Staying with the US Digital Service • Hacker News Board

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#111

Post by TheAceOfHearts » Thu, Jan 19, 2017, 9:13 AM UTC

One of the best things to come out USDS / 18F is their design guidelines [0]. It's very comfortable to read, and completely accessible! I think my only complaint is that the components are all a bit gigantic. But it's understandable, since they have to cater to so many people.

Considering the government and tech got me wondering: what software do our leaders regularly use? What measures are taken to ensure it's as safe? How much of this information is readily available? Hopefully this won't land me in an FBI watch-list :).

[0] https://standards.usa.gov/

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#112

Post by hueving » Thu, Jan 19, 2017, 9:26 AM UTC

NicoJuicy wrote: post #104

chris11 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump will not be a normal President. I'm expecting he will either be really hands off or micromanage depending on the situation. So I could see Trump getting involved with the USDS if they made the news somehow.

Trump isn't smart enough to micromanage, he hires smart people though. Which is good enough to look smart in the eyes of the public

It takes very little intelligence to micromanage. Doing it effectively is a different story, but anyone can bark orders to underlings easily.

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#113

Post by hueving » Thu, Jan 19, 2017, 9:30 AM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #93

bdcravens wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are supporters of someone like that suckers or just being dishonest about their own intentions? As long as we're drawing comparisons, isn't your question a bit like "Have you quit beating your wife?"

Rather than sophistry, it might be more productive to supply a third explanation for why someone would try and claim Trump hasn't worked hard to give the impression he wants a Muslim registry? Bonus points if you can explain the massive cognitive dissonance between supporting a man who goes out of his way to muddy the waters where his plans and opinions are concerned, and the gnashing of teeth about Clinton's admitta…

>Rather than sophistry

Like the false dichotomy you offered?

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#114

Post by RA_Fisher » Thu, Jan 19, 2017, 9:46 AM UTC

spoon16 wrote: post #35

1888franklin wrote: post #10

Howdy Matt - will you build a Muslim registry if Trump orders it or Congress passes it?

One of the USDS project selection criteria is that we prioritize work that based on what will do the greatest good for the greatest number of people in the greatest need. I do not believe a Muslim Registry does any good for anyone. Being involved in building one would require formally changing our values which would be visible to everyone in USDS. Disclaimer: personal opinion, I am currently serving on a USDS team, m…

Eek. I must admit I was hoping for for a response more like, "What? Hell no. It'd be civil disobedience time if that ever happened." :-(

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#115

Post by peteretep » Thu, Jan 19, 2017, 10:19 AM UTC

hueving wrote: post #113

peteretep wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than sophistry, it might be more productive to supply a third explanation for why someone would try and claim Trump hasn't worked hard to give the impression he wants a Muslim registry? Bonus points if you can explain the massive cognitive dissonance between supporting a man who goes out of his way to muddy the waters where his plans and opinions are concerned, and the gnashing of teeth about Clinton's admitta…

>Rather than sophistry Like the false dichotomy you offered?

    > false dichotomy

Sure. So what are the third and fourth options here?

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#116

Post by caminante » Thu, Jan 19, 2017, 10:42 AM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #102

potatosoup wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The registry was already there under Obama: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article... Also, it would be silly to assume that we didn't have a database of "country from" for immigrants or visitors. "Muslim" is not a country, it's a religion, so you'd need some serious behavior profiling for that -- probably FB/Google are ones you should be after. (Disclaimer: am immigrant, am minority.)

> so you'd need some serious behavior profiling for that Name and country of origin goes a long way towards determining it Of course it's not 100% correct, but should be enough to give a pointer

People could lie about their religion, too.

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#117

Post by throwanem » Thu, Jan 19, 2017, 10:48 AM UTC

prostoalex wrote: post #57

1888franklin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You state this as simple fact, but is it so? Delivering enterprise software is very hard. Matt suggests that USDS was necessary to rescue healthcare.gov, for example. The labor pool of skilled coders is smaller vs. demand than for many other professions. If the top 500 coders declined to participate in a project that savagely violates human rights - and encouraged this as a norm in our communities - isn't it plausibl…

> If the top 500 coders declined to participate in a project that savagely violates human rights - and encouraged this as a norm in our communities - isn't it plausible that doing so could either prevent, derail, or meaningfully weaken such a project? Not sure what the top 500 vote totals were on this, but when Snowden's documents revealed existence of a massive domestic surveillance program that included large amoun…

> One thing that's hard to judge from the outside is the quality and efficiency of that code.

I've had the opportunity to work with a few ex-NSA software engineers. One in particular was among the smartest and most capable colleagues I've ever had. If, as is the impression I gathered, he's at all typical of the talent NSA has at its disposal, I would expect the limiting factors to be the volume and accuracy of the data available, rather than the quality of the software built to analyze it.

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#118

Post by potatosoup » Thu, Jan 19, 2017, 10:50 AM UTC

caminante wrote: post #116

raverbashing wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so you'd need some serious behavior profiling for that Name and country of origin goes a long way towards determining it Of course it's not 100% correct, but should be enough to give a pointer

People could lie about their religion, too.

And convert, like Dave Chappelle (to Muslim) or Trump's daughter (to Judaism)

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#119

Post by tonetheman » Thu, Jan 19, 2017, 11:13 AM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #63

learc83 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you must follow it or resign--those are the only options, per your civil service oath. Those aren't your only options. Your other options are to stay in and leak information. Stay in and try to damage the project etc... I don't know what I'd do if I were in the position to damage, delay, or stop something as blatantly unconstitutional as a Muslim registration database, but I hope that I'd be able to muster to the c…

Then they should have acted 8 years ago, because the "Muslim registery" already exists under Obama

Started with Bush... they should acted before 8 years ago.

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#120

Post by nl » Thu, Jan 19, 2017, 11:30 AM UTC

general_ai wrote: post #110

tobltobs wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's the price of oil. Anyway, to use GDP as the prove for how good a president is, is nonsense anyway. Eg.: https://www.google.com/search?num=50&q=venezuela+per+capita+... .

Some of it is price of oil, sure. But if you're going to compare to Venezuela, you should be comparing PPP GDP, and not just GDP at exchange rate, which is kinda meaningless. Scroll down to "GDP at parity" here: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=venezuela+russia+per+c... . As you can see, price of oil alone doesn't guarantee that the economy will get any better. And Russian economy did get dramatically better und…

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=poland+per+capita+gdp+ppp...

Look at that. Russia and Poland are almost exactly the same. Czech Republic looks somewhat better, Romania somewhat worse but all are similar shape.

I guess Putin is a pretty amazing president! Or maybe there is something else going on...