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Urgh, this is nasty: curl -i 'https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook' HTTP/2 302 content-length: 0 location: https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/spotlig
by simonw 9mo ago
Urgh, this is nasty:
curl -i 'https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook'
HTTP/2 302
content-length: 0
location: https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/spotlighting-the-world-factbook-as-we-bid-a-fond-farewell/
They didn't even have the decency to give it a 410 or 404 error.
Same for all of the country pages - they redirect back to the same story: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/morocco/ https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/morocco/
The thing was released into the public domain! No reason at all to take it down - they could have left the last published version up with a giant banner at the top saying it's no longer maintained.
- CamperBob2 9mo ago[flagged]
- sylos 9mo ago[flagged]
- slg 9mo agoI'd be surprised if there was a single American who had the CIA Factbook as the deciding factor in determining their vote. It being shutdown is more evidence of how broken the American political system is rather than an indication of the will of the people.
- cucumber3732842 9mo agoI think it's a pretty strong condemnation of the CIA that they can't find something more important to flamboyantly kill though. https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/03/13/budget-politics https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/03/13/budget-pol... (you can stop reading after the first couple paragraphs, it goes into federal budget politics circa 2013)
- simonw 9mo agoRight, World Factbook single issue voters probably don't exist. That aside, something that frustrates me about US politics is that I rarely see any evidence of consideration given to taxpayers who want value for their money as opposed to having their taxes cut. I pay taxes here. I like it when those taxes spent on wildly ROI-positive initiatives like the World Factbook. The Trump lot appear to be killing off a huge range of useful things that I like getting in exchange for the taxes I pay.
- oldmanhorton 9mo agoSure, but this is based on a fundamental trust in governments ability to spend money effectively. The ineffective spending has been in the news way more than the effective spending, so some people take this to mean all of the spending is ineffective. I don’t know how to square this skepticism of government against very vocal “patriotism” coming from the trump camp, but humans can contain multitudes, I guess?
- brightball 9mo agoIt's a simple question of economics and observation. In a free marketplace, when a product, service or company is no longer useful...it dies. This creates a natural incentive to constantly improve, operate more efficiently or expand into new areas where it can create value. With government spending, this doesn't happen because there's no incentive for it to happen. Programs are created and then they grow, perpetually, forever. My goodness, I still remember Bill Clinton proudly showing a balanced budget. I remember George Bush Jr running with one of his biggest campaign points around fixing Social Security. How we got from that era of energy for fiscal responsibility to $39 trillion in debt is...maddening.
- trumpisafaggot 9mo ago[flagged]