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Comment by nullc | Hacker News Reader

Government sites shouldn't load any third party content.

Government sites shouldn't load any third party content.

For a work project, I recently had to visit about 200 government web sites from countries all over the world.

It's surprising how many of them not only load third-party content, but actually have banner and pop-over advertising on them, especially in Asia and Africa.

By comparison, even America's worst government web site¹ is better.

¹ https://njfamilycare.dhs.state.nj.us

Seeing a page like that is refreshing these days. Loaded in a fraction of a second on my cellphone. Healthcare.gov on the other hand shows a blank screen on firefox mobile for ios.

At first I kinda recoiled at the horror of 1990s color.

But then, yeah, it loads fast and does what it needs to do. I don’t think I’d want my taxpayer money getting some hip design studio to “modernize” it.

Wow, it's not even .gov

I think the .us registry regulates the state name abbreviation subdomains, and school districts and county levels. I agree, not as good as .gov tld, but still, a layman lile me cant get a example.ca.us without some kind of proof showing actual connection with California government. (Not that California uses .ca.us, it uses .ca.gov)

Wow, it's not even .gov

For a long time, .gov was for the federal government only.

In the days before search engines, people knew that their state's home page was state.xx.us. Lots of people memorized URLs back then, the way it was ordinary to know dozens of phone numbers off the top of your head.

I planned many a road trip by typing in travel.state.xx.us for the various states I planned to visit.

I couldn't buy I-bonds from the US Treasury website because they are using a third party identity verification. WTF? Third parties can't verify me, I've infiltrated private companies with nonsense to protect my privacy. Ask the IRS, DMV, DHS, or USCIS instead to verify me, damnit.

U.S. Savings bonds are something you "set and forget" and don't check up on them for decades. I had a HELL of a time acessing my online account (had to get someone from my congressman's office to get a Treasury Department manager on my case) to check my bonds that I bought in 2003 and, yes, I had my username, password, and the second factor stored in my safe deposit box, and access to the email I used to sign up for it.

The problem was the Treasury obsoleted the second factor they issued in 2003 (a physical lookup card with numbers on it) and I had to reverify myself. They couldn't log me in with the information I used to log into Treasury Direct two decades ago.

Reverification required entering information like the Driver's Licence number I had in 2003 and the DL expiration date of my 2003 licence (I don't know! It was in another state and I no longer have it) and some other security questions I apparently answered when signing up and short-sightedly didn't write down ("Favorite Vacation Destination")

Good luck logging in to check your iBonds 30 years from now! The don't issue paper bonds anymore to anyone. Maybe they're hoping for "breakage" -- people will simply forget they own them!

Are there any government sites that are doing this right?

I assume they are because they're broke

Government agencies are not meant to be profitable

Tell that to the people who keep getting elected. Takes time to repair poor decisions resulting from electorate whims.

https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/04/senators-call-pos...

https://fortune.com/2024/04/10/usps-dejoy-price-hikes-custom... | https://archive.is/b03We

Yup, it's hard to fault the postal service when the game is rigged against them from congress.

Right. And they are meant (?) to be transparent.

Only individual's information must be kept private.

Uselessly tied up budget and so many strings attached is functionally identical to broke.

I have a friend who works at USGS in California, the folks who track (among other things) volcanic and tectonic activity on the west side of the US (that includes Yellowstone).

For their field trips, they have a daily stipend for food & lodging of ~$100 IIRC. If you know the cost of lodging, you can understand how that's a ridiculously small amount.

Per diem rates can be looked up at https://www.gsa.gov/travel/plan-a-trip/per-diem-rates. The standard combined rate is $166: $107 for lodging and $59 for meals and incidentals. This is adjusted for high COL locations. Many hotels have a deal with the government where rates are subsidized. Government employees should pay no taxes on their stays.

So yeah, they’re not staying at the Ritz on government business (and they shouldn’t be!) but it’s not like they’re living in a tent.

That's still a small amount for many/most locations. It's certainly less than I'd pay myself out of pocket,

Don’t take this the wrong way but I don’t think that the average HN poster’s view on lodging/expenses is the correct gauge for what’s an appropriate per diem for your average government worker on a business trip.

And if the government worker wants to travel for work like a consultant or a FAANG employee then they can of course pay out of pocket.

Maybe. Unless I'm being wined and dined by a client, my expenses have been pretty middle-brow business lodging and restaurants in general. I'm not sure I'd expect a government employee to be going the Motel 6 and McDonald's route just because they work for the government.

OK. How do you propose to fix the current situation, then?

Completely impractical “yeah, but”-isms basically turn HN into an online political rally. This isn’t thoughtful conversation.

USPS is not the government, they are one of the world's most prolific spammers.

How do you figure? Establishing Post Offices is a Constitutionally enumerated power of Congress, and the USPS exists as a Federal Agency since the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 [1]:

> The United States Postal Service shall be operated as a basic and fundamental service provided to the people by the Government of the United States, authorized by the Constitution, created by Act of Congress, and supported by the people.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Reorganization_Act

While I don't necessarily agree, the argument is that the 1970 postal reorganization act required the postal office to be self funded, and that since they are not funded with any federal dollars they are somewhere between a government service and a private service. Some argue that because of this we have seen a significant degredation in the quality of mail, because the USPS explicitly and intentionally delivers the equivilent of spam mail to every address in the country. They do this as a form of generating revenue that wouldn't be required of a proper government service. This ties into the current post as it seems plausible the reason USPS shares customer data with Meta is due to their requirement of self funding.

> since they are not funded with any federal dollars they are somewhere between a government service and a private service.

This argument makes no sense at all to me (I did catch the part where you don't necessarily agree either btw).

There's no law which says that everything a government does has to be run at a pure loss on tax revenue. Many local utilities are owned by their respective governments, and are not infrequently run at a modest profit. That doesn't make them private, it makes them profitable.

> Some argue that because of this we have seen a significant degredation in the quality of mail, because the USPS explicitly and intentionally delivers the equivalent of spam mail to every address in the country.

This is quite possibly the case, but has no bearing on whether or not USPS is a government entity, which, it is.

> This ties into the current post as it seems plausible the reason USPS shares customer data with Meta is due to their requirement of self funding.

This, I do not consider plausible at all. I'm 99% sure that some youngster working on the digital side of USPS added some tracking pixels because it's all they knew how to do.

What do they "govern"? They distribute junk for advertisers. That's the majority of their existence. Can you imagine their carbon footprint? Driving to almost every US address 6 days a week to leave junk mail that 99% of goes straight to the trash. But I'm supposed to drive an EV or take the bus???

Yes, you should take the bus.

They govern the mail, by Act of Congress, as enumerated in the Constitution.

That you don't seem to like the USPS or its operations doesn't make it not a government service.

Some countries have no government postal service, and some have no postal service at all, but the US clearly has a government postal service.

Driving to almost every US address? I'm not American, but I was under the impression that mail delivery people mostly walked their routes.

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