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DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds

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Re: DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds

#201

Post by throw_pm23 »

diggan wrote: post #159
throw_pm23 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting the next Google or OpenAI. Not illegal, just not possible.

Thanks to what laws/regulations? Or was that just the meme "Europeans are lazy/slow" but tailored to HN readers? AFAIK, things like specific the text and data mining (TDM) exceptions would allow you to even train on copyrighted materials without permission in certain cases, in the example of LLMs. Mistral also seems to be making progress, and I'm not aware of any African, South American or Australian efforts that are…

Oh, that's not a very high bar now, not being the last :)

Siemens, Bosch, Mercedes-Benz, etc. etc. were innovative startups once that defined their industries and they put the foundations of the high standard of living that you enjoy now. Where are the similar European innovations of today?

Re: DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds

#202

Post by mjburgess »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #195
mjburgess wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, well I was choosing one of you "movie plot" cases to show you that the CIA does not care if it runs movie plot programmes. The mechanism of anti-trump coordination has yet really to be briefed out, and wikiepedia will be dragged kicking and screaming before there's an article on it. Give it a decade, perhaps. For now, if you want examples here's the atlantic council (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Cou…

A lot of rightwing stuff that circulates is disinformation -- there are plenty of examples of it. Trump is an inveterate liar about almost everything (this is easily fact-checked), and his followers have adopted the same strategy (lies are powerful because they are usually more shocking and travel faster than a boring fact-check). Not to say that other politicians don't lie or distort the truth, but Trump has taken t…

The issue isn't whether that's true or not (personally, I think you're 80-90% correct). If private citizens, or organisations, want to get together and develop political counter-narratives that's fine -- entirely within the constitution, and always a good idea.

The issue here is the top-down astroturfing from state-sponsored orgs whose boards are the last x heads of the CIA/etc.

At the moment there is no strong firewall between private polticial organisation, and state power, within the USA. You may think that's fine if its being used against trump, but it isnt.

Not least, since the example the AC gave in that video was trump tweeting "witch hunt" about the russia investigation -- calling this disinformation. Now, who was right? Trump. There was no Trump-Russia conspiracy, it was a witch hunt.

The only thing the muller report found was trump obstructed the investigation, it completely exonerated any supposed connections to russia. Then you might ask: where did all these intelligence dossiers come from?

And why is the atlantic council training journalists to label trumps poltical speech about this investigation as disinformation? (HINT: to enable its censorship etc.)

Re: DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds

#203

Post by diggan »

throw_pm23 wrote: post #201
diggan wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks to what laws/regulations? Or was that just the meme "Europeans are lazy/slow" but tailored to HN readers? AFAIK, things like specific the text and data mining (TDM) exceptions would allow you to even train on copyrighted materials without permission in certain cases, in the example of LLMs. Mistral also seems to be making progress, and I'm not aware of any African, South American or Australian efforts that are…

Oh, that's not a very high bar now, not being the last :) Siemens, Bosch, Mercedes-Benz, etc. etc. were innovative startups once that defined their industries and they put the foundations of the high standard of living that you enjoy now. Where are the similar European innovations of today?

> Oh, that's not a very high bar now, not being the last :)

Well, your argument was that it wasn't possible, so at least we both agree now that you were wrong there.

> they put the foundations of the high standard of living that you enjoy now.

Again, the crux of the argument is that I believe our institutions and governments are the reason we have high standard of living, not because there was three German companies who were innovative ~100-200 years ago.

I don't even understand how the innovations of those companies are related to the quality of life in Sweden, for example, but I think we've lost the thread in this discussion a while ago so maybe better to not continue at all.

Re: DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds

#204

Post by sundaeofshock »

Oh look this has already been flagged.

I think it’s important to recognize that HN is most likely supportive of the Trump/Musk regime. Remember that Gary Tan wanted to run the same playbook in the city of San Francisco.

Please keep this in mind when posting here.

