[HN Gopher] Anyone can push updates to the doge.gov website
___________________________________________________________________
Anyone can push updates to the doge.gov website
Author : mahkeiro
Score : 805 points
Date : 2025-02-14 07:31 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.404media.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.404media.co)
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| With friends like these, who needs enemies?
| nxobject wrote:
| Ironically enough, the WHOIS record points to CISA - the
| Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Very
| confidence-building.
| croes wrote:
| https://www.npr.org/2025/02/06/nx-s1-5288883/cisa-staffers-d...
| itronitron wrote:
| if you think you own everything then there are no external
| threats
| BarryMilo wrote:
| And internal threats, well, you just _have_ to deal with
| those, no matter the cost!
| zoelow wrote:
| https://archive.ph/wy1Wt
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Lots of government websites are vulnerable early on.
|
| Hope they used good proxies, because this seems like a felony.
|
| > One of the sources told 404 Media that they were able to push
| updates to a database of government employment information after
| studying the website's architecture and finding the database's
| API endpoints.
|
| Oof, not something to put in your article.
| lvturner wrote:
| "Able to" and "Did" are two very different things.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| > This person showed me two database entries they were able
| to push to the website, which are live on doge.gov as I write
| this (archived here and here)
|
| All you had to do was actually read the article; it's the
| very next paragraph from the one I quoted.
| netsharc wrote:
| > push updates to a database of government employment
| information
|
| Huh, what would be the goal of connecting this database to an
| API on or near doge.gov? Surely it's not the "actual"/"source
| of truth" database, more likely a copy: I can imagine the
| geniuses thought ""let's mirror everything online on a single
| system so it's easier for all of us to access it and do queries
| like "WHERE gender NOT IN ('m', 'f') OR race NOT IN ('white')"
| and get results from all the databases we know of."". (I assume
| there is no single federal employee database?)
|
| And since the truth is whatever they say nowadays, maybe it IS
| the "source of truth" database.
| altacc wrote:
| The massive difference here is that the Doge team is acting as
| quickly making decisions about government funding and
| classifications of that spending e.g. if it's a "scam". If
| they're supposed computer experts making incorrect decisions
| about something as simple as web hosting you can be sure that
| they're making incorrect decisions in more important topics.
| threeseed wrote:
| > Lots of government websites are vulnerable early on
|
| Would like to see a source on this.
|
| Governments are similar to large enterprises whereby every bit
| of code going into Production requires a full security,
| architecture and site reliability review.
|
| There is no doubt bugs in bespoke web applications but for your
| typical website.
| acdha wrote:
| > Lots of government websites are vulnerable early on.
|
| What data are you basing this on? Federal websites have an
| approval process which includes a security review so I'd expect
| some familiarity with that in your response.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| > Lots of government websites are vulnerable early on
|
| Citation?
| cozzyd wrote:
| Those DOGE 10Xers are so efficient they're outsourcing website
| content to the general public.
| t0ffif33 wrote:
| Ofcourse, democracy applies to HTML as well. Truly a noble
| deed.
| petargyurov wrote:
| Move fast and break things, government edition.
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| ow, put it back
| rainforest wrote:
| For a while the /join page was blocked by cloudflare WAF
| yesterday - I wonder if this is why.
| Shank wrote:
| It looks like the defacement was already cleared, but archives
| are available [0][1]. I posted these separately because of
| 404Media's soft-paywall, which is also linked separately here.
|
| [0]: https://archive.md/XzvTY
|
| [1]: https://archive.md/cMeco
| Hamuko wrote:
| I still see them live.
| whoitwas wrote:
| It's a "team" of junior hackers. What do you expect? I don't
| quite understand the motive. I mean the motive of the masses who
| cheer this on. Is it just to own the libs? They have to all be
| evil or completely misinformed. I assume most are ignorant and
| only a few are evil.
| crocowhile wrote:
| Well, the ministry of propaganda says this is la creme de la
| creme and we can trust their handling of government data
| blindly. So showing that DOGE is unable to even secure their
| website is a good exercise of hacker activism.
|
| The times are mature to rediscover where the word hacker came
| from. It never rhymed with billionaire but it seems this
| website tried hard to change that narrative.
| whoitwas wrote:
| Excuse me if you think I referred to Elon Musk as a hacker.
| He's a marketer. I meant the nazi kids he hired.
| croes wrote:
| The same kids who have now access to vital US systems.
|
| Better people learn about their lack of experience fro a
| hacked doge site than a hacked paxment system. The ones who
| will hack that won't be as friendly.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Many people who are not in tech circles think Elon is a
| brilliant expert in everything from artificial intelligence
| to space travel. People who largely think of technology
| fields as magic hail him as like the modern Galileo who
| cannot be wrong.
| ml-anon wrote:
| Many people in tech circles also think this. People in
| tech are no smarter or no more resistant to grift and
| propaganda. See this entire comment section.
| notfed wrote:
| The motive of people to cheer any team on is, generally,
| tribalism.
| altacc wrote:
| Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is
| adequately explained by stupidity". I think for those cheering
| on it's a mix of both. Culture wars have made them gleeful when
| they see opportunities for others to suffer and they're
| ignorant of how this is negatively affecting them, their morals
| and society.
|
| But it's definitely malice from Musk, Trump and the rest of the
| oligarchs. They have for a long time been clear that their plan
| is to tear down everything and rebuild around themselves and
| everyone else is a pawn to be used to their benefit. These
| people are purely transactional, they don't believe in societal
| goods, just what benefits them must be best for everyone.
| whoitwas wrote:
| It might be prudent to consider emigration or at least
| divesting from real estate assets. I assume property values
| will evaporate along with the stock markets if this train
| keeps on rolling.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > I assume property values will evaporate along with the
| stock markets if this train keeps on rolling.
|
| The US government can prop up the stock market for a _very_
| long time. Anyone who purchased Puts early on during COVID
| times found themselves on the opposite side of a suddenly
| generous Fed that poured hitherto unseen amounts of
| liquidity directly into the markets. The chickens only came
| to roost in the next administration, but ai suspect they
| could have kept at it for 10+ years and still kept
| inflation under 12-15%
| Terr_ wrote:
| During the first Trump administration I regularly tried to
| discern the difference, but ultimately that was a mistake--a
| kind of engaging and draining analytical junk food--and one
| I'm not going to make a second time.
|
| > Trump-scandals kinda killed Hanlon's Razor for me: A miasma
| inseparably blurring the lines between malice and
| incompetence, lies and ignorance, culpability and insanity,
| condensing into a greasy alloy which is definitely some
| amount of evil yet not worth anybody's time to separate and
| assay.
|
| I refuse to feed the algorithm more pathological input for
| another denial-of-service attack. For anything from that
| crowd of repeat-offenders, I declare the answer to be _both_.
| If they want to assert something was _just_ incompetence or
| _just_ malice, the onus is on them to provide the argument
| either way.
| croes wrote:
| I think the cheering is more a told-you-so cheer from people
| who suspected that Musk and his team aren't as compotent as
| they claim.
| croes wrote:
| Ever heard of the banality of evil? Ignorance is in some ways
| worse than being genuinely evil.
|
| You should be worried because the same guys who are resonsible
| for this web site are now in charge of much more vital systems
| and there are much bigger threats who just wait do get
| important data.
| boxed wrote:
| I would make a stronger claim: ignorance + power + conviction
| is exactly equal to evil.
|
| Mao killed tens of million of his own people because of his
| misconceptions about farming, economics, and ecology.
|
| Hitler killed millions because of his misconceptions about
| jews.
|
| 9/11 was executed becuase of a small group that were very
| confused about the basic facts of reality ("god").
|
| There is only delusion + power + conviction. There is no
| other evil.
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| Delusion + power + conviction doesn't always equal evil, so
| there has to be something missing in that equation. I'd
| wager it's evil.
| card_zero wrote:
| Though this doesn't really answer the question of
| motivation. Few people aim to do something that they
| regard to be bad. (It's possible, mind you.)
| throwaway03445 wrote:
| Calling something "evil" is implying an external force
| (often linked to religion), that I don't think should be
| used. It reduces the responsibility of the person doing
| "evil" acts.
|
| I think the missing ingredient is simply not caring about
| the outcome. It could be because they don't have empathy
| (sociopaths), or that the society has trained them into
| normalising obedience to the cause (facsism / communism)
| or inhumanized their targets (consentration camps).
|
| Acts can certainly be described as "evil", but I don't
| agree that "evil" is some type of force that affects
| people.
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| Not caring about the outcome doesn't make sense, people
| that are driven by something care about the outcome.
|
| To go back to my original point, the simplistic equation
| falls apart if you spend a second looking for counter
| examples.
|
| Sikhs give free food to any who asks, without expecting
| anything in return. They are deluded (they do to it
| please god), and need power and conviction to do so.
| boxed wrote:
| A good point. You can for sure accidentally do good
| things by being deluded and having conviction and power.
| One could also say that they have a small delusion (god)
| that gives them a bigger truth (being nice to people is
| good). So like their total delusion level in this regard
| is low.
| boxed wrote:
| Hitler cared about the outcome a lot. That's why he
| killed so many people. So your analysis has a pretty big
| flaw there.
| throwaway03445 wrote:
| I'm not a native speaker, and I see that I may have been
| unclear.
|
| I was thinking of the human consequences. In my language
| they are almost synonyms.
|
| They of course care about the outcome, but not the effect
| it has on the target group
|
| It's strange how one can normalize cruelty. Just think of
| how prison rapes are joked about in media and movies, as
| if it is an accepted consequence of committing a crime.
| It is a cruel and evil act that many choose to simply
| ignore because it is so common
| boxed wrote:
| Give me a counter example.
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43047395
| boxed wrote:
| Ah, I was thinking of an example where you have evil
| without those things.
| boxed wrote:
| Ah, I was thinking of an example where you have evil
| without those things.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| >There is only delusion + power + conviction. There is no
| other evil.
|
| If you believe this, your beliefs are out of step with
| essentially every Western justice system, which hold murder
| to be a worse crime than manslaughter. The difference
| between them is solely the intention.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| How does conviction (as OP used it) not align with
| intention? I don't follow your point here about murder vs
| manslaughter and how it contradicts what OP said.
| orwin wrote:
| Not that I agree with GP at all, but you are strawmaning
| him. I'll steelman his argument with your example:
| Premeditated murder is worse than just murder: for you to
| commit murder, you have to be convinced you have to do
| it, and the power to push it through. And in case of a
| premeditation, the dellusion you'll be able to do it
| without consequences.
|
| (I still think it's a bad example even presented like
| this, and I disagree with GP, but your example seemed
| wrong)
| boxed wrote:
| In fact it covers it 100%. Examples:
|
| Manslaughter is when you kill someone without conviction
| and/or delusion. You can hit someone without the
| conviction that you need to kill them and they fall
| really badly and die.
|
| Murder. You can hit someone in self defense where you
| have no conviction that the person must be killed
| (because for example they say you had sex with their
| wife, but you in fact know you didn't, it's a
| misunderstanding), and you don't have any delusion (you
| know the attacker is delusional in fact). And then you
| defend yourself and he dies because he hit his head badly
| on the way down.
| olelele wrote:
| I do think 9/11 was more a response to brutal colonial
| warfare and three letter agency shenanigans going back many
| years and less about religion..
| boxed wrote:
| A lot of people think that. Just a tiiiiny problem: the
| hijackers didn't think that. They were jihadis.
| olelele wrote:
| And the reason for anti-American jihad?
| cess11 wrote:
| bin Laden and al-Qaida talked a lot about their
| motivations. For one it was disgusting to them that the
| house of Saud bowed and scraped for the crusaders in
| Washington, and so was the rather arbitrary abuse of
| Afghanistan.
|
| They also were under the delusion that the US was a
| democracy, and hence the general population could be held
| responsible for the actions of its leaders.
| Understandable if they had mainly been exposed to
| US/Occidental state propaganda.
|
| Today I don't think anyone would be inclined to hold such
| a belief.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| People are arguing that right here in this thread - that
| Musks vandalism represents the will of the majority of
| America.
| cess11 wrote:
| A highly suspicious opinion since he is unelected.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| The People for the New American Century or the off script
| timezone goof by the BBC?
|
| Or maybe the Gelatin art crew?
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Sometimes- it also just rains. The end of WW2 and free trade
| + technology, have given the futurist ideology that every
| problem is solveable way to much credibility. Some problems
| are just hard and inherently not solveable and sometimes not
| even workaroundable by technology.
|
| Utopists who run into accumulating problems, closing resource
| windows and simple limitations of humans (tribal creatures)
| and the meta-machinery they built, are bound to just run
| around with their pants on fire.
| bloopernova wrote:
| I don't think it's ignorance. It's indifference. The vast
| majority of Americans simply don't give one iota of care as
| long as they are currently comfortable.
|
| I don't remember the quote, but something about them only
| learning from catastrophe.
| titzer wrote:
| > only learning from catastrophe.
|
| Worse. 1.1 million people died in a deadly plague and
| there's no national mourning, just straight back to the
| culture war and polarization.
| croes wrote:
| But 9/11 Never Forget!
| xethos wrote:
| Ironically one of the few wars America objectively and
| decidedly lost - and on their home turf no less!
| Terrorism is to enact political change through acts of
| violence; I think it's pretty inarguable that America is
| a changed nation with regards to government surveillance,
| and the powers granted to law enforcement.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| America has objectively lost every war since WW2. (Ok
| maybe not the invasion of Granada)
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Can't believe Iraq still occupies Kuwait!
