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Comment by chris_wot | Hacker News Reader

So much for the wunderkinds in DOGE.

They were able to eliminate all open CVE's while cutting costs at the same time. Amazing!

Soon to be powned, by their own extreme short sightedness. Duh.

Maybe "they" want to do the pwning with less coordinated resistance. Doing away with CVEs would help with that objective.

No, they are not skilled enough to hack anything. These are just a bunch of average junior engineers with hubris.

Soon to be? They already failed to deploy a website safely by exposing the db. https://www.404media.co/anyone-can-push-updates-to-the-doge-...

@bigballs, please save U.S.

I think you mean wonder kids.

wunderkind is a loanword, it's one of those cases of a German word being used but being odd in English since it's so similar. Like kindergarten which is often speller as "garden".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wunderkind_(disambiguation)

"tariff as wunderwaffe" often comes to mind these days.

Many of these terms originate during the Nazi regime and thus aren't used lightly in Germany anymore.

Other example includes: Endgegner (final boss) or Endlösung (final solution)

I would suggest to avoid such terms.

> Endgegner

I did not know about this, thanks for die Vorwarnung. In context, I'd assume "ultimate enemy" (Gegner=opponent) as "final boss" sounds videogame.

Many did in the golden age of German research, then to be destroyed by those mentioned.

Either the philosophers or the mathematicians/physicists likely coined them.

Wunderkind and Endgegner are used lightly in Germany.

The parallels to Nazi Germany's striking but impractical weapons seemed intended every time I heard or read Wunderwaffe in English.

Wunderkind predates the Nazis so it doesn't have that much baggage.

Endgegner originates from Endlösung and while it indeed often is used without thought, the question if it should be used lightly.

You stated Endgegner was not used lightly in Germany when it was. You seemed to think Wunderwaffe was used lightly in English when it was not. And searching for Endgegner and Endlösung found our comments and a few opinions they sound similar. No evidence or claims of origin. I conclude Endgegner does not originate from Endlösung probably.

I think the GP was making a reference to the Apple TV show “Ted Lasso”.

“Wunderkind” mispronounced as “Wonder Kid” is a running joke in that show.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TedLasso/comments/132rw9v/what_the_...

I'm pretty sure this is a joke reference to Ted Lasso.

Same thing.

Given that the Kids at DOGE are all computer experts, this reeks of a calculated move.

I think expert is not the right word for what looks like mostly rookies.

Absolutely not. They are not broadly experts, and they are not making these decisions after careful consideration, as evidenced by their continual acts of stupidity and basic errors and cutting things despite having no idea what it is they are cutting. Musk got in an argument with someone who said DOGE cut funding for a cancer treatment program, and Musk was calling the person a liar, and the person provided evidence and Musk admitted it was an accident. They are a clown car of idiots who vastly overestimate their own knowledge and underestimate how much good the government actually does. They think they can just slash and burn and there will be no negative consequences because they think the government is worthless.

Until, like Ayn Rand, they actually need the government. Then they'll be complaining how the government doesn't provide services.

My knowledge of Ayn Rand stops at having read a book (and considered it silly), when did she need the government and complained about it?

She was an Objectivist. She considered social security to be "legalized plunder". Then when she needed it, she decided to take it.

One of her wonderful worldviews was to rejects altruism as a moral imperative, arguing that individuals should live for their own rational self-interest. Social security, based on the idea of supporting others, contradicts this principle.

It takes strong and complex social glue to create a place where millions can safely follow their own self-interest.

Which means anyone whose wisdom matches their self-interest is going to understand that different things have very different efficiencies at different scales.

And some things happen to be dramatically more efficient/person and more effective, the larger the scale they can be coordinated at.

>It takes strong and complex social glue to create a place where millions can safely follow their own self-interest.

This exactly. All of these people who profess to believe in objectivism could easily move to a failed state and do anything they want to with zero government intervention. But they don't do that. They want all of the benefits of a working government with none of the things required to actually create a working government.

Side note: if they wait a little bit, they may end up not needing to move anywhere after all.

It is in your self interest to have a strong social safety net, because one day you might need it too.

Also, even if you don't need it yourself, it's far nicer to live in a society where people's basic needs can be met otherwise we end up living in some kind of Mad Max apocalyptic wasteland where people with nothing and nothing to lose roam the country looking for targets.

> One of her wonderful worldviews was to rejects altruism as a moral imperative, arguing that individuals should live for their own rational self-interest. Social security, based on the idea of supporting others, contradicts this principle.

This position was already pointed out by Plato (in the Gorgias IIRC) as being inconsistent. Political systems are made up by people - if a society, in particular a democratic one, has certain systems in place, then this is probably because it was (at least believed to be) in the people's self interest.

I don't see altruism as being outside of my own self-interest. I think that you get what you give, so having to give up some money to the public good is OK (usually not awesome, but OK).

What's funny, and it might be because of the translation, but I first thought her book where all entrepreneurs are hidden away in a sort of parallel country was a dystopian satire and a joke about some people sense of self importance. Then I learned about her (and when the book was written too) and realised her book was to be read as it was written, 'seriously'. Which makes it silly, but a funny story.

Medicare and social security after a lung cancer diagnosis (from being a heavy smoker)

https://www.openculture.com/2016/12/when-ayn-rand-collected-...

Sorry, I really should have said "experts" with the rabbit ears. But it still reeks.

They've done their degrees and masters in Computer Science, and many of them dropped out. But they focused on AI, so I'm assuming this makes them great at statistics, but does this mean they are great at security? Given the way they've gone through a variety of departments, I'd say they aren't.

The DOGE crew are incompetent. Witness their firing of all the people who look after the nuclear stockpile and Ebola research.

They are clueless kids at their first job, following the orders of their hero. You think they’ll resist when the boss tells them, “cut everything”?

No. [0] I wouldn't say they are computer experts. [1][2]

[0] https://www.404media.co/anyone-can-push-updates-to-the-doge-...

[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355895/doge-musk-nlrb-...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-14/doge-staf...

Hang out around here for a while and you will realize quickly that us tech bros mostly just know tech stuff. Our perceived intelligence in topics which we don't spend our time on is called hubris and we are swimming in it at all times.

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