[HN Gopher] Bulgaria's new eGov minister is a software engineer
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Bulgaria's new eGov minister is a software engineer
Author : phoronixrly
Score : 143 points
Date : 2021-12-13 16:02 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| tuukkah wrote:
| Also, Audrey Tang is the Digital Minister of Taiwan since 2016:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Tang
| emmelaich wrote:
| Haskell hacker and worked on Perl6/HUGS
| akmarinov wrote:
| He's also #40 on the all time rank on Stack Overflow -
| https://stackexchange.com/leagues/1/alltime/stackoverflow/20...
| orangepanda wrote:
| Enough of a qualification, no?
| akmarinov wrote:
| Being a helpful person that gives back to the community?
| Yeah, absolutely
| kreetx wrote:
| Yet his blog is also served over http..
| ThalesX wrote:
| What are the technical advantages of serving a static website
| with https?
| kreetx wrote:
| Anyone between the site and the user can inject any content
| to the site.
| krasin wrote:
| Some ISPs inject their own ads on non-encrypted pages. It was
| a prevalent practice in Russia as early as 2007-2010. Not
| sure if it's true for other countries and modern times, but
| the technical point is still valid: by using HTTPS, this kind
| of attack on your personal blog is eliminated.
| gsich wrote:
| It's not an attack on your blog, but the client accessing
| it.
| wiseowise wrote:
| And anybody should care why?
| ben-gy wrote:
| When did an active software engineer last get elected to use
| their skills as a politician in your electorate?
| beebeepka wrote:
| Well, I care. The status quo for the last 20 years have tried
| to pit software developers against the general population
| numerous times. Why? Developers make good money compared to the
| masses.
|
| Not to mention the countless intentionally botched e-gov
| projects. Oh, I care deeply
|
| We read about country specific stuff on this site every day.
| Cut us some slack, will you
| MrPowers wrote:
| Look into technocracy if you're interested in learning more about
| appointing government officials based on their technical
| knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy
|
| Anyone know of any studies of famous techocrats and the overall
| view on the effectiveness of appointing ppl that aren't career
| politicians?
| kleton wrote:
| The PRC is one ongoing study. The leaders of four of China's
| provinces are former aerospace engineers. The minister of
| education, as one might expect, is a computer scientist.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Wouldn't it only be a technocracy if the leader of the space
| program or airforce or whatever was an aerospace engineer?
| Not just an engineer doing some standard government job like
| governor or mayor.
| kleton wrote:
| Chen Qiufa (electrical engineering) ran CNSA from
| 2010-2013, then became leader of Lioaning province. His
| successor at CNSA, Ma Xingrui (PhD mechanical engineering)
| ran CNSA for a bit in 2013 before being tapped as leader of
| Guangdong province. His successor, Xu_Dazhe (also started
| as IC engineer), ran CNSA from 2013-2016, before becoming
| leader of Hunan province. Same story: Tang Dengjie, Fujian
| province, now national minister. Current CNSA head Zhang
| Kejian, physics, going by the pattern, he will "graduate"
| to some other province or national ministry in a year or
| two.
| cutemonster wrote:
| The PRC and the Soviet Union -- it'd be interesting with
| democratic countries too.
|
| But what if, in democratic countries, it's more important to
| be good at making an impression (being a career politician),
| to win more votes
| wara23arish wrote:
| This has been a very intense debate in lebanon over the last
| two years.
|
| A technocratic gov will still have to make political decisions.
| And those decisions will often reflect the interests of
| whoever's hired them.
|
| But in a way it will shield the political class from criticism
| since they are not the ones implementing the decisions
| directly.
| er4hn wrote:
| Two Western technocrats were Margaret Thatcher and Jimmy
| Carter. Neither had a good legacy, though for different
| reasons.
|
| Interestingly enough, they are also both from different ends of
| the political spectrum.
| gameman144 wrote:
| Usually the term "technocrat" refers to an appointed official
| rather than a directly elected official, even if they're very
| technically knowledgeable.
|
| For instance, Jimmy Carter would widely be considered a
| "politician" since he was directly elected, but someone like
| Janet Yellen could be considered a technocrat since she was
| appointed as Secretary of the Treasury due to her technical
| experience.
| krasin wrote:
| To the same list: Angela Merkel is a nuclear physicist.
| [deleted]
| nkmnz wrote:
| She's not. She did her PhD in physical chemistry. Breaking
| molecules is not the same as breaking nuclei.
| qwytw wrote:
| Not really, generally someone is considered a technocrat when
| she/he is appointed to some government position regardless of
| their political affiliation and purely because of their
| expertise in the area related to that position not because
| they might have a degree in STEM E.g. the current PM of Italy
| Mario Draghi can be considered a technocrat, but definitely
| not Thatcher or Carter.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Jimmy Carter's legacy is not fair and is more about a
| political mob's pitchforks than his actual accomplishments
| culi wrote:
| The former Soviet Union is generally considered an example. 89%
| of Politburo members were engineers and leaders like Leonid
| Brezhnev had very technical backgrounds
|
| EDIT: to add some more context
|
| Technocracy in the Second World (see: tektology) is quite
| common. In the First World the history of technocracy can't
| really be understood without studying the history of eugenics.
| This is also generally true of much of our science and even
| mathematical theory. Terms like "regression to the mean" have
| direct origins in eugenics theory
|
| https://nautil.us/issue/92/frontiers/how-eugenics-shaped-sta...
