7 ms·

Why this isn't front-page news in every Western country is the press' failure to understand technical matters, or perhaps the public's utter disinterest in ungl

by lores 2y ago

Why this isn't front-page news in every Western country is the press' failure to understand technical matters, or perhaps the public's utter disinterest in unglamorous infrastructure. This is the US' own Sulla moment, an incident that will be quoted in future history books as the beginning of the end of the republic.

oropolo 2y ago
Why isn't it front-page news on HN rather than being flagged? Is it just because Musk's "DOGE" is in the title? I think it's pretty significant that a number of agencies have handed root access to people who shouldn't have it and have made changes that could have significant unintended consequences. This is could end up being a case study in why you don't allow unfettered access even when ordered by the incoming regime (be it POTUS or CEO) because there be dragons and the new people don't know where they are yet.
- cbovis 2y ago
  > Why isn't it front-page news on HN rather than being flagged? Is it just because Musk's "DOGE" is in the title? Essentially yes. Certain users are flagging because they don't want any discussion related to DOGE on HN. See for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43036254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43036254.
  - oropolo 2y ago
    LOL... wow! I thought the "national cyberattack" and the root override/hijacking was far more relevant than the connection with the organization which shall not be named which is nominally led by he who shall not be named.
- Namahanna 2y ago
  It's very sad and a stark commentary on the current state of Hacker News that a post by Bruce Schneier on cyber security is still flagged over an hour after it was posted.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    The flagging system has good intentions, but seems like it was designed assuming good faith behavior from users. It does not appear to be resistant to partisan brigading.
    - 93po 2y ago
      I think it's working as intended in terms of HN not being a place for partisan issues and discussion in the vast majority of cases. There's literally an automatic downvoting of submissions where the comment to vote ratio is too high. It's not the type of discussion HN wants or is intended for.
      - intended 2y ago
        This is one of the unspoken assumptions of online communities, that will cease to be true, and lead to the implosion or imposition of rules on HN, which will lead to its fracturing. There is no running away from certain conversations, especially when your information ecosystem is intentionally made partisan. The flavor of american political discourse is architechtured to achieve very clear rhetorical and emotional goals. At best, HN can choose how it wants to handle the schism. For that everyone needs to realize it is coming.
        93po 2y ago
        HN has tackled this just fine for a very long time. I think it will be ok.
        intended 2y ago
        Want to make a predictive bet ?
    - kccoder 2y ago
      > good intentions, but seems like it was designed assuming good faith behavior Are you talking about HN or the constitution and our resultant system of government?
- 93po 2y ago
  There are so, so many posts on HN about this and they're getting flagged, I would guess, because people can see this content on literally any corporate news site or a million different subreddits, and there's not much value to it being on HN specifically, and the conversation around these topics is never interesting or productive. I flag it because for these reasons, and also I'm ridiculously tired of seeing 6 different posts about Trump and Elon every single day.
  - AlecSchueler 2y ago
    How many people on all those subreddits know what root access means, how many journalists havea technical understanding of what is possible with the access given to the DOGE team? How does that compare to the demographic on Hacker News? There are any number of places people can talk about this but the same is true of literally anything that gets discussed here. What value does HN ever add? What's ever the benefit of sharing something here? Personally speaking this is the number one place I want to see these conversations happen because I have a deep respect for the technical understanding of my peers here. It's disturbing that at such an important juncture in history so many people are jumping up to say "go elsewhere, there's nothing of value for you here."
    - 93po 2y ago
      Knowledge about the technical concepts means nothing if we're not getting real, meaningful information about what's actually happening. It's all rampant and unfounded speculation at this point.
      - AlecSchueler 2y ago
        No, common security practice would be to consider your servers compromised if an unvetted outside entity gained physical access to them. If this happened at your workplace you know that you would assume the worst because you would have no other choice. Everybody here understands that and so do you.
  - intended 2y ago
normalaccess 2y ago
I would like to take this moment to point out that Obama created the framework that trump is using. Here is a quote from NPR: "The USDS launched in 2014 by the Obama administration in the aftermath of the botched rollout of HeathCare.gov as an office to boost the digital capabilities of the federal government. It has operated like a digital strike team of sorts, recruiting private sector experts in design and technology to work collaboratively with federal agencies on projects that make public-facing parts of the government more efficient, modern and user-friendly." Link: https://www.npr.org/2025/01/29/nx-s1-5270893/doge-united-states-digital-service-elon-musk-usds-trump-white-house-eop-omb https://www.npr.org/2025/01/29/nx-s1-5270893/doge-united-sta...
- lores 2y ago
  Yep. Sulla didn't come out of nowhere, marching on Rome was only possible because the Senate had been corrupt for a long time, and institutions had already started decaying - but it was the arson that put an end to any hope of restoring the house.
  - mikece 2y ago
    I wish I could up-vote that one 11 times: we don't get enough Sulla references in the world these days!
- dmix 2y ago
  There's also multiple existing federal agencies that aggregate data across multiple federal agencies (OBM oversees federal data collecting https://strategy.data.gov/overview/ https://strategy.data.gov/overview/, GSA also centralizes federal datasets, OPM collects gov wide workforce data, etc). Aggregating gov spending data in a similar way is not a totally alien idea or even a new one... even if the concerns on data security and transparency are valid.
- ano-ther 2y ago
  The Obama initiative did not override security protocols though (what the article describes). It was basically installing modern IT management for the government.
bufferoverflow 2y ago
[flagged]
- cglace 2y ago
  Sources?
  - bufferoverflow 2y ago
    Source of what specifically do you want? If you want the corruption they have found so far, the press secretary is doing daily briefings where she lists some of the insanity they have found. Trump's approval ratings are quite good, while Biden's are tanking as their corruption is uncovered.
    - intended 2y ago
      https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/dona... Unfavorable rating of 48, vs favorable of 46. was this satire or sarcasm?
      - bufferoverflow 2y ago
        [flagged]
        intended 2y ago
        >Trump's approval ratings are quite good, while Biden's are tanking as their corruption is uncovered. That is what you said. I addressed what you said. Trump's popularity is below his unpopularity. For a new sitting president. Biden's data goes only to the 20th, so its not dropping anymore. Since he isn't a president. The data source you may be quoting, seems to have set you up to make a conclusion, but not the argument.
        johnnyanmac 2y ago
        why are we comparing the end of one president's term to the beginning (aka, the honyemon period) of another president. At least compare the first year February 13th, 2021: Unfavorable: 35% Favorable: 53% >Notice how favorability is increasing. Are we reading the same charts? Trump's Peak approval ratinig was 50% and is currently 49%. His nadir was 48.8%. It's a stretch to say it's moving either way. The only real data here is that his diaapproval rating is rising at the same point as Biden's first month (which is interestin, given that Biden came in at the height of COVID and his mandates really riled up red states. Trump has nothing to blame but himself)

