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Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#861

Post by psychlops »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #835
DanielHB wrote: post #815

I just want to highlight one thing about this whole government takeover debacle. The reason you have the separation of power (legislative, judiciary, executive) is not to be efficient, it is to prevent generational abuse. Even a well intentioned benign autocrat if given power would not part ways with said power voluntarily. So even if the current administration is "good" there is no reason why this kind of power coul…

> It is really the same reasoning with dictatorships, even if the dictator is good, competent and capable his successor most likely won't. Democracy is the best form of government because there are clean, regulated ways to transfer power. Not a scramble for dominance that once settled is meant to last in perpetuity. You're assuming that there will be a successor, in a democratic sense.

> You're assuming that there will be a successor, in a democratic sense.

It follows, since he's talking about democracies.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#862

Post by walls »

jdross wrote: post #185

I realized I’m treading in extremely hostile waters here, but the stories I hear from folks working in DOGE are closer to “I spend 8am to 2am with the leaders of department X going through all contracts and outflows and identifying what is important versus wasteful given a target of saving $X million per day, and there are some great people in this department who really know what’s been going on and it’s been great t…

[flagged]

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#863

Post by IOT_Apprentice »

nomdep wrote: post #849
dang wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent all day responding to the replies here, and then detaching them in order to save space at the top of the thread. But I just had a better idea. This is a stub comment so we have a single root to collapse the replies. This way (1) replies can stay close to their parent (the top comment) without flooding the screen with offtopicness; and (2) we can all re-experience the timeless truth of https://en.wikipedia.org…

@dang Considering how many are ready to label one of the “other side” as evil, I think it’s very irresponsible of you to allow articles about US politics in the front page, specially an article like this that it’s really an smearing attempt

I’m curious what you consider to be a smear. Are the items about his background & history factual or not? If true, it seems calling it a smear attempt might be disingenuous.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#864

Post by crazygringo »

jdross wrote: post #805
crazygringo wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be great if true. Unfortunately, from what we know of the people they've hired, they have little to no experience in doing that. They're not being transparent, we have no idea what metrics they're using, etc. If the team was meant to actually do what you claim, it would look very different in terms of its hiring, and there's no reason it would have to be operating so secretively.

I’m just telling you what I know from personal friends doing individual work in specific departments. The mandate is “find $X million per day” and they do, and it’s a lot of work, and it doesn’t happen overnight like big PR things

Again, I'd love to believe you.

But what you're saying is totally incompatible with closing USAID and the indiscriminate buyout package offered to employees that are of critical importance.

You're not providing any actual evidence, meanwhile the actions we know are actually taking place are totally contrary to the kind of careful thoughtfulness you're describing.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#865

Post by tom_ »

Brigand wrote: post #855
grahameb wrote: post #845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cleric here, so excuse me for getting theological: but there should be (and at times truly has been, even if flawed) a shared understanding of the dignity and worth of every person. if we have that, then when one party or another is in power, they know that they are expected to care for minorities and for the stranger, and for the 'other side'. we should be willing to vote for that. that seems to be breaking down, th…

My impression is that a focus on dignity and worth of every person has lead to a complete fixation on rights and wants of minorities and underprivileged groups. What is missing from this point of view are individual responsibility and willingness to contribute. From what I see online some people a fed up with this approach and this has caused the current backlash. Perhaps dignity needs to be complemented by responsib…

Mx Goat added a note about their real-world qualifications for pitching in on this sort of question, presumably because their user name didn't really make it obvious why we might wish to listen to their thoughts on how a society should function for the benefit of all.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#866

Post by throwaway5752 »

Brigand wrote: post #855
grahameb wrote: post #845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cleric here, so excuse me for getting theological: but there should be (and at times truly has been, even if flawed) a shared understanding of the dignity and worth of every person. if we have that, then when one party or another is in power, they know that they are expected to care for minorities and for the stranger, and for the 'other side'. we should be willing to vote for that. that seems to be breaking down, th…

My impression is that a focus on dignity and worth of every person has lead to a complete fixation on rights and wants of minorities and underprivileged groups. What is missing from this point of view are individual responsibility and willingness to contribute. From what I see online some people a fed up with this approach and this has caused the current backlash. Perhaps dignity needs to be complemented by responsib…

"has lead to a complete fixation on rights and wants of minorities and underprivileged groups."

