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Sagebrush posted:I don't think rockets (chemical explosives in general) are allowed under battlebots rules. Even then I bet a 250-lb rocket motor is gonna have trouble flipping over a 60-ton armored vehicle. Haven't done the math but I doubt we have engines with the required Isp. I misunderstood. I thought we were planning a bot to compete in battlebots but with a pentagon budget. Not to kill a tank. We already do that they are called anti-tank guided missiles. Re: UUV’s. Most people are unaware of this but the DSRV of Hunt For Red October fame was completely autonomous. Murgos fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Dec 13, 2020 |
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Dec 13, 2020 03:04
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PittTheElder posted:How have I never used this contraption in a Battlefield game before? Battlefield 3 (ie, The Best Non Bad Company One) had the EOD bot, that was pretty cool
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Dec 13, 2020 05:32
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Electric Wrigglies posted:Most people never spend a day in a hotel that costs over 80-120 USD per night in their life so for the general population it is absolutely astounding that someone at tax payer expense is seemingly flagrantly living in six times normal rate luxury at their expense. London is a little expensive Current USG perdiem rates: Lodging 303 M&IE 185 Total per day 488 That total day rate is lower than what it was in '14 too. E: Also, rates can go over perdiem due to events, etc. so while 665 is on the high side, that's not - out of the question for London. TCD fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Dec 13, 2020 |
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Dec 13, 2020 08:01
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Hyatt recently opened a hotel out of Great Scotland Yard and staying there is on my bucket list. It's gonna *hurt* to pay that bill, though. =/
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Dec 13, 2020 08:34
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When I got to travel with my antique store running grandmother in Europe, she balked at the thought of staying anywhere that wasn't four star. At least. Sheraton Park Tower in Knightsbridge, I miss you so much. The Capital in Knightsbridge still had to coziest beds I've ever encountered in my life. I don't desire and likely never will be wealthy. But those types of comforts should be experienced at least once.
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Dec 13, 2020 09:09
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I kind of think you want cabinet ministers to stay somewhere nice and close by to work, but I checked it out and she stayed at the Savoy which is a bit OTT. Also it looks like she refused to stay at another 5* hotel and got cancellation charges... I imagine most people would get some pushback on their expenses claim for that.
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Dec 13, 2020 11:19
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Cyrano4747 posted:Sure, but there's no real answer to that other than "don't go to London to do diplomacy I guess." These are the exact same people who are convening in another building because they only allocated funds to refurbish Parliament when it became actually unsafe, and similarly waited until the PM's residence was falling into ruin before allocating the (in the scheme of things) minuscule amount of money needed to refurbish it - all the while letting the cost of the entire NSS in owed but uncollected taxes pass them by every year
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Dec 13, 2020 14:52
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Nebakenezzer posted:These are the exact same people who are convening in another building because they only allocated funds to refurbish Parliament when it became actually unsafe, and similarly waited until the PM's residence was falling into ruin before allocating the (in the scheme of things) minuscule amount of money needed to refurbish it - all the while letting the cost of the entire NSS in owed but uncollected taxes pass them by every year It says a lot that absent the NSS mention and the context of this conversation this could apply to either England or Canada.
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Dec 13, 2020 16:58
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knox_harrington posted:I kind of think you want cabinet ministers to stay somewhere nice and close by to work, but I checked it out and she stayed at the Savoy which is a bit OTT. Also it looks like she refused to stay at another 5* hotel and got cancellation charges... I imagine most people would get some pushback on their expenses claim for that. Savoy is close to Whitehall like - 10 minute walk close. I'd imagine if the discussion is over a defense acquisition, being in close proximity to that building is a plus. E: It's a 10 minute walk to the High Commission too.
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Dec 13, 2020 17:42
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TCD posted:London is a little expensive Jesus christ. The most generous UKGov maximum reimbursement for London is roughly $180 and $60. Nutapii fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Dec 13, 2020 |
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Dec 13, 2020 18:16
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TCD posted:Savoy is close to Whitehall like - 10 minute walk close. I'd imagine if the discussion is over a defense acquisition, being in close proximity to that building is a plus. Oh yeah I know. The beef wellington at the Grill is fantastic and worth visiting for. I don't have a problem at all with staff staying in nice, convenient accommodation, it's just that staying somewhere that is synonymous with luxury is probably not the smartest move if you're in the public eye. Bit of a storm in a teacup really though.
