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The National Design Studio is a scam
- 3ternalreturn 1y agoabsolutely savage. no notes.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Mallowram 1y ago[dead]
- argomo 1y agoThe swamp overfloweth. How do we cure the intractable corruption of Trump and his administration? Will the nation be worth a fragment of what it was once we do?
- bongodongobob 1y agoSites like these that bury articles like this sure aren't helping. What our administration is doing is beyond just political, it's immoral, dangerous, and plain old fascism. This submission will be flagged within the hour.
- 3ternalreturn 1y agoIt's already been flagged and un-flagged. I'm sure that will keep happening.
- wahnfrieden 1y agoUnflaggers generally cannot win. The flagging kills vote momentum and when it reemerges unflagged, it's already dropped from the front page and from the new list, its only chances for revival.
- hackyhacky 1y ago1. It's flagged not because it isn't true, but because that's not what HN is for. 2. Increasing the visibility of articles like this anywhere, but especially on HN, is unlikely to change anyone's mind. At this point, I don't think anyone is going to change their opinion about the current administration no matter what. 3. There are more effective ways to mobilize voters. Edit: typo
- ares623 1y agoWhat is happening in the US now has happened in other developing countries in the past. The US will be paying for this for decades. For reference, in the Philippines, the effects of the Marcos regime still resonate some 50+ years later, and the changes imposed by it (and the corruption as a consequence of it) have solidified and have become normalized up to the present day. There is no going back.
- ValveFan6969 1y ago>Will the nation be worth a fragment of what it was America was worth something during Biden's days?
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoOne of the things about the Apple Store, is that folks want what it sells. Because of that, they put up with it. Personally, I find the Apple Store to be a pain in the ass. The online version makes me a clickaholic, and the IRL version is very confusing. Government sites are very different. I have no opinion on the new position. I don’t know the guy, and don’t use AirBnb. I just find that the insistence on making govt sites “like the Apple Store” to be weird. In a local mall, we have an Apple Store on one end, and a Microsoft Store on the other. Aesthetically, they are quite similar. But the Apple Store is always packed, and the Microsoft Store is always empty. [UPDATED TO ADD] As was pointed out, this was reflective of a long time ago. Microsoft closed all their stores a few years ago.
- fakedang 1y ago> But the Apple Store is always packed, and the Microsoft Store is always empty. Perhaps because more people associate Microsoft with software and Apple with hardware? Also there are way more stores selling Windows-based hardware equipment compared to Apple stores.
- bongodongobob 1y agoWhy would I ever go to a Microsoft store? To buy a Windows CD?
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoIt looks like I’m dreaming of a glorious past, but they seemed to sell XBox stuff.
- wnc3141 1y agofor a while they were making a play to be in the devices market.
- tanseydavid 1y ago> Why would I ever go to a Microsoft store? To buy a Windows CD? To get into the back of the line leading into the Apple Store which is ALWAYS packed.
- munchler 1y agoProofreading nit: "soundbyte" should be "soundbite".
- wolfcola 1y agohero
- infl8ed 1y agoIMHO UK currently holds the gold standard for this https://design-system.service.gov.uk/ https://design-system.service.gov.uk/ Most/many government services use the standard design architecture and, although it is not perfect, it is several orders of magnitude better than I've seen elsewhere.
- mikeyouse 1y agoAs mentioned in the piece - the designers at 18F were explicitly following the UKs lead here and were attempting to do just that before being DOGE’d in favor of some political hacks with no understanding or appreciation of the task at hand.
- infl8ed 1y agoThanks! Guilty as charged of not fully reading through the piece before commenting :)
- mcosta 1y agoWas 18F working?
- malcolmgreaves 1y agoYes
- mikeyouse 1y agoAside from all the actual success stories with products they rolled out, they'd built comprehensive guides for software procurement that were making every part of the government more efficient -- and then the ~arsonists~ experts at DOGE came through and deleted all of that work because some 'move fast and break things' toadies decided they didn't want to spend so much time on planning and they'd rather just build baby build. https://web.archive.org/web/20250201222157/https://18f.gsa.gov/guides/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250201222157/https://18f.gsa.g...
