- Feature Articles
- CodeSOD
- Error'd
-
Forums
-
Other Articles
- Random Article
- Alex's Soapbox
- Announcements
- Best of…
- Best of Email
- Best of the Sidebar
- Bring Your Own Code
- Coded Smorgasbord
- Mandatory Fun Day
- Off Topic
- Representative Line
- News Roundup
- Editor's Soapbox
- Software on the Rocks
- Souvenir Potpourri
- Sponsor Post
- Tales from the Interview
- The Daily WTF: Live
- Virtudyne
Admin
frist
Admin
I think Remy doesn't like Elon Musk very much.
Admin
My very generalized take on the situation is this: the incompetence on left (right) for some reason spurs more incompetence on the right (left), and this is the vicious cycle which brought us to where we are today.
Musk is just a symptom.
Leaving politics aside, the idiot now wants to build a hyperloop under the ground by connecting distant cities with a "gravity train". He promises it will be cheaper than airplanes because "reasons". Hahahaha
Admin
Uh-oh, Americans are going to loose their marbles over how "political" this article is. Luckily I'm not American.
The term con-man stands for confidence. Musk is the typical "trust-me-bro" / "I read a article about, so I'm a expert" type of manager - on first glance he seems to know and do everything, but on a deeper look you find out that he is just paying someone and then presenting the results as his own, like his fabulous gaming exploits (literally, actually). So he is a perfect politician, because they do exactly the same.
Now who's a good boss? Well, it's an enabler, simple as that. Making everything more productive by unburdening the productive work force.
Musk is the total opposite, he is a disabler and sells the greatly diminished product as productivity miracle (if there is any at all, but you know, Musks make mistakes, that happens) which only works because his remaining productive work force bails him basically out with insane trickery.
Admin
On one hand I think it's nice that you haven't anonymized the culprit this time.
But on the other hand if you first get started on Musk et al. you could probably fill TDWTF for years to come - and that would probably be tiring in the end. But OK for now: Keep them coming.
Admin
I read about such trains first in "The Eyre Affair", the debut of Jasper Fforde, published in 2001. It's set in a world where there are also dodos and mammoths in the UK, and the UK is run by one giant corporation. And the book world is so real that the protagonist changes the ending of Jane Eyre posteriorly. So yes, Elon Musk could well be the villain who escaped from literature to the real world and became head of "Goliath". Now, where's the heroine that can stop him?
Admin
I think the way the acronym "DOGE" is pronounced in the news is wrong. I think it should be pronounced as "Douche"...
Admin
How long until the Elon stans flood the comments?
Admin
Appreciate the view of the current insanity from a WTF viewpoint. Ignore all of the politics, whether any thinning of the labor force is needed, and your feelings on what/how is being done. Just look at the horrid process and results and realize... This is my parents social security, my taxes (Incoming), and think about what else is being impacted that I haven't even realized.
Admin
I think this is an interesting comment, because I would argue this post is the opposite of "ignore all of the politics"- this discussion is very political. But what it ignores is partisanship, which is honestly a sideshow to politics! Politics is how we, as a society, organize to get things done. How we decide what to do, how we decide who does it, how we execute- that's all politics. A TDWTF story where a bad boss makes bad decisions is political, and carries a point of view about how we should be making decisions and executing them.
Partisanship is how we abdicate our responsibility of participating in politics and just let "our side" handle it. Which, since I'm on the subject, a thing that really annoys me is how "giving up partisanship" usually means "triangulate a position that is a compromise between the 'left' and 'right' and generally move farther to the 'right'", which is frankly, bullshit. Giving up partisanship is not about picking an arbitrary middle point on an ideological map- it's about making good decisions that will have the best possible outcomes and the compromises are more about dealing with reality.
Admin
Technically, shouldn't we start with zeroeht rather than frist?
Admin
Thank you, Remy for this article. The wreckage being done by Trump and Musk affects everyone, and everyone should speak out. (But why does the reCaptcha require me to go through SIX screeens? WTF?)
Admin
This is the most profound excerpt I've read since a long time ..
on the Internet of all places..
Admin
Stick to coding.