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Point taken. Iraq I can be categorized as a win for the
| US. Iraq II was clearly not.
| fragmede wrote:
| Suppose they do care. What would that look like? Posting
| memes to TikToks and Instagram? Would it look protests in
| all 50 states? Because 50501 did that and got barely any
| coverage. If you knew to look for them you could and can
| find coverage, but it didn't dominate the news cycle on all
| channels for days on end.
|
| We're not united because they've goaded us into to fighting
| each other over two topics that really aren't, and there's
| only two teams to pick from. One was bad, and the other one
| worse.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > The vast majority of Americans simply don't give one iota
| of care as long as they are currently comfortable.
|
| Can you blame them? They've been toiling hard for decades
| while getting poorer and poorer, while the privileged class
| has lived lives of wealth and comfort from milking these
| government institutions. Did they care about the vast
| majority being comfortable or not?
| intended wrote:
| Yes.
|
| The repubs lost their battles, and decided they wanted to
| win at all costs. They had people show up to vote, vote
| in a bloc, volunteer for lower level positions, join
| multiple different organizations and basically organized
| them to dismantle the country.
|
| If people can be driven to do that, then its not much to
| assume that at least a few more people could have done
| the same thing.
| selectodude wrote:
| > They've been toiling hard for decades while getting
| poorer and poorer
|
| This is, by every metric, completely wrong. We have never
| been wealthier.
| fabian2k wrote:
| For some reason quite a number of people seem to believe the
| purpoted goals of DOGE, removing waste and increasing
| efficiency of the government.
|
| I can't really understand that as it seems obvious to me that
| they're just destroying parts of the government they don't
| like. And while there is certainly room for improvement in many
| areas, whatever they're doing is not going to improve anything,
| it's only destruction.
| nxobject wrote:
| And, currently, firing everyone without just-cause
| protections (probationary workers, as well the contractor
| workforce - nearly equal in size to federal employees.)
| Arn_Thor wrote:
| It befuddles me too. My understanding is that government
| spending is approved by congress and that all organizations
| except the Pentagon have passed their audits. This is not to
| say that there isn't _some_ waste, fraud and abuse in between
| the cracks, but any large expense is approved by Congress and
| the executive can't unilaterally override those spending
| choices.
| PaywallBuster wrote:
| Congress approves the annual budget for each department,
| it's not micromanaging how it's spent
| varjag wrote:
| It had approved the budget for USAID which was slashed
| wholesale.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| What exactly do you think a budget is?
|
| There's a reason the federal budget is several inches of
| very thin paper. The budget spells out how much money
| gets spent for various purposes, programs, projects, etc.
| Of course they don't specify the kind of paperclips the
| FAA buys. But they will approve or modify the FAA's
| budget plan which includes $X for office supplies, $Y for
| an upgrade to the FAA's network equipment in a branch
| office, $Z for upgrading some nav beacons, and so on.
|
| The executive branch can't defund or "stop spending money
| on" _anything_. Nixon decided he just wouldn 't spend
| money on programs he didn't like, and congress _very_
| rapidly passed a law that said that the president couldn
| 't do it, because the "power of the purse" rests solely
| with congress.
|
| It certainly can't stop issuing payments for existing
| obligations, and it especially can't take money back,
| which M did a day or two ago to NYC because he read a
| tweet that said NYC was spending money housing migrants
| in "luxury hotels", which shockingly turned out to be
| nonsense...
|
| That's why all of this DOGE crap is such theatrical
| nonsense. Congress, representing their state's interests
| and the interests of those who live in their district,
| via two separate branches, approves all the budgets.
|
| No matter what T and M say, no federal agency can just
| willy-nilly decide to spend money it's allocated by
| congress on other stuff.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| > The executive branch can't defund or "stop spending
| money on" anything. Nixon decided he just wouldn't spend
| money on programs he didn't like, and congress very
| rapidly passed a law that said that the president
| couldn't do it, because the "power of the purse" rests
| solely with congress.
|
| That's all great in theory: in actual reality those laws
| are just words on paper, Congress has no interest in
| asserting its authority, and enforcement rests with the
| executive.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Sure. But then the continuous narrative must be that
| Trump is violating the law. Every single person who
| supports Trump should have to confront the fact that
| Trump is doing this in a way that declares the end of our
| constitutional order and his position as an autocrat.
| johann8384 wrote:
| I don't think they see a problem with this. My
| grandfather used to say we needed to get a couple leaders
| from GE or whatever company was huge and successful then,
| and let them have free reign for a year.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I, for one, am glad I'm not living through the legacy of
| Jack Welch's government management.
|
| Companies can declare bankruptcy and fold their hand:
| governments, notsomuch.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| You end up driving up the share price in the short term
| and destroying the company in the long term but by then
| you're gone as CEO with your golden parachute. Not unlike
| presidents who will be gone in 4 years time (if second
| term) and let someone else deal with the consequences of
| their actions.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| There are definitely people who think that a president
| who just violates the law in order to achieve these
| outcomes is a fine thing. Those people are lost. Nothing
| I can say to those people will stop them from eventually
| putting a bullet in my brain.
|
| The goal should be messaging to everybody else.
| Especially those who might like the outcomes of Trump's
| crimes but would prefer not to have a president that just
| smashes through the law to get there. A way to help
| achieve this is to repeat, over and over and over, that
| Trump's actions are violating shitloads of laws.
| muddi900 wrote:
| It's good that your grandfather isn't alive to see the
| catastrophe that is GE.
|
| Jack Welch is the reason corporate America is a shit
| show, and GE is a joke.
| taylodl wrote:
| Trump is breaking the law, but Congress has no interest
| in holding him accountable - and they're the only
| institution Congress specifies for having the authority
| to hold the president accountable.
|
| So...Trump is breaking the law and getting away with it.
| What else is new?
| worik wrote:
| > Trump is breaking the law,
|
| Yes
|
| He has immunity
| bregma wrote:
| Pardon?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| And that's why we're talking about "authoritarianism"
| intended wrote:
| Congress is deadlocked, by design.
|
| Republicans who work on bipartisan platforms are punished
| and primaried.
| oldandboring wrote:
| That's not true. At all.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| FYI, the Marines have passed two audits so far:
| https://www.marines.mil/News/Press-Releases/Press-Release-
| Di...
|
| They were even able to account for all their crayons! PT
| belts on the other hand...
| average_r_user wrote:
| Crayons were accounted as food supplies? /s
| giantrobot wrote:
| It was a line item under "consumables".
| timeon wrote:
| They are they are shrinking the government to find ~4T$ for
| for corporate tax cuts. You can call it legitimate policy but
| calling it "efficiency" is bit misleading.
| nxobject wrote:
| That's a good read on the budget proposals the House
| Republicans are bringing to the table - the aggravating
| part, though, is that the loss of $4.5T of revenue won't
| help with the deficit or debt, since the current target for
| cuts in annual spending are only $1.5T. (Give or take
| increased defense and national security spending over the
| next few years.)
|
| https://apnews.com/article/house-republicans-budget-
| blueprin...
| titzer wrote:
| > You can call it legitimate policy
|
| Nothing is legitimate about this. Literally everything they
| are doing is both illegal and completely unconstitutional.
| They have thrown out the entire rule of law and it is a
| pure flex of power, a shock-and-awe meltdown that they hope
| to execute faster than the normal processes can react. They
| absolutely intend to abolish resistance and they know they
| can suffer no consequences for it.
|
| Dark times ahead. We're aren't arguing government
| efficiency or saving money, they are smashing it all.
| James_K wrote:
| Most people consider anything they don't like to be a waste
| of public funds. After all, they pay for the government
| through taxes, so it should serve only their needs. People in
| America do not view the government as a source for public
| good, but merely a piggy bank from which they should be able
| to extract funds. Just look at the student loan forgiveness
| crowd. I'm perfectly happy paying my dues, but a lot of
| people have decided that they want the government to give
| them a load of free money instead of using it for something
| productive.
| soco wrote:
| Many countries don't have this boat anchor named "student
| loan" at all, so maybe the lesson here is that indenturing
| your people who actually want to study shouldn't be a must?
| steadfastbeef wrote:
| It's not a must.
| oldandboring wrote:
| Whether you're right or not is beside the argument he/she
| made, which I think is pretty strong: that many Americans
| think anything government does that doesn't directly
| benefit them is a waste. Personally I find this to be
| somewhat more true among folks who identify as
| conservatives but I also hear plenty of self-identified
| moderates and liberals complaining about the expenditure
| of tax dollars when it comes to the military and foreign
| influence or tax policy as it pertains to corporations
| and high earners.
| James_K wrote:
| Why not? Student loans are a good protection against
| brain drain. If you offer free university, there's a
| likelihood that people will take you up on it then move
| out of the country, thus wasting the money invested in
| educating that person. A student loan guarantees a good
| return on investment for people you educate. Admittedly,
| America solves this problem by charging income tax for
| citizens living abroad, but a loan is better in my view
| since you can't rescind it like you could a citizenship.
| I actually think the concept of student loans should be
| extended down to primary education. I also think it would
| be good to institute a similar system for medical debt.
| MyOutfitIsVague wrote:
| The protection against that brain drain is to have a
| country worth staying in.
| taylodl wrote:
| That is an excellent response. If you're afraid educating
| your citizens will cause them to realize their country is
| crap, then your country is crap.
| James_K wrote:
| And how do you make your country not crap? Well, it
| starts with educating people. But when you educate them,
| they leave. You've effectively been forced to subsidise
| the skilled workforce of another country and your own
| country is worse than it was to begin with. This is a
| stupid petty response that doesn't really make any sense
| and is also deeply and unnecessarily offensive to large
| parts of the world.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| Some stay. And if the younger ones coming up find a lot
| of peers are also educated, they'll stay too, to work
| with them.
|
| Yes, you lose some. But not all. And that's how you
| start.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Your arguments seem to rest on highly questionable
| assumptions like 'when you educate them, they leave'.
| theshackleford wrote:
| Care to post a source suggesting that education in
| isolation leads to people leaving in majority numbers?
| James_K wrote:
| Most countries that are the recipients of skilled
| migrants won't allow entrance without a university
| degree. Education is a precondition for this migration.
| That's why it's called "brain drain". If people aren't
| educated, it doesn't matter if they leave or not.
| bumby wrote:
| This reminds me of an apocryphal business story: a bunch
| of managers were sitting around discussing a request to
| give more training to employees.
|
| One manager asked, "What if we train them and they
| leave!?"
|
| To which a more senior manager quipped, "What if we don't
| train them and they stay?"
| James_K wrote:
| To have a country worth staying in, you need an educated
| population. Can't get money if you don't have money. And
| it's especially hard if all the money you invest goes
| down the toilet from other countries freeloading off your
| investment.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > medical debt
|
| As far as I'm concerned, "medical debt" is effectively
| extortion.
|
| If I have some sort of major medical issue, such as
| cancer, it's _absolutely fucked_ that my choices are to
| either die or to rack up an extreme amount of medical
| debt that I might not ever recover from. In either case,
| my life is ruined.
| James_K wrote:
| By "similar system", I am mainly considering one by which
| the debt doesn't actually have to be paid back by the
| individual. Generally my idea is that the debt is paid
| back by the country the person pays taxes in, though
| obviously this is not feasible at present.
| muddi900 wrote:
| Running away without paying the loan is a way better
| solution.
|
| Y'all have the delulu American exceptionalism brain.
| People will leave if they don't like living here. A loan
| eill not stop them.
| James_K wrote:
| The international financial system makes it very hard to
| "run away" from a loan. Unless you are genuinely willing
| to become a wanted fugitive, you will end up having to
| pay.
| muddi900 wrote:
| There are a non-trivial numbers of absconders hiding in
| the US and the UK. The most famous example:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vijay_Mallya?useskin=vector
|
| The amount of money and effort required to extradite a
| person far outweighs the average student loan. Not only
| that, it is not really a "crime" to not pay your debts.
| It is a civil violation. The court can seize your
| property, in limits. You can't seize someones house in
| some states, and some don't even allow you to seize cars.
| Even if they can, any given student loan holder may not
| have either.
| int_19h wrote:
| This reminds me of one of the propaganda points used in
| Soviet times to justify denying permission to emigrate to
| Soviet Jews in 1970-80s. Since they got free education
| courtesy of the state, they were supposed to stay and
| "work it off".
| clumsysmurf wrote:
| From Reuters:
|
| "But Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Republican director of the
| Congressional Budget Office (CBO), said the agencies Musk and
| Trump have targeted to date account for a tiny fraction of
| the overall federal budget ...
|
| They are not going to go into agencies that are doing things
| they like. They are going into agencies they disagree with,"
| Holtz-Eakin, who has participated in past tax and spending
| negotiations in Congress, told Reuters.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-cuts-based-more-
| politi...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Writing the post mortem for a two year project after a few
| weeks seems unserious.
| freen wrote:
| Tackling the "budget" by having an llm screen NSF grants
| for the word "bias" IS unserious.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| The great american problem is that American bureaucracy is
| broken. Whether it's lottery systems for hiking in national
| parks, fixing roads, healthcare, or hiring across federal
| employers, all of these require a functioning bureaucracy and
| there is not one. And so what do Americans do? The left
| complains the bureaucracy is broken and the right complains
| the bureaucracy exists. There is little room left for ever
| fixing the bureaucracy in this situation. It leaves lots of
| room for people to grab power and change things unilaterally
| to their own benefit.
| beedeebeedee wrote:
| American bureaucracy is not broken (but is in the process
| of being destroyed). Claiming that it is broken is easy
| rhetoric for charlatans and backed up by a few cherry
| picked examples.
