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The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

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Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#441

Post by sunshowers »

gadders wrote: post #312
h197BQcV wrote: post #114

They have interesting pedigrees: Meta, Palantir, Neuralink, xAI, SpaceX, Databricks, Energize AI. It seems clear where this is going. Data mining and algorithmic (claimed!) efficiency improvements while working on an essential and critical production system. Since these people claim that "AI" does not need to respect privacy and copyright, perhaps they'll also train a model on this. Where are the Democrats on all thi…

They should try coming up with some popular policies and winning elections.

Policies don't really determine elections in this age -- the only thing that determines them is people's brains being cooked.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#442

Post by nickpinkston »

bende511 wrote: post #282
billiam wrote: post #183

[flagged]

No way a 19 year old could be tricked by a pretty woman into giving her secrets and access codes. Real level-headed and clear-eyed age

Though is true of a lot of fully grown men - especially in DC.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#443

Post by arionhardison »

This is where we are, we need to stop complaining and deal with things as the actually exist. I am doing this in my own way, my fear is Elon and Co. hitting Medicare/Medicaid so I am making my own: https://medicare.dev. I think this is going to become more and more common as fed become less and less stable/reliable.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#445

Post by niceice »

affinepplan wrote: post #249

“Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control. I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, just like that. How did they get in, how did it happen? That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There…

[flagged]

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#446

Post by kdmtctl »

tgv wrote: post #256
user32489318 wrote: post #210

how is someone’s age relevant? Is a 55 y.o. Software engineer who spent 20 years in a bureaucratic wheel any better than a bright 20yo mind? They both suck in a different way! Writing an entire article with ageism as a center piece is truly pinnacle of American journalism

19 year olds are much more malleable. They can be fanatic, and follow orders easily. They aren't educated. They have a limited grasp of morality, and can't oversee the consequences of their actions. They have no other obligation in life than to this holy task. That's why it's relevant.

This is exactly the reason why they were selected.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#447

Post by freddi333 »

affinepplan wrote: post #249

“Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control. I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, just like that. How did they get in, how did it happen? That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There…

This is like a Christian quoting scripture to an atheist, there are real world parallels of current events to draw from which carry substantially more weight.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#448

Post by ceejayoz »

gauravphoenix wrote: post #429
xnx wrote: post #73

Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII. Feels like Chesterton fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.

>The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII. now look at the deficits.

Which are roughly like me having a mortgage that’s the same as my annual salary. Which is quite commonplace.

It’d be a problem if we had to pay it all off tomorrow, but we don’t.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#449

Post by [deleted] »

nomel wrote: post #135
xnx wrote: post #73

Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII. Feels like Chesterton fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.

> Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? With the debt ceiling ever increasing, approaching a trillion dollars in interest per year, nearing $6k/year per working individual, I would say the correct time to put any effort, whatsoever, into reducing spending, was 20 years ago. I think the fundamental problem is we lack adversarial systems within the government: it doesn't like to hurt it…

[deleted]

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#450

Post by disqard »

novia wrote: post #174
m463 wrote: post #122

Posts here talk about the legality of this, that what they are doing is not allowed, or that they're doing something naively without understanding. But what is the goal? Maybe what goal to they think they're pursuing? This is hacker news, so I'm asking for an answer without political rhetoric.

The goal is to find government waste and to trim the fat. The goal is to make the US government lean, efficient, and effective at improving the lives of Americans while not prioritizing improving the lives of citizens of other nations. The view is that the government of those other nations should be responsible for taking care of their own citizens. The goal is to uncover fraudulent payouts, stop more from going out…

If that is the goal, then what happened to "profile before you optimize"?

As an analogy, what's happening feels like this:

* Somebody (let's call them "X") has embarked upon a mission to de-bloat the ancient-but-working family desktop PC. * X's first actions appear to be to desolder various things from the motherboard, while the computer is on. * Anyone who sees what X is doing, is somewhere on a spectrum between "scratching their head" "wow, they're trying their best to destroy the PC".

To those defending this particular way of "fixing" things, would you yourself replace a large, working legacy software system in this manner?

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