if you don't want to open twitter, here is xcancel link which i should have put as the og link https://xcancel.com/SollenbergerRC/status/189560929481046439...

finally, a nitter replacement

It's just a copy of nitter on a different domain.

I hadn't seen one since X took over

it does look like nitter but I thought it was dead after twitter changed the api after musk took over?

The first thing I wondered is why you'd post this information on Twitter of all places, to be honest.

because they have followers there and it won't get taken down? Sometimes you have to make a deal with the devil

Or just setup Redirector* to automatically redirect you to xcancel (and old.reddit.com, and away from whatever other hostile websites there are these days...)

* https://github.com/einaregilsson/Redirector

HN’s policy is that one should submit the original link, hence providing a more accessible but not original link as a comment is the correct thing to do.

I may be wrong, but I feel that the gist of posting the direct source is to avoid websites reporting a news regarding that source.

Such as, amd announcing new graphics card and a blog making a post about it. And it is understandable that it would be better to post amd own's page.

I would be curious about dang opinion on posting non og link that only contain the og source repackaged in a more accessible way

It’s also to automatically deduplicate submissions of the same source.

And HN does for example block archive.is for submissions, to which your argument wouldn’t apply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37130177

You can email hn@ycombinator.com to ask about the policy.

Oh ok, it is quite useful for disambiguation. I get that

Sounds like a conflict of interest.

Build in public!

That is chatgpt generated code too.

There’s a good chance the reason this is public is because he was using gist to transfer ChatGPT code between his personal computer and his government computer.

A bit more on Jordan Wick: https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/doge-agent-jordan-wick/

I'm a bit on the edge regarding to why someone on DOGE should collect data on critical infrastructure, even if it's available to the public audience for free.

I'm also quite worried by the possibility to filter federal workers based on the union status

I'm also quite worried by the possibility to filter federal workers based on the union status

Well, from a purely day-to-day, operational HR standpoint, that information is important. Like many things, in the wrong hands it’s easily abused.

A nothingburger. Not common to see such blatant misinfo high on HN. I do have higher expectations on this and people here instead of people jumping on a hatewagon :/

Community note on the post:

The geospatial data the reporter claims is "sensitive data" is not actually sensitive data. It is open source data. The source files in the DOGE employee's GitHub repository point to an open source site accessible by anyone.

https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0038118/Glo...

Sadly his github is now private and the archived pages are mostly previews, not full repos.

Just search for forks: https://github.com/PatrickFanella/x-dm-downloader for example. We will probably have a short while (day or two) before false DMCA notices about this are actioned by GitHub

What makes them false DMCA claims?

I don’t see a license on the repo.

This tells me all I need to know:

    # Read the CSV file
    df = pd.read_csv(csv_file)

Thanks for the explanatory comment Jordan /s

You can even tell that's ChatGPT rather than, say, Claude. Redundant obvious comments are a stylistic signature of their models.

I make comments like this all the time because I write code for people to read, not robots. Well-commented code allows you to skim very quickly, and gives a sanity check, allowing others to ensure a line or block of code does what it is expected to do.

That's not well-commented code, that's just noise. When you are calling a function named "read_csv()", you do not need to add a comment that says "Read the CSV file". These sorts of comments make code harder for humans to read.

The hill that I will die on is that if you need to comment what your code is doing, your code is either a) bad and should be rewritten to be clearer, or b) the result of tricky, clever optimization that you needed to do after profiling.

Comments should tell readers why you're doing something, when it's not obvious based on the code itself.

I agree that there should be "why" comments. Those are great to have in any codebase. However, that does not preclude descriptive comments.

Obviously, the best way to make code self-documenting is to wrap logic in a method whose name clearly describes its intended function. For one-liners however this can lead to overabstraction, and leaving a "what" comment can be entirely appropriate if the engineer decides it is. This cult-like behavior of engineers who think that well-commented code is some sign of weakness or unprofessionalism is beyond silly.

Absolutisms are a sign of a bad engineer, but I can give you the benefit of the doubt and not assume you're a bad engineer just because you employ such absolutist statements and use erroneously use them to judge code by oversimplified metrics instead of relying on deeper analysis.

Every word of the comment is in the code except "the". That level of redundancy is always bad. Yes, always.

"Absolutisms are a sign of a bad engineer"

Oh the tasty irony.

This is a bad comment. It adds nothing to clarify anything, since the function in the line below is "read_csv." This would be a textbook example of a comment that is not useful to improve legibility by humans and it demonstrates a lack of expertise among the people who are currently dismantling our government.

