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Comment by alexpotato | Hacker News Reader

Is this just US Digital Service V2?

https://www.usds.gov/

Ever since USDS got renamed as DOGE, they've had trouble recruiting people. I suspect this move is maybe an effort to shed DOGE's negative image.

Textbook PR. If your reputation went to shit, just rebrand it.

See, for example, how the head of DOGE said "That wasn't a nazi salute, that was roman salute! It's a completely different thing."

Is the implication that they are in fact the same thing or that you don’t like Elon?

Yeah my first thought was that this already existed, was doing great work, and got canned by DOGE in favor of what appears to be a MUCH MUCH more expensive version of it here.

And with Trump-aligned people running it, of course, not like the purged USDS. One of the perks is "networking" after all.

I was having a conversation with a Trump-supporting relative, who was genuinely asking me, “Don’t you think it’s great that they put a bunch of [DOGE] engineers into the government to fix things?”

When I said, “Well, we already had that - the USDS. And what has DOGE done, specifically, to fix things?” it just went right over her head. Did not even land.

Most people have very little idea how anything works. Especially in the government, but it’s fairly true in general.

Something like half of US adults don’t know how marginal income tax rates work, which is one of the very most-relevant-to-them-personally things for them to know about the federal government. The loudest ordinary citizens complaining about foreign aid or the estate (“death”, as republicans rebranded it on strategist advice) tax can’t tell you a halfway accurate thing about either, they’re just repeating what they heard, or some assumption they made (“well if [talking head] is complaining about it this much it must be really bad!”)

This doesn’t get better for any other program or tax or whatever that you can think of. Folks have no idea how anything works and the media figures and politicians they trust lie to them constantly, and are rewarded for it.

You beat me to it. Minus the good will and civic mindedness that v1 had going for it of course.

Minus the talent, as well.

We went from top notch Google SREs fixing HealthCare.gov to… “Big Balls” and script kiddies.

That was my first thought too. But they can say that this one was created by their administration. And is more AI.

I'd love to hear from people who had experience with USDS before this administration. The chatter I see online is overwhelmingly positive. OTOH, I interviewed with USDS and the experience was not good. I don't love tech interviews in general but this one was somehow worse. I remember thinking the interview would have made more sense if they were hiring for PMs, but I wasn't a PM and didn't want to be one. Focusing on my communication abilities and professional history is one thing, but this ... wasn't that. I always wondered if others had the same experience. Maybe I just had the wrong interviewer on the wrong day.

No, USDS was about modernizing the government's tech systems in general.

This one is about jamming AI into shit:

> Tech Force will be an elite group of ~1,000 technology specialists hired by agencies to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) implementation and solve the federal government's most critical technological challenges.

And apparently implementing a Central Bank Digital Currency using TrumpCoin.

> Backed by the White House, Tech Force will tackle the most complex and large-scale civic and defense challenges of our era – from administering critical financial infrastructure at the Treasury Department to advancing cutting-edge programs at the Department of Defense – and everything in between.

Also, surprised their AI reviewer allowed the use of DoD... I thought they identify as Dept of War now.

They couldn't even get the fucking US flag right on the AI-generated images.

These are incompetent buffoons who simply don't care about anything.

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