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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

> “At this point it's difficult not to suspect their awful 0pSec is a choice, and that there are specific people (ahem cough cough the Russians cough) to whom they're leaking secrets, with incompetence being merely plausible deniability for their true, treasonous agenda,” one critic wrote on Mastodon.

Good point.

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Is the point good enough to elaborate further preferably with actual proof instead of just opinion?

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then at some point you gotta assume it's a duck. No need to run a DNA test.

Its more like "i see something waddling and quacking, is it a mallard or gallwad"

I dont mind, its open season and neither is on the protected list.

This perspective is ripe for being manipulated. Use critical thinking and learn to sit with uncertainty.

> Use critical thinking and learn to sit with uncertainty.

Maybe tell that to the guy in the white house. I'm tired of being held to much higher standards than that person. There are limits.

I mean, obviously very difficult to prove, but there _is_ a level of apparent stupidity where Hanlon's razor starts to get a bit blunt.

"We don't do that here"

- T'Challa

How bad can it be? Be pardoned by a SCOTUS immune president?

That won't save you from a lawsuit

Ask Rudy Giuliani or any architect foolish enough to take a project from him. While Trump might know more about protecting people who help him than he did then, it would be out of character for him to expend the time it takes to sign something if his benefit in the transaction is over.

The 6 January rioters who got 20 years in prison, after beating and indirectly causing deaths at the capitol police have ALL been pardoned and are walking free.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capito...

"...The extraordinary pardons and commutations extended to those who committed both violent and nonviolent crimes on Jan. 6, including assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/us/politics/trump-pardons...

I imagine it is "all of the above".

Exactly as you describe, and I'm sure for other foreign interests, everyone at DOGE became massive targets for very highly directed nation-state level interest for phishing/malware/compromise.

Hanlon's razor

This is not an invincible decision making tool. It does not mean that literally every thing that can be explained by idiocy must be. We might start by leaning towards idiocy as an explanation but we are allowed to adjust our opinion as we see more and more information.

Hanlon's razor was originally a joke. Not like, serious observation about how world works.

The caveat is that intentional stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.

In law we shouldn't be focused on ignorance and cluelessness. The outcome of what they have allowed is the crime. All the DOGE dudes need life without parole.

idk the law differentiates between "attempted but failed murder" / "accidental murder" / "successful(?) murder"

...maybe your "law" is some ancient eye-for-eye kind of law instead of some modern stuff?

Do you actually believe that? Do you not think that at least SOME OF THEM, are working their asses off to save american tax payer dollars?

Can you point to any of the contracts in the wall of savings that have saved billions of dollars and disagree with any of them? https://doge.gov/savings

Did you look through that page before posting it? Currently, the default list of biggest savings is topped by things like eliminating a refugee intake facility, various HHS programs making sure public housing meets basic standards of habitability, and eradicating polio.

Is the argument that government was so efficient before that eliminating these seemingly useful programs was the best and only way to save taxpayer dollars?

I guess we just disagree on what's important. $2.9B for 3,000 children. That's 967K per child. What in the actual fuck? https://www.fpds.gov/common/jsp/LaunchWebPage.jsp?command=ex...

Edit: the contract was 3.3B, so that changes the calculus to 1,109,966.78 per child. Haven't seen the facility, but i highly doubt they are staying in million dollar condos, but if they are... there are better ways to do that.

$1,136,436,294.65 for paying their legal services... Why are we paying a billion dollars for legal services of a program we have discontinued?

1,021,000,000 to eradicate polio... Of which that last case in the united states was in 2022... Polio is all but irradicated here in the united states.

We just seem to disagree with what's important and what's wasteful. You could build a brand new city for those amounts in the private sector.

> there are better ways to do that.

That's the crux, for sure. The problem with DOGE though is that instead of creating better ways of doing anything, they just seem to eliminate doing those things at all.

Now we not only don't have a better way of doing a thing that might have been necessary, but we don't even have the sub-optimal way of doing that thing, so now it's not getting done at all.