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Dec 13, 2020 18:53
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I suppose part of it is also a question of just how crazy the expenditure is in relation to the job they're there to do. Like, it's unnecessary to put the deputy undersecretary of funny walks in a 50,000/night penthouse suite, but even if you did that and they racked up a $1M bill that's still a drop in the bucket compared to defense procurement. I'm not saying that the optics are great and I'm not saying that you SHOULD put up every petty functionary in the best room at the four seasons, but it's also kind of nuts to give that kind of scrutiny to the per diem for a traveling MP when the difference between them staying at a nice hotel and staying at a motel 6 is going to be a few thousand dollars. Yeah, that's a lot of money to an individual person, but you're talking about budgets in the hundreds of billions of dollars for a mid-sized country. Squinting that hard at a hotel bill and making an MP apologize publicly for it just seems performative as gently caress when Canada's recent budget has $106 million for "reinforcing our support of Ukraine" in 36 million allotments every year for the next 3 years. And that's not even something I think they shouldn't be spending money on. It's just a random line item I grabbed to show what kind of holy gently caress money governments spent on pretty much anything.
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Dec 13, 2020 19:47
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Nutapii posted:Jesus christ. The most generous UKGov maximum reimbursement for London is roughly $180 and $60. I think the UK rate is combined ~$354 for DC where the US's cheapest is $268 (although high season is $334).
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Dec 13, 2020 20:13
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Cyrano4747 posted:I suppose part of it is also a question of just how crazy the expenditure is in relation to the job they're there to do. I agree completely. The UK has a history of absolute penny pinching the small things at the same time as wasting huge amounts on projects by constantly changing their minds. The other day the UK suspended all reserve naval training to save £7.5m - absolute peanuts. On topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8BojR2BEt8
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Dec 13, 2020 20:23
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We shouldn't let public servants treat the public treasury like their own personal bank account. House them where you need to house them for the work to get done, but the more they think they're entitled to make free use of public funds, the more likely they are to do something boneheaded and corrupt and waste a billion dollars.
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Dec 13, 2020 20:40
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wiegieman posted:We shouldn't let public servants treat the public treasury like their own personal bank account. House them where you need to house them for the work to get done, but the more they think they're entitled to make free use of public funds, the more likely they are to do something boneheaded and corrupt and waste a billion dollars. That’s one way to look at it, another is that if you’re penny pinching a few hundred bucks on a hotel room for an employee they’re not going to be motivated to get the best deal on the millions or billions of dollars they’re spending on your behalf. Or they’re going to be very cheap to buy off.
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Dec 13, 2020 21:30
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Having our public servants live on penny pinching sets the standard that we should treat them poorly, and that government work isn’t prestigious. That’s bullshit.
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Dec 13, 2020 22:21
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wiegieman posted:We shouldn't let public servants treat the public treasury like their own personal bank account. House them where you need to house them for the work to get done, but the more they think they're entitled to make free use of public funds, the more likely they are to do something boneheaded and corrupt and waste a billion dollars. Fringe benefits for legislators are not ever the source of significant government waste. The kind of corruption that really racks up the costs is kickbacks for projects and other government work. It's much more concerning when the money for the hotel stay is coming from someone other than the government.
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Dec 13, 2020 22:24
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Cyrano4747 posted:It's been forever since I did hotels in london, but at least as of ~10 years ago you had a very linear relationship of "distance from the center of london" to "holy gently caress that's expensive." I think you're hitting the nail on the head why you're generally seeing, generous rates, both for the USG and for the UK Gov while traveling abroad. It makes it easier to have one rate that's acceptable to nearly all levels of the government vs having tiered rates based on rank. That creates problems both on the budgeting/accounting backend as well as the logistic side by having trips be split amongst hotels not because of availability but because of rates. You'd be spending more time trying to get people into $50-100 cheaper rates and have additional coordination issues - in what's already akin to hearding cats compared to letting both a GS-7 and SES stay at the same property. Additionally, there may also be some considerations why a government may not want their officials staying in another country's truck stop motel while being okay with lower reimbursement rates for domestic travel.
