A classic case of Fake News. This @politico article is misleading at best, and politically motivated at worst. Politico claims that DOGE’s cost savings are somehow not real because DOGE is using a “faulty” methodology predicated on ceiling values. Politico argues that the ceiling “can far exceed what the government has actually committed to pay out.” Theoretically true, practically false: the government WILL likely max out to the ceiling! In federal contracting, ceilings matter because they are almost always maxed out. For example, an analysis of the last 3 years of FPDS data shows that: -of the 5.3M awards at contract end in FY22, 97.64% were spent to the ceiling -of the 5.4M awards at contract end in FY23, 97.84% were spent to the ceiling -of the 5.4M awards at contract end in FY24, 98.12% were spent to the ceiling We think there’s a pattern here that perhaps a more intrepid reporter might have uncovered. Ceiling minus obligations is true savings in government contracting, making the $20k credit card analogy lazy and trivializing the very real work of protecting taxpayer dollars by using cheap jabs like ‘time for lunch.’ This is also why lowering ceilings is real savings. It prevents unpoliced “drunken sailor” spending. For extra measure, DOGE reviews entries with agency partners and makes adjustments as reported. We don’t pad results; the math is conservative, and the savings are real. If Politico is still struggling with 'why' ceiling is in fact the right way to measure savings and is not in fact “an accounting trick,” we invite them to personally guarantee a sample of government contracts for the full ceiling amount. That should clarify things. We can agree on one thing, though: Congress needs to pass more rescission packages so that the unused funds go back to the Treasury instead of being spent by default.

Amazing: KPMG wrote a report describing the successful use of AI by businesses. But the case studies turned out to be AI hallucinations. giftarticle.ft.com/giftartic…

LiDAR may not be a household name, but the technology provides millimeter‑level data of America’s infrastructure. We cannot rely on Chinese LiDAR systems to examine our roads, and I’m glad my bill to protect America from this spy technology is included in @TransportGOP’s BUILD America 250 Act.

The human-perceived RGB is image 1 and the Tesla AI photon count reconstruction is image 2. This is why Tesla FSD can see so well at night or through extreme glare.

Who actually shapes AI policy in the U.S.? We mapped 1,812 entities: 745 people, 918 organizations, 2,925 relationships. Frontier Labs, AI Safety orgs, Think Tanks, Government, VCs, and more. mapping-ai.org

Shapefiles had a legendary run, but they’re no longer the modern GIS default due to multi-file bundles, 10-char field names, weak encoding/CRS metadata, size limits. The path forward is cleaner: GeoPackage for durable local data, GeoJSON for the web, Parquet and FlatGeobuf for scale.

From the personal archives — Cooks from 2/82nd Airborne grilling on a modified 55 gallon oil drum during the 15-18 month surge deployments in Baghdad, Iraq

Taking ground, holding ground, and controlling people/land/resources are different activities. I'm hopeful and skeptical, but the great lie of the precise war is a common refrain. It was the shock and awe of Desert Storm, smart bombs of the early GWOT, SOF/CT of the mid-late GWOT, now drones and robots. It's never as pretty as the press release.