| cowfriend wrote:
| yeah, the claim that the bureaucracy is the thing that is
| broken-- can we look at a few things?
|
| Every time the administration changes, the heads of all the
| departments change, and the incoming people are typically
| pretty ignorant of what the department does. How would a
| corporation work if every 4 years you rotated the C-suite
| and 2 levels down, with people from a completely different
| business sector?
|
| Meanwhile, funding is shifted even more often. Or is just
| outright cut once every few years.
|
| Meanwhile, every action they take is an official government
| action. Which means it is LEGALLY REQUIRED to happen in
| certain ways based on laws written by people who don't
| think about consequences or how they are enacted.
|
| And it is 2.2 Million people. There are economies of scale
| here.
|
| So I wonder how this compares to current Google, current
| Facebook. I've heard people here talking about how messed
| up those companies are, projects started/stopped at whim,
| massive investments that get abandoned 2 years later, etc.
|
| Or to banks. Banks don't modernize their software because
| they can't, not because they don't want to. No wonder the
| US government has similar issues.
| orwin wrote:
| Lottery for national park access seems like a great idea,
| way better than putting a price on it.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| The American problem, speaking as an American, is the
| Americans. Their brains are incredibly smooth, and
| therefore they fear almost nothing. Famine? War?
| Environmental catastrophe? Societal collapse? Nah. The only
| thing they fear at all is someone who sounds like they
| might have a wrinklier brain than them. That's the problem.
| nicoburns wrote:
| If it was broken before, it's about to be a lot more
| broken.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Efficiency-wise it is impossible for DOGE to move the needle.
| That line of reasoning is a smokescreen for destroying
| government agencies. Maybe they need to be folded, so
| petition the people. They have the Congress and Senate.
| johann8384 wrote:
| Because the parts they don't like align with the parts DOGE
| doesn't like. They agree with dear leader and so all that
| woke BS is wasteful. This way they will pay lower taxes now
| because we got rid of all this "waste".
| from-nibly wrote:
| Yeah that's not going to happen. Lower government spending
| wont lower taxes. That's not what taxes are for.
| WickyNilliams wrote:
| I have seen some people who are undeniably very smart get
| drawn into this line of thinking.
|
| If saving money was the goal surely there's be discussion
| akin to "let's cut the military budget". That's how you'd
| know they're serious. But as it stands it is clearly just an
| ideological axe grinder.
|
| (I should note I'm not American, just watching bemused from
| the sidelines)
| ModernMech wrote:
| The way we know they're not serious is they're already
| planning to cut taxes taxes on the rich and corporations.
| There's no savings to be had, they plan to spend everything
| they cut on themselves, and another $3T beyond that.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| Or cutting the budget for cgi roadsters in orbit.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| The current GOP plans for the budget and tax cut will
| increase the deficit by 4T.
|
| No one is serious about "saving money". It's just to
| justify the corporate tax cut.
| dashundchen wrote:
| On top of the $8 trillion in debt needed for the last
| round of billionaire tax cuts and unaccountable PPP
| helicopter money Trump spent last time around.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _whatever they 're doing is not going to improve anything,
| it's only destruction_
|
| This is why DOGE is staffed with young people.
|
| It's easy to convince inexperienced people there's a 2-step
| plan:
|
| Step 1. Destroy the old.
|
| Step 2. Build the new.
|
| Yet people with experience know that Step 2 requires orders
| of magnitude more effort and time than Step 1.
|
| So, you have ignorant people breaking things, congratulating
| themselves on how quickly they're making progress... and then
| hit Step 2. And realize it's hard. And get bored. And so
| just, not.
|
| Thus in the end, you're left with a broken pile of what came
| before, and nothing new to replace it.
| ModernMech wrote:
| This is the classic 3 step plan.
|
| Step 1. Destroy the old
|
| Step 2. ???
|
| Step 3. Profit!
|
| "Build the new" doesn't even seem to be on the table at
| this point. There's no proposals to replace any of this. At
| least not public anyway, we know they are replacing all of
| this with for-profit scams.
| taylodl wrote:
| Step 1. Destroy the government
|
| Step 2. See? The government doesn't work! Just like we
| said!
|
| Step 3. "Fix" the problems created from Step 1
|
| Step 4. MAGA eventually realizes the swamp was enlarged
| and made worse, not drained
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| What makes you think that step 4 will ever occur?
| floren wrote:
| Step 4. MAGA sees more government inefficiency and
| corruption than ever, but is reassured that it's just
| those terrible liberals sabotaging DOGE's good work and
| the NEXT round will really purge them
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| This meshes well with the established policies of the
| Republican party, which is to campaign on how badly the
| Government runs, promise to fix it, get into office, then
| break the Government more, then run back to your
| constituency and say "I can't believe how bad the
| Government is, get me back in there so I can keep working
| on it."
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| They've long abandoned the pretense of fixing anything,
| and have gotten a lot of buy in from their base to just
| torch stuff and leave it in ruins.
|
| Unfortunately (for all of us, including for their base)
| this isn't actually what people want or need, except the
| ideologues pushing it with a clear understanding of the
| expected outcomes. The base just infers that the ruin of
| these "inefficient" programs is a noble end in itself,
| because their supposed inefficiency _is the problem with
| the programs themselves_.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| To be fair, conservative ideologues over-shrinking the US
| government is an improvement on conservative ideologues
| invading foreign countries, which happened last
| conservative-populist time.
|
| So at least we're not invading Iraq?
| ModernMech wrote:
| They're talking about invading Canada.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| You are being too kind to those young people. One doesn't
| need experience of bricklaying to see that building a house
| takes a lot longer than bulldozing it.
|
| Anyone doing this kind of work is not merely ignorant.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > One doesn't need experience of bricklaying to see that
| building a house takes a lot longer than bulldozing it.
|
| The experience of bricklaying will help you think about
| the future times when you'll have to lay the bricks.
| Without that experience you may not ever consider those
| times, especially in a scenario which has you excited
| about what you are currently doing.
| brazzy wrote:
| Fuck, that sounds familiar:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Olds
|
| I wonder if the DOGE kids will be also sent off to the
| countryside once they're not useful anymore...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sent-down_youth
| BWStearns wrote:
| That's what happened to Vivek.
| mooreds wrote:
| > It's easy to convince inexperienced people there's a
| 2-step plan:
|
| > Step 1. Destroy the old.
|
| > Step 2. Build the new.
|
| Feels very 'cultural revolution'-y
| Volundr wrote:
| > Yet people with experience know that Step 2 requires
| orders of magnitude more effort and time than Step 1.
|
| And also that the steps here should be reversed. Sure if
| you are tearing down a building you destroy before
| creating, but systems aren't buildings. If you are going to
| create a new system to run the cash registers for your
| business you don't tear out the old one and worry about
| building the new one later. First you have the replacement
| ready THEN remove the old one.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Yeah even on HN where I would expect above average
| observational and critical thinking skills, there are plenty
| of people who don't see or refuse to see what's going on.
| Pretty shocking really.
| xnx wrote:
| There's no reason to believe anything they say. Believe only
| what they do.
| kennysoona wrote:
| > I assume most are ignorant and only a few are evil.
|
| Wilful ignorance equates to evil in this case.
| titzer wrote:
| > Wilful ignorance equates to evil in this case.
|
| The media are absolutely craven, too, constantly normalizing
| insanity and pretending like even idiotic things are
| legitimate proposals that should instead be laughed out of
| the room. Like, maybe the Earth is flat? Let's _HAVE THAT
| DEBATE_!!
| Swoerd wrote:
| "The media" Give me a break. Who is this 'media' you speak
| of? Your local newspapers? CNN? Fox News? Joe Rogan? Who is
| to blame?
| lostdog wrote:
| NYTimes was calling this "reshaping the federal
| government," as though it was just a slightly different
| set of policies.
| teekert wrote:
| The people cheering them on are an anti-elitist bunch, the see
| themselves as the revolution for the people. But they don't
| understand the finer details of all the things going on in a
| modern government-society system, and most importantly they
| lost faith in it.
| kubav027 wrote:
| Exactly, those people are happy because "Musk will show
| them!". That is it.
| sanitycheck wrote:
| Sadly we can explain most bad things that happen by
| understanding that most people are f*cking idiots.
| harywilke wrote:
| The masse cheering this on have been told for decades that this
| is what they want. This is a response to Reagan's welfare
| queens, The $600 dollar hammer, and "activist judges". They
| think this is freedom. That this is good governance.
| card_zero wrote:
| Wheel-warring with democrats, who previously carried out
| their own subtle power grabs, perhaps. I wouldn't really
| know, but I suppose "corruption" might mean "things that
| benefit the other side".
| Hizonner wrote:
| "Those guys stole a cookie from the cookie jar. Therefore
| I'm entitled to rob a bank."
|
| "Those guys walked on the grass. Therefore I'm entitled to
| demolish the building."
| tclancy wrote:
| The way I've been saying it is the Right did such a good job
| of inventing phony boogeymen to get them elected (and then
| never do anything about said boogeymen) that they finally
| bred a generation that thinks their BS is real.
| gadders wrote:
| I think it is to reduce the size of government, reduce
| government waste and lower tax bills.
| whoitwas wrote:
| I'm going to assume good faith here. Yesterday they just
| asked congress for $4.3 trillion in deficit spending (debt
| increase) to fund tax cuts for the people who pay the lowest
| taxes already. The majority of government spending is on
| defense, which hasn't been auditable in decades. You're
| either wildly misinformed, or trolling.
| gadders wrote:
| Well clearly that debt increase has all happened since Jan
| 20th, when Trump was inaugurated, so you are right to blame
| the Republicans for that.
|
| I hope DOGE will also look at the DoD, and do the same to
| them as it has to other departments. I hope they review all
| the money that has been sent to Ukraine, Israel and other
| nations and make sure it is all accounted for.
|
| //edit// I wish they would also audit the H1B visa
| programme, but that is less likely to happen.
| cycomanic wrote:
| You care about debt, so why did you vote for the guy who
| increased the debt more than his successor
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/us-debt-by-president-dollar-
| and...
|
| Also it seems like you're confused by what a budget plan
| is for, it is what they want to do, not about the past.
| gadders wrote:
| >>so why did you vote for the guy who increased the debt
| more than his successor
|
| But less than his predecessor.
|
| And I didn't vote, I'm not a US citizen or resident.
| cycomanic wrote:
| You are aware that Obamas presidency lasted twice as
| long? So DJT added almost as much debt in absolute terms
| (6.7T vs 7.7T) and just over half as much in relative
| terms (33% vs 64%) in half the time. That's why I
| compared to Biden. They are much easier to compare.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Debt is the wrong metric. You really should be using
| deficit.
|
| Bush ran up a massive deficit from from '00 to '08, which
| Obama then inherited. The debt increasing under Obama is
| Bush's fault. The deficit LOWERED under Obama.
| whoitwas wrote:
| Based on your reply, you don't really understand much.
| That's okay. It's okay to be ignorant. It's an
| opportunity to learn and improve.
|
| Congress asked for a debt increase because they plan to
| cut taxes. The debt hasn't been accrued yet, they plan to
| cut taxes and it will cost 4.3 trillion.
|
| DOGE isn't trying to make the government better or more
| efficient. They want to cut programs and staff they're
| ideologically opposed to which is in theory all
| government, but in practice all government that doesn't
| enrich Trump or Musk.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Take a look at how much the deficit increased in Trumps
| first term.
|
| Did Trumps tax cuts put money if your pocket? They didn't
| put money in mine (but Biden's tax policies - child tax
| credits - did, ironically).
