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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> In the span of just weeks, the US government has experienced what may be the most consequential security breach in its history
Which is a ridiculous level of hyperbole and just factually not even close to accurate. Solarwinds, the 2014 OPM breach, snowden leaks, chelsea manning leaks, the DNC email leak, moonlight maze - there's a massive list of real, consequential security incidents that are nowhere nearly as bad as Elon and whatever his dumb team are doing.
The key words being "may be." The fact is that a bunch of kids working for an essentially unofficial department of the government were given root access to all sorts of systems with no oversight. We simply have no idea how deep the damage goes.
You seem to have a different definition of hyperbole to most people. I think everyone here understands the security implications of physical access to a server, the protocols that are usually put in place surrounding that and the reasons for them being there. The servers gave been compromised. We know that. To downplay the dangers of that surely makes someone guilty of the kind of misrepresentation that you're concerned about
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.
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."
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.
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.
This is Bruce Schneier, talking about the event in the most technical, calm and even handed manner around.
I have been looking for such a post since last week!
And this is hacker news, the exact site that is absolutely about this. We haven't even gotten to the part where people see the actual code that has been slung around here.
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."
The Obama initiative did not override security protocols though (what the article describes). It was basically installing modern IT management for the government.
The question is not whether it is good to have such a digital strike team.
The questions include: is the strike team in question being transparent, is it violating any laws, is it protecting data in the way the law requires, is the team composed of people who have been vetted at a level corresponding to the access they've been granted, are any of them potentially compromised or plausibly so, does anyone on the team have conflicts of interest, is there oversight and auditability of their actions?
The reason, I think, these are good questions is simply that these are things we should demand of our public servants, regardless of political affiliation.
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.
There's also multiple existing federal agencies that aggregate data across multiple federal agencies (OBM oversees federal data collecting 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.
It all started with Alan Turing, and let's not forget to put some blame on Charles Babbage and even Ada Lovelace who started it all. After all, anything deflecting blame from the beloved tech leader and his beloved leader is more than welcome.
See, they said the FRAMEWORK was created by Obama.
In these cases, just jump to the end, and if possible go a step further. The Dems couldn't be corrupt efficiently! They created this framework, and didn't use it to drain the swamp?? See, the dems are always wrong.
(Underlying any such point is an emotional fear, that the country was brought to the bring by liberals and democrats. This is what is actually triggering the nation wide fight or flight response. Address this)
This is like inventing a knife and using it to to more efficiently cut off hide and cook meals. Then later some other dude comes along and says "oh hey, I can kill people with this!" Who's to blame?
(Things are really dire when I need to make a 2nd amendment appeal as a metaphor for a government system).
These discussions are not about logic or facts. They are about emotions and content.
Most people are arguing from conclusions.
I won’t go into why “the dems are wrong” is a conclusion, or why it’s so common - it’s just got that feel of being right.
But by jumping to the end, there’s a chance to break the endless cycle of arguments online. Or at least have some fun with it.
When you jump to the end, the current argument is the same as the conclusion, creating cognitive dissonance, and often forcing the brain to actually engage to understand what’s going on.
In your example - you are saying that the dems were good. They didn’t use the knife to kill.
This only leads to more argument. Consensus depends on the other side agreeing that not killing people is good.
Which they can’t, because - see point 1. Arguing from conclusions.
So they will be forced to take more complex positions, carve out exceptions and generally create frustration.
well, I'm a democrat but I never cared much for "hurting people's feelings" on the internet when I'm simply posting comparisons and links. I purposely try to involve as little of the user into my arguments as possible: I'm attacking their argument, not them.
I'm ultimately to others, a piece of text on the internet with a semi-anonymous handle. There is very little I can do to cheer people up. It is a magnitude harder to make people happy on the internet than making people mad. I'm already at a disadvantadge by not having a face attached to my words.
>it’s just got that feel of being right.
Likewise, I don't stop at "it feels right" when I scrutinize myself. I introspect and say "why do I feel good/bad from this" and I've overtime gotten good at elaboring on my feelings. Sometimes I even defuse myself when I realize my feelings aren't rational. I don't like riling myself up over trivial issues. Not when theres so many non-trivial issues in my life to deal with.