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Dec 13, 2020 22:30
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These are good points that I hadn't considered, I'll agree that handling really high dollar amount contracts is probably not something you want someone resentful doing.
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Dec 13, 2020 23:01
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It's easier to look like you are fighting corruption and waste if you go after something not protected by moneyed interests. Guess how many lobbyists there are for government employees to have a nice hotel stay? And then compare that number to how many lobbyists for *waves hand broadly at everything else*.
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Dec 13, 2020 23:15
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John le Carré died today.
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Dec 13, 2020 23:22
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zoux posted:John le Carré died today. poo poo. Always one of my favorite authors
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Dec 13, 2020 23:25
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zoux posted:John le Carré died today. If that's even his real name 
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Dec 13, 2020 23:40
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He had to publish under a pseudonym because he was an active agent! He published his first three novels, including a Spy Who Came in from the Cold while he was still in MI6! His cover was blown by Kim Philby himself!
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Dec 13, 2020 23:43
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The penny pinching is quite literally performative. The people putting on the performance wants to win elections and public shaming of corrupt bureaucracts who spend your good tax money on luxuries for themselves is how you win elections in all proportional representative democracies. How big a percentage the per diem line is of the whole project budget couldn't be less connected to the performance if it was a planning permit for a new extension to the Watergate complex in DC but located on the moon. How is this even a discussion?
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Dec 13, 2020 23:53
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knox_harrington posted:I agree completely. The UK has a history of absolute penny pinching the small things at the same time as wasting huge amounts on projects by constantly changing their minds. The other day the UK suspended all reserve naval training to save £7.5m - absolute peanuts. It's hardcore Law of Triviality stuff. We understand reserve naval training, therefore we feel confident pulling £7.5m out of its budget. We however know effectively nothing about why we need two flat-top aircraft carriers, £7.6 billion, sign on the dotted line, God save the Queen.
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Dec 14, 2020 01:05
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tangy yet delightful posted:It's easier to look like you are fighting corruption and waste if you go after something not protected by moneyed interests. Guess how many lobbyists there are for government employees to have a nice hotel stay? And then compare that number to how many lobbyists for *waves hand broadly at everything else*. And this is how, while on official travel, I ended up staying in such garden spots as "hotel an hour from the main gate of the base we were flying an exercise at," "room with 2'x2' bloodstain in carpet," "room with 15" LCD computer monitor as tv," and "bed is aaaactually a hide-a-bed in a chair."
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Dec 14, 2020 03:09
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Godholio posted:And this is how, while on official travel, I ended up staying in such garden spots as "hotel an hour from the main gate of the base we were flying an exercise at," "room with 2'x2' bloodstain in carpet," "room with 15" LCD computer monitor as tv," and "bed is aaaactually a hide-a-bed in a chair." Out of curiosity, how much of this was because the tdy rates were too low to afford anything better and how much was just chain of command/4 shop being cheap? I traveled around pacom aor a bit and my hotels were at least decent mostly, but it was always as an individual or small group. I wasn’t booking the hotels but i always felt the per diem was pretty generous. Business travel sucks no matter how nice the digs are, but being able to get a nice meal and a comfortable bed goes a long way to making it bearable especially after what can be a very long working day. Business traveling for cheapskates must be hell.
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Dec 14, 2020 03:55
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I've been traveling on the government rate regularly to frequently for almost 20 years and I've never once had to stay in a hotel that wasn't hyatt place/HI express quality or better.