- havaloc 1y ago"AirBnB’s present dominance isn’t the product of real innovation. He and his friends stumbled upon an idea after listing their apartment on Craigslist for under-the-table sublease during a popular conference." Does the author wish he thought of it first?
- delaugust 1y agoenvy isn't necessary for legitimate critique you know
- Pedro_Ribeiro 1y agoThis barely qualifies as a critique; it's a hit piece with no constructive criticism and some anti-capitalist rhetoric thrown in. > The National Design Studio is a clear case of nepotism, and they're greatly overpromising. Dismantling 18F was a massive mistake. There, I just said the same thing but cut out the personal attacks and the ridiculous take that Airbnb was somehow built by thieves (does anything actually believe this?). I'm surprised this article has stayed up this long. Have the mods read it? It's low signal-to-noise ratio.
- jjani 1y ago> Dismantling 18F was a massive mistake. Mistake to me implies unintended consequences that differ from the original goal. I've never heard anyone say "Opening Auschwitz was a massive mistake", as its consequences were exactly as intended. In the same way, dismantling 18F is not a mistake.
- goldforever 1y ago[dead]
- staplers 1y agoThis is important: the very first act of creation was an act of piracy. It usually is, as with Spotify, any AI platform, Uber. While you're under the radar, do the illegal shady stuff to bootstrap, then scale, then regulatory capture (fight piracy).
- erulabs 1y agoIf you even remotely agree that Airbnb is a simply a clone of Craigslist, I think it’s perfectly sane to absolutely disregard every other opinion you have on running an organization. Absurd thing to imply, and especially absurd that it’s being digested at all on HN.
- 3ternalreturn 1y agothe author didn't write anything like that
- anon7000 1y agoDirect quote from article: > They realized money could be made, and built a website to let other people do the same thing, through them, not Craig[slist]. This is important: the very first act of creation was an act of piracy. What AirBnB does today is no different
- quantified 1y agoDoesn't commit to it being a clone.
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoRelated: America by Design Fail https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45032186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45032186
- enobrev 1y ago> They realized money could be made, and built a website to let other people do the same thing, through them, not [Craigslist]. This is important: the very first act of creation was an act of piracy. Unless Craigslist owned the building they lived in, this is a ridiculous assertion.
- wahnfrieden 1y agoIt's poorly written but you've misread the intended meaning. It says that they learned from illicit transactions on Craigslist. And then wanted to replicate that on their own platform. They've edited a correction: > They realized money could be made, and built a website to let other people do the same thing, through them, not Craig. Good on them, but renting a space is regulated differently than selling a used couch for many good reasons. What you could once attribute to the same quaint naivety of setting up a lemonade stand, you can no longer. The people who funded them knew better, and eventually, so did they.
- enobrev 1y agoEven so, "piracy" is rather hyperbolic. The correction definitely clarifies the point.
- titanomachy 1y ago> President Trump’s appointment of AirBnB co-founder Joe Gebbia as “Chief Design Officer” of the United States is a sickening travesty Can we reserve words like “sickening” and “travesty” for things a little more serious than this? A war crime is a “sickening travesty”. This is, at worst, a pointless waste of resources.
- riehwvfbk 1y agoWhen politicians of certain stripes wanted to spend money on renaming SF schools to atone for "past trauma" and canceling math because it's "not equitable" - that somehow wasn't a travesty. Spending some money on design is apparently the most evil thing imaginable though. Thankfully the tiger moms of SF stood up for their kids and got the grifters kicked out. Let's stand up to lowbrow idiotic articles like this one too.
- goldforever 1y ago[dead]
- monster_truck 1y agoNone of their sites are 508/WCAG compliant, that's how you know things are getting bad.
- saubeidl 1y agoPutin-style capture of government institutions by autocrat-aligned oligarchs.