If there are any Europeans here, I'd love to make my vulnerability database that's accumulated from all linux security trackers and the CVE/NVD open source if I can manage to find some folks who'd help with maintenance.
Currently hosting costs are unclear, but it should be doable if we offer API access for like 5 bucks / month for private and 100 / month for corporate or similar.
Already did a backup of the NVD in the last couple hours, currently backing up the security trackers and OVAL feeds.
Gonna need some sleep now, it's morning again.
My project criteria:
- hosting within the EU
- must have a copyleft license (AGPL)
- must have open source backend and frontend
- dataset size is around 90-148 GB (compressed vs uncompressed)
- ideally an e.V. for managing funds and costs, so it can survive me
- already built my vulnerability scraper in Go, would contribute it under AGPL
- already built all schema parsers, would contribute them also under AGPL
- backend and frontend needs to be built
- would make it prerendered, so that cves can be static HTML files that can be hosted on a CDN
- needs submission/PoC/advisory web forms and database/workflow for it
- data is accumulated into a JSON format (sources are mixed non standard formats for each security tracker. Enterprise distros use odata or oval for the most parts)
If you are interested, write me on linkedin.com/in/cookiengineer or here.
The main costs definitely not hosting and can be quite significant. MITRE had $2.37B revenue in 2023, most if it contributions. I don't know how much of it can be attributed to the CVE, but I assume it's not an insignificant part of it: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/422...
I don't think the EU has any interest in this. They've been aware of the risk of relying on the US for software security for years, but AFAIK there have been no efforts to do anything about it. Maybe the current situation will kick some butts into gear ...
Off topic: your username is very appropriate given the situation.
>They've been aware of the risk of relying on the US for software security for years, but AFAIK there have been no efforts to do anything about it.
Indeed. Just as Germany knew their economy is vulnerable to Russian gas and did nothing about it, even after the 2014 invasion of Crimea. Just as the west knew moving their entire manufacturing sector to one country would make them vulnerable, but choose to ignore it because it was too profitable.
I never EVER saw politicians act proactively for the good of the nation or the people, all they do is act reactively after the shit hits the fan to control public opinion and blame someone else to make sure they get re-elected, that's it.
Once you realize our rulers aren't competent at their jobs or acting in the peoples' best interest, it all makes sense. They're in it for the grift and to enrich their monopolistic friends in the private sector, to make sure line goes up in the next quarter, that's it.
Yes, I know there are good politicians out there who care and fight for their local communities, but they never make it to rule at national or international stage and actually change the rotten system because the status quo doesn't allow that.
Politicians react to the public when it stands up. Otherwise it will follow other agenda's.
That is why it is critical to have an informed public. When journalism has to compete with corporate owned Fake News and Entertainment, journalism dies, and democracy will follow. Then, add the spy business of Big Tech in the mix, with algorithmic silo's. The people don't even realize they are locked up in a jar, where they live on a diet of cultural engineering.
Now, pause a moment and think about what happens when you add AI-models to the mix. Your daughter, your neighbor will be totally brain-wrecked.
Perfect exmple of the "one-deep" conservative response.
PP is looking for a pattern, finding, and abstaining from questioning or contextualizing it:
Engaging only with the first or most obvious layer of an issue—never going deeper into context, nuance, or systemic causes.
The quickest counterexample that comes to mind is Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It has returned billions to American citizens.
I'm gonna have to stop engaging with you here if you start a comment by accusing someone to be a conservative.
If your first reaction is putting people into political/ideological camps in order to make their arguments weaker and easier to attack form a holier than though political/ideological angle, it's game over for me as I like to judge actions objectively based on the outcomes, not conservative vs democrat, left vs right, etc. since corruption and incompetence is colorblind.
I don't care which side of the political isle did what, I'm pointing at the systemic failures of the entire system built like a house of cards by all political parties, which collapsed as no thought was put into building it, and only chased short term profits at the expense of long term security. Trying to finger point a single political side only detracts from the issue which is the classic "divide and conquer" tactic politicians have been using to deflect blame and get away with it.
Germany had with under the best deal for gas possible with Russia, I don’t understand the sentiment calling it a vulnerability. There is still a working pipeline available and Russia stated clearly if would continue delivering gas, if Germany wants to.
