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

DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

931–940 of 1001 posts

Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

#931

Post by boppo1 »

mempko wrote: post #832
1970-01-01 wrote: post #625

What should happen, and nobody is talking about this, is the USA is severely downgraded in its overall credit rating due to an unhinged and ongoing "fire, aim, ready" self-audit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_governme...

The deficit hawks don't understand how money works. Everything about DOGE and their mission has a fundamental deep misunderstanding of why governments with their own currency must have deficits. Literal accounting 101. Unfortunately Elon has an economics degree, which means he is completely uneducated in accounting.

>why governments with their own currency must have deficits

I'm not sure I understand this myself. Can you elaborate?

Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

#932

Post by boppo1 »

swat535 wrote: post #587

Setting politics aside for a moment, I find it fascinating that an audit of this scale is taking place within the government. Has there ever been a historical precedent where an external agency thoroughly reviewed all departments, published its findings for the public, and then based decisions on that analysis? Is it really possible to root out governmental fraud using this approach? Fraud and theft exist at every le…

>published its findings for the public

Is doge actually doing this in a meaningful way? What is the website? Thus far I'm only aware of them celebrating partisan victories like chopping funding for trans theater etc.

Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

#933

Post by Rapzid »

swat535 wrote: post #587

Setting politics aside for a moment, I find it fascinating that an audit of this scale is taking place within the government. Has there ever been a historical precedent where an external agency thoroughly reviewed all departments, published its findings for the public, and then based decisions on that analysis? Is it really possible to root out governmental fraud using this approach? Fraud and theft exist at every le…

Instead of firing all the auditors(Inspectors General) I'd bring them in and get their input on how to tackle something of this magnitude. Then see about getting them the resources necessary as I'm assuming they would need to staff up massively with experienced auditors(aka not DOGE) and other resources.

Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

#934

Post by amy214 »

godelski wrote: post #820
FigurativeVoid wrote: post #537

At my first gig, I had "god" level access to our production database. All I learned is that nobody should have this level of access unless it is some sort of temporary break glass situation. It is extremely dangerous and even experienced engineers can cause irreparable data loss or some other bad outcome. In our case, some engineer accidentally sent around 10,000 invoices to customers that shouldn't have gotten them.…

> It is extremely dangerous and even experienced engineers can cause irreparable data loss or some other bad outcome It is literally why we never log in as root. HERE BE DRAGONS I don't know an admin who hasn't, on multiple occasions, unintentionally caused irreparable damage. It is easy to do even with the best of intentions and with extreme levels of care. Any one trying to rush through a dragon's den is only going…

I remember having some kind of C programming bug where output filenames got scrambled (string memory error probably). And output files in the same folder as the source code.

That seems innocuous, but remember then some of the output files might have the character "?" or even "*". So imagine trying to remove these files and going an asterisk too far. All gone!

Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

#935

Post by disqard »

vuln wrote: post #672
_heimdall wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is held together by people willing to follow the rules. In Trump's first administration they realized the trick is to just move so fast that you flood the system and can do whatever you want before anyone sees through all the noise or has a chance to stop you. Steve Bannon was interviewed on camera saying as much.

This is also the MO of startups. Look at AirBnB, Uber, Lyft. All illegal businesses that had enough capital to burn through lawsuits and keep operations going until they were too big to fail and whipped the snot out of city and state legal counsels.

Indeed, VC culture (esp. for the fabled "unicorn" wannabes) is DOGE culture.

It might rarely be admitted openly, but it sometimes is alluded to... e.g. Eric Schmidt's Stanford talk where he said:

"I want to say that if your product becomes popular, you can hire a bunch of lawyers to sort everything out. If no one uses your product, don’t worry -- no one will care that you stole someone else’s content."

Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

#936

Post by [deleted] »

andy_ppp wrote: post #706

If you think this data won’t be used to disenfranchise and target democratic voters and give the GOP perpetual rule, I have a bridge to sell you. “Oh no! Big mistake we cancelled hundreds of thousands of people from voting just before the election! It just happens to be 99.9% Democrats in swing states who all happen to be marked as dead in all government systems!” It will be similar to Cambridge Analytica - with all…

[deleted]

Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

#938

Post by dehrmann »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #824
dehrmann wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> put up with shit like this that doesn't even happen in industry Musk did a trial run with it on Twitter.

And look how badly that worked out

I intentionally didn't weigh in because on one hand, its main functionality is still going strong, and it hasn't had major outages. On the other, its user base has changed, advertisers are avoiding it because of its users, and we don't know what real usage numbers look like.

Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

#939

Post by torpfactory »

imperial_march wrote: post #909
torpfactory wrote: post #469

Hear me out. Elon wants ultimate control over people’s lives and choices. Why he would want this is a psychological question about which we can only speculate. This is a change from (at least in appearance) his previous libertarian leanings. Whatever the case, this is the plan: 1) Acquire god mode access to government systems and citizens information (contacting, grants, spending, taxes, SSI benefits, you name it). 2…

I think what is worse is people literally driven insane by the psyops that bad been running for last few years. Documentation found of US agencies funding psyops to basically crush critical thinking skills and scream what their handlers want them to scream. "Hate the smoke detector, not the fire!" For this situation, that these agencies and their psyops have put you in, you have my greatest sympathy.

What the actual fuck are you talking about. Gonna need some proof that isn’t a 4chan sewer please.
Post reply on HN