True, not everyone has such a choice, but I volunteered for the organization I wanted to work for and then I volunteered for multiple deployments I didn't have to go on. Many of us have that choice and make that choice.

I chose to "go into war zones" many times and none of it was to "enjoy killing people".

Also running python on a microcontroller to do cryptography is fucking insane.

Golang is the best language there is for most workflows that aren't bare metal embedded or have real time requirements, and this is coming from a 20 year+ C++ dev.

If you try to get them to compose text, you'll end up seeing a lot less variety than you would with a chatgpt for instance. That said, ask them to analyze a csv file that you don't want to give to chatgpt, or ask them to write code and they're generally competent at it. the high end codex-gpt-5.2 type models are smarter, may find better solutions, may track down bugs more quickly -- but the local models are getting better all the time.

Yes, the models it can run do not perform like chatgpt or claude 4.5, but they're still very useful.

I don't know who the other two are, but Bongino was already polygraphed and cleared for the Secret Service -- there's no reason to pretend that he wasn't cleared for the job. This article reads like a political hit piece and has no real grasp of reality. It also has statements that clearly betray its author doesn't really understand how security clearances work anyway -- most clearances don't require polygraphs, those are an IC and LE thing, and any OCA can grant any waiver they choose to grant. In this particular case if the AG wanted to review this decision she could do so as his boss, but it really makes no difference.

Given that polygraphs are, again, junk science, who gives a shit.

If there is really a touch "screen" requirement, I would put a screen under the trackpad -- that would be more useful for me at least. I think somebody tried that and it pretty much flopped though.