391–400 of 404 posts
A surprisingly large amount of data one might think is classified is not at all. In this case all the examples listed are from freely available public data outside of the Twitter thing which seems to be just setting up the environment for some local tool. Here are the sites: --- datacatalog.worldbank.org opendata.arcgis.com mrdata.usgs.gov / www.usgs.gov --- Sharing things like this isn't very useful because it just…
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As I said in anothercomment, using available data in itself can be seen with suspicion. With freely available data you can build a nuclear reactor (if very capable), or buy fertilizer and build a bomb. Chances are, fbi will knock at your door and ask what you're doing. The same way, an agency gathering lot of public available data regarding sensitive infrastructure can be assumed to misuse the data for shady purposes…
This is such a lame comment. He's looking at publicly available geospatial data, not trying to build a bomb.
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Afghanistan has that. Instead of landlords, they have warlords, just a different term for the same thing. Why is anybody interested in repeating that thing? I've been told that billionaires think differently than the rest of us, but I still can't fathom why someone would want to be the king of a shit hole when they could be richer as a regular citizen of a liberal democracy. Why do they hate our success?
Is life really that much better for billionaires of today than kings of last millennium? Sure you can acquire a private fleet of jets and cars now. But given that you rarely if-ever drive them it's no different than a fleet of rare animals. Sure you can play video games and watch sports on TV but is that really much better than watching sports from a private suite? I will conceded that their life expectancy has basic…
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The problem with a persistent bureaucracy is that it selects for bureaucrats in favor of perpetuating and expanding the bureaucracy. So a political appointee who wants to expand government finds willing allies. An appointee who wants to reduce government finds opposition. The association of individual political parties with those positions is more variable.
The American federal government has more or less the same number of employees as it did in the 1970s.
But this neglects the millions of contractors and other positions that are also funded by government spending, which is harder to measure, and does change more over time.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-true-size-of-governme... (2020, but the article doesn't clarify if the 5m includes short-term census workers)
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The American federal government has more or less the same number of employees as it did in the 1970s.
Yes, if you only count "federal government employees" https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES9091000001 But this neglects the millions of contractors and other positions that are also funded by government spending, which is harder to measure, and does change more over time. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-true-size-of-governme... (2020, but the article doesn't clarify if the 5m includes short-term census worker…
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The problem is, compiling the list like he has, and being on the DOGE team, makes it all very, very suspicious. And it is sensitive data - even if it is open. Those are important infrastructure locations.
> And it is sensitive data - even if it is open. This is literally contradictory. Data does not become sensitive because some random on HN says so. You are speaking with authority but have no idea what you are talking about.
"classification by compilation" is literally part of the Security Classification Guide (SCG) and given as mandatory training to everyone with a clearance at least once a year. Individually unclassified pieces of information can absolutely become sensitive or even classified when aggregated. Read the SCG people, this is not rocket science.
(I am not saying that applies here to this data. Merely stating that none of you have any idea what you are talking about.)
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> my understanding is, they will do literally anything to make sure DOGE succeeds, because a failure is basically unacceptable They have shown over and over that they are after a good story, not good results. They’re going for shock factor and they’re pumping out propaganda at an alarming rate. We’ve seen so many hyperbolic claims of rampant fraud with zero evidence. At the same time, they’ve had to remove the bigges…
>Numerous other claims have been shown to account for entire contract amounts, even though they only cancelled the remaining balance of the contract. They are building this live and it's been a month as a side quest. They have fixed those issues that you have said, and have been updating the website, fixing different pricing, etc. etc. every single day. They have not been preparing for months... that's not how system…
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What laws are being broken?
> What laws are being broken? In this specific case? Unclear. Will wait for the lawsuits. In the last weeks, the DOGE bros have broken the Privacy Act of 1974 [1] and numerous court orders [2]. [1] https://epic.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/EPIC-v-OPM-25-cv... [2] https://tax.thomsonreuters.com/news/19-state-ags-file-suit-a...
“is Trump a Russian asset”?
- via Forbes: