This is an update to this thread https://rdrama.net/h/chudrama/post/338638/-
DELETED: GSA's tech arm, a far-left agency that viciously subverted Trump during his first term, surrendered after an @elonmusk deputy took over. It deleted huge swaths of code dedicated to virtue-signaling rather than mission, such as its "inclusion bot" that lectured staff. pic.twitter.com/MqbYhRFxDL
— Luke Rosiak (@lukerosiak) February 1, 2025
https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1j1zitb/18f_eliminated_by_doge/
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People keep harping that it's this team that supposedly made QoL changes but speaking as a gov contractor I'm willing to bet it was contractors that did all the work and any government worker most likely hindered or were blockers to any major releases, requiring six months to a year to get the all clear.
Like I'm trying to do that now to get clearance for a new software dev pipeline that's faster and more secure.
Yet the people that need to sign off on it never show up to meetings or demos to look at it.
So then they need their own personal meeting for it but they keep kicking that can down the road.
It's unreal how unmotivated government is to incorporate improvements.
I would be more than happy if they were fired and contractors took over and we got paid more.
Edit: I love
pins
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I'll throw out my random government website experience. I have to do some financial reporting thing yearly into a system that's sole purpose is to upload some document once a year. There's no instance you'd ever do it more than that. If you don't login for 3 months, it locks your account and you have to call some number to unlock it. No information is viewable on it. It's basically a screen that shows an upload button.
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Yup, navy and army has similar websites for bullshit like this.
Like navy digital marketplace, I dont need it but its there if I need to ever pull stuff, but It asks me to refresh my login every 30 days or else my account is deactivated. Not deleted, just deactivated and you'd need to bother someone to reactivate it. Its like the DoD thinks inactive user accounts can suddenly wake up on their own and take over the whole network by doing a login query.
Its so much extra busybody work that you know some government type implemented simply so he can tell their higher ups that they "made the website more security since they're been on board."
Like when I worked for the Army you had the one Garrison officer that would come on board make it so you cant log into the teams on your personal phone. Saying they made it now more secure, then the next one would come and rotate out and would say ok you can have teams on your personal phone to facilitate faster communication between dev teams. Then the next garrison officer comes and takes it away...
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General Motors had the same thing.
I built an "App Store" for them which was really just a collection of links to websites like Google Chrome cause IT didn't want the employees clicking on r-slurred links.
I made $350 an hour doing that for around two years.
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Why do you say "NOT DELETED, JUST DEACTIVATED" like it makes more sense to delete it?
Do you think nothing malicious can be performed, or information pulled, from a low privileged account - that can upload files? Do you think it's a good idea to leave accounts indefinitely active? Why should your contractor account be always active and exempt from standard security policies?
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Not even close to what I said r-slur, most of those other accounts are separate from our cac/nmci accounts that are clearly active and should be based on that accounts activity.
In this field you wind up juggling different accounts to use at various times and it just adds unnecessary busywork for workers to track.
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That's exactly what you said.
"Why don't we, like, just have one account or sync all our accounts together? It's all just that simple, right? I just have so many accounts, like, no other field has all these accounts."
I hate security jockeys setting up useless, user-unfriendly mazes more than you know, but I also hate uppity contractors like
@rakrakaon whining that they have to make a phone call twice a year. They wouldn't let me in the military, so I don't know, maybe it's super easy and secure to sync all those account expirations together.
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Sounds like you don't have enough accounts and access yet to find it all annoying
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If only.
It's forever for all of us forever until Elon Musk buys Google and Microsoft and creates a standard U.S. citizen account for EVERYTHING. Everything. Totes secure. And 35% of the U.S. population works at call centers doing Tier 1 support (but it's all idle make-work, because AI does most of tier 0 and anything it can't do usually goes to Tier 2 in India.)
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I like how there's Login.gov but it doesn't actually support any of the things you'd want to use it for.
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I'm not a contractor and I'm not exaggerating when I say it is once a year (with another day wait for it to be fully activated).
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Lol, so once a year
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Yeah. It's a completely unnecessary, 15 minute phone call that requires two government employees (that I know of) to activate it.
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What the frick is 18F?
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Yeah I noticed that nowhere in their rambling statement on their cancellation where they're talking about how useful they are do they actually mention a single concrete thing they do.
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They fixed healthcare.gov so it wasn't a broken insecure piece of shit and I think they did the IRS DirectFile more recently.
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So they were basically just a webdev team? Their website made it sound like they were some kind of advanced helpdesk group.
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They're like a DX/platform team, really. They build (or built) cowtools that make it easier for the government to do modern software dev.
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This is still so vague lmao, it's basically what the website says.
Like do they manage the govt's git repos? The build system, CI system, or deployment system? Or are they responsible for vetting libraries that other gov devs want to use?
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You can see for yourself https://github.com/18F
https://www.feedme.design/the-fall-of-18f-why-this-matters-more-than-you-think/
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I'm assuming it's all the glue stuff, just a pool of talent building interfaces for databases and frontends for services (like login.gov) but otherwise web development is contracted out
Most agencies are silos so it makes sense to have a generalist app dev team, just like it makes sense to have a generalist cross-agency finance analysts / Jannies
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They made a lot of websites https://github.com/orgs/18F/repositories
Besides the inclusion bot stuff they were probably a valuable agency. Not sure why they didnt just rebrand and clean up the activist ruffians.
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Maybe if they rebranded too 15F trump wouldnt have been able too resist it
Trans lives matter
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Which is stupid but takes 15 minutes to configure on Slack.
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Our resident femcel in chief
was
ing all over their "work" when this was first posted a couple of weeks ago
Dramatards wouldn't lie about something like that, purely for agenda pushing purposes, right??
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Hopefully xhe can repurpose the inclusion bot to lecture people on rdrama now.
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Probably why they got axed, couldn't put any bullet points in their email for what they did last week
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Government technology works so poorly that I can't believe these guys were doing much productive work even if they were very busy.
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18F (M)
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18 f cali
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!oldstrags
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Sup shawty
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hey
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Non partisan they say but only have a link to bluesky
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Nice catch lol
My gut instinct told me but a bluesky link is a definite tell. I only know furries who use it
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That example probably didn't even use code, and the other example screenshot is Markdown files (also not code). !nonchuds
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Ok, show the donation charts
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What does an AI conference have in common with a neo-nazi meeting? The answer is simple: zero black people. It's true: as I looked around the room at all the attendees, I saw many Asians, Whites, and Indians, but not a single Black person in the room. I don't say this in a critical way: to be honest, it was probably for the best. The level of woke white guilt in a lot of these tech companies is so intense that if a black AI developer actually existed, they would probably have kneeled at his feet and pronounced him the DEI messiah right there and then. Every company represented there would have tried to hire him so that they could proudly say they worked with the only black AI developer on the eastern seaboard, and I'm sure that they would have slobbered all over his feet messily in a pathetic bid to ingratiate themselves. Don't worry, black nerds: I am here to save you from this social awkwardness. I will be your Paul Atreides or your Lawrence of Arabia and tell you exactly what goes on at one of these events.
Snapshots:
https://18f.org/:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
https://x.com/elonmusk:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
pic.twitter.com/MqbYhRFxDL:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
February 1, 2025:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1j1zitb/18f_eliminated_by_doge/:
undelete.pullpush.io
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
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