by lores 2y ago

oropolo 2y ago

Why isn't it front-page news on HN rather than being flagged? Is it just because Musk's "DOGE" is in the title? I think it's pretty significant that a number of agencies have handed root access to people who shouldn't have it and have made changes that could have significant unintended consequences. This is could end up being a case study in why you don't allow unfettered access even when ordered by the incoming regime (be it POTUS or CEO) because there be dragons and the new people don't know where they are yet.

cbovis 2y ago
> Why isn't it front-page news on HN rather than being flagged? Is it just because Musk's "DOGE" is in the title? Essentially yes. Certain users are flagging because they don't want any discussion related to DOGE on HN. See for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43036254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43036254.
- oropolo 2y ago
  LOL... wow! I thought the "national cyberattack" and the root override/hijacking was far more relevant than the connection with the organization which shall not be named which is nominally led by he who shall not be named.
Namahanna 2y ago
It's very sad and a stark commentary on the current state of Hacker News that a post by Bruce Schneier on cyber security is still flagged over an hour after it was posted.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  The flagging system has good intentions, but seems like it was designed assuming good faith behavior from users. It does not appear to be resistant to partisan brigading.
  - 93po 2y ago
    I think it's working as intended in terms of HN not being a place for partisan issues and discussion in the vast majority of cases. There's literally an automatic downvoting of submissions where the comment to vote ratio is too high. It's not the type of discussion HN wants or is intended for.
    - intended 2y ago
      This is one of the unspoken assumptions of online communities, that will cease to be true, and lead to the implosion or imposition of rules on HN, which will lead to its fracturing. There is no running away from certain conversations, especially when your information ecosystem is intentionally made partisan. The flavor of american political discourse is architechtured to achieve very clear rhetorical and emotional goals. At best, HN can choose how it wants to handle the schism. For that everyone needs to realize it is coming.
      - 93po 2y ago
        HN has tackled this just fine for a very long time. I think it will be ok.
        intended 2y ago
        Want to make a predictive bet ?
  - kccoder 2y ago
    > good intentions, but seems like it was designed assuming good faith behavior Are you talking about HN or the constitution and our resultant system of government?
93po 2y ago
There are so, so many posts on HN about this and they're getting flagged, I would guess, because people can see this content on literally any corporate news site or a million different subreddits, and there's not much value to it being on HN specifically, and the conversation around these topics is never interesting or productive. I flag it because for these reasons, and also I'm ridiculously tired of seeing 6 different posts about Trump and Elon every single day.
- AlecSchueler 2y ago
  How many people on all those subreddits know what root access means, how many journalists havea technical understanding of what is possible with the access given to the DOGE team? How does that compare to the demographic on Hacker News? There are any number of places people can talk about this but the same is true of literally anything that gets discussed here. What value does HN ever add? What's ever the benefit of sharing something here? Personally speaking this is the number one place I want to see these conversations happen because I have a deep respect for the technical understanding of my peers here. It's disturbing that at such an important juncture in history so many people are jumping up to say "go elsewhere, there's nothing of value for you here."
  - 93po 2y ago
    Knowledge about the technical concepts means nothing if we're not getting real, meaningful information about what's actually happening. It's all rampant and unfounded speculation at this point.
    - AlecSchueler 2y ago
      No, common security practice would be to consider your servers compromised if an unvetted outside entity gained physical access to them. If this happened at your workplace you know that you would assume the worst because you would have no other choice. Everybody here understands that and so do you.
- intended 2y ago