I'm sorry, but a code comment does not demonstrate lack of expertise, although such a perspective certainly brings your own expertise into question. Perhaps we should all assume a little less?

I think it does, objectively. In a pull request, I’d comment: “You imported pandas with an abbreviation. You economize the variable name `df` instead of dataframe. Those anticipate a reader who already knows when to chose the read_csv method.”

If you are in charge of reviewing someone's pull request and ensuring they adhere to specified company guidelines, you can do whatever your organization wants. Outside of that though, you lack the authority to tell programmers how many comments are too much. I too know how to write self-documenting code, but that doesn't mean your code should have no comments or shouldn't be liberally commented.

GP mentions that this is a textbook unnecessary comment and I would beware any textbook and professed expert that disagrees.

Whether a LLM coding model demonstrates understanding of unnecessary comments might be interesting, as would any differentiation in quality if my prompt asked for more or fewer lines of comments.

You'd get the spirit roasted out of you at any FAANG (at least, back when people gave a shit) if you ever sent out a change review with such a dumbass comment.

This is not a case of "code for people to read". If you want that, maybe try literate programming[0]. I prefer in the case where the code is blindingly fucking obvious for there not to be an extra comment above it that adds no value whatsoever. I much prefer for comments to be about the theory of the code rather than to explain in a worse way what I can already clearly see simply by reading the code. In other words I much prefer comments about, say, why some particular data structure was chosen, over comments that only say shit like "create a new linked list".

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming

How about we don't tell other people how to code? It's one thing to make suggestions, it's another to make demands. I've been doing this for a long time and I can code laps around most people. I also like well-commented code that allows me to quickly skim code and check it for correctness.

You can have your preferences all you want and that's great, but when you start passing irrational judgement about the value of someone's code just because it's liberally commented, your perspective becomes less respectable.

How about we don't tell other people how to code? It's one thing to make suggestions, it's another to make demands. I've been doing this for a long time and I can code laps around most people. I also like well-commented code that allows me to quickly skim code and check it for correctness.

I'm sorry, that was not intended to be received as a demand, I edited my comment to hopefully clarify.

You can have your preferences all you want and that's great, but when you start passing irrational judgement about the value of someone's code just because it's liberally commented, your perspective becomes less respectable.

I didn't say anything about the value of your or anyone's code other than that obvious comments don't add any to me. (I do tend to find it funny when a comment manages to obviously contradict the code that it's about, but here that's not the case.) My point was more that comments are more useful to me when they're non-obvious. See, again, the data structure example.

I appreciate the edit and I do think we could have an enjoyable and fruitful conversation about this. Normally I would, but I have a lot going on today. I do appreciate your willingness to have a productive conversation about this topic and I apologize if I let my frustration toward some of the other commenters in this thread affect how I engaged with you specifically :)

// This is my reply:

No. You have "well-commented code" completely backwards. This is not it.

// This is the end of my reply.

Generating boring one off analysis scripts is the best use case for AI code writing, so can’t fault them for doing so. For serious projects I found LLMs—even cutting edge Claude Sonnet 3.7 in agent mode—just can’t generate a large amount of code with the level of consistency and quality I expect and fixing such code is barely faster than writing it myself with AI autocomplete. But little scripts that I throw away after a single use? What used to take fifteen minutes or longer now takes thirty seconds.

A bit tangent, and since I’m an outsider who doesn’t live in the states and have no skin in the game — my understanding is, they will do literally anything to make sure DOGE succeeds, because a failure is basically unacceptable. I can’t even imagine how you can backtrack this, and fix stuff up. They obviously prepared for it months in advance. Targeting ex-employees of successful product companies and putting them in charge (especially the ones with a lot of money, but a bit lost because they want can’t find meaning in life) is also kinda funny.

That being said, if it doesn’t succeed, they will start doing the usual — pretending that it was successful. And that’s when the team-sports based politics come into play. If you’re so deep into supporting one side that you can’t objectively see failures, the narrative pushers will keep winning. It applies to both sides, by the way. But burden of proof lies on the government in power.

Good luck to you, guys!

Succeed at what?

For example, they canceled invasive species control programs for the Great Lakes. Is it a success that they saved a modest amount of money, while letting the condition of the lakes further erode?

Didn’t they cancel some cancer treatment research projects?

I am sure the Head of the health department — one that doesn’t consider measles a problem — has given his stamp of approval for that, after all, he has a whole 0 years in all tangentially related fields combined!

Didn’t they cancel some cancer treatment research projects?

“Cancel” suggest more decision-making than appears to have happened, at least in the research projects I am aware of—a number had to be canceled by those running them because the unprecedented blanket payment pause notionally to evaluate programs existing programs made it impossible for them to continue operating.

No. They actually cancelled it.

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/doge-cuts-911-related-c...

Whatever they promised and people voted for by believing in those promises. People wanted a strong man, and they basically got it. I understand markets can be irrational blah blah, but still surprised how people with money aren’t shipping it away or storing it somewhere more safe looking at the current situation.

I would frame that as being motivated to satisfy their base, vs being motivated to succeed.

Success usually has a positive connotation, and they don't seem to be doing a particularly good job if you take the "reduce the size of the government" goal at face value (they are making messes everywhere they go, with the government shrinking slower than normal attrition...).

Their bases in this context is also one or two men, not voters.

They also wanted people who wouldn't spend money on "stupid programs", which is basically anything there isn't an immediately obvious reason for. A lot of work that government programs do is data-gathering and preparation for other, more obviously helpful programs. But these clowns don't seem to understand that, at all.

They also don't seem to understand that a lot of work isn't profit-oriented (which is the only thing the Trump administration believes in). Some programs exist because they were a benefit at the time (and yes, those need review) and may still be of use, but they always were intended to be a service for everyone, even if some people didn't use. them.

No one seems to understand the concept of government service. It's government business or nothing.

Some have said that the folks running DOGE follow an Anarcho-capitalist philosophy. According to Wikipedia, that philosophy "seeks to abolish centralized states in favor of stateless societies with systems of private property enforced by private agencies." If so, I don't think they care if it's a "good" program or a "bad" program, they just want to reduce the size of government. Some might say, they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but their goal might be to throw out the baby, bathwater and the tub.

Afghanistan has that. Instead of landlords, they have warlords, just a different term for the same thing. Why is anybody interested in repeating that thing?

I've been told that billionaires think differently than the rest of us, but I still can't fathom why someone would want to be the king of a shit hole when they could be richer as a regular citizen of a liberal democracy. Why do they hate our success?

Is life really that much better for billionaires of today than kings of last millennium?

Sure you can acquire a private fleet of jets and cars now. But given that you rarely if-ever drive them it's no different than a fleet of rare animals.

Sure you can play video games and watch sports on TV but is that really much better than watching sports from a private suite?

I will conceded that their life expectancy has basically doubled but I don't think there's anything you can do as a king to fix that. If you don't hoard all the wealth it's not like life expectancy immediately doubles. A rising tide raises all ships but the tide takes centuries to do that lifting.

In fact things are worse for them today. In Versai it was the norm for the king to take a dump in a bucket in front of the whole court. Today's billionaires have to pay people to watch them do it and have to keep it hush hush.

I would suggest you read “Anatomy of the State” by Murray Rothbard. I don’t want to sound rude but your comment is what people say when they haven’t read anything about it.

I used to make similar arguments like was at the top of your comment until I actually read some literature around it.

Which state is it about? Can't I just read history, and the news?

The argument I could see is that even the least king has certain privileges that no tycoon in a democratic state offers. The obvious example I could see is just the concept of legal immunity. There's no need to deluge your critics with lawyers when the courts will simply refuse to take up objections to His Majesty. It would also presumably make an excellent "flag of convenience" for your other wealth assets- create a legal framework to formally avoid taxes and liability.

Of course, I always assumed it would be cheaper to buy a regime change in some small nation of limited economic import than to wrangle a nuclear superpower, so what do I know.

If I woke up with Elon Musk's pocketbook, given I spent way too much of my childhood playing SimCity and Civilization, I'd want to experiment with some ideas on statecraft myself. Mine run to more "WWII-style ration books as a UBI distribution medium", "we're banning cars and building so much rail that people will regularly have their arms amputated by sticking them out their apartment window and hitting a passing train" and "ripping the Berne Convention to shreds and wiping with it on livestream", but clearly YMMV.

That system only works so long as you are prepared to be completely self-reliant, which is fine for a largely agrarian society. But at some point, technological complexity requires continued reliance on outside groups or you don't progress or even maintain.

Consider a scenario - the US falls into some weird anarcho-libertarian dystopia. This works fine for a while, but no one is making new computers or new cars or new anything and the only way to get these things is to open negotiations with outside groups. But what do you offer them? The currency is worthless because it used to be backed by a central government but it isn't now. If you don't have something that is valued by the outside group, you have nothing to bargain with. And if you don't have superior force of arms, they don't have to accept it anyway. And even if you do, you absolutely cannot trust them.