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > Did Trumps tax cuts put money if your pocket?
|
| Yes, the standard deduction effectively doubled. That
| helped lower my federal income tax, and probably the
| taxes of anyone who didn't own multiple properties. I'm
| not a fan of Trump at all, but he did cut income taxes in
| his first term.
| belorn wrote:
| I am always reminded by a critique of the Obama v Mitt
| Romney (2012) how if there is one thing the left and right
| are in full agreement on, it is to massively spend on the
| military. The left and the right can disagree on health,
| taxes, and the economy, but when it comes to the military
| they are in a full agreement.
|
| This old video from rap news still ring very true.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpMPu5p_QXU
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| > I'm going to assume good faith here. Yesterday they just
| asked congress for $4.3 trillion in deficit spending (debt
| increase) to fund tax cuts for the people who pay the
| lowest taxes already.
|
| Completely - it's again propaganda vs reality. They keep
| showing exactly what they believe by their actions, but
| from.what I see people on the right keep believing their
| words/propaganda. There is such and echo chamber on the
| contermporary right it's incredible. No matter how much
| tangible, see-it-with-your-own-eyes evidence of something
| is presented, as long as there is a cover story given that
| denies it people seem to keep believing the story. And then
| afterwards when it becomes clear that reality was the case
| and not the story it all swaps over to rationalizations and
| the cycle begins again with a new topic.
|
| I remember when it was "there is no way this candidate
| really will do the extreme things he claims. He's just
| saying them for effect." To "he doesn't really mean he'll
| work to be a dictator from day one when he says it" "he
| doesn't really mean vote for him and you'll never need to
| vote again".
|
| Then when he starts doing it but gives a different cover
| story it: "Yah he's not really doing that, he's just
| cutting waste", to what will be "he's not really doing that
| he's just fixing unfair election procedures" and so on.
|
| Then finally it will be again "yes he actually did those
| things but here's why its ok and it doesn't change my
| mind".
|
| Extremely prominent SV backers in the VP side of the
| administration have said/implied multiple times if it's
| democracy or their world views, they choose instituting
| their world views - and somehow people are still making
| justifications saying "they don't really mean that, they
| won't really do that." Even with the clear evidence of
| what's happening now.
|
| Why do people refuse to believe people when they are
| explicitly stating their intentions?
|
| Sidestepping any specific political topic, this new view of
| "I'm against the other party's political touch point item
| that I'd rather throw out 250 years of democracy" is really
| wild to witness.
| casey2 wrote:
| How can you repeat exactly what he said verbatim and then
| call him misinformed or trolling? I'm going to assume bad
| faith here and remind other readers that only a small
| portion of the country is productive and those people
| should be incentivized to work above all others, even if it
| means paying them.
|
| This has been the status quo for a long time, rather than
| pay taxes and get it all back in controversial and bloated
| government contracts (which is what gives the appearance of
| government spending working) it's better to stay lean and
| just have them not pay, as this removes the middlemen.
|
| Let a company do it's job and you get people crying about
| them raping the planet and exploiting workers
|
| Stick a company with red tape, tax them a billion, give
| them (and yourself) a billion to complete a political
| project that goes nowhere and it's labeled a great success
| with people cheering in the street and using it as an
| example of socialist success for the next 60 years.
| muddi900 wrote:
| The largest discretionary spending is the military.
|
| The issue Americans have is that they can't really afford
| non-discretionary welfare spending.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| Lower tax bills for the rich. Proposed tax cuts would make
| the higher incomes less taxed and the not 1% incomes (or
| something around that 1%) more taxed
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| The problem is that "waste" is now "anything Trump and Musk
| don't like".
|
| I'd be happy if they actually saved real money by cutting the
| military budget in half, but that's not going to happen
| because the US is an industrial-military based economy.
|
| How much did Trump's 2017 tax cuts lower your tax bills? They
| didn't lower mine. I benefited more from Biden's tax policies
| (child tax credits) than Trump's. Even taking it from the
| point of view of "fuck the gov, fuck climate change and our
| future, I want what's mine, now" Trump did nothing for me in
| his 4 years on power and is doing nothing for me now -
| gutting a bunch of gov agencies doesn't put money in my
| pocket.
| RIMR wrote:
| "Stupid or Evil" has been my go-to logic for approaching far-
| right agenda items for a long time.
|
| You're either so dumb you believe every piece of propaganda you
| are shown, and never notice the harm being done, or you are
| fully aware of what's happening and you're cheering on the
| chaos and suffering.
| cess11 wrote:
| Commonly the propaganda or myth is a better story than the
| truth. It's nicer to be in a story about pedos conspiring in
| a fast food restaurant than being forced to work to pay for
| universal healthcare in Israel but not getting it yourself.
|
| The toil and confusion and nastiness of everyday life under
| capitalism is not as fun and exciting as an imminent invasion
| at the southern border or the coming rise of the God Emperor
| or the final solution to groceries being expensive. Running a
| soup kitchen and washing clothes for the homeless just hasn't
| the same attraction as doing nothing by chasing the next
| Q-drop.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| Especially when (my background, I gave that all up - maybe
| later than I should have) you already believe in spiritual
| beings daily fighting over your very soul, etc..
| InfiniteBox wrote:
| I don't know every motive or even most motives for cheering it
| on. But I know my take on it: I'm an anti authoritarian.
| ban-evader wrote:
| Instead of assuming the worst, you could at least try to
| imagine that the people who cheer it on can be thoughtful and
| intelligent people. It might even be you are the idiot, and not
| the other people.
| MyOutfitIsVague wrote:
| It's incredibly hard to imagine anybody cheering this on to
| be thoughtful or intelligent. I see no critical thinking,
| intellectual rigour, or even any interest in real evidence or
| data. In what way is any of this intelligent or thoughtful?
| It's the complete opposite of both.
| mehphp wrote:
| The guy leading the charge is calling people "retards" on
| twitter. How does that effect your "who's the idiot"
| calculus?
|
| https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1889062581848944961?mx=2
| TheGRS wrote:
| What would lead me to assume that at this point?
| josefresco wrote:
| > They have to all be evil or completely misinformed. I assume
| most are ignorant and only a few are evil.
|
| I thought that after 2016, I no longer do. It's the reverse.
| Maybe "evil" is a strong word but they are definitely what I
| would consider "bad people" based on their extreme selfishness.
| Most pretend to be ignorant, or "low information" in person but
| they follow news very closely.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Agreed. The 2016 were self-serving grifters that didn't
| understand the mechanisms of government and were mostly
| bumbling around. The 2024 team are also self-serving grifters
| but have a much more coherent plan to shape things to their
| liking and much smarter people in play. Miller - arguably one
| of the smartest but also someone to whom the "evil" label
| perhaps best applies - plays a much bigger role this time
| around.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| As they say power corrupts - true for most people.
| eric_cc wrote:
| You have no problems with wasteful spending of tax payers
| money?
| rvz wrote:
| They were _always_ fine with it until we found out on what
| that money was spent on. It turns out, that the most of it
| was a waste at best and grift at worse.
|
| As for 'juniors', it's not like we've seen this sort of thing
| before such as those here happy to propel the opinions of so-
| called 'climate expert / activist' (Greta Thunberg) who
| didn't finish school and was used by the media as the face of
| _' saving the planet'_ and throwing unfounded claims of
| disaster by 2023, despite a significant lack of understanding
| of climate change and what she was talking about.
|
| But then again, I have not heard back from Netflix's elite
| team for a postmortem of that live-streaming disaster which
| there were no juniors to blame this time despite being
| inexperienced in delivering live-streaming on their platform
| reliably.
| tclancy wrote:
| That's a straw man. Show the waste they are cutting. Musk
| didn't even know which Mamas he was talking about when he
| found out"waste" at USAid and, when told, just shrugged and
| said it was the press' job to correct those mistakes.
|
| The odds of a junkie recognizing good or bad spending is very
| low.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _I mean the motive of the masses who cheer this on. Is it just
| to own the libs?_
|
| Yes, in many respects. See this paper for a good model of the
| basic behavior:
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600451
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > I don't quite understand the motive. I mean the motive of the
| masses who cheer this on. Is it just to own the libs?
|
| You're surely being obtuse. I'm a progressive independent and
| even I understand _why_ they are doing it, even if I 'm not
| convinced this is the correct way to do it.
|
| This is why they are doing it: https://www.usdebtclock.org/
|
| It's just their idea of austerity.
| fecal_henge wrote:
| Can someone help me with what roro means?
| tennisflyi wrote:
| I think they meant "ruh roh" -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3SaxRRfJ4E
| gavinray wrote:
| It's common to sign your handle to exploit/pwn'ed messages.
|
| I'd wager the person who did the edit goes by the name "roro".
| PokemonNoGo wrote:
| Scooby dooby Doo...
| mieses wrote:
| oh good i hope someone other than China can now access all the
| natsec data
| buyucu wrote:
| this is absolutely hilarious
| cyberlimerence wrote:
| Every other intelligence agency on the planet is about to scoop a
| ton of American data via cyber and basic HUMINT. It's free for
| all out there, I guess.
| average_r_user wrote:
| Tinfoil hat mode: "What if" this results from a foreign
| influence?
|
| But I guess that you don't need to find answers externally when
| stupidity is a much simpler reason
| ethagnawl wrote:
| I've been wondering this myself, not that I necessarily
| believe it. If they _were_ acting at the behest of a foreign
| adversary (pick your reason: leverage over an individual
| because of a targeted campaign, leverage over all of them
| because of the SolarWinds/Salt Typhoon hack, cash, etc.), how
| different would their actions look?
| not2b wrote:
| Sometimes the tool doesn't have to know he's a tool. The
| Russians use the term "useful idiot".
|
| They've created the back doors, I'm sure that the Russians
| and the Chinese are now in the systems the DOGE people
| broke.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| foreign influence like a South African blood diamond heir?
| delecti wrote:
| That accusation is wildly off base. He's a blood _emerald_
| heir.
| dobin wrote:
| Its not just this website. Since DOGE, China probably canceled
| all vacation days for their hackers, as its a free for all.
| Firing of most so many people including security departments
| and most likely the (good) femboy furry hackers.
|
| Is the newly created user with name "bigballs" who downloads
| whole government databases a foreign TA or just DOGE? Who
| knows. Who cares, certainly not the Government.
|
| The data and access gained currently by China, Russia, NK and
| SA will continue to be useful until and way after the next war.
| cyberlimerence wrote:
| Oh I have no doubt about that. You have people, who would not
| be able to obtain a security clearance in a 100 years if they
| tried, running around, accessing government databases and
| taking "backups" offsite. Maybe law
| enforcement/Pentagon/intelligence data is not under threat at
| the moment, but in a couple of years who knows. Meanwhile
| people get fired, proper access protocols and communications
| continue to breakdown, and you get chaos. And every spy
| agency loves chaos.
| TheGRS wrote:
| I'm honestly just hoping "security by obscurity" is helping
| things for the moment. There's no way a 20 year old is
| figuring out the data structures of an entire department
| and getting all the data in a single day.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| no they are uploading loads of raw data to some LLM
| somewhere. Bestcase no history, worse case its hosted by
| a hostile actor
| leptons wrote:
| Nothing they have done or will do is supposed to make
| America better, it's designed to destabilize the country.
| They want America to fail so that they can rule over the
| ashes.
| trhway wrote:
| > Maybe law enforcement/Pentagon/intelligence data is not
| under threat at the moment
|
| the payments data would tell a lot about intelligence
| networks for example or about various Pentagon contractors.
|
| Remember Assange? He did a decade under house arrest for a
| leak paling in comparison to what happens today. How times
| have changed.
| ben_w wrote:
| That's not why Assange spent a decade hiding in an
| embassy, which also wasn't house arrest. Before he got
| kicked out, he could have left any time he wanted -- it
| was the police outside who weren't allowed in.
|
| He spent a decade hiding in an embassy to avoid
| extradition to Sweden for unrelated crimes, ostensably
| for fear of what ended up happening in the UK where he
| was apparently happy to stay while insisting Sweden
| wasn't safe.
| trhway wrote:
| >wasn't house arrest. Before he got kicked out, he could
| have left any time he wanted -- it was the police outside
|
| and the people in prison can leave anytime they want - it
| is just prison guards outside who would shoot them.
|
| > to Sweden for unrelated crimes
|
| And what happened to those crimes in Sweden once he
| resolved his US issues?
| addandsubtract wrote:
| > Is the newly created user with name "bigballs" who
| downloads whole government databases a foreign TA or just
| DOGE? Who knows. Who cares, certainly not the Government.
|
| Someone willing to work without morals for money can just be
| bought by the next highest bidder. Anything they touch should
| be treated as compromised.
| not2b wrote:
| If they'd only been downloading data that would be bad
| enough, but they've been modifying code as well, code that
| they don't understand. It's the biggest security disaster
| in recent history (perhaps Kim Philby giving everything to
| the Russians was worse) and entirely self-inflicted.
| taurknaut wrote:
| I don't even think half of them are getting paid. They're
| doing it gratis.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Oh, they're getting paid, all right. Who's doing the
| paying is the question.
| morkalork wrote:
| Is there a source for the vacation days thing? That's the
| kind of story that has an apocryphal vibe to it like the
| Pentagon Domino's Pizza meter has.
| hn_acker wrote:
| >> Since DOGE, China probably canceled all vacation days
| for their hackers, as its a free for all.
|
| > Is there a source for the vacation days thing?
|
| The "vacation days" line seems to be a jokingly hyperbolic
| prediction. China might have directed more resources
| (including hackers) toward collecting the data exposed by
| DOGE and Elon Musk's actions (and might try to widen the
| crack), but is unlikely to have literally cancelled all
| vacation days for said hackers.
| bregma wrote:
| You can't cancel them if they don't have them.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| They don't even need to: they have direct access via their
| agents. Such as the new intelligence chief and a couple of
| the DOGE boys who've already been caught directly selling
| NDA'd information.
| Freedom2 wrote:
| I think the good thing is that the DOGE team seem extremely
| humble and willing to learn from their mistakes, rather than
| pass the blame in ignorance. Just like their leader!
| rightbyte wrote:
| > Firing of most so many people including security
| departments and most likely the (good) femboy furry hackers.
|
| Why is this not a joke?
|
| Edit: Rethorical question.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| They got it long ago, don't kid yourself.
| davidw wrote:
| Or they could just, like, call Tulsi Gabbard.
| SXX wrote:
| Unfortunately she is too busy for that.
|
| She'll just invite her friend Bashar al-Assad to assist.
|
| I have read on the news he recently became #opentowork.
| e2le wrote:
| Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the situation, but isn't this
| similar to Hillary's E-Mail?[1]
|
| >Over at OPM, reports indicate that individuals associated with
| DOGE connected an unauthorized server into the network.
|
| [1]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/02/doge-as-a-
| nat...
| nomel wrote:
| Is there any evidence that the contents of the database are
| accessible? The linked article doesn't make these claims.
|
| Is there any evidence that the database for this microblog of a
| cloud flare hosted website has anything of importance in it?
|
| Are you also (alone) suggesting there's a tunnel from cloud
| flare (where this is hosted) to some larger government
| database?
|
| You may want to RTFA: https://archive.ph/wy1Wt
| fesoliveira wrote:
| I think you are missing the entire point of this. It's not
| that it had sensitive data or anything of importance. It is
| that a .gov domain under the command of the self proclaimed
| Mr. Efficiency and smartest person of Earth about servers and
| car manufacturing was wide open for script kiddies to deface
| and access data from. It is a show of hypocrisy and how
| cutting corners like Dr. Emerald Mine Child here wants will
| shape the rest of this administration.
