A DOGE staffer appears to be posting DOGE work on his public GitHub
101 comments
·March 1, 2025somenameforme
methou
https://openstreetmap.maps.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.h...
There are actually a lot public information available on Layers -> ArcGIS Online.
I used to see ongoing Waterworks maintenance in there. In the area I live, there are also very up to date earthquake information from Government feed.
throw0101c
> Sharing things like this isn't very useful because it just causes further divides.
Perhaps creating division is the point:
amarcheschi
As I said in anothercomment, using available data in itself can be seen with suspicion. With freely available data you can build a nuclear reactor (if very capable), or buy fertilizer and build a bomb. Chances are, fbi will knock at your door and ask what you're doing. The same way, an agency gathering lot of public available data regarding sensitive infrastructure can be assumed to misuse the data for shady purposes, given the agency isn't exactly one you can trust
bburnett44
This is such a lame comment. He's looking at publicly available geospatial data, not trying to build a bomb.
amarcheschi
He's not looking at, he's gathering
null
TwoPhonesOneKid
> Sharing things like this isn't very useful because it just causes further divides.
I gave up trying to gentle parent other adults a long time ago. Newsrooms themselves have no fear publishing disingenuous and polarizing content.
bburnett44
Yeah the "sensitive geospatial data" is just open data. He also created the geospatial gists before trump was in office so he definitely didn't have access to critical data then https://web.archive.org/web/20250228230950/https://gist.gith...
tokioyoyo
A bit tangent, and since I’m an outsider who doesn’t live in the states and have no skin in the game — my understanding is, they will do literally anything to make sure DOGE succeeds, because a failure is basically unacceptable. I can’t even imagine how you can backtrack this, and fix stuff up. They obviously prepared for it months in advance. Targeting ex-employees of successful product companies and putting them in charge (especially the ones with a lot of money, but a bit lost because they want can’t find meaning in life) is also kinda funny.
That being said, if it doesn’t succeed, they will start doing the usual — pretending that it was successful. And that’s when the team-sports based politics come into play. If you’re so deep into supporting one side that you can’t objectively see failures, the narrative pushers will keep winning. It applies to both sides, by the way. But burden of proof lies on the government in power.
Good luck to you, guys!
maxerickson
Succeed at what?
For example, they canceled invasive species control programs for the Great Lakes. Is it a success that they saved a modest amount of money, while letting the condition of the lakes further erode?
tokioyoyo
Whatever they promised and people voted for by believing in those promises. People wanted a strong man, and they basically got it. I understand markets can be irrational blah blah, but still surprised how people with money aren’t shipping it away or storing it somewhere more safe looking at the current situation.
maxerickson
I would frame that as being motivated to satisfy their base, vs being motivated to succeed.
Success usually has a positive connotation, and they don't seem to be doing a particularly good job if you take the "reduce the size of the government" goal at face value (they are making messes everywhere they go, with the government shrinking slower than normal attrition...).
drivingmenuts
They also wanted people who wouldn't spend money on "stupid programs", which is basically anything there isn't an immediately obvious reason for. A lot of work that government programs do is data-gathering and preparation for other, more obviously helpful programs. But these clowns don't seem to understand that, at all.
They also don't seem to understand that a lot of work isn't profit-oriented (which is the only thing the Trump administration believes in). Some programs exist because they were a benefit at the time (and yes, those need review) and may still be of use, but they always were intended to be a service for everyone, even if some people didn't use. them.
No one seems to understand the concept of government service. It's government business or nothing.
throw0101c
> Succeed at what?
Dismantling government. Look up the "network state":
* https://thenetworkstate.com/preamble
> All of these men see themselves as the heroes or protagonists in their own sci-fi saga. And a key part of being a “technological superman” — or ubermensch, as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would say — is that you’re above the law. Common-sense morality doesn’t apply to you because you’re a superior being on a superior mission. Thiel, it should be noted, is a big Nietzsche fan, though his is an extremely selective reading of the philosopher’s work.
> The ubermensch ideology helps explain the broligarchs’ disturbing gender politics. “The ‘bro’ part of broligarch is not incidental to this — it’s built on this idea that not only are these guys superior, they are superior because they’re guys,” Harrington said.
[…]
> The so-called network state is “a fancy name for tech authoritarianism,” journalist Gil Duran, who has spent the past year reporting on these building projects, told me. “The idea is to build power over the long term by controlling money, politics, technology, and land.”
* https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/395646/trump-inauguration...
Also:
* "Why big tech turned right": https://www.vox.com/politics/397525/trump-big-tech-musk-bezo...
