291 Comments
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Georgiaburning's avatar

150 billion? That’s going to be eaten up by Secret Service golf cart rentals.

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Geoff Anderson's avatar

So, product manager here. That 71 minute change is bonkers.

I guaran-damn-tee you that their support line will get fucking hammered by people expecting the log in button to be where it was.

So, sure, they can "fix" this non-issue in little over an hour and push it to production. But the trouble tickets are going to explode EXPONENTIALLY.

This is the same janky-assed shit that Musk did at Twitter.

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agony's avatar

I'm an admin on a website, one that is very information heavy, with lots of links and pages, and I can't tell you the number of times we have made some small change meant to make life easier for users that had unintended consequences. If your site is old, and complex, there is going to be one small aspect of the change that you forget to account for when making it.

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simpledinosaur's avatar

What these right-wing idiots may never understand is that in (allegedly) fighting to hack away at "government bureaucracy," they are fighting against many of the advances human beings have made since they lived in caves. A large population and a complex way of life require a robust government. Its exact responsibilities and powers are open to argument. But a tiny little government isn't going to work for 340 million people. Worse yet, the "small government" they claim to want is flat-out authoritarian. It helps nobody and yet asserts tremendous power over the people's lives.

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GoldStar's avatar

“Thank god they cut Ebola testing. I’m never going to Ebola anyway.”

- MAGA

“Don’t worry, it’s coming to you.”

- The CDC… back when there was one

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Shoofly's avatar

I'm looking at the before / after screen shots and on the after shot the the glorious "top right of the navbar" is cut off so I can't see the login thing they "fixed" Can any wonkettes see that login on the "after" screen shot?

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Always Be Ithacating's avatar

Well, it's s shortfall now, but come back after 73 million people don't get their checks for a couple months. Efficiency!

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Zyxomma's avatar

Ta, Gary. Loathsome begins to describe it, but only just.

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JR's avatar

Bonus - the online logins have been changed to requiring either a new login.gov account or ID.me account for both the SSA & the IRS. The old login method no longer works. Good thing I looked before proceeding, ID.me works for both, but login.gov doesn't appear to work for IRS. Having worked on a PeopleSoft / COBOL payroll system doing functional mods but nothing like ripping out the software innards, I find it laughable that the musketeers think they could retool the vastly larger SSA payroll system in " a few months". If they omit the critical step known as "parallel testing", they might get it down to a year, but the public will be the beta guinea pigs.

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"M"'s avatar
Apr 28Edited

"laughable that the musketeers believe they could retool the vastly larger SSA payroll system 'in a few months'"

They don't think that

No sane person thinks that

That is just the lie they TOLD you

I so appreciate this heads-up, though

Because there's going to be a lot of panic with people not understanding why their IDs aren't working

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Jim Parker's avatar

"...there isn’t that much fat to cut in the federal budget without touching Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security,..." Have the Dogebags taken a look at the amount of money spent on the military? I'm gonna go out on a very strong limb here and say that Leon and his Shitler Youth could find a dollar or millions to cut from the military budget. In 2023, that amount was over $800 BILLION. Think there might be a little waste and inefficiency there? Fuck you Leon.

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"M"'s avatar

Well, I mean

He's working on trying to get most of it, if not all of it

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VelveetaSneeze's avatar

See, this is why it's been almost a week since I've read anything here or commented. I'm fucking crying after watching that Chris Hayes clip. Those poor fucking kids. And this is also why I made a low-blow about Laura Loomer's looks. Fuck these people, each and every one of them. That's enough for today. Those poor fucking kids.

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Hank Napkin's avatar

Are we sure it's the Ketamine and not the Inbreeding?

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"M"'s avatar

Two things can be true at the same time

So many of these guys are so much better at stealing than they are at anything else

Because White Western culture worships being rich, but doesn't value being empathetic or intelligent

https://www.wired.com/story/doge-government-salaries-elon-musk/

https://www.wired.com/story/department-of-labor-doge-usds-payment/

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Hank Napkin's avatar

"When faced with a choice, do both"

from Oblique Strategies

by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt

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Goonemeritus's avatar

I could cut a trillion, first I would close down the defense department, oh wait that's all I would need to do.

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Majordomo Billy Bojangles's avatar

If we do that how are we going to invade Panama or annex Greenland?

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Goonemeritus's avatar

Send them a nice Edible Arrangement?

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Biff52 Lost Canadian's avatar

Once we merge with Russia, we won't need it anyway.

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Wookiee Monster's avatar

Most likely, the IRS engineer told Big Balls or whichever DOGE incel was up in their face that they couldn’t move the login button for 103 days because they didn’t want to make any changes in the middle of tax season lest something go wrong and hundreds of thousands of Americans weren’t able to use the website.

You know, like they’ve done to the Social Security website.

I wouldn’t trust a guy who rushed his trucks to market after using the wrong glue to give us the whole story.

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bobbert's avatar

This here.

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Tza's avatar

A lot of people genuinely do not get how complex the federal budget is, and half of those that do assume that since it is complex it must be able to be simplified.

In reality the massive amount of stuff the federal government covers for good reason is complicated to cover.

The real inefficiencies:

1) the Feds will HAPPILY spend way too much money “monitoring” spending—as my dad would put it “spend a hundred dollars not to misspend one”

2) if a department does not use its full budget, actually finds efficiencies and save money…their budget gets cut for next year. So near the end of the fiscal year they spend on stupid things to avoid that. We should reward cost saving instead of penalizing it

3) the Defense Department hasn’t passed an audit in for fucking ever and this gets shrugged off in ways no other branch could get away with

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"M"'s avatar

that last one

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Goonemeritus's avatar

We business types always round up.

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