Notices by Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)

JavaScript is Visual Basic, fight me.

Trying to figure out how to get more information out of the home charger and now I've fallen down a time hole because the stuff I'm reading includes references XMPP and SOAP and HipChat?!?!

I posted this on the bluesky and people found it useful there:

You should know that a big part of 18F's work was to make sure multi-million to multi-*hundreds*-of-millions dollar contracts at fed *and* state level didn't go to shitty enterprise IT consultancies that *repeatedly* delivered tech that didn't work, was late, or didn't even do what it needed to

METROPOLIS: Billionaire entrepreneur Lex Luthor completes acquisition of Daily Planet, overhauls Opinion section with bold vision of personal freedoms and free markets

WIRECUTTER: The Best Billionaire For Most People is No Billionaire

Why you should trust us
Please this is the last article we will be allowed to post, they will shut down our accounts as soon as this goes live.

Who this is for
Run while you still can.

How we picked
It's true, nobody is safe now.

@rose they even demo it Sockpuppeting, iirc

Also, people often don't hire for glue people.
https://mastodon.social/@jawnsy/114017034803401260

if I were writing stories about the gov "firing thousands of probationary workers" I would probably rewrite as "firing thousands of new hires or people new to their role because of promotion or transfer -- who are often on a status called "probation" --" because I think the general understanding of "probation" is "in trouble for something they did"

if I were uncharitable, I'd think the usage of "probation" without the qualifier first was the result of unexamined regurgitation of a press release

ftr puppygirl hacker polycule hacking the planet is good

wait so is hacking the planet good or bad now

I cannot emphasize enough the degree to which what's happening is the shittiest of all bond movie villain plots

Me on DOGE for the MIT Tech Review:

"So we should plan for the worst, even if the likelihood of the worst is low. We need to dust off those “in the event of an emergency” disaster response procedures dealing with the failure of federal government."

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/07/1111283/elon-musk-doge-and-the-evil-housekeeper-problem-government-technology/

In case you're interested and missed it yesterday:
https://dan.mastohon.com/@danhon/113953369948152187

20/ The Evil Housekeeper Problem is why the physical presence of DOGE is terrifying. Yes, "the cloud", but there's still on-premises technology.

And it's easier to coerce people when you are standing next to them, threatening them.

21/ All the rules and measures I talk about above are put in place because you don't want something to break.

Musk, Trump and the rest of the administration *want* to break things. Accelerationists are in the executive branch. Leadership like Secretaries and Directors *want to break things*

22/ So I want you to understand how easy it is to break things or turn things off.

i) government technology is brittle
ii) coercion is easy ("you're fired", "we will stop paying you", "we will tear up the contract")

Musk *just stops paying for things he doesn't want to pay for*.

Does anyone want yet another take on what's happening with DOGE from someone like me?

23/ Like, "Musk doesn't pay for things" isn't up for debate. There's ample evidence. "Trump doesn't pay for things" isn't up for debate either. These are both facts.

*They do whatever they want*

24/ If you're, say, a major government contractor like Deloitte, or a consultancy that runs the system for tracking migrant unaccompanied minors for DHHS and the DHHS secretary or Musk says "we will not pay for this" and instructs the bureaucracy to do so, then that contractor won't get paid.

25/ So now you're a government contractor with a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and a whole bunch of people on staff working on it. Do you just... keep going? Knowing you won't get paid? Do you tell your staff to stop working? What if they've been told to stop already anyway?