* "The crypto bros who dream of crowdfunding a new country": https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyl171lyewo
Have you ever read cyberpunk, especially William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy (starting with Neuromancer) where corporations are the government? Basically that.
PartiallyTyped
Didn’t they cancel some cancer treatment research projects?
I am sure the Head of the health department — one that doesn’t consider measles a problem — has given his stamp of approval for that, after all, he has a whole 0 years in all tangentially related fields combined!
kelnos
> Good luck to you, guys!
Unfortunately I think we're going to need a lot more than luck.
But I appreciate the sentiment.
philistine
A conservative movement has no end goal. The dismantling of the government will never be over for them. The point is destroying progress, not a specific government size.
amarcheschi
if you don't want to open twitter, here is xcancel link which i should have put as the og link https://xcancel.com/SollenbergerRC/status/189560929481046439...
nottorp
The first thing I wondered is why you'd post this information on Twitter of all places, to be honest.
lopatamd
[dead]
agumonkey
Ah, many thanks for that tip
867-5309
finally, a nitter replacement
maxlin
[flagged]
latexr
I clicked the twitter link. Perhaps because I don’t have an account, I don’t see any Community Notes nor can I read any other posts in the thread, so no point in using the “official” link.
And it’s not like Community Notes will remain reliable.
https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-says-hell-fix-community-notes-...
maxlin
Because it is a pending note. Which often already are extremely relevant. Many see these as prominently as other CN's as becoming a "Community Noter" is not too hard.
>And it’s not like Community Notes will remain reliable.
That's as useless like saying your house might burn down in the next hour so might as well not go inside during a storm. CN's are the best weapon we have against misinformation given they require consensus from people that have disagreed in the past. Track record of CN's is unbeatable. They sure as hell are better than the abuse of flagging my factual parent comment on HN. Shame on whoever did that, but a honor system clearly isn't enough, sadly not even on HN.
amarcheschi
A bit more on Jordan Wick: https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/doge-agent-jordan-wick/
I'm a bit on the edge regarding to why someone on DOGE should collect data on critical infrastructure, even if it's available to the public audience for free.
I'm also quite worried by the possibility to filter federal workers based on the union status
JackFr
> I'm also quite worried by the possibility to filter federal workers based on the union status
Well, from a purely day-to-day, operational HR standpoint, that information is important. Like many things, in the wrong hands it’s easily abused.
amarcheschi
Yup, that's what I was talking about, it's not happening in a vacuum, it's concerning given the context
6stringmerc
Saying “the quiet part out loud” is kind of a hallmark with this team’s approach though, so watching it steamroll over any auspices of ethical behavior is noteworthy.
anacrolix
Well I can tell you the Python code was written with the help of an AI
blitzar
That is chatgpt generated code too.
faizshah
There’s a good chance the reason this is public is because he was using gist to transfer ChatGPT code between his personal computer and his government computer.
elif
Good catch this is actually my workflow when I code on my phone in the hot tub.
jerpint
Interesting, that would be a pretty blunder
null
RadiozRadioz
Build in public!
DrNosferatu
As the Germans say:
You need to be smart to be that stupid ;)
TomK32
Sounds like a conflict of interest.
zja
Siphoning money away from the public and to themselves is the whole point.
atoav
Only if you (somewhat naively) assume the interest is what was publicly stated.
Grifting is the goal, not the unintended side effect.
agumonkey
Sadly his github is now private and the archived pages are mostly previews, not full repos.
LoganDark
Just search for forks: https://github.com/PatrickFanella/x-dm-downloader for example. We will probably have a short while (day or two) before false DMCA notices about this are actioned by GitHub
notdian
Looks like they used it to scrape the DMs for the @doge account, as they are calling for people to report "fraud" there. Crazy that the US government is allowing a third party such as X to have such control.
zmgsabst
What makes them false DMCA claims?
I don’t see a license on the repo.
agumonkey
ah, obviously, thanks a lot
st3fan
Useful for Russia. Easy download.
belter
According to official documentation submitted to the court by the current US Administration, the person running DOGE, was on holiday in Mexico when nominated.
A surprisingly large amount of data one might think is classified is not at all. In this case all the examples listed are from freely available public data outside of the Twitter thing which seems to be just setting up the environment for some local tool. Here are the sites:
---
datacatalog.worldbank.org
opendata.arcgis.com
mrdata.usgs.gov / www.usgs.gov
---
Sharing things like this isn't very useful because it just causes further divides. People who think DOGE is not a big deal will use this to confirm that 'oh no the worst they could dig up is somebody posting publicly accessible data in public!' And those who do think it's a big deal will often just double down on stupid and insist this was leaking secret information, even when they probably know it wasn't. So you end up with people living in two different worlds, but only one of them is real.