Except what Russia states and what Russia does are only aligned when it serves Russia. Russia stopped delivering gas through NordStream 1. After that, Germany took note of the danger and decided it would do better without that dependency.
> Germany took note of the danger and decided it would do better without that dependency.
So they just swapped dependencies. And it's not that the new dependency will have no strings attached.
Diversifying while keeping russian energy in the loop, as part of a risk-management strategy, would make more sense. Completely cutting off russian energy just gives more bargaining power to their new energy provider.
> There is still a working pipeline available and Russia stated clearly if would continue delivering gas, if Germany wants to.
You conveniently leave out that minor detail that it was RUSSIA who stopped the gas.
Germany tried hard to keep it going, even making a sanction-exemption or a Siemens turbine repaired in Canada, which according to Russia was needed. Only that when they were to receive it nothing happened, gas stopped anyway.
Nordstream 1 which had if I recall correctly one working turbine left and went into inspection during which an oil spill was noticed and the restart of the service was postponed. Shortly after Nordstream 1 Pipeline A + B and Nordstream 2 Pipeline A was been blown up.
It’s up to debate if the oil spill which was uncovered during the inspection which postponed the gas delivery was a political move.
The turbine, which underlies sanctions, should have been still in transit during that time and even if delivered useless.
There is still Nordstream 2 Pipeline B intact available to deliver gas and it uses Russian made turbines compared to Nordstream 1.
The whole discussion is very special to say the least if you leave out that some adversary blow up the infrastructure.
I'm German, I followed those developments closely at the time. Russia refused to deliver gas! The blowing up of the pipes happened quite some time after that!
That shows that Russia prepared for using gas as an economic weapon against Germany especially well before they even started the war.
From the Zeit article:
German
> "Die Gasflüsse über die deutschen Grenzen sind unüblich niedrig für diese Jahreszeit - mit Ausnahme von Nord Stream 1, die sind konstant hoch", sagt Fabian Huneke. Es sei verwunderlich, dass vor dem Hintergrund der hohen Preise und der hohen Nachfrage die Gaslieferkapazitäten Richtung Europa so wenig genutzt würden. "Wenn Gazprom sich marktrational verhalten würde, würden sie die Gaslieferungen nach Europa auch durch die Pipelines, die durch Belarus und die Ukraine führen, verstärken." Den Grund für dieses Verhalten sieht der Energiemarktexperte in der Ukraine-Krise.
English, translated by Google
> "The gas flows across the German borders are unusually low for this time of year - with the exception of Nord Stream 1, which are consistently high," says Fabian Huneke. It is surprising that, given the high prices and high demand, the gas delivery capacities to Europe are so little used. "If Gazprom behaved in a market-rational manner, they would also increase gas supplies to Europe through the pipelines that run through Belarus and Ukraine." The energy market expert sees the reason for this behavior in the Ukraine crisis.
Except that Russia did not deliver (not any meaningful amount anyways), when the pipelines were still intact. And yes, they pretended to be willing, firing off a series of excuses sufficiently transparent to make it clear between the lines that it's a demonstration of power. Get your history straight: "Russia stated clearly if would continue" has between zero and negative value.
>I don’t understand the sentiment calling it a vulnerability
- You're Germany.
- You join NATO for protection from Russia, an actor with a long history of military aggression[1]
- Your export economy is based on manufacturing.
- The energy driving your manufacturing sector is ~60% cheap gas from Russia, your military aggressive partner.
- Russia invades Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 to no ones surprise
- Leaders of USA and Eastern Europe warn you of Russia's influence on your economy
- You ignore all this and build another gas pipeline from Russia
- You are surprised Russia invades Ukraine(again) and gas sanctions cripple your manufacturing economy
MFW German leaders and HN commenters see no vulnerability in this.
Someone please stop the planet, I wish to get off, my sanity can't handle this level of stupidity anymore.
> Someone please stop the planet, I wish to get off, my sanity can't handle this level of stupidity anymore.