| nomel wrote:
| > Every other intelligence agency on the planet is about to
| scoop a ton of American data via cyber and basic HUMINT
|
| I was replying to what was written. I read this as implying
| that sensitive (or _any_ ) data was available.
|
| > and access data from
|
| Again, is there any evidence that any data was accessible,
| beyond what is visible on the webpage? If you read the
| article, the flaw was that anything could be _pushed_.
| Could you link a source that says extra data was
| _accessible_? Your claim _is not made in the above article_
| , and I can't find anything mentioning _data access_ , with
| a quick search.
| rob_c wrote:
| Well it was probably faithfully outsourced to people with correct
| documentation and certificates with their weight in gold then...
| SXX wrote:
| That would be very inefficient spending.
|
| They hired some cheap Upwork freelancers instead.
| aithrowawaycomm wrote:
| Pretty gross to think of these people doing code reviews for
| projects they have no familiarity with - along with of course
| this bafflingly incompetent tweet:
| https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1889062581848944961#m Donald
| Trump said DOGE were "super-geniuses," and according to his
| standards they probably are.
|
| (The way Trump's election directly led to "retard" being a common
| pejorative again hasn't been discussed enough. Just awful.)
| rsynnott wrote:
| This is about the level of Musk's understanding of tech:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12519729
|
| Games are written for Windows, therefore webapps should be
| written with "Microsoft C++" (presumably meaning Visual C++,
| though I suppose there's an outside chance that he means
| "Microsoft C/C++", from the early 90s).
|
| He's not new to being... bad at this.
| dada78641 wrote:
| Reading that set of quotes, it really is incredible how
| little Musk knows about even extremely basic things. He
| doesn't understand there are different problem spaces in
| tech, and that different problem spaces require completely
| different approaches and skill sets. To him, something like
| World of Warcraft is very impressive, so if you build Paypal
| on the same technology it will be impressive too. Like,
| honestly it's shocking that this guy is allowed near anything
| that has a button.
| rsynnott wrote:
| The "games programmers are best programmers, in all senses"
| thing is a very, very common point of layperson confusion;
| not totally sure why.
|
| (As someone who has worked in both the games industry and
| Big Tech(tm), yeah, no.)
| pas wrote:
| Because a game _looks_ hard. Forms look easy. Website?
| Even a phone can run a website, but a game requires that
| beefy big box!
| sarchertech wrote:
| Obviously there are many problems in the web world that
| are just as hard as problems in the game world. Some of
| them are even the same problems.
|
| But having done both, making any game beyond the absolute
| most basic game in Unity is harder than what 95% of web
| developers do day to day.
|
| I'm currently in web dev because it pays so much better,
| but game dev really is more technically challenging than
| most web dev.
|
| It's hard to compare average skill levels between the 2
| because so many people are drawn to games because they
| love them and to the web because of the pay. But if I had
| to guess, I'd put my money on there being a significantly
| higher floor for game dev.
| Olreich wrote:
| I do think that game companies have a higher percentage
| of top-tier programmers. This is both due to pedigree and
| size of the field.
|
| There are some incredible programmers in both big tech
| and game dev, but big tech has vastly more developers
| with less pressure to have top-tier talent.
|
| Median developer at both probably represents the same
| skill because of normal distributions.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Game companies need developers that extract as much
| performance of the machine as possible.
|
| Other companies need developers that make applications
| not anyone can push updates to. Those are also good
| developers.
|
| There is no single metric for "good" in a field as vast
| as programming.
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| I agree, but the core reason for this has nothing to do
| with either of the points you mention. There are few
| other sub-cultures that come anywhere close to the (avg.)
| level of passion and narrow focus than game dev. And you
| absolutely need it, because it is very complex and
| usually badly paid.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| I doubt it. Game companies need guys willing to sign
| their life away, months at a time. I worked in EDA, now
| storage. TONS of very talented people.
| netsharc wrote:
| He sounds like Dilbert's boss...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-
| prev...
| rsynnott wrote:
| Yeah, I mean that archetype exists for a reason.
| teddyh wrote:
| Better link: <https://dilbert-
| viewer.herokuapp.com/1995-11-17>
| soared wrote:
| Having never read that - it reads incredibly similar to how
| Trump talks but with better sentence structure. It all sounds
| believable, but it's really useless platitudes.
| adamsb6 wrote:
| Developer tools, along with availability of developers, was
| probably the number one reason to have chosen a Microsoft
| stack around the year 2000.
|
| The annoyances of IIS were borne by sysadmins, but your
| developers were probably able to be more productive.
| tjpnz wrote:
| They're promising to deliver security next quarter.
| giomasce wrote:
| You mean Full Self Security?
| bamboozled wrote:
| I thought this was a feature to make it easier to leech
| information ?
| cedws wrote:
| Elon Musk needs it most of all, he's the most insecure human in
| existence.
| EvanKnowles wrote:
| If I click Join I am immediately redirected to a "Sorry, you have
| been blocked You are unable to access doge.gov" CloudFlare page.
| That's odd.
| bstsb wrote:
| same, i'm assuming they've set up a firewall rule on the
| cloudflare dashboard to block non-internal ips for certain
| routes
| CompuIves wrote:
| It's a block for non-US IPs, I think. The page is an
| application form for joining them, and it only accepts US
| citizens.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| I think this is it, in eu i get blocked but if I access it
| via VPN I can open the page
| Larrikin wrote:
| US citizens have to pay federal taxes abroad but now can't
| view federal websites.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| Yup, that checks out
| poniko wrote:
| Transparency maximum.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I am shocked, SHOCKED! that this Elon Musk thing staffed by a
| bunch of weirdos he found wherever isn't very competent.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| loyalty >> competence
| Brendinooo wrote:
| Does anyone want to talk about the hack itself? Can anyone give
| more details than "left their database open"? I came to this site
| hoping for a real discussion about that and didn't see it here
| yet...
| a012 wrote:
| My bet is on SQL injection
| rozap wrote:
| In the year of our lord 2025? I doubt it. I'd put money on
| "some third party cloud service was configured in a silly
| way".
|
| But, I would love to see details.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| They used one of those databases which are easy to connect
| directly to the internet, it's the same thing as about 90% of
| modern data breaches.
|
| Every generation we make things much easier, lower the bar,
| and are rewarded when amateurs make amateur mistakes like
| this.
| bregma wrote:
| We made it so easy to program that any idiot could do it.
| So they do.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| I found my new signature quote.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| No way this is real.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > The database it is pulling from can be and has been written
| to by third parties, and will show up on the live website.
|
| Not enough detail to say for sure; could be SQL injection,
| could be credentials exposed in the frontend.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| ...or endpoints not requiring any credentials at all.
| rsynnott wrote:
| ... Oh, yes. After reading more carefully I see it, er, IS
| that. Where the hell did Musk find these people? 1996?
| CharlesChadwick wrote:
| I'm not too sure about this theory; just went on the DOGE
| site and the API endpoints don't allow for POST requests,
| and I can't find anything that allows me to upload
| internetter wrote:
| According to a source of mine, there were unsecured API
| endpoints for modification
| monocasa wrote:
| Someone unminified the js, and it turned out that a bunch of
| the rest endpoints it knew about were just unverified crud
| endpoints for the site.
|
| https://archive.ph/2025.02.14-132833/https://www.404media.co...
| Euphorbium wrote:
| Smells exactly like llm created solution.
| monocasa wrote:
| Or just what happens when you hire a bunch of 20 year olds
| and let them loose.
|
| That's currently how I model my usage of LLMs in code. A
| smart veeeery junior engineer that needs to be kept on a
| veeeeery short leash.
| ellisv wrote:
| Yes. LLMs are very much like a smart intern you hired
| with no real experience who is very eager to please you.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| IMO, they're worse than that. You can teach an intern
| things, correct their mistakes, help them become better
| and your investment will lead to them performing better.
|
| LLMs are an eternal intern that can only repeat what it's
| gleaned from some articles it skimmed last year or
| whatever. If your expected response isn't in its corpus,
| or isn't in it frequently enough, and it can't just
| regurgitate an amalgamation of the top N articles you'd
| find on Google anyway, tough luck.
| worik wrote:
| The Age of the Eternal Intern
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| And the content online is now written by Fully Automated
| Eternal September
| kps wrote:
| Today is Friday the 11490th of September 1993.
| willturman wrote:
| Without a mechanism to detect output from LLMs, we're
| essentially facing an eternal model collapse with each
| new ingestion of information from academic journals, to
| blogs, to art. [1][2]
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_collapse
|
| [2]https://thebullshitmachines.com/lesson-16-the-first-
| step-fal...
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| LLMs are to interns what house cats are to babies. They
| seem more self sufficient at first, but soon the toddler
| grows up and you're stuck with an animal who will forever
| need you to scoop its poops.
| gvx wrote:
| One who thinks "open source" means blindly copy/pasting
| code snippets found online.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Even at 20 years old I would not have done this.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The difference is that today's digital natives regard
| computers as magic and most don't know what's really
| happening when their framework du jour spits out some
| "unreadable" text.
| mlinhares wrote:
| So much this, I was interning at a government entity at
| 20 and I already knew you needed credentials to do shit.
| Most frameworks have this by default for free, we're so
| incredibly screwed with these folks running rampant and
| destroying the government.
| rcpt wrote:
| Maybe doge should have used an LLM to generate defenses
| caboteria wrote:
| They did, and this is what they got.
| AirMax98 wrote:
| My first guess is that this is an unauthenticated server
| action.[0]
|
| 0 - https://blog.arcjet.com/next-js-server-action-security/
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Good thing we have the best and brightest at DOGE!
| croisillon wrote:
| well they pay for a blue checkmark, they _must_ be the
| cleverest we have
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's been a while since I last saw a CMS pulling data from a
| database... It's a miracle the website didn't crumble under
| the load.
| CharlesChadwick wrote:
| Just checked the DOGE website; I'm not too sure about this
| theory given that POST requests are blocked and the only APIs
| you can find (ie. /api/offices) only supports GET requests
| and if the UUID doesn't match, it 404s.
|
| I don't see any CRUD endpoints for modifying the database
| 1_1xdev1 wrote:
| DOGE noticed. They might have "fixed" the vulnerability by
| now
|
| https://doge.gov/workforce?orgId=69ee18bc-9ac8-467e-84b0-10
| 6... is what's linked to by the "Workforce" header, and it
| now looks different than the screenshots
| guywithahat wrote:
| I mean the article is paywalled but it sounds like this is
| isolated to their site-displayed twitter feed; basically the
| site was hosted by cloudflare and you could insert your own
| fake tweets into what was recorded on the site (but not on the
| actual DOGE twitter feed). I don't think any data was actually
| compromised
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Yeah, it's just tremendously embarrassing. These are supposed
| to be the tech geniuses who can parse 50 years of accumulated
| legacy code and find all the government waste? In 3 weeks?
| ghthor wrote:
| Data science and websites are different beasts.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Some of the "data science" people I've met certainly
| believed that they could architect entire software
| systems just because they understood how to structure
| data in databases.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Surely technical competence is strongly correlated across
| the two beasts.
| Volundr wrote:
| I can't speak to any data that may or may not be compromised,
| but this isn't about inserting fake tweets. Anything in their
| "government org chart" can be edited unauthenticated.
| Molitor5901 wrote:
| Well, it seems to be working fine now.
| greatpatton wrote:
| Is it me or mods are actively hiding everything that is critical
| of the current admin? This post is 6 hours late, 308 points and
| at the bottom of the 3rd page. This is not the first post that is
| either flagged or just made invisible. Is HN still a place we can
| trust?
| et-al wrote:
| I trust dang.
|
| I also believe there are a bunch of Musk fanboys on this site
| that would flag this. Or people who don't want to understand
| the implications of what's going on and avoid anything that's
| "political".
| Balgair wrote:
| Knowing how petty Elon is with _Diablo_ and _PoE_ , I do not
| at all put it past him to have some bots/cheap labor just
| flag anything about him.
|
| I also trust dang
|
| Don't know how to square these thing either, though
| dang wrote:
| It's not bots flagging these things, it's regular users.
| Unless the regular users are bots, which seems unlikely.
|
| When there's a major ongoing topic like this one,
| especially when it's divisive, the flags tend to come from
| a combination of (1) users who flag one-sidedly for what
| appear to be political reasons, and (2) users who don't
| think the story is on-topic for HN, whether because it's
| too sensational / flame-prone, too repetitive, or both. The
| first is a bad reason to flag and the second is a good
| reason. When we notice users flagging repeatedly for bad
| reasons, we take their flagging privileges away.
| Balgair wrote:
| Hey dang, thanks for the reply.
|
| I didn't know you take the flagging away. That's not a
| bad idea.
|
| I've been seeing you defend yourself all over the place
| these days. Sorry to make you feel like you had to do
| that here too.
|
| My comment was more one of confusion, to clarify. Reading
| your comments these last few weeks, I trust in your
| decisions and those of the rest of the mods. HN is a
| really good place because of you all.
|
| But I also know Elon is super petty/crazy and doing some
| monkey business is not above him. And yes, I know that
| sounds very conspiracy theory of me based on your comment
| here.
|
| Suffice to say, maybe I'm just reacting to the sea change
| in HN participation and doing some 'self protection'. I
| like HN and then I recognize this flagging behavior on
| mostly just two men. Is there more flagging? Yes, but
| that's 'background' to me. These things don't square to
| my mind, so I go off to conspiracy land. Either way, my
| lizard brain is triggered and whether I like it or not, I
| can't help feeling 'bad/danger'. Maybe some self-work is
| needed.