Modern government is built on trust. It has value because, even if it is somewhat corrupt, or even totally corrupt, it keeps society functioning in a way that provides value to everyone, even if it is unevenly distributed. By reducing that uneven distribution, we increase the overall value to everyone both inside and outside the system. It's literally the definition of win-win.

If the government system has some value, then its currency has value, regardless. The US dollar is valued because it is backed by the word of the US government. Other countries have lesser value because, while their word might be good, they aren't as trusted or don't have the might that the US government has at its command.

Trump and Musk and the people they're working with don't get that. They only see win-lose. They don't understand that their value is in trust and that they are rapidly pissing away that trust.

We are unimaginably fucked.

Maybe I'm preaching to the choir, and badly at that, and I apologize for that. I'm sitting down here, so far from being able to do anything effective, and it's so unbelievably frustrating.

Billionaires are transnational; they can live wherever they want. The only thing tying them to a particular country is that country's restrictions on their capital flows. They don't really care if it's a liberal democracy or not, they just want the lowest taxes and free movement of capital. If an area becomes undesirable to live in, they'll move somewhere else.

The DOGE members are tech bros who are into classic Randian libertarianism,small government that only protects money and property, and all other "public services" would be provided by private markets. They want to make government look weak and impotent so that people like Musk, Bezos, the Waltons, etc can provide those services at a premium or "fuck you". it's a downward spiral that concentrates wealth in the hands of the wealthy and creates a permanent class of serfs and slaves. Until they figure out that won't work here when the masses have had enough and communism starts looking pretty good when you and your children and freezing and starving and you have a basement full of guns and ammo that you can't eat.

Succeed at what?

Dismantling government. Look up the "network state":

* https://thenetworkstate.com/preamble

All of these men see themselves as the heroes or protagonists in their own sci-fi saga. And a key part of being a “technological superman” — or ubermensch, as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would say — is that you’re above the law. Common-sense morality doesn’t apply to you because you’re a superior being on a superior mission. Thiel, it should be noted, is a big Nietzsche fan, though his is an extremely selective reading of the philosopher’s work.

The ubermensch ideology helps explain the broligarchs’ disturbing gender politics. “The ‘bro’ part of broligarch is not incidental to this — it’s built on this idea that not only are these guys superior, they are superior because they’re guys,” Harrington said.

[…]

The so-called network state is “a fancy name for tech authoritarianism,” journalist Gil Duran, who has spent the past year reporting on these building projects, told me. “The idea is to build power over the long term by controlling money, politics, technology, and land.”

* https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/395646/trump-inauguration...

Also:

* "Why big tech turned right": https://www.vox.com/politics/397525/trump-big-tech-musk-bezo...

* "The crypto bros who dream of crowdfunding a new country": https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyl171lyewo

Have you ever read cyberpunk, especially William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy (starting with Neuromancer) where corporations are the government? Basically that.

Yep, here's a pretty good summary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no

Indeed I believe that the current administration's end-goal is the collapse of the US as we know it. Thiel and other billionaires need the collapse to create their own cyberpunk states inside current US territory. The remaining territory will be probably taken by Project 2025 guys, who want to rule it as a Christian theocracy / far-right utopia.

Another possibility is that the uber-rich techbros can see that, if we keep heading the way we're going, the whole thing comes crashing down. We've been speedrunning a far-left utopia for quite a while now, and it's not going well. Whether it's some kind of currency collapse, internal civil war, or something else, this is a death slide towards something bad.

Assuming that's the explanation, then radical change isn't surprising. How radical can be argued, but turning the rudder on the ship of state can't be.

speedrunning a far-left utopia

What the fuck are you talking about? We don’t even have socialized medicine in this country.

Source?

The only news I’ve heard is that they fired 12 of 85 staffers and prohibited hiring seasonal workers, which was then rescinded a few days later.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/03/federal-firings-coul...

Not to attack you personally, but I’ve noticed there is a lot of hyperbole here based on dramatic headlines, extrapolation based on feeling rather than facts, so important but difficult to stay informed.

Where's the hyperbole you're complaining about?

The comment you're responding to says "...while letting the condition of the lakes further erode", which the article you linked to supports.

...extrapolation based on feeling rather than facts...

12 of 85 is a fact. It's basic logic to estimate the effect of this.

