They aren't claiming that government programs do provide unbiased public could, just that they could, and are being compared to private corporations which cannot.
That's something that's easy to understand if for someone who tries and not actually particularly related to things like "perfect" efficiency or "immunity" from corruption.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
>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?
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?
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.
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.
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...
This isn't an example of incompetence. DOGE staff broke laws when they connected their personal computers to classified system. They knew better, plenty of people told them not to do this and they still did it.
They could have followed OpSec rules and still done their work. They chose not to do so. Their willful disobedience of the laws and OpSec might stem from multiple rationals, but it doesn't matter, because their actions are criminal and their negligence is beyond incompetence.
Emacs' configurability is hard to describe to anyone who hasn't immersed themselves in that sort of environment. There's a small portion of the program written C, but the bulk of it is written in elisp. When you evaluate elisp code, you're not in some sandboxed extension system - you're at the same level as Emacs itself. This allows you to modify nearly any aspect of Emacs.
It'd be a security nightmare if it was more popular, but fortunately the community hovers around being big enough for serious work to be done but small enough that it's not worth writing malware for.
I don't know if it's a security nightmare any more than other editors that have "plugins" (or the like).
One advantage for Emacs is it's both easy and common read the code of the plugins you are using. I can't tell you the last time I looked at the source code of a plugin for VS Code or any other editor. The last time I looked at the code for a plugin in Emacs was today.
I don't think it's a security nightmare per-se. Most of the time, you're not installing a lot of packages (the built-in are extensive) and most of these are small and commonly used.
It's like saying the AUR is a security nightmare. You're just expected to be an adult and vet what you're using.
I'm not sure I agree with the number and size of packages people install (unless you're comparing them to, say, org-mode), but that's not really what I'm talking about.
Emacs runs all elisp code as if it's part of Emacs. Think about what Emacs is capable of, and compare that to what a browser allows its extensions to do. No widely used software works like that because it's way too easy to abuse. Emacs gets away with it because it's not widely used.
I don't know the first thing about VSCode but I'm willing to bet there are strict limits to what its plugins are allowed to do.
I don't know if that's changed since last I wrote an extension for a web browser, but the API is pretty open for the current context (tab) that it's executing in. As long as it's part of the API, the action is doable. Same with VSCode or Sublime. Sandboxed plugins would be pretty useless.
I guess it's hard to switch from a working setup that you've invested time in.
Especially since you might not be familiar with the new one.
Personally, I'm trying out things in VS Code, just to see how they work. But when I need to work, I do it in Emacs, since I know it better.
Also, with VS Code, just while trying it out, simple things like cut & paste would stop working (choosing them from the menu, they would work, but trying to cut & paste with the key shortcuts and the mouse, wouldn't). You'd have to refresh the whole view or restart it, for cut & paste to become available again.
Erythritol is a sugar alcohol widely used as a noncaloric sweetener in sugar-free products, such as keto-friendly snack bars, energy drinks, and sugar-free chewing gum.
The findings suggest it increases oxidative stress and reduces nitric oxide production in brain blood vessel cells, which may impair blood flow, contributing to a higher risk of vascular events like stroke.
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