Admin
@Remy Porter
What would you say are the systemic failures that allowed Musk to do this?
That particular bad boss story is probably just starting, but the big question is just how deep the underlying WTF is. Would you say the current mess raises questions about the whole US political system? The entirety of the US society? The entirety of the world population?
Just how big is actually the real-world Jurassic Park? The metaphorical dinosaurs are loose, and problems could be very deep in human nature.
Admin
"Move fast and break things" is not how you run a government.
Admin
TRWTF in this whole DOGE fiasco has to include Congress as well because DOGE is dismantling systems that have been approved and mandated by Congress. No Legislative appointee has the right OR authority to stop or alter those programs without the consent of Congress (or the Judicial branch, but that's a whole other ballgame). In this situation, Congress would be the ignorant, lazy board of directors that have been completely hoodwinked by the CEOs nephew and put into a position that destroys their company from the middle out (Yes, that was a Silicon Valley reference).
Admin
The real root cause, I believe, is that the US Constitution, which is the foundational document of our legal system, is based entirely on the honor system. It has no enforcement mechanisms to preserve the separation of powers. The SCOTUS has no mechanism to enforce it's rulings, and Congress has no effective way to police the POTUS. (Yes, there is impeachment, but the bar on that is so high that it is effectively worthless, as recent history has demonstrated.)
The consequence being that when people who have no honor take office, there is little we can do to stop them. We don't even have an opposition party. It reminds me of an old joke from Beyond the Fringe, in which four English chaps were talking about American politics. "They have the Republican Party, which is the equivalent of our Conservative Party, and then they have the Democratic party, which is the equivalent of our Conservative Party."
Admin
Ooof, that is a question, and I'm not sure there's a single clear answer to it. The systems involved are huge and complicated and the problems are multifaceted and have grown over centuries. Certainly, many of the seeds were planted in the founding of the US, both in terms of our founding documents and the oppressive systems which were in place in the 18th century.
But I think, speaking to the immediate situation, there are more immediate causes. For all that the US has a constitutional system of government made up of laws and rules, so much of the day to day functioning of our political apparatus is handled by informal norms. There aren't rules so much as there are expectations of behavior. In the past, violations of the norms could be handled by the social pressure- because most politicians agreed that the norms were good, enforcing the norms didn't follow any partisan lines. Everyone played by the unwritten rules. But once a critical mass of people decided "wait, these are just norms, and there are no consequences for breaking them!" the table flipped. And that's how you end up in a situation where a junior staffer from DOGE walks into the IRS and says, "Let me at your computers or I'll call Elon!" There are no norms for this!
And there's a really good historical parallel here: the fall of the Roman Republic. A lot is made out of the "oh, this is like the fall of the Roman Empire," which is nonsense- the Empire went through many centuries of decline and remained a viable political entity in the east until the 15th century! But it is a lot like the fall of the Roman Republic. Much of the republic's functioning operated on norms. Who got promoted to what rank in society, how you managed the welfare system, who declared holidays and when, how the senate functioned. And those systems were in a state of decay for a long time before Julius Caesar came along and just blew them up.
Admin
And it's worth noting that our founding documents also were a compromise which enforced a brutal system of race-based chattel slavery, and in TDWTF terms, that's technical debt that we've never really paid down- it's been a series of patches and hotfixes that have never really dealt with the problems created by that system.
And I think "technical debt" is a good lens to look at structural inequalities through, honestly. I think we can all agree that an equal and just society is a good goal, but there's ongoing technical debt that acts as an obstacle to that. And paying down that debt is really hard because society is the one thing we can't do a "greenfield rewrite" on- society must continue to function while we make changes to how it functions.
//I mean, you can do a greenfield rewrite, but the costs are extremely high
Admin
"...the avatar of Dunning-Krueger, Elon Musk." Really? Both of them in the same body? No wonder he's such an awkward human being!
Admin
Looks like a Monday full court press. All the tech sites woke up and decided to rant about politics out politics.
Flak over the target.
Admin
The Constitution is just a piece of paper (OK, parchment), it can't enforce anything. Any system of government eventually reduces to the honor system -- people have to do what's written on the paper.
