Musk aides lock government workers out of computer systems at US agency | Hacker News Reader

Musk aides lock government workers out of computer systems at US agency

reuters.com

187 pointsdanso125 comments

It might be to prevent them from altering job and task descriptions in order to escape DEI purges.

Let's hope they don't use a regex or an "AI" to decide whom to purge, but I would not be surprised.

This happened on Friday for a reason

The massacres will increase until open society finds leverage to push back.

this is...despite happening concurrently with a "democratic transition", a coup, which is going entirely unopposed by the legislature.

this is ... beyond bad.

Why is this flagged? This seems like a pretty damn important tech story.

I wonder if the flagging/flame war detector is too aggressive for stories like this that blend the worlds of tech and politics. From my bystander PoV, it seems like the majority of interesting news stories like this one get flagged and killed despite a somewhat normal discussion in the comments. I know people want to pretend that politics don't belong on their tech/startup forum, but that's just ignoring the reality of how intertwined the two are at this point.

Users flagged it. We can only guess why users flag things, but in this case it seems unlikely to have any chance at a thoughtful conversation. It has the Ultimate Troll Ingredient but little actual information.

You have the ability to unflag stories. This is critically important. Please do the right thing here.

Many stories that (correctly) get flagged on HN are critically important, far more important than anything which does appear on the front page. There's a simple reason for this: if importance were the high-order bit, then HN would be a current affairs site.

In fact its mandate is something quite different, as everyone here should know—see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and (for endless elaboration on the point) https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....

The problem is that there's no counter-action to a group of dedicated users who want to kill a story killing a story.

Moderator review is a counter-action, especially when we turn off the flags on a story. The problem is that we don't (and can't) do that often enough to satisfy everyone.

seconded

yes

We both know he won't do the right thing...

Yup, every time something important gets gang-flagged he leaves it flagged even though he can unflag. There's zero transparency and a heavy bias in moderation here. I stopped contributing here and moved to lobste.rs

In a way, Danf is just following the will of the people. If the people want to gag reflect to "Musk" and "government" and hide the story, what are we to do?

We both know he won't

We just have to face the facts that this is a tech site thst aggressively rejects politics, no matter how dire. It's the same Apathy that won Trump the election. A problem starred by technocrats won't necessarily have wannabe technocrats solve it anyway. Better off organizing on Reddit.

If you want to get around flagging, vote it up anyway. I check top daily/weekly news and lagged news shows up (I'm pretty sure I have showdead on Btw).

How many users? Is it the same group of users flagging every political post? You seem to agree with their take openly, are you flagging these as well?

I agree with the "take" that this article isn't going to get discussed substantively and thoughtfully on HN. You needn't look far to see why—the current thread demonstrates it.

The commenters insisting that this is the wrong call don't seem to have fully taken in the intended purpose of this site, because they're actually making a case in favor of the flags, not against them.

Btw, it's not true that every political post gets flagged. HN's approach to that question has been stable for a long time, even though there can be strong disagreement about specific calls. If you or anyone wants to read about what the approach is, there are lots of links at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... In particular, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 are good places to start.

Indeed many of the top comments are about how this thread will inevitably be flagged but continuing on to give substantive commentary. Is this not a sign that the system is not producing the desired results? That good contributors see a good topic and give up on it isn’t a sign that the topic is inherently not worth discussing.

This is the culture HN is building not one magically produced by the topics themselves, and I think the fact the that the only moderator on the site agrees that all political discussion is not worth having contributes to the quality of political discussion on the site.

I think you do a great job overall dang, but I think politics is inherently in an area that highlights the downsides of having a single moderator at the helm. I get wanting to avoid policing political thought but does shutting it all down produce the best community? Does allowing power users to disable commentary on certain topics create the community you are trying to build?

We're far from "shutting it all down"; that's what those links in my GP comment are about. It's a question of which stories/threads have the best chance at supporting a thoughtful discussion.

Not disagreeing, but it shouldn't be flagged.

It was flagged, then un-flagged, now flagged again.

Because you have two parties of HN users that happily flag, which is enough. Those who are Trump supporters and those who just don't want any politics / the discussions surrounding it on HN. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Doesn't seem to be a duplicate, so dang might unflag it and remove the filter if he sees the thread.

You can always email dang about Flags you think are unjust. He's pretty responsive and fair. Just checkout the contact page linked at the bottom

Everything Musk related gets flagged in seconds.

Welcome to absolute free speech.

I'm sure this will be flagged soon enough, but people need to know that there is an unprecedented, hostile, and (seemingly) illegal blitzkrieg happening against the federal civil service. Doors are being barricaded. Strange servers are being installed by unknown individuals. People with decades of institutional experience are getting pushed out the door.

First-hand accounts can be found here: https://old.reddit.com/r/fednews/

Running the Federal government like a Silicon Valley startup - what could possibly go wrong?

We are literally following Curtis Yarvin's playbook for toppling democracy right now: https://archive.is/iAtnM

Musk should have nothing to do with governing. Period.

