Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 839 posts

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#151

Post by guelo »

cycomanic wrote: post #138
somenameforme wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "federal budget" is something people often mention, but it's quite misleading. At least in terms of what we think of. The reason is that the overwhelming majority of the budget is spent automatically - pensions, medicare, social security, and all of these expenses are unavoidable and in a mandatory expenses category. The remainder of the budget, including military, is considered discretionary. That discretionary…

It's important to note though that the goal is not to reduce debt. The goal is to cut taxes (largely for the rich). I mean if debt was an issue why vote for the guy who has increased the national debt by the most in history and whose spending plans were going to increase the debt by almost twice of his opponent? https://www.investopedia.com/democrats-vs-republicans-who-ha...

Also to cut regulations, aka the police for corporations and the rich.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#152

Post by krapp »

franczesko wrote: post #20
NewJazz wrote: post #9

Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it's true! — but when you're a…

Cringe. How on earth this guy was elected again?

Price of eggs went up ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#153

Post by suzzer99 »

tossandthrow wrote: post #60
PaulRobinson wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is, it’s not backfired - the example you cited “worked”, because it rapidly identified key personnel without weeks or months of subjective analysis and political posturing by workers and their supervisors. I think in federal government the risks are much higher, and Musk is being an idiot by exposing the America public to those risks, but the feedback loop for him on these previous experiments has been positi…

It only works because you allow yourself to sorely disrespect human beings, their livelihood and their feeling of safety. A strategy that seems to be hot in the US, but is an utter ethical abomination and shameful.

Before the election, Vivek or Elon or one of the galaxy-brains floated the idea of firing every other employee in the federal government based on the last digit of their social security number.

The cruelty is the point.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#154

Post by TeMPOraL »

jimnotgym wrote: post #123
TeMPOraL wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter lost 84% of its revenue. How much of that is because of politics? Already at the point of takeover, Musk was so hated by half the US for various reasons that it became profitable for major publishing platforms to abandon Twitter/X "on principle". When you're in that situation, nothing on the object-level can help you - neither good management nor technical competence. Revenue depends indirectly on the publi…

Is it politics that people don't want to do business with shitty people? I'd call that being human. If I owned a bill board space, and set everything around it on fire, wouldn't you think it was my fault that advertisers didn't want to pay to use it any more?

No, but then burning everything around the billboard doesn't necessarily make you a shitty person, and also opinions of people siding with advertisers aren't somehow the definitive ones.

I mean, why do people who hate what Twitter is now care about it's lost revenue? Especially given what it was, and where the revenue came from, this isn't exactly an argument that generalizes well.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#155

Post by ben_w »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #147
ben_w wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Musk was so politically toxic as to drive an 84% revenue decline, the Republican politicians wouldn't have allowed him to support them or their party.

Why? That entirely depends on political alignment of revenue sources, and I bet that (before the takeover) the balance was heavily on the US left-wing side, as that's also the overall bias in tech industry and social media and news publishing. And all that is amplified by advertisers in general, regardless of political leaning, being very touchy about controversy. I can easily imagine this to alone be responsible for…

> Real world has a different political distribution than the Internet.

5% different, almost everyone is online.

But, thinking about your oft-quoted blog post about advertising bring a cancer, I guess if the top ad spenders cut themselves out entirely, then the bidding system could result in the runner-up bidder finding their ads are now almost arbitrarily cheaper.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#156

Post by michaelscott »

watwut wrote: post #82
michaelscott wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American right has (always?) been anti-government overreach traditionally. I don't actually think Trump or Musk are particularly conservative or right wing (they'll say and do what gets them the support) but on this topic they are actually very much in line with political tradition. I think they're overshooting here and will need to correct, but I get the impression as an outsider that the American people who vot…

American right was always pro government overreach when it comes to cops, military and so on. The are anti government when the government is helping someone they dont like. They are against public schools, public health care, consumer protection, safety rules. Trump or Musk are very much American right as it always was, except without pretension of respectability.

Yeah this is exactly my impression as well

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#157

Post by computerthings »

kelnos wrote: post #149
franczesko wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cringe. How on earth this guy was elected again?

Half the people in the country either a) want to watch everything burn, because the system has served them poorly for too long, or b) are stupid enough to believe that Trump actually wants to help them. Or both. Many (most?) Americans don't seem to have ever learned how to think critically or question what authority figures tell them to believe. On top of that, COVID was rough for lots and lots of people. Even though…

Mind you that not even a quarter of Americans voted for Trump.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#158

Post by everdrive »

bee_rider wrote: post #65
TZubiri wrote: post #19

What's the biggest difference between a startup and a country? Aside from the obvious distinction, Musk has no experience running existing corporations with lots on the line to lose, he comes from move fast break things, great for a social media app, who gives a shit, great for literal moonshots, go big or go home. However when you manage something big, any upside from improving is weighed against its risk of degrada…

Maybe “reactionary” or “accelerationist” is the word you want? Please let’s not popularize the label “progressive right,” our political labels are already a mess in the US but that is just too much.

I don't have a strong opinion here, but I am curious. What don't you like about the term progressive right?

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#159

Post by [deleted] »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #97
PaulRobinson wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is, it’s not backfired - the example you cited “worked”, because it rapidly identified key personnel without weeks or months of subjective analysis and political posturing by workers and their supervisors. I think in federal government the risks are much higher, and Musk is being an idiot by exposing the America public to those risks, but the feedback loop for him on these previous experiments has been positi…

Makes sense. And isn't this the ol' military trick, that in software dev / project management parlance is now called a "scream test"? I.e. if your unit feels like it's doing nothing but endlessly filling out all kinds of reports, and no one knows which ones are important, the solution is to stop submitting any reports at all - and wait until calls and angry letters from higher-ups begin. That will quickly reveal whic…

[deleted]

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#160

Post by ben_w »

mlindner wrote: post #90
XorNot wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, sold Feb 15 2025[1]...right as the CEO took over running the US government and raided the US treasury department. I'm sure this is a completely above board sale that definitely does not represent a legal-if-you-don't-look-at-it way to bribe the de facto head of the US government / the expectation of massive corruption (ala: Tesla's stock price rising on the news Elon Musk was running DOGE - weird right? The C…

If you invent reasons to dismiss what people say then there's nothing anyone can say to convince you otherwise.

There's a gap between "no you can't see the dragon in my garage, he's invisible, intangible, emits no body heat, and has no gravitational field" and "here's some citations to back up my belief".

Are the citations sufficient? Dunno. Just saying this isn't what you call it.

Post reply on HN