Edit: Bringing it back to the article, if a person with access to 'a "core financial management system" belonging to the Federal Emergency Management Agency' was foolish enough to let their system get hacked, are we really finding a better way to do things, or are we being a little too careless?

It's 2.9B for a facility that can accommodate up to 3000 children simultaneously, as well as the support services to run it and provide the medical care and social workers needed to take care of them. It's not $3B for a specific 3000 children somewhere, so it's nonsense to try counting the cost per child that way.

regardless of the KPI perspective, do you agree that $3.3B is a bit much for a facility that can only host up the 3k?

For reference, look up some of the Giga factory costs (With Capital expenditure for production). They are similiar in expenditures.

I haven't looked at the contract in detail, but no, $3B over 5 years for 3000 people including construction costs sounds reasonably in line with prison costs (the closest comparison). Certainly not the order of magnitude too high like you're suggesting, which surely someone would have undercut on the bid if it were easy.

You can look at the bid requirements yourself and determine whether you think it's reasonable for the scope of the facility: https://sam.gov/opp/3726d9e2246c47e197396e805ce6bb33/view

This was awarded sole source. There were no vendors able to compete.

I also find their J&A unconvincing, and there's no way it passes the smell test required in Far part 6.

There was really no other vendor in the world, besides Family Care to be able to do this? They aren't even a construction company.

Wow, I took a look at the first one: ~$3 Billion for temporary shelter for just 3k kids? Almost $1 million per child??

Never heard of the program but on its face that sounds pretty bad. Grift, scam, or just inefficient govt? Not sure but not a good argument for keeping it around!

You can't trust their claimed savings either. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/us/politics/doge-contract...

show me an example? Go to the link i provided and show me where they misrepresented savings. You can go directly to FPDS-NG from their saving reports.

NYT is a trash media outlet, which obviously leans everything anti-elon.

Hanlon's razor is overused and abused. Quite often, it is actually a malice and if you are willing to look at the situation dispassionately, it is quite visible.

Hanlon's razor was originally a joke. Not a scientific observation how world works, but a funny sentence about there being a lot of incompetence in the world.

Hanlon's razor is for a peaceful heart, not for helping you win bets.

¿Por qué no los dos?

(Spanish for _Why not both?_)

Hanlon's razor has been weaponized against good-faith applications

I would normally second this, but the Trump admin did order a suspension of offensive cyber operations against Russia in March. So not sure you can truly rule out malice in this case.

And also asked Russian intelligence services to hack his opponent in 2016, which they did the next day.

you could not make this shit up, right!?

There was specifically the televised "Russia, if you're listening..." quip followed by the release of the DNC emails.

>a suspension of offensive cyber operations against Russia in March.

uhhh... why are we commiting offensive cyber operations against a nuclear power? Somewhere in your line you seems to think that it's justified? And that biden was doing the right thing by provoking a major power?

Some people just want the world to burn, and when someone puts out the fire, they think that's unamerican?

> why are we commiting offensive cyber operations against a nuclear power?

Maybe because they are doing it too ?

Such Biden logic that ended with us launching missiles into russia. A constant escalation with no real end in sight and always matching "tit-for-tat- instead of trying to solve the root issue.

You don't think trump is actively involved in negotations with russia to stop all this madness?

Don't you think that one of the first signs of good faith in negotations would be to stop attacking eachother?

You misspelled Reagan.

(Though to be fair, every president since Truman has escalated things with Russia/USSR, except maybe Clinton. Reagan just did more than most.)

> You don't think trump is actively involved in negotations[sic] with russia to stop all this madness?

No, I think Trump is doing whatever Putin wants him to do.

No other president has given explicit permission to launch american missles and use american guidance systems to launch missles into russian territory... Besides biden. What are you talking about?

And you forgot... besides Trump. because trumps not a warmonger, people like to act like he's on the side of the russians. People have lost their minds.

> trumps not a warmonger

In the last 3 months, Trump has threatened to invade:

- Greenland - Canada - Mexico - Panama - Cuba

> people like to act like he's on the side of the russians

Trump has said that Ukraine is the one that started the war, and the "deal" he negotiated to end the war excluded Ukraine from the discussion and would give Russia everything it asked for.