The Constitution contains checks and balances, but that depends on the other branches to do their duties. GOP Congressmen and Senators admit that what Trump and Musk are doing is not techically legal, but since they're OK with the end goal they don't care how he does it.
This is not new, either. We've had civil rights laws since the 60's, yet blacks and browns still get beaten and killed by the police for no good reason, and punishment is rare. The DOJ performs investigations, finds that these police departments are racists, they promise to get better. They pay lip service by sending everyone to training sessions, then everything goes back to normal.
Admin
I'm highly political. I follow a lot of both news and rants from both sides of the aisle. I already have my sources. You know how people say "no offense, but..." well, I'm deliberately saying I mean offense when I say that I come here for foibles in my industry; I don't come to this site for politics.
Admin
My argument here is that people setting IT systems on fire and publishing government websites which are unsecured is 100% what this site is about. That it touches upon global current events is just the nature of the world in which we live.
Admin
"Farmers in the US depend on USAID purchasing excess crops to stabilize food prices. Abroad, people will die without the support they've been receiving." Don't you think those two should have been written in reverse order? People dying looks much more important than the 'America first' pitfall.
Admin
Lots of crying about DOGE methods. However there has been a lot folks on both sides of the political divide that have wanted to deal with the accountability, one hand giveth the other taketh away policy confusion, duplication of efforts, fiefdoms, and similar issues present in our government for the Post War era forward.
You know what - basically none of them have been successful. Government is bigger and more expensive and always becomes so no matter who gets elected. The 'people' who win the election never really get to see their policy vision tried, because the ship is so slow to turn their guy's term of office is usually up before much even goes into effect. Really ask yourself what if any progress on domestic issues have we made since the end of the cold war? What if any progress in terms of lasting foreign policy progress has been made? I don't think we have much show of the last 35 years at all with respect the life of the average citizen.
It is painful, but so is setting a broken bone, the pain does not mean you should not do it. Everyone is just upset because for the first time in several generations Trump and Musk are actually trying something different. Who knows if it will work, but nothing else working.
Admin
in regards to the 150 years and crazy timelines, there was an article here about Irene Triplett who died in 2020 who was the last American to receive a Civil War pension.
Admin
It's laughable to say that they're trying anything different- variations of austerity plans have been tried all over the place, and they consistently end in dead bodies. The only difference in the approach compared to other austerity operations is that this is all a flagrant violation of the law. I wasn't discussing some of those broader elements in the article, because they're out of scope for the site, but there are systems in place to decide how government agencies are formed and staffed, and they involve acts of Congress.
But let's set that aside, because I think there is a really important thing that gets lost in "government is inefficient!" discussions, and that is something that actually is on topic for the site: the triangle of stability. In the vein of the ol' "good, fast, cheap, pick two", "resilient, consistent, efficient, pick two".
Government systems favor resilience- they're meant to remain stable over long periods of time. A highway project, for example, is going to take longer than most elected officials will be in office. The SSA has been stable for almost a century at this point. Similarly, consistency: everyone should have the same experience engaging with the same service.
To do that requires bureaucracy and paying large Coase costs. It's inefficient. But the goal isn't to be efficient, it's to be resilient.
Admin
"Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My suggested compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration." -- Stan Kelly-Bootle
Admin
The primary point, as far as I'm concerned, is not what they're doing, but how. They are inarguably breaking the law to do it --- why? Why not get Congress's permission? If they can break the law, so can I.
Admin
I think it should be pronounced "dodgy". That should suit everyone. The opponents think it is referring to its methods, while its supporters think it refers to its targets.
Admin
But there are rules for that, I would think? If I were to walk into that same office and demand access to a computer, they would call security to escort me out of the building — if I’m lucky. Given the security culture in the US, I very much suspect there are clear rules and many actual laws that prevent anyone who is not specifically authorised, from accessing all kinds of this information that DOGE demands and gets access to without following those rules.
The real problem here, in this regard, is that nobody seems to feel heroic enough to stand up to them. Which is probably because doing so will get them fired, but given the way DOGE operates, maybe it’s a safe bet they will likely get fired anyway, so why not at least make a symbolic stand? Which, I suspect, could be because of a cultural issue I’ve observed in many Americans: they’re all “I’ll do what I want, it’s the Land of the Free!” but as soon as an authority figure actually stands in front of them, they’re “Yes sir, no sir, how high sir?”
