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Comment by NumberCruncher | Hacker News Reader

> It's too hard to get access to GIS software

It took me a whole 5 seconds to google [1] up. As far as I can remember Anaconda can be installed without admin permissions on any PC and pulling the needed packages is a matter of minutes. Or a Tableau Online account with Tableau Creator desktop app having similar GIS functionality costs a whole 70 bucks a month, OMG. The public sector seems to excel in making up "blockers" to justify why shit doesn't get done.

[1]: https://blog.jupyter.org/interactive-gis-in-jupyter-with-ipy...

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The “hardness” I’m talking about is not technical difficulty it’s the political difficulty. Sure I could have found other solutions but the acceptable solution for a tool that I can hand over to “the business” must cost $0 and only use authorised applications installed by IT. So that leaves Excel. That’s just the way it is unfortunately.

And yes they make up lots of shit. I don’t. I just make the best of a bad situation for people who need to get shit done despite the stupid policies.

I used to work in the public sector myself, so who am I to judge your way of making a living? But still, I don't like if public resources (work-time and tax money) are wasted just because of political reasons. But that is entirely my problem.

Depends on the org. Some firms block direct executable file downloads and scan for unrecognised code on the network, proxying them all through something like Nexus This is only going to become more common (and necessary) in the wake of things like the SolarWinds hack.

My Excel skills are a bit rusty but I remember the times when it was advised to not open .doc or .xls files from an unknown source because harmful VBA macros could be executed on opening the file. Did this changed lately? If not, how is opening an .xls file different from installing a non-tested python package from security perspective?

You're mistakenly assuming all IT policies stem from logic.

Hmm... I should have written making up "blockers" disguised as policies stem from logic. I consider the loop closed. QED

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