This guy decided to get into politics like 5 months ago and is now the second most powerful person in the world purely by dint of being extremely wealthy. He bought the US government and it was apparently a bargain at $250M.

The system has been broken for a while, but that certainly made it clear. Reagan set in motion what led us to the current wealth disparity and Citizens United didn't help the state of things.

Actually, 44.28bn when you include twitter acquisition. Still a bargain.

> The systems include a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers, the officials said.

> "We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems," one of the officials said. "That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications."

This seems beyond bad.

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Can you provide source for your claim?

https://tennesseelookout.com/2025/01/30/tennessee-house-pass...

> The bill’s passage came despite concerns over the constitutionality of a provision creating a Class E felony, punishable by up to 6 years in prison and a $3,000 fine, for any public official who votes in favor of so-called sanctuary policies.

It was prohibited to create such policies since 2019[1]. They've increased punishment for offenders. You might want to read on what exactly changed[2]

Besides Tennessee law prohibits creation of "sanctuary city" way before Trump came into power.

[1] https://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/Billinfo/default.aspx?BillN...

[2] https://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default.aspx?BillN...

It was prohibited to enact those policies. But that's performative, it has always been illegal to aid criminals. It's also technically illegal to sell weed in Colorado.

This makes it illegal to vote. That's first amendment protected behavior and has long been precedent. And once they set the precedent they can make voting a particular way illegal, they'll apply that same law to more and more laws - and then they'll apply it to citizens (based on the SCOTUS ruling that legislators have the same first amendement right as citizens). Stop being a fascist apologist and pretending this behavior is normal.

It is not God damn normal to outlaw voting a specific way. It's their job to represent their electorate and that's literally how we're supposed to change the system in democratic system. This is clearly a move to make it illegal to progressive.

I do have to agree punishing elected representative for voting is a slippery slope.

But in this case, it didn't really change anything.

The fact it is accepted by every single branch of government and is being done flagrantly in the open and their supporters cheer changes everything.

From your link:

>making it a felony for public officials to back sanctuary policies.

Saying "vote against Republicans" makes it sound like voting against any Trump policy is a crime.

Yes, I quoted that in a comment.

I'm sorry, are you being a fascist apologist here? Is it remotely acceptable to make it a crime to vote a given way as a democratically elected representative? Once a single such law exists, it's now precedent we can do it anywhere.

Such a law doesn't even exist for murder for obvious reasons.

I chuckle when people were worried about China. The call is coming from inside the house. We have met the enemy and he is us.

If anything, these billionaires are concerned that Chinese power is in it's ability to control its people and businesses and democracy gets in the way.

Pure delusional greed of silver spoon tech incels.

why is that word used, this guy has like 9 kids

He also acts like a child. An uninspired edgelord like Musk shouldn't be in government.

Yeah I'm not disagreeing with that, I'm so sad the space guy has become this

I've probably just been too poor/whole life, never rich but I can't imagine being that much of an ahole regarding not helping others but might is right... right

I also believe in the premise of capitalism (getting paid for merit/work) but yeah when you get to that much money why do you keep going for more

Greed, I suppose — or I suppose when you've stepped on enough people to get that rich you stop caring.

Doesn't change the fact he cannot be involuntarily celibate after fathering 9 kids. The usage of the term in this vain is basically the same as if I called cyanydeez "retarded" over the usage of this term.

A word with a negative connotation that inapplicable by definition, but used anyway because they consider people that are such to be lesser people.

Logic and reality take issue with your use of "cannot"

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65429936

Musk may very well have had Grimey sex, it still remains possible to father > 500 children without having had sex with their mothers.

https://time.com/6176310/our-father-true-story-netflix/

Etymology and definition are different things.

In this case, not dispositive.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexzhavoronkov/2022/07/27/elon...

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As you see in the replies a well-funded anti-tax movement has been radicalizing a lot of the country against their own government.

They love to see this dissolution of constitutional government. While they claim smaller government is better for the economy, they really care most about ending constitutional government and couldn't care less about the impact to the economy.

Meh, that seems like hyperbole to me. Doesn't a real coup involve the military going into federal buildings and rounding up congressmen from opposing parties and detaining them?

Forgive me for not viewing it the same way. The news is focusing on the airplane right now.

I wouldn't call it a coup, but I've seen something similar going on in some Europe countries in the past (including mine).

President or government acting like a mafia, replacing all key employees based solely on loyalty to them and not competence. And this is done at such a massive scale and speed that the whole country becomes a kleptocracy real quick. Pretty much what's unfolding in the US right now.

A military coup is a kind of coup, but not the only kind. This one, for example, is an auto-coup. Many coups don't look like one at first.

a military coup is a type of coup, and a common one, but not the only

Literally lookup the definition and you'll find out more

Coups do not require troops. They simple require the existing regime to be removed.

Months ago, the leader of Project 2025 said a second Trump term would be "a second American Revolution" and "bloodless if the left allows it to be".

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/04/leader-of-the-pro-t...

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