The administrator in the best position to understand the impact of this has provided an analysis: "Cutting back the control program by one-sixth would allow over one million lamprey to survive, McClinchey estimated. Those lampreys would eat nearly 5 million pounds of fish, equalling $105 million in lost economic output and potential, far outstripping the cost of the workers’ salaries."

What's your basis for dismissing this as feelings? It appears irrational.

Saying something involved hyperbole means you think part of the claim was exaggerated, not that you think the entire affair was invented from the ground up.

E.g. if your coworker comes into work and says "Wow, you guys wouldn't believe it - I was passed by this maniac doing at least 140 mph on the way in to work today. What a crazy speeder!" then you see on the news the police arrested the driver for driving up to 95 mph. You might say "140 mph sounds like hyperbole, it looks like it was significantly less". If they respond "what's the hyperbole, you don't think he was speeding? You're irrational!" you might be a bit confused as, leaving the unnecessary bit at the end aside, the hyperbole was the clear and excessive exaggeration of the rate of speed, not an implication the individual was driving safely this morning.

In the above the hyperbole was "they canceled invasive species control programs for the Great Lakes". Well no, they are risking it being ineffective and causing great harm due to a personnel cut somewhere on the order of 15%-20%. The exaggeration here is the amount it was cut. At no point was it claimed the exaggeration was there could be some level of a negative impact as a result.

Hardly "a lot of hyperbole", especially since the following sentence clarifies (you might understand that it's specifically quoted for a reason).

To me it doesn't seem worthwhile to respond from the perspective of misinterpreting a comment, especially when being pedantic. One would hope the same level of precision could be applied to the writing as to the reading?

my understanding is, they will do literally anything to make sure DOGE succeeds, because a failure is basically unacceptable

They have shown over and over that they are after a good story, not good results. They’re going for shock factor and they’re pumping out propaganda at an alarming rate.

We’ve seen so many hyperbolic claims of rampant fraud with zero evidence. At the same time, they’ve had to remove the biggest wins from their public DOGE leaderboard because they were found to be incorrect (some might say fraudulent claims).

One of their biggest wins was discovered to be an error because someone put it into the DOGE leaderboard as billions instead of millions. On off-by-1000 error in one of their top claims to success is no small matter. Numerous other claims have been shown to account for entire contract amounts, even though they only cancelled the remaining balance of the contract.

They don’t care about facts. They care about what they can convince enough people to believe without getting caught.

Numerous other claims have been shown to account for entire contract amounts, even though they only cancelled the remaining balance of the contract.

They are building this live and it's been a month as a side quest. They have fixed those issues that you have said, and have been updating the website, fixing different pricing, etc. etc. every single day.

They have not been preparing for months... that's not how system integration works... They post literally daily about their savings.

https://doge.gov/

I’m not sure how to put it in the nicest way possible without offending anyone, but — your government is the only one in the 2nd/1st world country that is doing in a way where it hurts average person for no reason. Hypothesis among people that I talk to in real life is that American government is jealous of China and knows they can’t have the same power and abilities as they due. This is just a side effect of them freaking out and realizing that they are, in fact, the laughing stock of the entire world.

There’s this idea, I have no idea from where, that entire world depends on the states, and without US everyone would literally starve to death. But it’s just really not the case. Sure, everyone would suffer, but any sane country has already worked out contingency plans, and is preparing for it while blatantly pretending to bend the knee.

I think there’s a deep cultural issue that you guys need to face and fix. In my opinion, most of it comes from the lack of education. However, you’re actively making sure that people are less educated and blur our the moral lines to have small wins that will be insignificant in the longer term.

I’m saying this as a person who has deep personal connections to people living in the states. Those people belong different “factions” of the political spectrum, and it is just incredibly sad to see from the sidelines.

Project 2025 has been an open plan for years and the level of coordination between political elites aligned with the Heritage Foundation and tech industry radicals is obvious on its face.

If the goal was reducing fraud and waste, accurate accounting would be a core principle and this wouldn't happen. They aren't because it's not. Their goal was rapid destruction of the US government apparatus to prevent oversight and accountability that would enable preservation and restoration of constitutional government. Seems like it's working.

To me it "seems like" the CIA is being attacked and its extinction burst through the media it controlled for the last generation is causing a blast of hysteria. Everything published in media organizations that until recently were receiving federal funds should be viewed through that light. They're mainly mad because their gravy train stopped.

I don't like the Yarvinists doing the attacking but the old regime acting like it was a representation of the will of the people at this point is pretty offensive.

There's a reason people voted against them. It's just a shame that we couldn't have voted for liberal ideals instead of neoreactionary ones.