While this may be a feeling based on what some choose to read or listen to, numbers don't back this up as reality. There are many fact-based cases I could make, but I'm going to just focus on top CEOs - https://www.researchgate.net/figure/White-male-CEOs-and-New-... indicates 85.8% of Fortune 500 CEO are white males, even though they are only ~38% of the population.

Adding back in white females, Fortune 500 CEOs are 92.6% white, even though they are 75.3% of the population (https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045224)

Flipping it for effect, only 5% of top CEOs are non-white even though those groups are 25% of the country.

One frustration that may of us disagree with the point you've articulated is that this perception is innacurate and largely a result of people self-selecting into "red-pill" type media ecosystems that are manipulative and spend greatly disproportionate amounts of time generating outrage and the perception of a crisis.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#867

Post by tomrod »

nomdep wrote: post #849
dang wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent all day responding to the replies here, and then detaching them in order to save space at the top of the thread. But I just had a better idea. This is a stub comment so we have a single root to collapse the replies. This way (1) replies can stay close to their parent (the top comment) without flooding the screen with offtopicness; and (2) we can all re-experience the timeless truth of https://en.wikipedia.org…

@dang Considering how many are ready to label one of the “other side” as evil, I think it’s very irresponsible of you to allow articles about US politics in the front page, specially an article like this that it’s really an smearing attempt

What in the article do you consider as lacking a factual basis?

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#868

Post by indoordin0saur »

firstlunchables wrote: post #421
amazingamazing wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reporting on this is terrible. There are also senior (in age and experience) people, but much of the focus is on the youngins for obvious reasons. Musk also believes (either arrogance, or true belief) that much of this stuff can be figured out from first principals without much need of traditional experts.

Touting “first principals” is a way of revealing “I’m too dumb to understand other people’s work.” Like if you can’t understand higher level concepts and have to start on your own from Euclid, it just means you aren’t very smart but think you can be another Maxwell just by thinkin’ real hard. It’s a joke.

It seems to have worked well for him many times.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#869

Post by prmoustache »

DanielHB wrote: post #838
red-iron-pine wrote: post #835

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is really the same reasoning with dictatorships, even if the dictator is good, competent and capable his successor most likely won't. Democracy is the best form of government because there are clean, regulated ways to transfer power. Not a scramble for dominance that once settled is meant to last in perpetuity. You're assuming that there will be a successor, in a democratic sense.

I see no reason why it wouldn't, they don't seem to be trying to dismantle the voting system. I am not super familiar with the US system but my impression is that a most of it is handled at the state level, not the federal level.

Hasn't Trump promised his electors they will not have to vote again during his campaign? If that is not a promise to create a dictatorship, I don't know what is.

“I love you. You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.”

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#870

Post by zaneyard »

Brigand wrote: post #855
grahameb wrote: post #845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cleric here, so excuse me for getting theological: but there should be (and at times truly has been, even if flawed) a shared understanding of the dignity and worth of every person. if we have that, then when one party or another is in power, they know that they are expected to care for minorities and for the stranger, and for the 'other side'. we should be willing to vote for that. that seems to be breaking down, th…

My impression is that a focus on dignity and worth of every person has lead to a complete fixation on rights and wants of minorities and underprivileged groups. What is missing from this point of view are individual responsibility and willingness to contribute. From what I see online some people a fed up with this approach and this has caused the current backlash. Perhaps dignity needs to be complemented by responsib…

I disagree with this thought. I think it's really easy for people to react to things being done for other people (who may have it better or worse off than you) with a sense of abandonment. The reality of the situation is that some people do need more help than others, and a lack of empathy prevents us from seeing that. The idea that receiving help means that person has "given up" their responsibility to society is harmful to society itself in my opinion.
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