|
| Still, thanks a ton for all the time and the effort yo
| and the rest of the mod team put in here. I really
| appreciate it.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I also trust dang, but the "Elon has built cool companies so
| I'm going to set aside what critical thinking skills I have
| and put my trust in him and Trump and forget that Trump Is an
| inveterate liar and Elon has been saying shit for a long time
| now" is really getting to me. I expect that from Reddit or
| Fox News watchers. I expect higher order thinking from HN and
| it's pretty disappointing.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| > I expect higher order thinking from HN
|
| Uh, don't. HN doesn't block dumb people from joining the
| site and commenting.
| gnomesteel wrote:
| Yes, they're all being hidden. I've yet to see a good reason
| why.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Please see my response to parent
| tim333 wrote:
| (copied from an earlier comment)
|
| There are at least 60 recent DOGE stories on HN with comments
| on. I guess people get a bit DOGEd out. It's probably part of
| the Trump/Musk strategy. 'Flood the zone' with so many things
| people can't follow it.
|
| (on zone flooding https://youtu.be/iTSgL_R1CC4)
| cassepipe wrote:
| I see you are new here. It's not about being political or not,
| it's about whether this is going to end up in a flamewar or
| not.
|
| Here are the guidelines :
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Moderation is decentralized, downvoted comments tend to
| disappear. Flagging is a power people who have a lot of karma
| have, if you think are one of them you can vouch (unflag) for a
| comment. There is one mod, dang Here are the moderator last
| comments so you can have idea of the work he is doing:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang
| kccoder wrote:
| It would be so uncivil to have a conversation about how the
| US govt is being carelessly lit on fire because it might lead
| to a flamewar.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| If you're going to have emotions we'll have to ask you to
| leave
| lolinder wrote:
| There is no conversation here. There's one thread near the
| top that tries to talk about the actual vulnerability, the
| rest is knee-jerk snark.
|
| I totally understand why people are knee-jerking, but it's
| not a conversation and it doesn't belong on HN. We have
| other forums for knee-jerk snark. I'll be happy to see
| another DOGE post here the next time there's a topic that
| has enough meat for a useful conversation to come out of
| it.
|
| In the meantime, I suspect that dang just left this here to
| avoid the appearance of silencing the topic. I hope that
| people who see this come away better understanding why so
| many of these threads get flagged to death.
| timeon wrote:
| I wonder if site being hacked belongs to _hacker_ news.
| lolinder wrote:
| Whether something belongs on Hacker News doesn't really
| depend on the news item so much as on what kind of
| discussion comes off of it. Some of the most insignificant
| stories are great Hacker News topics because they spawn
| amazing discussions.
|
| This thread on the other hand? There's one comment near the
| top that mentioned some interesting facts about the U.S.
| Digital Service, and a second comment that's third from the
| top that tries with limited success to get people to talk
| about the hack.
|
| The rest of this thread is just mindless snark. That's
| fair, DOGE is stupid and deserves snark, but it's a waste
| of space on the HN front page.
|
| A decent metric for whether something belongs on HN is: is
| the conversation more interesting than the Reddit
| equivalent would be? The answer here is pretty clearly an
| emphatic "no", so I think that this belongs on Reddit
| instead.
| dannersy wrote:
| I've suspected the same when people are critical of AI.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| It's not mods. Dang and his team are phenomenally fair. It's
| users flagging it because we're massively tired of this content
| and if I want to read it and hear endless thoughtless comments,
| I'll go to Reddit.
| dang wrote:
| I've been answering this a lot lately. Here are some links:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43019507
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43003751
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978572
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 (<-- principles
| listed here)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42979382
|
| If you take a look at those and still have a question that
| isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
|
| Trust as you please, but we're moderating HN the same way we
| always have.
|
| Edit: Actually we wouldn't expect or ask anyone to trust in the
| first place. I do think it's reasonable to ask regular users to
| familiarize themselves with the principles by which we moderate
| the site. Then if you see something that doesn't fit those
| principles, or if you want to make a case for different
| principles, we have something to discuss.
|
| These principles go back a long time and have held up well in
| terms of preserving HN for its intended purpose over the years.
| If you (or anyone) want to familiarize yourself with them, see
| the link I marked above. It contains a partial list, and
| pointers to lots of past explanations.
| cowfriend wrote:
| Going to defend dang here.
|
| These posts have a high political index, which given
| America's current culture wars tends to bring out the kind of
| behavior which none of us want on HN.
|
| It's a damn tough balancing act.
|
| Also, look at my post history, I'm pretty strongly anti-DOGE.
| I'm defending Dang because I love HN and appreciate what he
| is doing under extremely tough conditions.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| A group of users flags it all but dang has done a good job of
| overriding it lately.
|
| I'd still like if threads indicated whether or not flags were
| turned off. Dang must be tired of answering these questions
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| This post now appears on page 5 of HN despite being number 1 at
| /active
|
| :<
| rozap wrote:
| TIL about /active.
|
| There have been so many of these types posts that have been
| hidden from the front page.
| noname120 wrote:
| https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-
| undocumented#flame-...
| dang wrote:
| /active shows the threads that are accumulating comments most
| quickly. If we ranked the frontpage that way, then HN would be
| a flamewar site. Therefore we don't rank the frontpage that
| way.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| fair enough; thanks for the explain. I do appreciate that HN
| doesn't turn into a flamewar while allowing discussions and
| not flagging everything just because it's controversial,
| especially with all the impactful stuff going on. kudos on
| the moderating and threading that needle; tough job
| mbravorus wrote:
| so most people here are salty about Doge actually delivering on
| transparency, albeit imperfectly, vs promises and SLS style multi
| billion "effort" unable to deliver for decades?
|
| mind you, it's totally legit to ridicule the noob security
| lapses, but the rest of the sentiment here seems a bit meh
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I agree the website itself is fine -- not that the information
| wasn't publicly available before, but having it consolidated is
| nice.
|
| But as for transparency, DOGE isn't at all being transparent
| about what it is doing. I'd give them an F so far on that.
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| I'm generally trying to keep away from the whole political
| madness going on, but when I do follow a story, Iat least try
| to verify what I am seeing. This requires a fair bit of mental
| energy, intelligence and frustration tolerance, and is frankly
| impossible to do for more than a fraction of what is going on.
|
| For example, the recent headlines of the state department
| trying to buy $400m worth of armored Tesla vehicles was
| obviously a Democrat plant. It was done under the Biden
| administration in December, with no chance of fulfilling before
| the handover. Some.one thought it would be a simple way of
| making the Trump admin look bad.
|
| You have to always be wary of being misled by the media in
| today's age. That said, the shit-slinging coming out of Doge
| has been largely false and illegal. If Congress assigns money
| to fund impressionist dancers in Pakistan, then that's what it
| has to be spent on. The real issue here is that to get a bill
| passed in the US a lot of fluff has to get attached to it. Doge
| can't unilaterally cancel payments without breaking the law.
|
| Even in the cases I looked at were real corruption is
| plausible, ie. the money given to the Clinton Foundation, Doge
| just straight up lied about the amounts and purpose.
|
| Outside of corruption, there is no good reason to move this
| fast and reckless. At least no good reason for the American
| people. They are moving this fast because they know what they
| do is illegal and idiotic and false, and they are trying to
| drown us in bullshit.
|
| Musk gets a nice kickback for every single link going back to
| his own website (that is actually corruption), but more
| importantly, they are building up outrage fatigue for normal
| people and a frenzy for their fanatics. This is all about
| paving the way to paint legality as corruption so that they can
| justify ignoring the courts and Congress going forward.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| Most people here on HN are idiot savants - little to no
| experiences that expose them to govt bureaucracy and corruption
| (example:taxes beyond simple salaried income tax,
| buying/selling property,run a business,run a payroll,
| investing, inflation etc. )
| deadbabe wrote:
| Maybe they should fire these kids and replace them with REAL
| engineers.
|
| And I know some of those kids probably read Hackernews, so here's
| the advice: put away ChatGPT and learn what the fuck you're
| doing.
| guywithahat wrote:
| The one good thing about them all being so young is it explains
| why I never got an interview; at 28 I was too old to ever get a
| job there
| deadbabe wrote:
| Yup. At 28 you're going to have way more things in your life
| distracting you from the job, you're probably prioritizing
| work life balance which is a red flag.
| baggachipz wrote:
| Why would you apply to work in this debacle. Ever.
| drawkward wrote:
| To move slow and break DOGE?
| guywithahat wrote:
| You can criticize it all you want but I'd be working
| directly for the President and the richest man alive, doing
| incredible LLM-powered work that's basically never been
| done before. Not only would all the work be innovative (and
| thus fun), but it would look incredible on a resume
| palmotea wrote:
| > Maybe they should fire these kids and replace them with REAL
| engineers.
|
| Nah, they'll want reasonable pay, reasonable hours, and won't
| confuse their boss for a living god. They may even have some
| self-confidence and morals, which would be a total deal
| breaker.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Sadly you're both right.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Most importantly, they will refuse to participate in the
| administration's regular human centipede rituals.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| These are ideologues, not earnest professionals.
| aqueueaqueue wrote:
| You need someone who is
|
| 1. Good experienced engineer
|
| 2. Without ethics
|
| 3. Happy to be paid below market rate of a good experienced
| engineer without ethics.
| tolmasky wrote:
| I guess DOGE lives up to "Vox Populi, Vox Dei" even better than
| Twitter.
| waltercool wrote:
| Please stop sharing paywall content. We are not paying
| subscriptions because some headline.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Idiocracy in full effect!
|
| Just wait until we have a huge outbreak of Measles or are
| prescribed essential oils for cancer...
| avanai wrote:
| Too late. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/science/measles-
| vaccinati...
| neilv wrote:
| Not a good look, when you're doing a blitz of obviously
| criminally -- _treasonously_ -- reckless things.
|
| It's harder for supporters to even pretend that you're even
| minimally competent.
| leptons wrote:
| I'm not sure you've actually heard from their supporters - they
| have proven again and again that there is literally nothing
| they won't excuse or handwave away.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| Many of their supporters wouldn't know a webpage from a
| database schema and once thought Bill Gates would send him $$
| for forwarding emails. Like my 60+ BIL.
| danso wrote:
| Worth noting that the U.S. Digital Service (USDS, i.e the org
| that DOGE has now subsumed) has for a long while been experts at
| building and deploying static websites for the federal
| government. And doing it completely in the open. Within minutes
| you can literally clone and re-deploy all of httsp://usds.gov --
| 150MB of 2,700 assets and documents, built on Jekyll -- locally
| or on S3. They've even written out the complete deployment
| instructions:
|
| https://github.com/usds/website
| darth_avocado wrote:
| But that's only useful if the incoming people in charge don't
| have any contempt towards existing employees and want to
| leverage best practices instead of pretending that they know
| better. Twitter had the same problem after Elon took over.
| bozhark wrote:
| You mean the next incoming people
| TheGRS wrote:
| Yea so far DOGE doesn't seem like they take any time to ask
| questions or research before doing anything.
| danso wrote:
| What's especially unfortunate is that experienced USDS
| employees had already achieved the one software engineering
| task that is basically impossible for a 19-year-old (or a
| newly hired USDS employee of any age): convincing a federal
| department manager that using a static website is a great
| solution -- nevermind also publishing all of its source code
| and documents on a public github.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| USDS really did represent the best of the federal
| government. They modernized hundreds of websites, brought
| accessibility and mobile access to the forefront, improved
| usability, and a lot of that work is invisible, slow,
| internal politics/battles.
|
| Understandably everyone is upset about what "DOGE" is
| doing. But on top of those harms, the killing of USDS (or
| at least ending its core mission) is also a real harm.
| gavmor wrote:
| I'm not a federal contractor nor employee, and I _am_ a
| die-hard Pivotal zealot, so absolutely take the following
| with a grain of pink Himalayan rock salt:
|
| Although overshadowed by Kubernetes elsewhere in the
| industry, I suspect that Pivotal's _Cloud Foundry_
| Platform as a Service (PaaS)--which the US General
| Services Administration 's (GSA) internal digital
| transformation consultancy, 18F, adopted[0] in 2015
| significantly influenced the software delivery philosophy
| of the federal government by making trivial heretofore
| disastrously cumbersome provisioning, staging, and
| deployment processes. The step away from hand-provisioned
| virtual machines to elastic, accommodating environments
| may have made agile development _possible_ in federal
| offices, bringing our government into the 21st century,
| only fifteen years late.
|
| I distinctly remember the switch from "here's your VM" to
| "here's my code," and--as an application developer--I
| never want to go back.
|
| 0. See: https://cloud.gov
| ethbr1 wrote:
| To me, that's the most important goal of devops tools
| teams in practice:
|
| "Internal team, what's your current greatest pain point?"
| -> Make that easier / faster / better
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Move fast and break things.
|
| Where have we heard this before?
|
| They even broke the USGS earthquake maps. Yesterday morning
| you could check the site for new quakes anywhere on earth and
| end up with a really good idea where it was on earth because
| there were several map styles available as overlays -
| Terrain, gray scale, street, ocean, etc.
|
| Yesterday afternoon the only map layer available was an ocean
| layer showing continents, islands, seafloor profiles etc with
| no place names available at all.
|
| Late yesterday night or early this morning they added another
| layer, USGS topo, that has generalized landforms and cultural
| stuff like roads, with enough detail that you can zoom in and
| find your town here in the USA. The problem is that this
| layer is totally broken outside the US.
|
| If you are like me and you're monitoring new activity in the
| Aegean Sea that topo layer is completely broken. If you zoom
| to a level where you would expect to see individual towns,
| etc you will find the Aegean Sea labeled as being in the
| Pacific Ocean and all the coastline and landform data
| completely broken so that it isn't possible to identify any
| of the islands that could be affected in the region.
|
| If you look at all the seas in the Mediterranean you will
| find it labeled as the Pacific Ocean and that label persists
| all the way across the Atlantic at that zoom level until
| Bermuda where you can see the Atlantic Ocean label.
|
| Frankly, whoever did this probably has a good start on eating
| a giant bag of dicks.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| This stuff was incredibly valuable when my SO and I were on
| vacation overseas. Also, I'm sure there are a ton of
| consular and embassy employees around the world that rely
| on USGS data. It's just an accident that it's also
| exporting the work product of the US government overseas.
| yujzgzc wrote:
| Is this DOGE's doing?