If we get very lucky maybe we will wind up with the CIA defanged and without completely sliding into authoritarianism! a person can dream, anyway..

Targeting ex-employees of successful product companies and putting them in charge (especially the ones with a lot of money, but a bit lost because they want can’t find meaning in life)

there was a post a couple of months back on HN from such a person who worked with DOGE for a bit

According to official documentation submitted to the court by the current US Administration, the person running DOGE, was on holiday in Mexico when nominated.

A surprisingly large amount of data one might think is classified is not at all. In this case all the examples listed are from freely available public data outside of the Twitter thing which seems to be just setting up the environment for some local tool. Here are the sites:

---

datacatalog.worldbank.org

opendata.arcgis.com

mrdata.usgs.gov / www.usgs.gov

---

Sharing things like this isn't very useful because it just causes further divides. People who think DOGE is not a big deal will use this to confirm that 'oh no the worst they could dig up is somebody posting publicly accessible data in public!' And those who do think it's a big deal will often just double down on stupid and insist this was leaking secret information, even when they probably know it wasn't. So you end up with people living in two different worlds, but only one of them is real.

Yeah the "sensitive geospatial data" is just open data. He also created the geospatial gists before trump was in office so he definitely didn't have access to critical data then https://web.archive.org/web/20250228230950/https://gist.gith...

The problem is, compiling the list like he has, and being on the DOGE team, makes it all very, very suspicious. And it is sensitive data - even if it is open. Those are important infrastructure locations.

This is nonsense. If infrastructure locations are not classified then every potential malicious actor already knows them.

He is saying the malicious actor is doge itself, if I understood what is being said by the previous comment. Which is the idea behind which I posted the news here on hn

And it is sensitive data - even if it is open.

This is literally contradictory.

Data does not become sensitive because some random on HN says so. You are speaking with authority but have no idea what you are talking about.

As I said in anothercomment, using available data in itself can be seen with suspicion. With freely available data you can build a nuclear reactor (if very capable), or buy fertilizer and build a bomb. Chances are, fbi will knock at your door and ask what you're doing. The same way, an agency gathering lot of public available data regarding sensitive infrastructure can be assumed to misuse the data for shady purposes, given the agency isn't exactly one you can trust

This is such a lame comment. He's looking at publicly available geospatial data, not trying to build a bomb.

He's not looking at, he's gathering

I gather things like this all the time. I'm against DOGE as much as 90% of the US is, but collection of open data for curiosity and interest is really not a thing to focus on.

Point of contention - according to a recent YouGov[1] poll, 48% of respondents think DOGE should be kept or expanded, while only 37% think it should be reduced or eliminated. A far cry from 90% either direction. You may be subject to confirmation bias.

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/doge-support-collapsing-poll-elon-m...

The government has whole departments of people whose job it is to be on top of this sort of thing.

Why is it suddenly part of the job description of a junior DOGE employee to build workforce org chart visualization tools and investigate strategic resource datasets? Isn’t that weird to have one brand new government employee doing self-taught random investigations of topics as complex as ‘government workforce management’ and ‘strategic resource analytics’?

Sharing things like this isn't very useful because it just causes further divides.

I gave up trying to gentle parent other adults a long time ago. Newsrooms themselves have no fear publishing disingenuous and polarizing content.

While this is the lede there are other activities posted. If there were true transparency with nothing to hide Mr. Wick would not have taken the repos private but just ensured that that all avenues of harassment were disabled. More of concern to me is the potential for a focus on the union status - though with just the screenshots it is quite difficult to tell what is really going on.

Useful for Russia. Easy download.

it's public info

Compilations of data can have value. That’s the whole point of the “facts aren’t copyrightable, but databases are” principle.

Yeah, the Russians definitely couldn't have done this themselves... they needed the help of this one guy to compile publicly available data.

Am I on Reddit or HN?

I wish people paid this close attention to federal workers and their agencies all the time.

Most federal workers aren’t openly and flagrantly breaking the law. Given each DOGE bro has violated several laws in the past weeks, it’s prudent to focus attention on them. Not too much. But enough that there is a public record for litigation and prosecution at the state and local level in the future.

Honest question. Which laws?

Works created by U.S. federal government employees as part of their official duties are in the public domain, according to 17 U.S.C. § 105, except for classified or restricted information (but none of what he posted is classified or restricted)

Implying that DOGE bozo is law-compliant while breaking laws and destroying trust is...humor too soon?

Seems like a case of "a broken clock is right twice a day"

humor too soon?