News from an American here, on an antidepressant and deathly fat from stress eating:
I’m worried about the eventual welfare of those protesting. I’m hearing that people of color are being told by their pastor to stay home rather than protest so as not to risk being used as scapegoats.
My family and friends are divided and still dividing over politics. I recently was crazily ranted to by big-personality entrepreneur immigrant that told me his story of how easy it was to come to the states, rags-to-riches, and how they were supporter of the administration because “they don’t want to pay taxes for illegals”. Part of the half of the U.S. that supports the administration isn’t just brainwashed, but has a very strong, angry, and desperate look, and the other part says “just wait four years and it will be over”, but it won’t; before the election, this party used gerrymandering and legal action to ensure that election, then post-election replaced election officials and many government officials.
The DOE is claiming anti-semitism and the need to have viewpoint diversity to deny funding to schools that are known for their open viewpoints.
And yet somehow I’m still surprised when they kill the CVE program.
It’s an ever-escalating circus of chaos, because our administration thinks this was needed to ensure U.S. interests, because those vulnerable in the U.S. were manipulated by outside actors and internal power-hungry politicians and zealots, and all is spun to just feed into the chaotic nationalism that is trying to one-up every other dictator that has ever lived.
To top all of this off, AI, which I use daily, will take my job before I retire, and I have no backup plan.
Despite all of this, I have the will to live, to support those whom I love (even the crazy ones), and to try to make the world better. I continue to pray for direction on all of this.
I know that they are a 501(c)3, but they have significant revenue and intellectual property, so in order to do the lift and shift, there would need to be some money changing hands to accomplish it. Not only that, but being owned by the EU gives the ability for MITRE employees to have the option to immigrate to the EU to protect against any retaliation.
I cannot believe I am typing that second sentence, but here we are.
> Not only that, but being owned by the EU gives the ability for MITRE employees to have the option to immigrate to the EU to protect against any retaliation.
According to which rule would "owning by the EU" result in an option to immigrate? Immigration is handled on a per country basis. I don't see how the EU provide such an option.
The EU has agreed upon programs in order to bring in, through an immigration policy, high skilled persons from non-member states. More importantly, working within the member nations, as to which member nation would want MITRE to be located within their borders, is not something that is a hard sell given that it has economic advantages for whichever state(s) onboard MITRE.
> The EU has agreed upon programs in order to bring in, through an immigration policy, high skilled persons from non-member states.
Where in this is the option that the EU provides an option to immigrate because the EU owns something?
I'm very well aware of knowledge workers. It's not something the EU can provide as an option. What you linked to is the legal framework around how EU members can provide such a thing.
That still leaves decisions on who to admit to states. As far as I can see its main effect is to allow people admitted to one country as highly skilled to travel to (not live in) other countries?
I think all the big companies that owe their ongoing business should band together and fund it. No way an organization like this should rely on just one sponsor.
oh but you forgot the mandatory time before they even start considering the tender.
looking at average speed of bureaucracy in EU it will take roughly a year to set date for a meeting that will set the date for actual meeting which will decide if this will go forward or not....
(if you think i'm joking - i'm basing this on proposed EU initiative for nuclear power which started with setting a date of meeting to setup a meeting to draft an agenda)
This would be hilarious. That would be a good thumb in the eye to the current administration who complained long and loud about how Obama let ICANN leave US possession. Just imagine the campaign commercials in 2026,
>The POTUS transferred our cyber defenses to the EU
Well, that's kind of the point? The current administration doesn't care about cyber defense, any less than it cares about protecting the environment, protecting consumers, having top-notch universities and research, foreign aid etc. etc. Actually, it takes pride in not caring about all of these things.
My guess is that they feel they are supplying something the whole world is benefiting from, and they believe that unfair.
That ignores the fact that the US benefits immensely from this, and that they benefit domestically from providing that benefit more widely by getting a lot of free contributions from the outside. But the US foots the bill of those who do get payed, so its unfair...
Its a bit like when you are a two-bit loser but have a private island where you can do whatever you like, and invite every celebrity you can find over to party every weekend, then start complaining that they haven't paid any of the island running costs and that they are all spongers because you are the main attraction of the island parties.
And at the best restaurants! And I get to choose the restaurant! And choose when we eat! And pick the appetizers, drinks, entrees, and desert!