> People have lost their minds.

You're right on that point, but its probably not the people you're thinking of.

Because when someone punches you in the face, you punch back?

Also I don't know why we keep referring to Russia as a major power, their GDP is about the size of Italy's, their economy is on the rocks, their military stockpile is depleted from a failed invasion of their much, much smaller neighbor.

failed operation? Have you seen the war map? After the whole world dumped all their stockpiles to ukraine for over $500B, the russians have still taken over a 3rd of the country. Biden logic was going to lead to a american troops on the ground, and a vietnam all over again.

Russia didn't punch us in the face, they punched some dude that we barley knew in highschool half way across the world.

Your numbers are way off. Ukraine has not received "over $500B". According to the Kiel institute tracker, as of February, the total military support for Ukraine from all all over the world combined stands at 132 billion EUR (~148bn USD). Nor does Russia control a third of the country. Russia controls 18.3%, of which 7.05% was occupied before 2022 and 11.25% since then. The total area held by Russia peaked in the first month of the war at 25.86%, was reduced to 18% with Ukrainian counteroffensives, and has stood there since the late 2022.

Scroll to "Overall control of Ukraine": https://www.warmapper.org/stats

While looking at the chart, keep in mind that Russia currently loses around 30-45k people a month as dead and wounded and they have nothing to show for it. The last major territorial gains were during the first month of the war in March 2022. It's a total military disaster with no end in sight.

And the person you replied to is absolutely right: Russia is not fighting for the potato fields of Ukraine, but to dismantle the entire international security system that the US built after the WWII to secure commerce and influence on the world. Ukraine is one of the stepping stones. Here's the full blueprint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Con...

Hanlon's razor can be taken advantage of.

>Good point.

Is it a good point? How so?

Without any proof or arguments, to me that Mastodon comment is just your average brain rot social media conspiracy slop, especially when you examine the profile of the user who wrote it.

Is this what journalism has now become? Parroting othe people's unhinged takes off social media, then upvoting it on HN?

Likely not the choice of the engineers, who appear not to know that they're being used as pawns in an international spy game that could send them to prison for a very long time.

I fully believe that the engineers themselves are wildly optimistic about society and their own abilities, but good security comes from realism and pessemism. Someone, probably many people, in the chain of command above them has moral and legal responsibility for choosing this course knowing it carried this risk and not caring.

Knowing their choice of targets too (definitely not left up to the engs), by which I mean only DOGEing and compromising the security of what they consider left-leaning agencies: with that targeting and their care to cover their tracks digitally, why not choose a strategy that lets the Russians in quietly? Shortly after they compromised the security of the NRLB they were making blackmail threats by taking drone videos of people (who threatened to reveal their malfeasance) where they lived and worked. Clearly someone in the chain of command is thinking carefully about what they can learn from how Russia governs

But it's coming from the right/good side so any conspiracy instead of panic and dehumanization is plausible and not worth discussing further.

Remember that checklist meme from /.? The “You seem to be advocating/here is why it will not work”?

Well, you’ve burned a bit of time on HN with the karma you’ve accrued. The non-conspiratorial truth is that if you go back and read HN over a longer period of time, it amounts to people parroting other people’s unhinged takes. Least offensive is tech, which is merely juvenile. But the other topics, especially medical ones, are dangerous. Political ones, with zero verification are the worst from a board culture/health perspective.

HN has turned itself into slop in large part due to the voting and flagging mechanisms, because the community was never mentally equipped to use either tools responsibly. And pg/dang never set the tone. So now you see how far it has fallen.

My advice: don’t come here to read comments seriously. Yes, from time to time someone of good taste shows up to a topic they have first hand experience with and they have to educate the rest as to why their takes are completely wrong (and sometimes dangerous, see above).

Instead, come here to get the news, laugh at the shit flinging if you must, and move on.

I’ve been contemplating doing an HN-without-HN filter board; show just the tech stuff, have commentary without voting or flagging. Because while you’re just seeing how things are now, I am afraid to say they’ve always been so.

We're being downvoted to oblivion, but notice nobody is saying we are wrong?

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