C'mon USA, do something funny.

What laws are being broken?

What laws are being broken?

In this specific case? Unclear. Will wait for the lawsuits.

In the last weeks, the DOGE bros have broken the Privacy Act of 1974 [1] and numerous court orders [2].

[1] https://epic.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/EPIC-v-OPM-25-cv...

[2] https://tax.thomsonreuters.com/news/19-state-ags-file-suit-a...

Given they have to be vetted the same way as any other government employee with that access, including security clearances, I’m not sure these will succeed.

At least to my mind it’s not clear how a government employee can have access but for doge it’s breaking the law. The devil is in the specific details.

they have to be vetted the same way as any other government employee with that access, including security clearances

We know this wasn’t done when they were rummaging around the Treasury. Courts are granting restraining orders because the DOGE bros acted so incompetently. (It’s generally incredibly hard to restrain government employees.)

it’s not clear how a government employee can have access but for doge it’s breaking the law

Same way a park ranger can’t walk onto a military base and start rummaging through documents. Or start tweeting them. (Or hell, the President himself tweet your tax return.)

We know this wasn’t done when they were rummaging around the Treasury.

Sorry, do you have a source for that? Having trouble verifying it.

I agree there are standard vetting and security clearances, and they should be followed.

They were not vetted/bgchecked, full stop, and are not complying with any security controls. Doing my yearly fedgov security trainings while those fucks are yoloing with all classifications of sensitive data is, shall we say, bitterness inducing.

What functional, diplomatic purpose exists for calling him a "bozo"? What problems does this solve? Which tensions does this ease? Which conflicts does this stop? What sensitive government data does this un-leak? Which broken laws does this adjudicate? What usurped power is being brought back under control with this?

Or is it just contributing to a one-way ratchet that only ever increases partisan polarization and hostility for no reason at all, instead of seeking to de-escalate and solve problems?

P.S. this goes for Trump/Musk/DOGE supporters too. Name calling and vindictive personal attacks aren't decreasing the deficit, they're not paying off the debt, they're not reducing weaponization of government against conservatives, they're doing nothing to address border and immigration concerns, and they aren't reducing crime. So I ask you, too, what problems are being solved with vindictive, spiteful namecalling?

How dare we call the vindictive, spiteful, name calling president currently destroying our country names!

weaponization of government against conservatives

The government is clearly being weaponized against anyone who has ever opposed Trump in any way. You are in a reality tunnel.

The OP is not. He’s calling someone working on a project, posting his code to GitHub names.

The correct response in a democratic society to people attacking political enemies as enemies of the state, spreading untruths, attacking the rule of law, and acting like assholes is _to not do these these things_.

I’m really baffled by this take. How are you not understanding the basic fact that these are criminals actively performing a coup to destroy the “democratic society”, not political opponents?

We must be polite to them as they spit in our faces UwU

Actions the GOP is allowing right now have real downsides that inflict real harms on real victims. I am frustrated at them and I wish they would stop, but I recognize that insulting them and calling them names is only going to encourage them to be even less charitable in return.

Actions the left has allowed during past progressive administrations had real downsides that inflict real harms on real victims. I am frustrated at them and I wish they never would've done those things, but I recognize that insulting them and calling them names is only going to encourage them to be even less charitable in return.

It's not about being nice, it's about not deliberately and intentionally making things worse by stoking polarization for no reason other than to dehumanize and ostracize the other side.

This isn't a complicated idea, it's like mutually assured destruction: we're all better off when we all step back for a second from being pissed off and afraid... slow down... think... recognize that we all lose if we all stay on the offensive, so let's dial things down and be more diplomatic instead of intentionally continuing to make tensions and polarization worse.

Both sides have to recognize that both sides do it and both sides are better off if neither does it.

We are not the foolish prisoners in the prisoner's dilemma who are unable to communicate and thus unable to collectively work together to find win-win and avoid lose-lose. But we have to actually humanize and respect eachother in order to facilitate that dialogue, and that starts with not dehumanizing eachother.

What makes you think that problems will be solved by de-escalation?

I think the path to solving problems doesn't start out by deliberately and intentionally trying to derail what otherwise has the potential to be a mutually respectful dialogue.

There's no guarantee a mutually respectful dialogue solves the problem, but it sure doesn't hurt to try that instead of starting out with dehumanizing the other party in a social conflict as the opening move.

It may hurt if the only way to solve problems is to take away power from bad actors. In a democracy, one can only do that by winning voters. In 2025, it turns out that voters respond positively to strongmen who do indeed begin their conversations by derailing, dehumanizing, and attacking their opponents.