So instead I will allow myself to be robbed and we'll all share the cost of a low-key restuarant. Or maybe let's charge each other to eat together, yeah!
> The current administration doesn't care about cyber defense, any less than it cares about protecting the environment
On the contrary, I would argue that they deeply care about the environment. The REAL point of all those tit-for-tat tariffs with China including with small mail/packages are to drastically cut cargo/shipping emissions. The threatening of annexation of Canada? That was really to get ~70% reduction in air passenger traffic BECAUSE they care about the environment. Same with creating a few high profile border horror story incidents against nationals from allied countries. The real point of it? Reduce transoceanic air passenger loads and save the environment. /s
Yes, maybe reach out to Michiel Leenaars from the NLNet foundation. But IIRC NLNet mostly funds shorter development tracks, not ongoing upkeep/maintenance.
I would email someone like Patch My PC they seem good stewards of stuff open source from my vague looking and they are good people. They may just host a clone of it that's open.
(Spain, doing storage and web hosting)
What usually worries me the most is the administrative or management part, which I don't know how big would be for this project...
I agree with you there. Before CISA got sacked / taken down, they were working together with the BSI and other CERT agencies on a vulnerability exchange format.
This might be the optimum time to implement CSAF and to lead by example when it comes to vulnerability disclosures.
The European, GDPR compliant subnet of the Internet Computer could suit your needs. The app would be decentralized out of the box and it can't be shut down by a single entity like a traditional cloud provider or nation state. Hosting 100GB costs about 500$ per year [0]. This is not a traditional hosting provider, it's a decentralized cloud. Reach out on the forum [1] or to me if this sounds like a good fit to you (I think it does, from your list of requirements).
Apart from the few maniacs On Here who seek out the unregulated intentionally. Raw milk (all those tasty diseases). "Research chemicals" (don't hear so much about that lately, but there were whole microdosing fads).
And we enjoyed our milkborne tuberculosis, typhoid, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and septic sore throat thoroughly, too. The risks actually doubled the joys. Why does a supposedly enlightened society step all over my right to choose which eliminated diseases to bring back?
To play devil's advocate - it's horrible when gaming, programming, business or even porn forums get overrun by politics.
It's not that the political topics are unimportant but all my feeds just end up looking the same as each other and the same as a newspaper app. I hate election nights because of this.
I think it's a stretch to suggest _all_ are, I'm not sure I could believe that a game like Super Hexagon is political. Would it be political to paint the tree in your backyard, or to draw a picture of your cat?
Depends. We’re a small, very international startup and have a super strict “no politics” policy. Politics and work are not a good combination when you’re employing people from all over the world.
But I would not consider it a political statement to adopt this policy.
I think it exists two different general ideas of what politic mean.
For some (including me), politics are, following the oldest definition: 'how do I and fellow humans organize ourselves to live together' this often leads to a belief that everything is politics (for me it's true, but it's a belief, not a fact).
For other, I think that when they say politics, they think of geopolitics and partisanship, which is fair, because it's how politicians and political journalists themselves define politics. For this group, hopefully, not everything is politics.
So to me, this disagreement about wether or not all is political is often semantic rather than ideologic.
Your statements are incoherent. Politics is decision making and power relationships within groups of people. It is 100% a political statement to adopt this policy as it exercises power over a group. You cannot function as a group without politics. "Where do y'all want to go for lunch" is also politics, as it involves group decision making and power relationships (Do you go to the vegetarian place? Do you avoid the spicy place?) It's a completely banal decision but it is still politics.
If what you want is a "don't piss off your coworkers by discussing topics unrelated to work that you know will annoy people" policy, that is fine, but don't pretend you are not engaging in politics.