| [deleted]
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > In the First World the history of technocracy can't really
| be understood without studying the history of eugenics. This
| is also generally true of much of our science and even
| mathematical theory. Terms like "regression to the mean" have
| direct origins in eugenics theory
|
| And yet studying the history of eugenics will not help you
| understand regression to the mean. It's certainly not a _bar_
| to understanding.
| w-j-w wrote:
| Understanding the concept requires no understanding of
| eugenics. Understanding where it came from does.
| yumraj wrote:
| It seemed great, but then I read:
|
| _founder of a blockchain-based SIEM startup_
|
| Now I'm worried for Bulgaria.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| From looking quickly at their product, it seems that the
| "blockchain" part of it is mostly here as a marketing buzzword
| more than anything: It seems that they are building a Merkle
| tree of logs and calling that a blockchain (you know, like the
| famous blockchain project called _git_ ).
| MitPitt wrote:
| Why?
| renzo88 wrote:
| "blockchain based siem" is a completely useless phrase.
| mlinksva wrote:
| I wonder what "blockchain" means here. The word is all over
| https://logsentinel.com/ but it may be just to make
| "immutable audit trail" more buzzwordy.
|
| In 2017 they posted a skeptical
| https://techblog.bozho.net/blockchain-its-all-greek-to-me/
| which in linked to from very recent
| https://techblog.bozho.net/digital-transformation-and-
| techno...
|
| > Technology alone will not solve anything. And my
| blockchain skepticism is a hint in that direction - many
| blockchain enthusiasts are claiming that blockchain will
| solve many problems in many areas of life. It won't. At
| least not just through clever cryptography and consensus
| algorithms.
| dinkblam wrote:
| same here, couldn't agree more
| marcodiego wrote:
| I think a minister should be a good administrator. It is good if
| they are also specialist in the area, but not a requirement.
| Brazil science, technology and innovation minister is an
| astronaut and not much has improved in the area.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Hot shot businessmen, investigative journalists and prestigious
| academics make some of the worst failures as politicians in
| Turkey too.
|
| However, in this case maybe there's a chance because his post
| seems quite domain specific and not very policy heavy.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Hot shot businessmen
|
| probably the worst of all the listed specimen and it reminded
| me of a prescient Hitchens moment from the early 90s
|
| https://youtu.be/j1MynYJDyE0
| bluetomcat wrote:
| He is a well-known and reputable speaker at many local tech
| conferences, primarily on Java and security topics. He has also
| shown commitment in pointing out the numerous problems
| regarding the sorry state of Bulgarian electronic governance -
| no synchronisation of data between institutions, duplication of
| data, the need for getting paper verification notices from one
| institution to be admitted in another.
|
| In case he sets up a good team of techies, I think he would be
| able to guide them in the right direction, because he is aware
| of the problems and has the technical competence for choosing
| the viable solutions.
| baybal2 wrote:
| More about the new Bulgarian government
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petkov_Government
|
| We can wish the new government success. They will need a lot of
| it to purge the corrupt mafia demons.
|
| Administrative corruption was the scourge of 20th century.
|
| Political corruption is the scourge of our time.
| tbojanin wrote:
| Pretty exciting to see the party being led by two Harvard grads
| imo.
| brnt wrote:
| If neoliberalism is your thing, sure it's great.
| ggerganov wrote:
| Indeed, people are very excited here. The majority strongly
| believes that the previous politicians somehow stole so much
| of their money that their lives became miserable. The new
| government promises to fix this and eliminate 100% of the
| corruption - we are yet to see exactly how this will be
| achieved.
| dzink wrote:
| The ministers of the 4 departments with largest income from EU
| subsidies and internal tax collection are assigned to the
| Socialist Party, known for corruption - Economy and Industry,
| Labour and Social Policy, Agriculture, and Tourism.
| phoronixrly wrote:
| Also featured multiple times on HN:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| yorwba wrote:
| Looks like he posted his site a bit too often and now his
| submissions get autokilled:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=bozho
| dang wrote:
| Yes, HN's software filters submissions that it categorizes as
| promotional (from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: " _Please
| don 't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your
| own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site
| should be for curiosity._")
|
| However, bozho's submission history is maybe borderline
| rather than over the line, so I've restored the posts now.
| The software can be a bit overzealous and I need to tweak it.
| yorwba wrote:
| Maybe it would be a good idea to let users know when their
| submissions are detected as too promotional and remind them
| about the guidelines rather than automatically silencing
| them. (Like the "you're posting too fast" message, except
| less vague.) That would also tip off actual spammers, but
| if they evade the detector by posting less often... mission
| accomplished, I guess?
| dang wrote:
| Unfortunately most of these measures would lose their
| effectiveness if we did that, so it's not really an
| option.
| yorwba wrote:
| I'm sure you've thought about this for longer than I did,
| so I'll take your word on it. It's just always a bit sad
| to see people who appear genuinely confused as to what
| they're doing wrong:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29542828 Though
| maybe explaining it to them wouldn't work either.
| dang wrote:
| People can always email us at hn@ycombinator.com, which
| is listed under "Contact" on every page, and get a clear
| answer about what is happening. Many do just that.
| yorwba wrote:
| I know, and it's great how responsive you are, but the
| problem is that people first need to notice that they're
| shouting into a void...
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(page generated 2021-12-13 23:00 UTC)