I've seen what happens when a startup tells young but very eager people that they need to ship as quickly as possible, oh and don't bother with any rules or procedures that would slow you down. They just pile on technical debt, sometimes realizing and sometimes not. From an infosec perspective, it's an absolute nightmare. It's one thing if it's an early stage startup, it's quite another if it's a system that people rely on for really sensitive things.
I’d love to know what security clearance checks were performed on the teenage tech-bro disciples working at DOGE. It’s clear to me as an outsider that whatever secrets the US still had kept from its adversaries are already in the hands of those adversaries. This whole situation is a gift of mammoth proportions to Russia and China.
I am guessing they did not do any kind of background investigation on the 19 year old, who goes by the online handle "Big Balls" and was fired from his previous internship for leaking sensitive information. Or the "I was racist before it was cool" guy.
I'm starting to wonder if [flagged] needs qualifiers. "The conversation" may not always be on point but its substantively mainstream non peer review write up of often peer review and cited materials. It does have opinion pieces as well. You know the author and the editorial and the publishing arc, it's all listed.
So how would it qualify for flagging beyond some individuals "I don't like it" ?
People don't like repetitive topics - that's a much simpler explanation and things get flagged for repetitiveness all the time. The source doesn't really matter, after the Nth DOGE article, if Kabosu herself descended from doge heaven and wrote a DOGE article, it would probably get a lot of flags.
Then a subclass flag boring|tendentious|inappropriate would work. Not knowing if this is just boredom with topic means total conjecture. And, considering sources its my belief few feeds from reputable (I know.. ) sources deserve flagging. Professional writing on boring subjects is better than bad writing.
Right but the HN criterion is repetition. What difference should it make if the repetitive thing is professionally written? People flag dupes all the time and many stories are covered by multiple reputable sources.
We've only seen what the media has reported and from people that are getting fired (and hate Trump and Musk). We don't know what's actually going on from the inside.
In my city, I've been seeing people posting on Facebook since Trump came into office that ICE was pulling kids out of school, according to teachers working there and other employees that witnessed it'. When someone actually investigated this, it never happened. ICE was never even near the school.
I've been in cybersecurity for a couple of decades and I remember when they were investigating the networks attached to the voting machines. There were glaring security issues (old/outdated software being used and the ability to get updates over the Internet (when it wasn't supposed to be connected at all). Many from the security community came out and denied that there was even an issue at all.
While there was no proof that the voting machines were hacked, these obvious security issues shouldn't be ignored. I don't think anything has changed.
When Trump won in 2016, the security community talked about all of the insecurities in the dominion voting machines (with Proof-of-concept attack chains). All of these articles disappeared after Biden won in 2020 and the community stopped talking about any issues with the voting machines. I expect to see more articles about it, now that Trump is back in the Whitehouse.
It's really hard for me to take anything seriously from the security community when it comes to things like this because many are so politically motivated, they are willing to ignore obvious evidence when it hurts the people they like and exaggerate (and outright lie) about security issues when it comes to people they hate.
I don't consider myself vehemently against Elon Musk, but these are surface-level things that background checks would filter out if Elon hadn't overridden them. This isn't even partisan so much as it is about protecting data. If Elon's flagrant illegal disregard of the GPL license at Tesla is any past indication, his respect for the law is less than coherent.
Krebs also claimed there were no issues with the voting systems or networks, when there were glaring issues that were completely ignored, because nobody wanted to help Trump in his fight after the election.
I really lost trust in his ability to give us the truth about actual security issues at this time, because of this.
"identifies one of the DOGE workers as an online thug facilitating cybercrime, fraud and slander"
Is he a criminal now or was this in the past? Are people not allowed to be reformed?
This article mentions even hosting Russian websites as a reason not to hire him. and working for a company that was started by a cybercriminal. Since guilt by association is a thing now, should we not hire anyone that speaks Russian? How about if they speak Arabic?
All of the things Democrats claim to be against: bias, racism, bigotry all come back when it involves someone you hate. This phony behavior will not help you win elections in the future.
> I really lost trust in his ability to give us the truth about actual security issues at this time, because of this.
That's a shame. The article is really well written and has been received excellently by HN. Maybe he's popular because he doesn't waste his time blogging about conspiracy theories?
> Are people not allowed to be reformed?
Wow, now you're getting really defensive of a criminal. Surprising! Yes, you can reform if you accept your punishment for your crime, plead guilty and apologize. Otherwise you're still a criminal.
> Since guilt by association is a thing now, should we not hire anyone that speaks Russian?
Well yeah, half the planet is sanctioning them at the moment. Hiring Russian citizens or accessories of the Russian state would be stupid, dangerous and illegal. Equally as head-up-ass as hiring Chinese nationals to audit state secrets.
> All of the things Democrats claim to be against: bias, racism, bigotry all come back when it involves someone you hate.
I'm not actually a Democrat. I'm a Republican that was pushed out of my party for supporting common sense regulation. Now that we've failed to regulate our businesses, they've started paying Donald Trump for illegal favors and anticompetitive advantages. America is fucking itself in the ass and people like you are spreading the cheeks open.
> This phony behavior will not help you win elections in the future.
People said that in 2016, right before Democrats put a corpse in the primary who's only platform was "I'm not Trump" (and won).
Also just having read access is still a problem when the read access is for PII and other sensitive information. You want a 19 year old kid who got fired from an internship for leaking sensitive information to have read access to all your employee data? (Pay, retirement, worker's comp, performance, banking information, and everything else). How about your social security records? Medical records from the VA? The list goes on.
"Also just having read access is still a problem when the read access is for PII and other sensitive information. You want a 19 year old kid who got fired from an internship for leaking sensitive information to have read access to all your employee data? (Pay, retirement, worker's comp, performance, banking information, and everything else). How about your social security records? Medical records from the VA? The list goes on."
"but sources tell WIRED"
Sources told me they never had access. Who do you believe now?
Do you know for sure there are no checks and balances in the system besides what you read in a Wired article?
Well I would tend to believe the news organization that I know has reported accurate things in the past, and which I know has a reputable editorial process, and is accountable for what it publishes, rather than bill99k from hacker news who can just make up whatever shit he wants with no accountability. But that's just me.
If this was true, then how come all the tweets that Elon puts out with data about supposedly fraudulent and corrupt spending are screenshots of open source systems that anyone outside of government can access?
How about letting the richest man in the world be responsible of judging his own conflicts of interests, while giving him all the power to cut funding to the rivals of his many companies?
Or to cut funding from departments that investigate his companies?
People who defend Trump and Musk wouldn't recognize fraud and corruption if it hit them in the head.
> essentially funding state-run media without our consent.
This is a dumb conspiracy theory. Politico has an expensive database product for tracking legislation. Government agencies subscribe to it the same way investment banks subscribe to a Bloomberg terminal - it helps them do their job.
Also - it's literally the job of government to understand and respond to what is happening in the world and what the public is saying. Of course they are going to buy a fucking newspaper subscription to do that job. I'm sure every single Republican congressman is paying for some media subscriptions.
You're falling for totally disingenuous propaganda.
"Don't engage with the trolls, I'm surprised this one is marginally literate, probably a bot"
Funny, I felt the same way about the majority of the people frothing at the mouth and posting nonsense about Musk and Trump. Intelligence and critical thinking goes completely out the window.