The politics of saying "no politics" is that you are drawing some line that separates some political issues into "politics" and others into "not politics". Because to truly avoid all politics is impossible; even if you believe banal, purely intra-personal politics are not political so much of the basic organization of a business & capitalism are politics. "Should we allow remote work" for example is a deeply political question that ties deeply into discussions about the rights/value of neurodivergent & disabled people in the workplace. To say 'I don't believe in God' is a deeply political and dangerous statement in some parts of the world, but fairly banal where I live. To contrast, in Indonesia, it is technically _unconstitutional_ to not believe in a "one and almighty God"
I wish people were at least honest about "no politics" to mean "lets avoid to unsafe, potentially divisive issues relative to our geographic location, and take the basic tenets of neoliberal, capitalistic society to be assumed". And yeah, that is a more than reasonable policy. Its a difficult policy in international spaces, because its very hard to not trespass that line when political contexts differ so strongly across the globe
The word “politics” is vague, and that only makes banning political discussions worse if it only becomes political when the higher-ups don’t like it.
Say your company has a possibility of working with some client company who is directly or indirectly involved with cause X. If it is “political” to talk about not working with them because of X, but it is “not political” to talk about working with them, then you see what I mean.
It doesn’t have to be a destructive conversation: one employee might say we should avoid them, but you might say we need to work with them because we need the money now and can drop them later when we are in a better place. Other employees could talk how cause X is not that unethical for reasons. If someone balks at a point of view incompatible with theirs and is incapable of expressing a viewpoint in a way that respects other views, maybe that someone is not mature enough and next time your HR can avoid that type.
I am torn.com player which is a MMORPG as far removed from politics as can be. But when large part of dev team are ukrainians that were suddenly unable to work from clearly political reasons you can't ignore it.
First, “no politics” is not a political statement to me, more of an implicitly adopted political position.
Personally, if I have a personal political position and my colleague has an opposite one, I don’t see why we can’t talk about it. If you have a workplace rule about no politics during working hours, you better have this rule for all non-work discussions at work, or I personally would feel uncomfortable.
— If politics talk happens at work too much and affects productivity, then it is a problem, but then it is a problem with any non-work topic.
— If it causes heated debate, ruins morale, and makes people dislike each other, then it is a problem, but then it is a problem with any topic that causes heated debate. For some people it’s golf, for some philosophy, for some music. How many topics should be banned?
Are you from the US? In the last 15 years it has become impossible for two people to reasonably disagree over political positions because of how much vitriol is thrown around on the attention markets—even if both individuals themselves are rather tame. When having an otherwise normal political opinion makes you a racist bigot or a beta cuck because the opposition is so determined to get their way at any cost, no, you can’t just talk politics at work and have a cohesive team. Someone will feel oppressed.
Work is about making money. Politics is a distraction unless there’s an issue that directly affects the business. Then it’s fair game. Like this one. Many teams of individuals will have to figure out how to navigate this situation so discussing it in context is apropos and can be done objectively.
> When having an otherwise normal political opinion makes you a racist bigot or a beta cuck because the opposition is so determined to get their way at any cost
If someone calls me a racist bigot or a beta cuck, that is a problem. That problem also has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with someone not being emotionally mature enough or equipped to handle a discussion with someone who has different views, or someone having a mental breakdown.
I am not from the US, but I had enjoyed some reasonable conversations with people from the US (among other countries) with very different views, and I was never called names. There are awkward moments when you have to hear something you don’t agree with, but that is most of life if you ever interact with people.
The key is to be like an HTTP server: liberal in terms of what you can accept, but strict with what you put out there.
> Work is about making money.
You have just thrown another political position into the mix, I hope you realize that?
Being straight is also pretty much political at this point. With the way it's being slipped into the culture (all that trad stuff, images of lifestyle to aspire to, etc.) and has become (has always been perhaps) a part of political messaging and campaigning, heterosexuality is political. Even within the heterosexuality itself and its expressions, there's still politics - "what's the right way to do it" and such. (not saying this like 'oh those poor straight people' but just that, it is all, all political)
For what it’s worth, I completely agree, I just thought LGBTQ was a clearer example because of how different it is seen in different parts of the world, and how it is at the same time an inescapable part of many people’s identity.
One might argue that it's even more important to discuss international politics these days, considering how interconnected the world is and how so many countries seem to be facing many of the same issues.
No it’s not. It’s having discipline to not pollute unrelated conversations with your politics. I am very against the status quo but I don’t complain about it to a bunch of anonymous usernames on a forum focused on technology.
Technology and the consequences of using technology are inherently highly political.
