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

Doge Is Planning a Hackathon at the IRS. It Wants Easier Access to Taxpayer Data

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 36 posts

Re: Doge Is Planning a Hackathon at the IRS. It Wants Easier Access to Taxpayer Data

#21

Post by dragonwriter »

eastbound wrote: post #8
Raidion wrote: post #2

I think the group of people that work on this should petition for their tax data to be the first to be used. Seems to align the incentives on internal controls of PPI.

Then those who vote for higher public services should be the ones to pay. Which, if they did, would solve the left/right dichotomy. But no, those who want the public services want the money taken from the other half. Here’s what I always remind myself about this current government: It is really the worst ideas conflated together, but it was that, or elect leftists in power. At the thought of leftists in power, I thin…

> Here’s what I always remind myself about this current government: It is really the worst ideas conflated together, but it was that, or elect leftists in power.

There were basically no leftists running under any major party banner for any federal office in the US, and the small number of arguable center-leftists doing so in the general election were mostly incumbents, and mostly reelected.

It was not, in fact, a choice between leftists and what we got, it was a choice between the center-right corporate capitalist wing of the Democratic Party and what is, at best, lawless kleptocracy and at worst outright fascism.

Re: Doge Is Planning a Hackathon at the IRS. It Wants Easier Access to Taxpayer Data

#22

Post by gopher_space »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #17
gopher_space wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Information wants to be free in the same sense that hot air wants to be rising. More of a truism than a license to all the things.

> Information wants to be free in the same sense that hot air wants to be rising Except information left alone doesn’t become free, it degrades. It takes energy to preserve it in an accessible form. That, in turn, tends towards making it very much not free.

That was an analogy to explain the simile. Homily? Anyhow, we're personifying information to make a statement on how people communicate. People naturally want to share information. We self-organize around the idea.

Re: Doge Is Planning a Hackathon at the IRS. It Wants Easier Access to Taxpayer Data

#23

Post by JumpCrisscross »

gopher_space wrote: post #22
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Information wants to be free in the same sense that hot air wants to be rising Except information left alone doesn’t become free, it degrades. It takes energy to preserve it in an accessible form. That, in turn, tends towards making it very much not free.

That was an analogy to explain the simile. Homily? Anyhow, we're personifying information to make a statement on how people communicate. People naturally want to share information. We self-organize around the idea.

> People naturally want to share information. We self-organize around the idea.

Except we don’t. We heavily filter and censor what we share for a variety of reasons. When people freely share their every thought you get Twitter, not civilisation.

Re: Doge Is Planning a Hackathon at the IRS. It Wants Easier Access to Taxpayer Data

#24

Post by throw0101d »

krapp wrote: post #13
tmpz22 wrote: post #3

"We love disruption and whatever is good for America will be good for Americans and very good for Palantir,” Palantir CEO Alex Karp said in a February earnings call. “Disruption at the end of the day exposes things that aren't working. There will be ups and downs. This is a revolution, some people are going to get their heads cut off."

"We're making the mother of all omelettes here, can't fret over every egg!"

> "We're making the mother of all omelettes here, can't fret over every egg!"

At nearly US$ 6/dozen:

* https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000708111

yes, Americans can. :)

Re: Doge Is Planning a Hackathon at the IRS. It Wants Easier Access to Taxpayer Data

#27

Post by Volundr »

cdot2 wrote: post #6

If this was done two years ago HN would be talking about how great it is.

I can confidently say I, and pretty much every other engineer I know would have been categorically opposed to having a hackathon to rip out and replace IRS systems no matter who was doing it.

Techies like those of us on HN understand the difference between safety critical systems and throwing ideas at the wall in a startup.

If this was being done in a careful methodical fashion, with deep care given to data integrity and security I'd support it regardless of whose doing it. This 30 day move fast and break things would be bad from Biden, Obama, or in a better timeline Bernie.

Re: Doge Is Planning a Hackathon at the IRS. It Wants Easier Access to Taxpayer Data

#28

Post by xnx »

mullingitover wrote: post #18
eastbound wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then those who vote for higher public services should be the ones to pay. Which, if they did, would solve the left/right dichotomy. But no, those who want the public services want the money taken from the other half. Here’s what I always remind myself about this current government: It is really the worst ideas conflated together, but it was that, or elect leftists in power. At the thought of leftists in power, I thin…

> Here’s what I always remind myself about this current government: It is really the worst ideas conflated together, but it was that, or elect leftists in power. "We destroyed the economy for a generation, but at least we stopped people from making us put pronouns in our bio."

> at least we stopped people from making us put pronouns in our bio.

More accurately: at least we forced other people to stop putting pronouns in their bio

Re: Doge Is Planning a Hackathon at the IRS. It Wants Easier Access to Taxpayer Data

#30

Post by bjtitus »

mullingitover wrote: post #11

> Next week, DOGE and IRS leadership are expected to host dozens of engineers in DC so they can begin “ripping up the old systems” and building the API, an IRS engineering source tells WIRED. The goal is to have this task completed within 30 days. Sources say there have been multiple discussions about involving third-party cloud and software providers like Palantir in the implementation. Well yeah, obviously bring in…

So many mythical man months incoming.
Post reply on HN