alt Hacker NewsThe scales of money at play always seem so strange. Oh a few hundred million for ocean sensors, or about what a few OpenAI / Cursor employees or a few hundred FAANG employees could personally fund if they desired to do so.
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The US military budget is 900 billion dollars. The government can afford a few hundred million for some sensors, it should not need private sector patrons
It’s nothing to do with money, that’s always the libertarian excuse, and HN laps it up far more than the rest of the word.
Its not even about saving money. If they just wanted to save money they'd just stop paying attention to the data coming in, retask/lay off the people working on it, and let the buoys stay out there. A dumb idea to me, but at least that's consistent. Let other organizations decide to manage the buoys. While I'd prefer for the government to do it, it could be possible to have other groups fund such things. It would be a lot cheaper, easier, and allow for a smoother transition with no lost data for some other org or government to take over the project.
Instead, we're paying money to pull the sensors out of the water. We're actively spending money to blind ourselves to things we know are growing areas of concern.
Lol Big Tech employees don’t have desires beyond money at any cost.
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These sensors and a bunch of other scientific research for a thousand years, or pointless war with Iran for 3 months.