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Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

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Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#21
post #5

They built / manage login.gov? Oh boy. It’s one thing if Twitter has bugs. It’s another thing if people have bugs while trying to login or signup to government services. Or hackers finding vulnerabilities and no one to fix them?

I don't think so. Many of those sites are routinely down or inaccessible. Eventually, you have to pick up the phone and wait on hold, hoping you don't get disconnected.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#24
post #3

So Mark Cuban wants to lean into exactly what DOGE is pushing by putting himself in the middle of the Governmental to Private shift? That doesn't surprise me and gives more evidence that Cuban is not dissimilar to Musk, just that he has much better PR.

The fact that this is your conclusion made about Cuban offering this as a gesture to how talented and critical these people are, says more about you than Cuban

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#25
Put Mark Cuban to the side for a bit, I think the general idea of 18f going private is a good one and was my first reaction when I heard they were getting dissolved.

EDIT: I think it's a good idea in the context of them getting dissolved. I would much prefer if they continued to exist within the govt, but if the choice is between going private and ceasing to exist, I would prefer they go private and I think it's a good idea in terms of salvaging what they had already built as an org

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#26
post #20
post #3

So Mark Cuban wants to lean into exactly what DOGE is pushing by putting himself in the middle of the Governmental to Private shift? That doesn't surprise me and gives more evidence that Cuban is not dissimilar to Musk, just that he has much better PR.

The question is what would you do if you were Cuban?

Live my best life in the wilderness and never have to hear about politics again

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#27
post #5

They built / manage login.gov? Oh boy. It’s one thing if Twitter has bugs. It’s another thing if people have bugs while trying to login or signup to government services. Or hackers finding vulnerabilities and no one to fix them?

When I first encountered login.gov several years ago I rolled my eyes and thought, "there's absolutely no way that anybody in the government got all these different organizations to have any sort of effective common logon scheme." Yet, three years later, I'm always amazed that it works effectively as it does across so many systems. The worst offender is probably EFTPS, for doing payroll taxes, that has additional obscure and inscrutable login stuff on top of login.gov, but the login.gov part of it works well for everything science related I do.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah I had to step back from this when I saw it* on my feed because I was so disenchanted by how positive the replies were. Not even sure what their issues with DOGE are if they think this is a great solution... ETA: I'm on about his bluesky post, to be clear, not this thread

the issue with Elon Musk's involvement is the WAY these things are being done. If what was previously funded through coercion -- tax dollars -- can be funded through voluntary charity of a billionaire that is 100% a good thing and we can still be upset about the rule of law and all that while being happy that billionaires are stepping up to pay their fair share when the tax money is taken away. HOWEVER Congress has N…

Hate to tell ya, but unless you’re already pretty rich, the money won’t be coming back to you

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#30
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean Musk is carrying out a coup, and Cuban is trying to invest in some programmers. I think there's some day light here.

but the core problem to me feels like “billionaires in charge of what should be government functions.” this is still that bad for that reason even if Cuban is funnier on Bluesky

The core problem to me is that we're going through a successful coup.

I'm here for it if we're proposing redistributing the wealth of everyone with 9 figures or more.

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