
Availability of the Government of the United States - mjwhansen
https://govavailability.info/
======
irrational
{ "start": "1995-11-14T00:00:00-05:00", "end": "1995-11-20T00:00:00-05:00" },
{ "start": "1995-12-16T00:00:00-05:00", "end": "1996-01-07T00:00:00-05:00" },

I remember this one. I was in college. I was sitting on the front stoop of the
house I was living in when the mailman came by. I mentioned that I was
surprised he was still working since the government was shutdown. He laughed
and said that the USPS is self-funded and is flush with cash and had no debts
so they had no problem staying open. Oh how things have changed.

~~~
Scaevolus
In case you don't know: the government passed a law that USPS must _prefund_
all benefits (like pensions), which is _extremely_ uncommon (pay-as-you-go is
typical).

[https://www.cnbc.com/id/45018432](https://www.cnbc.com/id/45018432)

~~~
pstrateman
pay-as-you-go is typical and nearly universally results in bankruptcy of the
pension plan.

requiring USPS to pay for obligations incurred today isn't some crazy scam to
bankrupt them

~~~
crankylinuxuser
Actually requiring a fund in escrow to complete its promises is what __all
companies __should have been required to do. Employees took a willful paycut
to save money for later... But, why does the company care?

You want to know what happens when they don't? They declare bankruptcy and the
judge dismisses the pensions, and the federal government takes it over.

------
Eridrus
This is a truly optimistic assessment of the Availability of Government
Services.

I went to the post office a few weeks ago, and while the building was open,
they had stopped taking packages. Not that they wouldn't mail them today, but
that they just wouldn't even take them. And that doesn't even count the hours
they're meant to be closed.

In any case, it's clear that the length of any specific downtime matters as
much as the cumulative downtime.

~~~
nostrademons
It's measuring whether the service as a whole is outright down and refusing to
respond to requests. There's arguably been a degraded user experience since
the 80s, but we seem to have reached the cascading failure point in the last 2
years.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
There's arguments to be made that this is a right-wing coup.

Many hardliners in the republican party, along with trump, want to starve the
beast. And there's not much more you can do than by harming the rank and file
with "you must go to work but we won't pay you". The people in federal
positions I know of are already looking elsewhere. Some are trying to survive
it. And others are going "sick-out".

Regardless how its being done, it is. And this shutdown is starving all non-
military federal positions from TSA to the USDA. If this goes on for months,
then those people will leave, along with their experience their tenure
brought. And eventually, when the government is not "shut down", they will
have proof that the government _really_ didn't need those positions.

And we open our eyes, and realize the swamp wasn't Capitol Hill. The swamp was
us. We're in the middle of draining.

~~~
nostrademons
Maybe, but I think it's ironic that this shutdown is over a Republican (well,
Trumpist) initiative to spend _more_ money, while it's the Democrats who want
to hold the line on spending.

~~~
tropo
It's not really money. You'd need 3 or 4 significant figures to even tell the
difference, depending on how you calculate it. With less, the wall completely
disappears in the rounding.

Maybe that says something bad about the size of the rest of the budget. It's
kind of disturbing that the wall cost is like loose change dropped down under
a seat cushion and forgotten.

To put it another way, the wall cost is just half a day of the federal budget.
Most likely, we've already blown far more than that on the cost of the
shutdown.

Scaling things down to median American household sizes, it's like a couple
getting a divorce because one person insists on spending $16.81 to $93.42 and
the other person is flipping out over it.

~~~
davvolun
Absolutely, this is not really over money. I think if you look at the past few
decades, Democrats have been better at being fiscally conservative, for
whatever reason, but this is a battle over principles, not money.

------
jasoncartwright
I find the timestamp in the data really enjoyable for some reason...

"usa": { "start": "1789-03-04T00:00:00-05:00", "end": null },

~~~
presscast

        {"screeching_eagle": true}

~~~
CobrastanJorji
// TODO: I could only find a red-tailed hawk sound. Fix before shipping.

~~~
house9-2
LOL, this cracks me up because movies always use the Red-tailed call, even
when it is an eagle or vulture being shown

~~~
presscast
I did not expect this thread to teach me anything, and yet here we are.

Why is this the case? Do most birds of prey not have particularly virile
screeches or what?

~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
Bald eagles make a sort of whiny peeping. It's a very cute sound, not at all
what people expect.

To quote Sibley: "Call rather weak, flat, chirping whistles, stuttering,
variable. Immature calls generally harsher, more shrill than adult until three
to four years old."

------
slg
Most of us would be fired if we had only one nine in our uptime rate.

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somebodythere
Can we also have little dots that show which services are currently impacted
by the outage?

~~~
shogun21
I would like a US government statuspage.

~~~
excalibur
I'd be happy just to see it listed on downdetector.com

~~~
vertexFarm
Ha just for funsies I went over there and searched "U.S. Government" and it
brought me here:
[https://downdetector.com/status/irs](https://downdetector.com/status/irs)

I guess that's close enough.

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gpm
No shutdowns until 1980, and 10 since then according to the data.

What changed in 1980?

~~~
tapesonthefloor
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast)

~~~
vertexFarm
And we have plenty of data showing how this works out, latest of which might
be Kansas:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_Senate_Bill_Substitute_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_Senate_Bill_Substitute_HB_2117)

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TomK32
Website isn't for small screens. There sure gotta be some funds for that?

An SLA I'd never agree to. There might not even be a single 9 in the this
year's uptime percentage.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Works fine on mine (iPad mini, pixel1) - what problem do you have, on what
device?

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CobrastanJorji
One nine of uptime isn't amazing.

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cheschire
durability would be an interesting measurement, including compromise, data
loss due to redaction, etc.

------
sdinsn
The dataset misses one of Trump's earlier shutdowns. He's had 3 shutdowns.