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Dec 14, 2020 04:02
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bewbies posted:I've been traveling on the government rate regularly to frequently for almost 20 years and I've never once had to stay in a hotel that wasn't hyatt place/HI express quality or better. e: Not me, but I was thinking about seasonal variation and we had people get straight thrown out of their hotel in Augusta because the hotel doubled their room rate during the Masters. We had the block of rooms booked solid year-round for rotational travel, and the hotel gave no shits. standard.deviant fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Dec 14, 2020 |
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Dec 14, 2020 04:11
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Godholio posted:And this is how, while on official travel, I ended up staying in such garden spots as "hotel an hour from the main gate of the base we were flying an exercise at," "room with 2'x2' bloodstain in carpet," "room with 15" LCD computer monitor as tv," and "bed is aaaactually a hide-a-bed in a chair." Eh, I usually ended up in pretty nice spots on official travel. Sometimes really nice places. But even then there were the times I'd end up crammed into a shed behind somebody's house, in a tiny room in a walled compound, or a hotel where the floor/walls were covered in identical tile, the bedsheets appeared to be made of plastic, and the entire room smelled extremely strongly of bleach. And yeah, when you're jumping around to different cities/countries every couple weeks/months at 80% travel it helps a lot if you have a nice place to crash. Even after international travel becomes entirely routine it's often a stressful thing - and I always figured it was one of the ways they kept highly educated and experienced people from jumping ship to get paid more in the private sector.
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Dec 14, 2020 04:12
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bewbies posted:I've been traveling on the government rate regularly to frequently for almost 20 years and I've never once had to stay in a hotel that wasn't hyatt place/HI express quality or better. You probably book your own travel, like I do, and I spend some extra time finding the best hotel with government rates rather than just taking the one at the top of the list from whatever travel tool your organization uses. I could see that if you were travelling as a group and someone else was responsible for booking the hotels then it's going to come down to how lazy the booking agent is. One big tip is that for most orgs you don't actually have to book hotels through that tool. You can just call a hotel directly and see if they will give you the gov rate. Want to stay at a 5 star $600 hotel/night? Give them a call and say, "I am required to request the government rate, can you meet that for X date?" I'd say 3 out of 5 times they take it. They don't want empty rooms. also, travel budgets in bid proposals get a lot of scrutiny because they are their own line item and during the process there is always a 'trim the fat' period where people look for ways to bring the $ amount down without affecting the required work.
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Dec 14, 2020 14:00
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The two times (1 night each) I’ve stayed in a really poo poo motel for travel, it’s been because of the unit pinching pennies, not DOD regulations. Otherwise the bad lodging has been when a host unit helpfully said on-base lodging was available but what they meant was they put cots in their maintenance building.
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Dec 14, 2020 14:09
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My personal record is a $8k hotel bill for a month in Singapore.
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Dec 14, 2020 15:18
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bewbies posted:Like everyone in here should be, I'm a Battlebots enthusiast. My kid last night asked me what a military battlebot would look like and found the idea interesting. A tungsten hammer moving at 370 feet per second would do a lot of damage, and spinning a pair of hammers would be a good weapon. But I just read that document and I have a better plan. Since walking robots can weight twice as much as driving ones, use eight sturdy, heavy legs protected by an arrangement of arms that can grab and incapacitate opposing robots. The arms could be remote-controlled by some kind of exoskeleton setup, since I know this is something the US military wants to develop. The invention of a remote-control Terminator with redundant limbs would be a bad thing for humanity, but also an entertaining season of Battlebots.
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Dec 14, 2020 17:31
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Might as well go for broke if it's going to be the final season. It's gonna take BattleHumans a while to catch up.
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Dec 14, 2020 17:44
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A military grade battlebot could also do some fun things with redundant control. I'm thinking basically two (or more) discrete CPUs where if one goes offline the other picks up Or hell go fully insane and have 3 or more in a polling situation like they do on rockets. 3 decisions, pick the one that two agree on, and as CPUs are damaged and go offline lower the number of votes needed for consensus accordingly. Now that I think about it the real value to a DARPA battlebot might not be new and fancy robo-killing tech, but an insane degree of damage tolerance and redundancy
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Dec 14, 2020 18:26
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The big picture is to take the spinning hammer to its logical conclusion. Two counter-rotating hammers at the highest possible speed. They should be made of something really dense - I propose enriched uranium. To safely stop they would simply be crashed into each other.
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Dec 14, 2020 18:39
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unfortunately weapons are limited by both weight and velocity. is there some sort of super sharp/hard material that would make a spinner or hammer more lethal than steel?
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Dec 14, 2020 18:47
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