So, if you want to win in the court of public opinion, maybe go for the throat in Round 1. Sadly, respectful dialogue is not en vogue.

On one hand, you have a a group that is working very quickly to make irreversible changes (likely in violation of many laws) before the judiciary catches up and enjoins them.

On the other hand you have an internet user calling them a bozo.

De-escalating the conflict and lowering the temperature of discourse, as you suggest, massively favors the group trying to ram through these changes. If we take a deep breath and calmly work it out, it will already be over and nothing can be done.

Elected officials take notice of these urgent issues when there is significant public outcry. Now I'm not saying that one person calling them bozos meaningfully moves the needle, but as a principle if a regular person wants to do their best to stop what is happening, they must use strong language.

How do we know he is a bozo?

Can one request all of the code this dude has written or is it as his discretion what is released to the public domain?

idk try to make a FOIA request

DOGE moving under the presidents executive office instead of as a separate agency seemed to be done for the purpose of shielding DOGE From FOIA and only subject to President Records Act

And Trump's history with that act suggests it'll go to the highest bidder, foreign or domestic

Is it OK to make baseless accusations on Hacker News now? When did that become OK?

Only if you are attacking Trump or anything his administration is doing.

Which is hilarious because they promised DOGE was going to be all about transparency

....and that was a lie.

Also they've been hoovering up cash like it's going out of style. I think at last count DOGE had slurped up $40M and nobody knows where it's gone

If they are an actual federal employee then they will need a 'cooling off' period before they can work in the private sector in an area related to their government work (I don't see that happening).

This depends on their role. That more applies to people involved in contract decisions and execution (the legal/financial parts, not the doing the technical work part). For programmers, they can move back and forth relatively freely, but should go through their agency's legal office to be certain.

Right, well ... the DOGE staffers (which assumes they are actually employed) seem to be primarily focused on contract decisions and execution.

If they are just data analysis and gathering, that's not exactly contract negotiation.

Does that also applied to all of the employees that have been DOGEd? For example, would someone that just got fired from NOAA need a cooling off period before getting hired at AccuWeather? That seems to be the MAGA solution for all of the NOAA employees.

U.S. federal government employees as part of their official duties

“Official duties” is load bearing in this sentence.

If the work is found to have been improperly authorised, this DOGE bro is acting in his personal capacity. That means personal liability for his actions and lawbreaking.

I think it’s pretty hard to show an employee is not acting in an official duty in regards to work material. I don’t think this is a sound legal opinion.

it’s pretty hard to show an employee is not acting in an official duty

Not if they’re violating a court order without executive privilege.

Wick officially works for the USDS and CFPB. If Bessent and Trump haven’t given a clear order to violate the law, his actions cease to be on behalf of the United States but instead enacted in his personal capacity. Similar to a park ranger walking into a military base and trying to run off with some kit.

Interesting theory, lets check back next year.

This is a ridiculous statement. The US Government (or any government) has processes to publish data so that it is well vetted and understood. Some script kiddie isn't allowed to just post things in public on his own.

None of the info listed is classified or secret. This article reeks of disinformation.

We need politics out of here. Maybe make the line between HN and the rest of news a bit more clear.

It turns out that DOGE is USDS rebranded

If you think that's bad, in one of those screenshots, he is using HTML tables.

They're underrated if you're doing reporting.

My comment was tongue in cheek. I'm not a web focused guy and I learned HTML long enough ago that I have no specific moral objection to tables. I used them in a quick personal project a few months ago.

Can someone be more specific about what's potentially illegal on these screenshots?

This is literally nothing - visualizing an org chart using D3 (a JS dataviz library), playing around with open source geospatial datasets, and a Twitter DM downloader for personal use.

Look at the screenshots, not the description by this "politics reporter" who seems to be indulging in evidence-free witch hunts.

evidence free witch-hunts. Hm.

I wonder where else I've seen that recently.

Exactly, these look like baby’s first JavaScript projects. Surprising considering these doge employees are supposed to be genius coder whiz kids, and yet this looks like the work of someone following a tutorial to write their first tweet downloader.

Does being a 'genius coder whiz kid' imply knowledge of every technology? Should one only be allowed to publish code according to your standards? What kind of nonsense is this?

It implies knowing your boss owns X and you shouldn’t need to write a downloader at all, direct DB access is more efficient, they should know this they’ve been doing a lot of it lately.

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Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

These?

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.