Hacker News: omnivore

New comment by omnivore in "Statement from Jerome Powell"

omnivore — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 02:45:47 +0000

What an unhinged moment in time. At some point, they'll need to be courageous people with the ability and funds to speak up and say enough. But will they? It does not appear so.

New comment by omnivore in "The Army’s Newest Recruits: Tech Execs From Meta, OpenAI and More"

omnivore — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 21:07:26 +0000

Civic tech is dead.

New comment by omnivore in "4chan Sharty Hack And Janitor Email Leak"

omnivore — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 13:13:24 +0000

Meh, good riddance. The old internet wasn't all good.

New comment by omnivore in "GSA Eliminates 18F"

omnivore — Sat, 01 Mar 2025 19:30:44 +0000

This thing was always underutilized even by the last 2 administrations. For all of the purported DOGE savings, these folks actually legitimately saved money from agencies, which is why big contractor shops were so opposed. They didn't take Congressional appropriations and charged agencies for work, but couldn't just go to agencies and pitch business, they had to be reached out to.

Can't imagine how much better the thing had been if it'd been allowed to fully blossom, but given all the stuff they deal with it, it wasn't perfect but it was a really good experiment.

New comment by omnivore in "Starlink to take over $2.4B contract to overhaul air traffic control comms"

omnivore — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 16:30:43 +0000

even conceding that, letting one guy decide it using executive power is problematic. And illegal

New comment by omnivore in "Starlink to take over $2.4B contract to overhaul air traffic control comms"

omnivore — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 16:29:33 +0000

Procurement rules exist for a reason, letting one guy funnel business to his company using the President's power is a huge risk to the nation-state.

New comment by omnivore in "Starlink to take over $2.4B contract to overhaul air traffic control comms"

omnivore — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 16:28:03 +0000

It's illegal and unfair competition. We can't just throw out laws we hate all the time on the whims on an unelected guy in the White House.

New comment by omnivore in "Moving on from 18F"

omnivore — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 01:06:31 +0000

haa, an insepector general looking at this stuff is quaint in the era of let's just break all the rules.

New comment by omnivore in "Moving on from 18F"

omnivore — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 01:06:10 +0000

Not young people at all, actually. Mostly mid-to-senior people.

New comment by omnivore in "Moving on from 18F"

omnivore — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 01:05:54 +0000

"losing money" is a canard when it's a self-producing government entity that was using not public dollars but instead user fees from a GSA Fund. There were lots of folks who had incentive for that thing not to work: https://insider.govtech.com/california/www-techwire-net/form...

Also, that IG report is a comedy show compared to the last 3 weeks of chaos from these people doing what they're doing flouting laws, rules and the common order.

New comment by omnivore in "Moving on from 18F"

omnivore — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 01:04:33 +0000

there are lots of them already, but many more that need them.

New comment by omnivore in "Moving on from 18F"

omnivore — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 01:04:19 +0000

In reality, they were embedded with federal agencies and worked on engagements for them. You gotta read what people actually do in practice, versus just the pitch.

New comment by omnivore in "Moving on from 18F"

omnivore — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 01:02:43 +0000

The model of 18F changed a lot, none of those products including Login.gov or Cloud.gov were part of 18F, they're all spinfoffs that live within TTS.

New comment by omnivore in "I Tried to Fix Government Tech for Years. I'm Fed Up"

omnivore — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 18:12:08 +0000

it's expensive, the risks of losing are big and they dig into your whole life and basically ruin it. But agreed more people should be in these roles or at least advising these people, but the money is bad and it requires a different set of skills.

New comment by omnivore in "I Tried to Fix Government Tech for Years. I'm Fed Up"

omnivore — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 18:11:29 +0000

I think there's a big difference between -- hall monitors making stuff impossible and what we're seeing now. USDS part of the executive branch made things more difficult, but if you'd given those folks even half the runway these doofuses have right now, imagine the sort of good they could've done.

New comment by omnivore in "Show HN: Interactive game teaching dark patterns in UX design"

omnivore — Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:17:21 +0000

Dark patterns as a name needs work anymore, but I like the general premise of this and think it could be cool for people learning this stuff for the first time. Good work conceptually.

New comment by omnivore in "Ask HN: Why has no one replaced Ticketmaster?"

omnivore — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 06:47:34 +0000

same with dating apps. match owns all of them but bumble

New comment by omnivore in "Substack Notes"

omnivore — Sat, 08 Apr 2023 05:33:23 +0000

Mastodon is fine for a specific audience but not a scalabale Twitter. SubNotes won't be either, but it's atop an ecosystem that should prevent the spam & trolls of Twitter, et. al.

New comment by omnivore in "Dice baseball: a tabletop tradition"

omnivore — Sat, 19 Nov 2022 06:53:46 +0000

Loved pen & paper baseball as a kid, used to invent vast worlds. Now I use Out of the Park Baseball as my simulator of choice, but there have been precedessors since the late 90s.

New comment by omnivore in "Dice baseball: a tabletop tradition"

omnivore — Sat, 19 Nov 2022 06:51:55 +0000

That book was a childhood favorite of mine.