normalaccess 2y ago

I would like to take this moment to point out that Obama created the framework that trump is using. Here is a quote from NPR: "The USDS launched in 2014 by the Obama administration in the aftermath of the botched rollout of HeathCare.gov as an office to boost the digital capabilities of the federal government. It has operated like a digital strike team of sorts, recruiting private sector experts in design and technology to work collaboratively with federal agencies on projects that make public-facing parts of the government more efficient, modern and user-friendly." Link: https://www.npr.org/2025/01/29/nx-s1-5270893/doge-united-states-digital-service-elon-musk-usds-trump-white-house-eop-omb https://www.npr.org/2025/01/29/nx-s1-5270893/doge-united-sta...

lores 2y ago
Yep. Sulla didn't come out of nowhere, marching on Rome was only possible because the Senate had been corrupt for a long time, and institutions had already started decaying - but it was the arson that put an end to any hope of restoring the house.
- mikece 2y ago
  I wish I could up-vote that one 11 times: we don't get enough Sulla references in the world these days!
dmix 2y ago
There's also multiple existing federal agencies that aggregate data across multiple federal agencies (OBM oversees federal data collecting https://strategy.data.gov/overview/ https://strategy.data.gov/overview/, GSA also centralizes federal datasets, OPM collects gov wide workforce data, etc). Aggregating gov spending data in a similar way is not a totally alien idea or even a new one... even if the concerns on data security and transparency are valid.
ano-ther 2y ago
The Obama initiative did not override security protocols though (what the article describes). It was basically installing modern IT management for the government.

bufferoverflow 2y ago

[flagged]

cglace 2y ago
Sources?
- bufferoverflow 2y ago
  Source of what specifically do you want? If you want the corruption they have found so far, the press secretary is doing daily briefings where she lists some of the insanity they have found. Trump's approval ratings are quite good, while Biden's are tanking as their corruption is uncovered.
  - intended 2y ago
    https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/dona... Unfavorable rating of 48, vs favorable of 46. was this satire or sarcasm?
    - bufferoverflow 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - intended 2y ago
        >Trump's approval ratings are quite good, while Biden's are tanking as their corruption is uncovered. That is what you said. I addressed what you said. Trump's popularity is below his unpopularity. For a new sitting president. Biden's data goes only to the 20th, so its not dropping anymore. Since he isn't a president. The data source you may be quoting, seems to have set you up to make a conclusion, but not the argument.
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        why are we comparing the end of one president's term to the beginning (aka, the honyemon period) of another president. At least compare the first year February 13th, 2021: Unfavorable: 35% Favorable: 53% >Notice how favorability is increasing. Are we reading the same charts? Trump's Peak approval ratinig was 50% and is currently 49%. His nadir was 48.8%. It's a stretch to say it's moving either way. The only real data here is that his diaapproval rating is rising at the same point as Biden's first month (which is interestin, given that Biden came in at the height of COVID and his mandates really riled up red states. Trump has nothing to blame but himself)