Admin
Are you calling letting Putin win a war of aggression, or letting people die from lack of medication, or knocking the supports out from under various organisations that have kept the world stable for 80 years, or of insulting countries who have considered themselves your friends for about as long, “progress”?
Admin
Have the TDWTF operators considered a site mirror located in fex the EU on a non-US domain? Other countries that took the same path as USA have done, turned out to be less than hospitable to writers etc.
Admin
@Richard Brantley & @Remy Porter
Alright, thanks for your answers!
Admin
What is your confidence of getting a presidential pardon?
How many articles are on this site where someone who thought they knew more than they did was able to do stuff for as long as they did since they have the confidence and protection of upper management?
Admin
Regarding the political aspect of all this, the biggest problem i have with DOGE is that cutting a few tens of billions here and there will not fix the problem. US needs a massive welfare reduction (if not shutdown) and entitlement privatization, along with a hard lock at the defense budget. USAID and education etc are peanuts.
And yes, they have to get congressional approval to close departments.
Admin
USAID was the US primary soft power tool; in other words by dismantling it the US has given up to be a super power. Will be interesting to see the full extend this move will happen in the coming decades.
Admin
True to an extent, but like most of government, very inefficient. 1. I'm not for or against abolishing it; 2. I don't like effectively abolishing without congress; and 3. I don't think it will fix the deficit.
Addendum 2025-02-17 16:01:
Admin
That is true. Constitutionally, departments are created and abolished by congress. But the deficit is enormous and congress has done absolutely nothing to fix it. I'll leave it to all of you to debate if it's better for a country to disintegrate because of erosion of its political structure, or because of hyperinflation and mass deaths. 🤣🤣
Admin
see ya, good luck with the next 4 years
Admin
Well, any election system which is based on personal elections are prone to favor populists.
And the current american system favors also rich people because they have the connections (and money) to finance that all.
And still having a electoral college is the very tip of all the problems.
The election system is riddled with fundamental problems (you have to register to vote, gerry mandering (?), the winner takes it all etc.)
There needs to be a serious overhaul.
Admin
Its as if so many people never heard "knows just enough to be dangerous".
Admin
Elon is such a dumbass. I guess that’s why he’s a billionaire and you are editing a blog.
Admin
I agree with Argle here. I feel most people regularly come here for tech stories and quite frankly found post to be a total affront to core intention of this site, and quite frankly a misuse of an editor's position. It's like an actor in a production deliberately going out of character to talk about completely off-topic. There are far better places to discuss such thing. Using a site that you work for that has nothing to do with politics, but has a clearly stated interest, feels like a violation thereof. This had long been a place where a lot of people go to read as an alternative to the daily political grind. It doesn't matter what side of the spectrum you consider yourself to be on. Please don't use this site for something that it was clearly not intended for.
Admin
DOGE will cause both
Admin
It may be interesting to know that "Doge" was a word identifying "the head of state and head of the Venetian oligarchy" back when Venise was an indipendent republique. You may get more information at the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice
Admin
"gerrymandering" (one word), but that's a potential problem in any electoral system where different "types" (white/black, poor/rich, whatever) are not uniformly distributed and the unit of voting isn't the entire country/state/whatever. Some types of voting system (other than first-past-the-post) can mitigate this problem, notably the ones that elect several representatives at a time in a group of what would otherwise be districts, but that's not applicable to a presidential election, where only one person is elected (but, equally, in a popular-vote system (no electoral college), a presidential election can't be vulnerable to gerrymandering anyway).
Registering to vote might be a problem, but it's a less-bad problem than the alternative, where the authorities don't actually know who is eligible to vote where (and, in theory, someone might be classed as "can't vote here" everywhere, or, worse, nowhere).
Winner-takes-all (perhaps better-known as "first past the post") is a problem, but its prime virtue is simplicity, which not one of the alternatives can truly claim.
Admin
Not you too man. Musk is great and what he's doing is uncovering decades of shady dealings and fraud in our own government.