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Yes.
|
| It is happening contemporaneously with all the other
| bullshittery so I think it is a reasonable conclusion
| that DoGE personnel directed by someone likely unelected
| and so far unaccountable are the parties responsible.
|
| I'm not sure why someone would intentionally destroy the
| utility of a site that has been extremely useful, not
| only for Americans but for people anywhere who needed to
| understand earthquakes and their local historical
| seismicity.
| kennyloginz wrote:
| Probably broke when changing the Gulf of Mexico name.
| jacobolus wrote:
| I believe they deleted all of the map layers because they
| couldn't figure out how to write "Gulf of America" on them
| instead of "Gulf of Mexico".
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| That's what you get when you only have a handful of complete
| juniors reporting directly to a capricious CEO. There needs
| to be adults in the room.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| This is so clearly not the case of an underexperienced team
| trying to accomplish something complicated and failing at
| it. The goal is to dismantle the government and that's
| exactly what they're doing.
|
| There is no problem from their point of view, they are
| succeeding from their perspective, and musk's, and trump's
| and every other anti-america neo nazi shitlicker who got
| them there.
| caycep wrote:
| I see recent changes being made, are the prior timestamps
| available for archiving?
| skywhopper wrote:
| If you've checked out the git repo, you can go back to any
| point in the history and build that revision.
| ivewonyoung wrote:
| Are they just running shell scripts off the public web for
| deploying federal gov sites that are targeted by nation states?
|
| From the docker file: curl -o-
| https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.3/install.sh
| ethbr1 wrote:
| A vein pops out in my forehead every time I see a shell
| script echoed from the internet into a prompt.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| It's much better when it's done importing javascript
| snippets ...
| muglug wrote:
| On top of that, Musk said he "deleted"[1] 18F, which built out
| the IRS direct file system (online tax filing is an area where
| the US lags far behind other countries).
|
| This is a moral crusade carried out under the auspices of a
| tech overhaul of government operations.
|
| [1] https://archive.is/3vdPN
| wrs wrote:
| What's moral about it?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| The mistake is to assume our concept of morality is shared
| by the oligarchs.
| brianwawok wrote:
| The possible moral argument, is the government is funding a
| service that costs businesses revenue.
|
| However it would be pretty insane to argue that a citizen
| of a country should need to pay money for someone to fill
| out a basic tax return to pay taxes...
| Freedom2 wrote:
| I've had someone on this site say to me that it's because
| America embraces the free market, as well as it being the
| only country to have granular enough taxes to require a
| third party to handle it. It's incredibly hard because
| you can point to any other country to show examples of
| good (not perfect) implementations but then American
| exceptionalism takes over and they simply dismiss any
| advice.
| ericrallen wrote:
| It sounds like that particular someone might have had a
| vested interest in maintaining the current (terrible)
| status quo around filing taxes in America.
|
| The rest of us hate it.
| muglug wrote:
| The one thing I've discovered as I've got older is that
| most people don't have some insidious vested interest.
|
| Complex political issues sometimes just come down to "I
| want my side to look good and I want the other side to
| look bad". In a system that treats Silicon Valley
| billionaires very differently to someone selling lumber
| in rural Ohio, sometimes that naked tribalism is the only
| thing that truly unites people in political parties.
|
| Some people hate the IRS self-filing system because it
| _works_ , and because the "other side" is taking credit
| for it.
| strathmeyer wrote:
| Morals are a collection of ethics. Their ethics are that
| people who aren't billionaires are parasites, and that rape
| and overthrowing the country and murdering politics are
| acceptable, it's what everyone voted for. The guy in charge
| of the military has white nationalist tattoos and an
| unelected foreigner gave white power salutes behind the
| presidential seal, get used to it.
| taco_emoji wrote:
| "Moral" can mean "of or relating to morality", not
| necessarily "exhibiting goodness".
| yongjik wrote:
| American conservatives view governments as inherently evil:
| if the government can make it more convenient for people to
| pay tax, people might be willing to pay more tax (or at
| least object less to tax), allowing the government to spend
| more money, and since the government is inherently evil, it
| allows for more evil.
|
| On the other hand, creating an office whose sole objective
| is to destroy other functioning parts of the government and
| make it less useful to people? Totally moral.
|
| Don't ask me, I'm not a conservative.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| You're arguing in the right direction, but you have the
| wrong basis.
|
| American Conservatives don't believe the government is
| evil, they believe that not having control over the
| government is evil. The slash and burning of agencies and
| departments isn't just due to a deep seated hatred, it's
| a need for control. And in order to have control you need
| consolidation.
|
| American Conservatives have no problems with state
| governments vastly overreaching their authority or
| punishing cities. They have no issue with potentially
| taxing workers more to issue tax breaks for corporations.
| And they have no issue using the government to punish,
| stalk or harass dissidents.
| Sloowms wrote:
| This is just rich people taking money. There is no deeper
| meaning, there is no crusade or moral framework.
| Dig1t wrote:
| What is the evidence for this? Like literally any evidence
| at all?
|
| The stated goal is to reduce debt and corruption.
|
| Look at some of the programs that have had their funding
| cut like these:
|
| - $3.9 million for "LGBT causes" in the western Balkans
|
| -- $5.5 million for LGBT activism in Uganda
|
| -- $6 million for advancing LGBT issues in "priority
| countries around the world"
|
| -- $6.3 million for men who have sex with men in South
| Africa
|
| -- $8.3 million for "USAID Education: Equity and Inclusion
|
| Try making an argument for why taxpayer dollars should be
| spent on things like this instead of unsubstantiated claims
| of theft.
|
| The incentives don't even make sense, these people have
| hundreds of billions of dollars already, they do not have
| an incentive to try to get rich from government because
| they are already rich.
|
| You'll also notice that the people complaining the loudest
| are the people who have actually gotten rich from their
| position in government like Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth
| Warren.
| wilg wrote:
| Sounds like an anti-gay crusade to me!
| mlazos wrote:
| Like sure I'm not familiar with the value of these
| programs, but you get that these programs are literal
| pennies compared to the government's budget right? It's
| not even worth talking about these. DOGE cuts aren't
| going to add up to shit and you bet we're going to hear
| "mission accomplished" in six months, meanwhile Russia
| and China and are going to grab global influence in the
| absence of USAID and we won't experience the
| repercussions for years after these clowns have left
| office.
| ks2048 wrote:
| I've learned about the USDS in the past on hackernews and was
| always impressed. If someone wanted to really make a "DOGE" in
| good-faith (i.e. improve efficiency of government instead of
| just destroying everything), I think it would look like
| expanding the power and scope of things like USDS.
| xd1936 wrote:
| There's always a relevant XKCD.
|
| https://xkcd.com/932/
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| Classical snake oil sales
| gvx wrote:
| Everyone knows investing in cybersecurity is just wasteful
| spending!
| linuxhansl wrote:
| Is that really a surprise to anyone. DOGE is theater, a stage
| show.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| They are doing tremendous damage for something that is supposed
| to be a stage show. Among everything they've done over the past
| three weeks, HUD is being gutted as we speak and the company a
| friend works at lost $100 million in contracts practically
| overnight.
| linuxhansl wrote:
| I agree. My apologies. I didn't mean to diminish the damage
| they are doing.
| buzzert wrote:
| $100 million to do what?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| HUD is Housing and urban development. So probably something
| to do with building low income housing and other kinds of
| city planning.
|
| I saw low income becsuse 100m is pennies for housing.
| You'll probably get a few neighborhoods if it's brand new
| housing.
| anjel wrote:
| Its an inverse Robin Hood attack. Take from the poor to give
| to the rich. The middle class is about to get moved from
| business class to coach. https://www.rawstory.com/gop-
| budget-2671154997/
| NewJazz wrote:
| YOU HAVE COMMITTED AN ACTUAL CRIME
| mikepurvis wrote:
| The real damage that has already been done is almost certainly
| incalculable. As just a very small taste:
|
| https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/02/doge-as-a-nat...
| dehrmann wrote:
| The real question is when does something break that causes
| near-universal outrage. Unless something breaks in the near-
| term that most people care about, nothing will change.
| mmusson wrote:
| And if it causes near-universal outrage, what then?
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Near universal outrage is arguably part of what saved the
| ACA in 2017, though obviously infighting and incompetence
| by the GOP leadership was big piece as well-- then again,
| outraged constituents jamming phone lines helps stoke
| those fires, particularly when it's card-carrying party
| members who are saying "yeah we'll vote GOP again next
| time, but not for you; fix this or you're getting
| primaried."
|
| The real trick is that the outrage has to be enough to
| break through the right wing media smokescreen that's
| currently gaslighting half the country with "yeah well
| everything is about to get more expensive, but you
| actually want this, it's patriotic to be excited about
| higher household prices because it's all in service of
| making America great again, whatever that now means!"
|
| And critically, it's not just Fox/OAN/Newsmax that are
| the problem, it's also the army of thousands of
| podcasters and influencers who repeat these talking
| points. Many of Joe Rogan's 11M listeners likely trust
| what he tells them considerably more than they trust what
| a talking head on cable says.
| superfrank wrote:
| DOGE is a complete farce, but I think there's an important to
| not just write this off as a stage show and the people buying
| into it as idiots. There are a lot of people who feel that
| government isn't working for them and so when they see things
| like "8 million dollars spent on condoms for Palestinians"
| they're already primed to get angry about it. Musk/DOGE's
| actions may all be for spectacle, but he's tapping into some
| very real emotions that he wouldn't be able to tap into if
| people felt the government was working for them. DOGE is a
| symptom of a larger problem. Even if Musk and DOGE are
| completely discredited, if we don't figure out a way to make it
| so the average citizen feels like they're getting their money's
| worth from the government, it's just a matter of time until
| someone else steps in to exploit that feeling for their own
| gain.
| carpo wrote:
| "... it's just a matter of time until someone else steps in
| to exploit that feeling for their own gain." Someone just did
| ...
| code_runner wrote:
| > even if DOGE and musk are discredited.
|
| The idea being that if common sense prevails and folks
| realize what a shit show/farce this DOGE thing is.... the
| underlying issues that allowed DOGE to exist in the first
| place will be unsolved.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Exactly. That's one thing that disappointed me about the
| US Democratic party after the first Trump election -- a
| complete lack of curiosity into _why_ people voted for
| him.
|
| Maybe people were voting for him because they were dumb?
| Or they were lied to?
|
| But neither of those change the importance of
| understanding what those people _wanted_.
|
| You can't win elections without understanding what most
| people actually want.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| My hot take is, social media alongside with TikTok showed
| the world to some people who usually wouldn't venture out
| of their small bubbles. Eventually they see significant
| positive things about other countries, and a lot of
| negative about theirs. This subconsciously brings up "we
| have it worse for sure!" emotions in some people, that
| later translated into whatever it is right now when some
| people started targeting and exploiting these feelings.
|
| I have no source, no data, nor examples to defend my
| point, it's just the vibes.
| gman83 wrote:
| Re: this report that USAID was sending condoms to Gaza, that
| was actually in Gaza, Mozambique (which has one of the
| world's highest rates of HIV/AIDS), not Palestine. Maybe they
| knew, maybe not. Anyway, I know many people who have been
| parroting that stat, so it was effective propaganda.
| joshstrange wrote:
| This is straight from Elon's playbook at Twitter. Cherry-
| pick some things that sounds bad, find a few real bad
| things, mix those all together and pretend they are equal,
| then dribble that out to people while feigning
| outrage/shock.
| settsu wrote:
| And remove any suggestion that there was forethought.
| It's pure, unfettered trolling. He's _desperate_ for
| attention from _anyone_.
|
| Fascinating--if unfortunate--to see the world's 2 most
| powerful men basically functioning as walking test cases
| for classic outcomes when a child is not given
| appropriate attention/affection and also zero boundaries
| for socially-appropriate behavior.
| squigz wrote:
| Anyone on "the other side" (problems with that framing aside
| for now) who doesn't understand and accept this is only
| serving to make the problem worse. This is the result of
| people's disillusionment with government from both sides of
| the aisle reaching a boiling point. Anyone could have seen it
| coming, and anyone who wants to fix it needs to understand
| where the other side is coming from, and not just paint them
| as evil stupid idiots.
|
| Compromise. It's essential to peaceful co-existence of a
| group of humans of any size. At some point along the line,
| America seems to have lost that quality.
| 2358452 wrote:
| I think not only compromise, but more importantly
| communication. Like it or not, the other half of the
| country is also part of the country, and you cannot claim
| to be in support of the public without covering half of the
| public. The first line should be consensus, and when
| consensus isn't possible a carefully balanced compromise
| should be attempted.
