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Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?

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Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?

#231

Post by dragonwriter »

anticensor wrote: post #230
xenadu02 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaming of the procurement system. The websites are all written by big consulting outfits. Not to mention the disaster that is big corporate IT projects combined with government rules. Obama had the Digital Service (that Trump shut down) which paid higher salaries. Those folks were sharp and everything they touched was actually decent. As I noted this is not unique to government. Large corporate projects at the Fortun…

Digital Service didn't shut down, it just temporarily got retasked to DOGE.

It wasn't temporarily retasked, it was reorganized and permanently repurposed and renamed the US DOGE Service, and then within that reorganized service, a subordinate temporary organization was created called the US DOGE Service Temporary Organization that was scheduled to sunset not later than July 4, 2026. (All but 65 of USDS's pre-reorg employees were also fired as part of the reorg, and 21 of those remaining 65 employees did a mass resignation.)

If you visit their website, you will notice that except for historical documents, there is no full name branding at all; mostly only the logo and the occasional "USDS", when prior to the reorg (as can be seen on the Wayback machine) the original full name was prominent.

Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?

#232

Post by IT4MD »

smithkl42 wrote: post #205
PaulHoule wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That e-filing web site for taxes has never worked for my son because he can’t complete the id.me process, it might be as simple as you are an unperson if you use an android phone or maybe because he’s just started in the workforce he does not have a long history of tax filing and credit history to match up with. Two years in a row we’ve been able to fill out a 1040 and the NY state equivalent and make a paper submiss…

The id.me process is absolutely horrific.

I'm not sure the word horrific is up to carrying the weight of just how bad id.me is. Still, a great effort.

Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?

#233

Post by ThrowMeAway1618 »

shazbotter wrote: post #149
giantg2 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how blaming the pre-existing website on the current administration makes sense.

People really really dislike when you point out that the democrats are also broadly anti immigration in practice. They forget Biden deported 4.6 million people vs Trump's 2 million.

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?

#234

Post by mrtksn »

peterfirefly wrote: post #226
mrtksn wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm Danish and we have lots of Turks. They are generally much nicer than the Danes but almost all of them are dunces That's rich coming from someone who doesn't understand what the Schengen visa is about. FYI it's not about settling in Denmark, it's for up to 90 days stays in 180 periods for tourism and business purposes. But hey, the inventors of of the mRNA vaccine are both Turkish immigrants to Germany and there…

There is clearly something wrong with you.

is this how you cope with your aging in front of a computer?

Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?

#235

Post by [deleted] »

qingcharles wrote: post #209
gmueckl wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to deal with the DS-160 multiple times over the year. I don't think you give justice to how bad this website really is. I have started to notice that these "timeouts" are very random. At the worst times, the session "times out" immediately after login. These random logouts happens more frequently during certain times of the day and seems to follow a semi-predictable pattern. It is almost certainly tied to syste…

One thing a developer sat in DC or SV with a 5G iPhone 16 doesn't realize too, is that if you are visiting these web sites with a phone plan that has a tiny monthly data allowance then this bloat can blow out an entire month in one sitting. I worked with people on parole that were given free phones to use for job applications, finding their way around etc, and they would only get 3GB data a month. Some of the sites t…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?

#237

Post by sitkack »

theyinwhy wrote: post #212
lol768 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's being looked at. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1481298

7 year old ticket updated and prioritized because of https://localmess.github.io/

This is how it always is with Firefox, you hit some bug and then find that it was entered YEARS ago, while they burn focus on things like Pocket.

Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?

#238

Post by sitkack »

johncolanduoni wrote: post #184
adithyassekhar wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox doesn't implement either approach -- I assume this is indicative of their lack of development resources. Since ublock had this as a feature for a long time, I'm sure they are aware of it. Unlike other non funded oss projects, Firefox can't and shouldn't shield themselves with this lack of development resource excuse. They have millions.

A trillion dollar company (that loves huge vanity projects) gave up on maintaining a browser because it was too much work and just ship a Chrome fork now. I won’t defend Mozilla’s allocation of their resources, but even if they put it all into the “right” Firefox features the web platform is too complex and too much of a moving target for a company with mere centi-million revenues.

They are also firing as many senior folks as possible. You should revisit what ever argument you are trying to make.

Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?

#239

Post by monkeyelite »

zzzeek wrote: post #220
monkeyelite wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your claim that they found zero people fraudulently collecting social security through a dead relative?

no, this is an entirely bad faith representation of my words as written he most certainly did not understand that the vast majority of what he perceived as "dead people getting benefits" were completely legitimate cases where beneficiaries were receiving those benefits and/or the data was encoded without a real birth/death date since you appear to be of the opinion that Musk was somehow indicating a useful fact of so…

> since you appear to be of the opinion that Musk was somehow indicating a useful fact of some kind,

No but I am glad he took action to fix it.

The Cobol 150 year thing is also incorrect and was widely criticized in tech circles: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/31288/did...

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