 5 statutory compliance, and FISMA/NIST regs. Just customizing something like PeopleSoft to fit is a large task in itself, let alone trying to implement bespoke software using an engineering pool that isn't even large enough to modernize the software it currently owns.
Bespoke sounds nice and works well in startups but that's not the context we're discussing. Check out Phoenix Pay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_pay_system and understand the US is even more complex.
I’ve worked on HR software. There are currently at least 3 large scale, bespoke, homegrown payroll/HR systems in use by the Federal government. There used to be many more. There are many reasons to outsource software but the government can’t hire enough engineers is not one of them. It’s clearly been done before.
>Just customizing something like PeopleSoft to fit is a large task in itself, let alone trying to implement bespoke software
Customizing large enterprise software is more like writing bespoke software than it is what most people think of when you use the word customization. You end up paying enormous vendor margins on top of the costs for something that is effectively bespoke software.
There is so much bespoke software out there that is at least as complex as government payroll software.
Considering how bad most enterprise software is, I assumed the only real relevance was if the sales team ponied up some lavish perks to the right VP who only has to sign checks and never actually interact with the software.
> Maintained by the Sovereign Systems & Security Architecture Team.
Hmmm... must be some "team" with this user (https://github.com/mc493) contributing only this repository in all of three years. Complete slop.
I see no proof of care with the first commit 9 hours ago, and every commit by this "security architecture team" unsigned except for the AI output paste commits to README made thru the web editor.
Although I would definitely prefer macOS or Windows + WSL (since I play a decent bit of games), ChromeOS is a lot more pleasant experience now than in the past.
> The claims seem a bit overstated though, since the metrics mentioned are cherrypicking refusal count and KL divergence, both of which make the outcome seem the most dramatic.
is right out of an LLM. It's the kind of language I'd expect out of a thinking trace also mentioning "boundaries" and "oracles" and "contracts."
- Limit engine start cycles to approximately 10 total cycles per day, on average. Occasionally cycling the starter system more than this will not cause damage unless it becomes a long-term trend.
- Assuming seven additional cycles per day are not exceeded (assumed ten total cycles per day), any shutdown with a duration in excess of one minute will result in overall cost savings.
- Limit electric accessory use during shutdowns, particularly during longer shutdown periods.
- Drive more than five miles between start cycles to ensure the battery is fully charged.
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