|
| If the left or the right disagree on even language and core
| cultural issues, they both need to find ways to communicate
| and evolve that allows for a peaceful coexistence. The
| notion the other party is a stupid or evil adversary
| incapable of enlightenment is poisonous, it forbids
| communication. Even if your adversary is indeed stupid
| and/or evil, it is far better to talk to them and if not
| change their mind, explain yourself in a language they
| understand (that includes a language they don't find
| outrageous or absurd!), leaving open the door to seeing
| your point of view. Even if they want to destroy you, it is
| a much better strategy to show you're not all that bad than
| escalating or just giving up. Of course, there are always
| voices that profit from discord, and human nature is
| perhaps attracted to antagonism. But we shouldn't let that
| go out of control, for the benefit of everyone.
|
| If we're wrong about something, it's to our profit to learn
| from an adversary. This is the main lesson I think we
| should be taking -- even if being wrong is painful or
| sometimes isolating. Also logically, don't isolate those
| who think a little differently from your cultural
| heterodoxy, for the case they might have good reasons you
| just don't understand yet.
|
| I think the old customs of being, and of course appearing,
| respectful were in part norms created for this. By behaving
| respectfully you're showing a willingness to learn and be
| wrong. By shouting, offending and imposing your opinion
| you're demonstrating you might be closed to other
| possibilities even if they are wrong, sometimes for very
| misguided reasons like ego, pride, or power. It's clearly
| then particularly important to act respectfully with those
| who are your adversaries or with whom you disagree (since
| perhaps you'll be more inclined to hear those who you
| already mostly agree with).
|
| In summary: communication, compromise and respect.
| alxjrvs wrote:
| It would be a lot easier if they weren't so god-dammned
| stupid and plausibly evil.
|
| I do not feel the need to compromise with "White Power" or
| "We need to find a way to safely inject bleach".
| squigz wrote:
| That isn't what I'm suggesting, and the fact you jump to
| that conclusion is precisely what I'm referring to...
| jjulius wrote:
| > ... it's just a matter of time until someone else steps in
| to exploit that feeling for their own gain.
|
| This is quite literally what is happening.
| uticus wrote:
| This strikes a chord with me, perhaps because I'm one of the
| people who "feel that government isn't working for them."
|
| - government spending has been rampant and completely
| disconnected from available funds
|
| - "shutdown" threats, typically a sign that a red line is
| being crossed, has been treated as political currency
|
| - funds going from taxpayer (individual and corporations) to
| government, to be redistributed for an ever-increasing list
| of grants, programs, and studies
|
| - locked-in mega spending areas of the budget showing plenty
| of warning signs of unsustainability, with nothing being done
| to address
|
| Even if DOGE is "all for spectacle," I'm having trouble
| finding the downsides of DOGE's actions for generations
| coming after us. But maybe someone could help me understand
| why they feel differently?
| lm28469 wrote:
| I feel like what's happening right now is a double leg
| amputation while all you had to do was to treat the
| gangrenous toe. Or two parents discussing one's infidelity
| in front of their 7 years old kid.
|
| Like sure it'll get you somewhere, but what will you
| break/lose in the process? And what will you gain?
|
| It's not "all for show", I don't think Americans understand
| how they're unraveling decades of soft power, eroding the
| trust they were already losing on the international stage,
| &c.
| staunton wrote:
| It's not just spectacle. It's destroying government
| agencies with decades of institutional knowledge on how to
| run the richest and most powerful country in the world.
| None of us even know most of what these interconnected
| institutions do, a lot of which does affect our lives in a
| very real way.
|
| Sure, a lot of these agencies are doing wasteful things and
| there is a lot of room for improvement. Meanwhile, it's a
| slow and humongous beast that's very difficult to reform.
|
| However, thinking that these institutions have no value is
| a great mistake. So is thinking that a few teenagers can
| improve things by firing people and dissolving agencies in
| the course of a few weeks. Needless to say, there is no
| historical precedent for something like this working.
|
| You can take the position that it will just get a lot worse
| before it gets better: "destroy everything and build it
| from scratch". It's often tempting but almost never a good
| idea, even for software will projects. On the level of a
| government, this idea is actually insane and I have no
| doubt that people will find out why, unless they stop
| breaking things.
| ModernMech wrote:
| The way DOGE is shutting down things is
| extraconstitutional. They are essentially saying they have
| the power to shut down Congressionally appointed agencies,
| which is explicitly against the Constitution. They are
| creating a situation where in future generations, whatever
| power comes in can change everything, creating immense
| instability. Congress is supposed to pass laws, and the
| Executive is supposed to implement them. They can't choose
| not to implement them, because it would allow them to
| declare a valid law null and void. This is known as
| "impoundment" and it was explicitly made illegal by
| Congress after Nixon, but the Constitution spells out why
| the idea is so absurd -- it's not a power the President
| has.
|
| So what are the downsides of DOGE's actions? They are fully
| upending the Constitutional order of checks and balances. I
| personally thought it was an okay system, but really it
| seems like enough people are willing to ignore it, that the
| Constitution is effectively suspended.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| it may be a stage show, but it has real consequences. A huge
| number of NIH grants awards have not gone out. Already, I am
| facing a 15% shortfall in my budget from a grant that was all
| set to be awarded. This is not tenable kind of behavior form a
| major institution, and DOGE dog and pony show disgusts me.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| The numbers they claim to save are like trying to turn your
| household budget around by cutting out a weekly latte.
|
| If you really want to make big financial changes, you need a
| lot more income, or cut serious costs - like a car payment or
| downsize your house. In the case of DOGE, I haven't seen them
| touch DoD or any of the massive medical programs, etc.
| ben_w wrote:
| If they do cut $2T, there will be a huge recession --
| worldwide impact, but potentially has EU and China (and
| India?) all trading more with each other than at present, so
| plausibly results in China having a larger nominal GDP after
| the dust settles.
|
| I kinda expect the senators to prevent it, but we will see.
| Pxtl wrote:
| It took _twelve hours_ to get one of the vandalized pages taken
| down.
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/pxtl.ca/post/3li5vddrkw227
| internetter wrote:
| Only the most viral ones:
| https://bsky.app/profile/boehs.org/post/3li5m3cekec2s
|
| They still have not successfully purged the database, though
| the endpoint has been secured.
| taytus wrote:
| It seems Elon's DOGE boys aren't as tech-savvy as he made them
| out to be
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Pretty par for the course for so called "10x Developers".
| tgv wrote:
| Perhaps they were hired because they were "14x" developers.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Amazing, that's what I'm going to refer to them as from now
| on
| malfist wrote:
| That's what happens when you believe the l337 hacker hype the
| script kiddie tells you about themselves.
| jpcom wrote:
| It's just an information page about the cuts that have been made,
| 404 could have reported this to the admins first but needed the
| clicks...
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Nah, this is an important story about how incompetent the
| developers are who have taken it upon themselves to dismantle
| the US federal government.
| jpcom wrote:
| It's just an information page about spending cuts, everyone
| in the thread is overreacting and embellishing.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| It's not an overreaction. It's a demonstration of how
| incompetent and lackadaisical the developers are that have
| been given totally free reign over government systems and
| data. If anything this thread is underreacting.
|
| DOGE is an autocratic power grab, and there's immense risk
| of damage, whether intentionally or through incompetence.
| jpcom wrote:
| Computer Fraud and Abuse Act makes altering a government
| database, even if left openly exposed, illegal.
| jasondigitized wrote:
| The same dudes who stood up this page are now writing COBOL to
| determine what cuts to make. Sounds like a great outcome.
| thewanderer1983 wrote:
| https://balajis.com/p/americas-175-trillion-problem
|
| Might have something to do with all this.
| SXX wrote:
| > 8) Less sanction efficiency than ever
|
| > So according to the World Bank (not a Russian source!),
| Russia just flipped Japan to become the fourth largest global
| economy in GDP-by-PPP:
|
| After reading this line you can easily identify that author is
| either propagandist or moron.
|
| This is how Russia "increased GDP": 1 - Paid to
| restore tons of USSR weaponry garbage to just burn it
| yesterday. 2 - Funded building of new weaponry that will
| be burned today. 3 - Moved 5-10% of population to
| "military economy" building some military crap that have no
| other use other than get burned tomorrow. 4 - Took
| 300,000 random people out of real economy via forced
| mobilization and thrown them on frontlines. 5 - Hired
| 500,000+ poor or destitute people who had annual salary of
| $3600. Hired them for $2000 / month and paid them out $40,000
| sign up bonus to go die on frontlines. 6 - Killed at
| least 100,000 of them and paid out $50,000 for each dead body
| to a family. 7 - Made like another 200,000+ of cripples
| that wont be able to work like until they die. So more
| spending.
|
| And in process doubled mass of local currency in economy from
| 2022 from 65 trillion rubles to 117 trillions.
|
| Economy is booming!
| zombiwoof wrote:
| It's all bluffing and posturing and smoke and mirrors
|
| Is that really how Elon became the President :)
| xyst wrote:
| Wonder if the pitchforks will come out this year or the next?
|
| So many programs and jobs have been gutted so the orange man and
| his kleptocracy cabinet can get their $4.5T in tax cuts for the
| ultra wealthy [1]
|
| I'm not impacted but this shit is really tiring. It's painful to
| see American public be so ignorant and buy into the neoclassical
| economic lies.
|
| [1] https://apnews.com/article/house-republicans-budget-
| blueprin...
| jpcom wrote:
| Unauthorized access or modification of any government website,
| even if it is left openly accessible, is illegal under laws such
| as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) in the U.S.
| boredatoms wrote:
| Thats lucky, only the US is able to access the internet
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Hack the planet.
| taco_emoji wrote:
| well then, good thing they're gutting the law enforcement
| agencies
| ldoughty wrote:
| The DOGE website currently does not have an acceptable use
| policy.
|
| Modification of the site is as unauthorized as access to the
| site -- undefined.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Trump/Elon fascism/heroism (depending on your point of view)
| aside, one thing that concerns me is how quickly is it possible
| to decide that 1000 employees at a place like the Department of
| Energy, including 300 at the National Nuclear Security
| Administration, can be dismissed without any impact on the
| effectiveness of these agencies.
|
| Even if you do believe that these agencies are bloated with
| workers who are doing "unnecessary" work, which is possible, it
| seems very unprudent to make cuts so quickly. And who is
| qualified to make these decisions? Elon? Some Tesla or SpaceX
| engineer who wrote some code and put up a website? Come on. WTF
| do they know about how all these agencies operate and the
| downstream effects? You think they're taking the time to really
| think it through?
|
| Now it's possible that prior to taking office, Trump had people
| with deep understanding of government operations go through
| everything, and really think things through, and prepare a list
| of jobs that could be cut without any impact, but if that is the
| case, it's never been said. Given who Trump has around him to
| lead these agencies (McMahon for Dept of Ed? An Oil and Gas
| Lobbyist for BLM? Really?) that doesn't seem likely.
|
| Move fast and break things works fine for a start-up, and might
| even be fine for more cultural type stuff ("DEI"), but Dept of
| Energy?
|
| It's like firing two-thirds of your sysadmins because "well, we
| haven't had any issues with our servers lately, and no breaches,
| so those people must not be needed".
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| I have been waiting 30 years for this to happen so I am excited
| while remaining optimistic.
|
| If the systems and Nation is as fragile we have bigger problems
| than the Chaos Monkey unleashed at the Federal level.
|
| Do people think Nuclear reactors will go unmanaged or Prisoners
| will go unfed? I suppose it is possible and time will tell.
|
| We were lied to by the Government. The new administration may
| be lying as well. I think we will all learn a lot.
|
| Considering the powers that be attempted to remove the current
| President through kinetic means I would imagine he is going to
| move as fast as possible.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| I wonder if Trump ordered all the F22s to be flown into the
| ground, the aircraft carriers to be run aground, would anyone do
| anything? What about blowing up all the government buildings?
|
| How does Musk get to destroy millions of dollars of investment?
| These are all government assets. What the fuck is going on here?
| foxglacier wrote:
| Musk has said that he like Xavier Milei's way of "deleting"
| government departments without too much investigation of their
| importance because if they're important, you can always put them
| back. He's probably taking a similar approach with DOGE. Some
| researchers and aid organizations lose their funding today but if
| they really are important and not just grift, they or their
| successors will probably get it back later. This isn't like
| social welfare where people might starve if their regular payment
| is stopped. Nobody's going to starve if research funding is cut.
| Researchers might have to get another job but that's an expected
| and normal part of life, especially for academics.
| JackYoustra wrote:
| Well, except for everyone on USAID food, NIH funded trials, god
| I can go on. Just because you don't know precisely what you're
| cutting doesn't mean it's not important.
| klipt wrote:
| You can't just turn people off and on again like computers and
| expect them to carry on as before.
|
| You cut funding for cancer trials people are already enrolled
| in, people die.
|
| You cut funding for HIV drugs, patients' viral loads go up.
| Even if you put the funding back before they die, their viruses
| have already evolved resistance to the drugs they used to be
| on.
|
| You cut military aid to US allies, those countries learn the US
| isn't a reliable ally. Soft power centuries in the making
| evaporates, just like that.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| Well, they did claim they were transparent. Transparently
| juvenile. Befits the plan.
| aqueueaqueue wrote:
| I am wondering if it would have been more of an effect to instead
| of this add some DEI trolling ... April 1st level of foolery so
| people think it is real and then get Twitter riled up on it.
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