>In your example - you are saying that the dems were good. They didn’t use the knife to kill.
I never explicitly said the dems were good. But yes, the assumption from many people are "making food and clothes is good. This is a good tool". But the knife is a tool and a tool is as good as its weilder. Whether it was effective is a much ore subjective argument.
>This only leads to more argument. Consensus depends on the other side agreeing that not killing people is good.
Well those are not people I engage in discussion with. I know these topics are polarized but I still am trying to maintain the ethos of HN in exploring curiosity. People who simply want to preach is not someone to see curiosity from. Likewise, a closed mind with their conclusion set is not someone who's ready to discuss.
It seems to be decreasing as of late. But I "discussed" on Reddit for years and year, and even on 4chan. It's like a gold rush, but reading those few times where you actually convince someone, you get convinced of a point, or you simply have an insightful comment chime in does give me hope in discussions like this.
Is it to argue for your own benefit? If so then this makes sense.
If it is to convince the other person, then what matters is understanding them and how to get to them.
>It seems to be decreasing as of late.
You seem like a person who aims to be thoughtful. I will speak from my own actions - I anticipated and called this escalation out, probably a decade ago by now.
I am not very smart. If this is obvious to me, it should be obvious to any other thinking person, perhaps after moving some assumptions around.
This is how I work to continue to communicate and uphold my principles, in an environment that is changing.
If something ceases to work, and to repeat the behavior, is .. well its many things, but lets call it frustrating.
So I ask again - what is the point? You end with the goal of convincing someone.
I won't urge you to use my techniques, or my crack brained approach.
But is it fair to point out to you - that something is rotten in the state of Denmark, that people are increasingly immunized to our typical attempts at reason?
If you agree so, and if you also believe in the spirit of inquiry, the search for truth and the pursuit of progress (lots of "ifs"), then would it be a stretch to say new tools, approaches are needed?
(Side note - I read tons of stuff on misinformation, indoctrination, and communities. So I am not exactly completely flying high without a tether)
And Trump has signed an executive order making all their actions secret, which is suspicious for a president who campaigned for transparent government that wouldn't need Freedom of Information requests, and for a department which is supposed to be uncovering and revealing things: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/us/politics/trump-musk-do...
In short, I don't believe it. (That's not to say 'I believe there is no corruption' or even 'I believe there is little corruption'. It is to say 'I believe an employee sends Musk an email saying they found $10M spent on <whatever> and Musk gives it three seconds of attention then declares it is fraud and announces that on Twitter').
The problem is not The Privacy but the consequences of non-vetted, inexperienced kids allowed to access systems and processes that are vital to the nation.
Kids that because of the lack of vetting could be susceptible to approaches by enemies—private or state actors—for the knowledge and access they now hold.
Have you personally looked into the claims made by Leavitt during her briefings? It doesn't take much digging to see that they are much more nuanced than we are being led to believe.
For there to be fraud that means they are bringing charges and the court will decide if it is fraud. Fraud has a very specific meaning. If it is waste then it's in the eye of the beholder thus nuanced. I doubt Elon and his script kiddies would even know how to find actual fraud.
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)
>Readout of President Donald J. Trump’s Meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan
> Statement from the National Security Advisor [This is about Russia]
>Presidential Message on Super Bowl LIX
> United States-Japan Joint Leaders’ Statement
>Statement from the Press Secretary on January’s Jobs Reports
>Readout of President Donald J. Trump’s Call with President el-Sisi of Egypt
So yeah, where are all these briefings of corruption? It's only been 3 weeks, so I didn't take long to exahaust all the briefings. None of them talked about DOGE
Pretending this is some goo-goo (good government) initiative is ridiculous. Trump is the opposite of good government movement, he is literally the most corrupt president we've ever had. His administation is full of lies and attacks on the press and lack of transparency even when it is legally mandated.
"Totally unrelatedly" he has spoken out against the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which such actions likely violate.
Claiming this will save money is also ridiculous, its just about destroying large parts of the government. Some of which they dislike, other parts which they don't care about. Because they don't care about making things better.