Finally, depending on where we end up, I wonder how history will remember HN.

Re: DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds

#205

Post by yoyonamite »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #52
PaulRobinson wrote: post #29

I say this as a UKian with a constitutional monarch as head of state: These actions suggest that today the United States seems to have a de facto King with far greater powers than even those held by George III at the time the founders decided that America did not need a King. They might not be called that, but they have the ability to exert behaviours akin to an English monarch not seen much since Henry VIII. Arguabl…

We're watching the checks and balances fail in real time. By the time the first court order comes through the DOGE boys are already doing something else somewhere else. The legal system can't create injunctions as fast as Trump can sign things. It's proving impossible for a legitimate system to keep up with the wanton pillaging.

I think it might actually be worse. I don't think the judiciary can enforce any of their court orders.

Re: DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds

#206

Post by simonsarris »

jkestner wrote: post #2

> DOGE claims to be auditing FEMA. But sources within FEMA report that the DOGE employees are primarily “computer science guys” and do not understand the basics of financial management. In one instance, a coder brought in by DOGE confronted a FEMA staffer about mismanagement of funds. The FEMA staffer clarified that no funds were allocated during the time period in question and that the DOGE representative simply mis…

That sounds thoroughly unremarkable by itself. A staffer asked for an explanation of something he was seeing and got one (he was incorrect about the data). This interaction repeats a zillion times per day for any consultancy project.

Re: DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds

#207

Post by ketlag »

ryandrake wrote: post #186
duxup wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's a pattern for sure. Lotta folks seem to not want other people to talk about this kind of thing. Same goes for most other Trump administration articles. I get not wanting to read it, but that's not what flagging is for IMO...

Visit /active: https://news.ycombinator.com/active You'll see every single article criticizing DOGE has been flagged by users, in order to try to bury it.

Im surprised my comment is still up!

Re: DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds

#208

Post by throw_pm23 »

diggan wrote: post #203
throw_pm23 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, that's not a very high bar now, not being the last :) Siemens, Bosch, Mercedes-Benz, etc. etc. were innovative startups once that defined their industries and they put the foundations of the high standard of living that you enjoy now. Where are the similar European innovations of today?

> Oh, that's not a very high bar now, not being the last :) Well, your argument was that it wasn't possible, so at least we both agree now that you were wrong there. > they put the foundations of the high standard of living that you enjoy now. Again, the crux of the argument is that I believe our institutions and governments are the reason we have high standard of living, not because there was three German companies…

I gave those three just as examples from many possible. The swedish quality of life is due to the similar caliber swedish innovators of the past hundred years. At least we agree in ending the conversation :)

Re: DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds

#209

Post by ceejayoz »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #97
tyleo wrote: post #8

Is there anything we can do? I don’t mean to ask that and imply that there is nothing. I mean it as an honest question. Is there a process or organization to snap into right now to help?

Isn't this what you guys have the second amendment for? To secure a free state?

https://theshovel.com.au/2020/06/04/nra-accidentally-forgets...

Re: DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds

#210

Post by Timon3 »

simonsarris wrote: post #206
jkestner wrote: post #2

> DOGE claims to be auditing FEMA. But sources within FEMA report that the DOGE employees are primarily “computer science guys” and do not understand the basics of financial management. In one instance, a coder brought in by DOGE confronted a FEMA staffer about mismanagement of funds. The FEMA staffer clarified that no funds were allocated during the time period in question and that the DOGE representative simply mis…

That sounds thoroughly unremarkable by itself. A staffer asked for an explanation of something he was seeing and got one (he was incorrect about the data). This interaction repeats a zillion times per day for any consultancy project.

Is there any documented process in place to ensure that the staffer has to take the explanation into account?

Government workers have been relentlessly antagonized by Trump and his party. How can we be sure these situations are handled correctly and fairly, especially when the people doing the "auditing" don't know what they are doing due to missing qualifications?

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