New or improved technologies shape communities.
Ignoring that is a political statement as well.
Just see how online media has changed discourse, how Amazon changed retail business, how business analytics change the way businesses work, how always being connected changes relations, ...
When developing technologies one can be Wernher von Braun "(where the rockets land and whether they contain explosives is) not my department" or one can consider consequences.Both are a political position, with consequences.
> You can believe something without proselytizing.
You can talk about politics without proselytising. Why should discussing a topic even invoke the words like “belief” and “proselytising”?
Not only stating an opinion is compatible with a constructive discussion that could lead to a mutual adjustment of opinions—in fact, stating your opinion is a pre-requisite to having it changed!
Not being able or willing to freely exchange and converge on opinions with people whom you routinely meet in real life, only discussing them online in your respective bubbles, is a sure way to having only more and more wildly incompatible and divisive opinions, and I suspect it is exactly what has been happening in recent years.
It's in favor of not having relationships break down in your community/company.
Only a small percentage of people are able to handle fundamental disagreements calmly and without it bleeding over to other interactions.
Will the SE and sales guy work as well together if the former knows the latter donates half his commission money to organizations that help kill babies?
Turning the question around, will the SE and sales guy work as well together if the former knows the latter donates half his commission money to FSF while the other is hard advocate for commercial software?
Politics are across all layers, including at technology decisions.
I have friendly relationships with a few people who have political opinions some of which are opposite to mine.
> Will the SE and sales guy work as well together if the former knows the latter donates half his commission money to organizations that help kill babies?
A friend of mine is a vegan. Anywhere he works, to him, most of his coworkers not just help kill conscious beings that have self-awareness and feel pain, they literally eat them. Does this mean talking about what you have for lunch should be banned? Does this mean he should throw a fit any time he talks to a non-vegan?
Incidentally, we sometimes have good debates about the nature of consciousness, the effectiveness of individual veganism on reducing suffering, utilitarianism and deontology, vegan food options, etc. I feel being converted and I don’t mind it.
It’s really a question of time and place. There are many foundational topics in life, such as politics, religion, and philosophy. But it’s not always helpful or appropriate to discuss them in a particular setting.
That said, HN already has an extremely wide range of subject matter, so I wouldn’t say politics should be out of place here. It can, though, become a divisive distraction that disrupts other conversations, so I can appreciate that some limits are needed.
> The ancient Greek understanding of an “idiot” referred to someone who was a private citizen or a person who did not actively participate in public life or politics.
I view the archive.org, Wikipedia, CVE program, and Linux Kernel to all have had discussions on HN about how to they should be funded. Is that kind of politics the kind that people wish that HN stayed out from?
Everything was always political. Laws, the economy, conflcit. How is any person not affected by these? The government is responsible for all or a large part of how a country functions.
People who say "I'm not political" are deflecting to avoid conflict
One of the benefits a working democracy conveys to its citizens is that they largely don't have to care about politics. They can trust that government action is relatively consistent over time, that laws will be enforced fairly enough, that their property will be protected to a reasonable degree, that the currency will be reasonably stable, that the roads will be maintained, that some public transport will be available, that sudden wars won't erupt around them, and so on.
That's what makes working democracies successful. But it seems that it also makes democracies vulnerable because people don't realize they have these benefits because they live in a working democracy. They start to think these benefits have nothing to do with politics and are just the way things are, like the laws of nature.
Interestingly, I believe that the reality is exactly the opposite: on the political regimes' spectrum of democratic -> authoritarian -> totalitarian only the middle one doesn't require people's participation. Both democracy and totalitarism need to be actively maintained by significant part of the population, otherwise they converge to the "natural" state of things - authoritarian order. None of the stuff you listed (fair laws, property rights, etc.) occur naturally once it has been set up at some point in past. That's why they talk about "checks and balances" all the time, and they are impossible without active participation.
I think the most significant distinction is exactly that:
Authoritarian - leaves people alone in general as long as they stay out of politics. Examples: 90% of regimes throughout human history. Almost all post-soviet countries, almost all of Middle East and Africa, Singapore, etc.
Totalitarian - forces people into actively participating in leader's political goals and penetrates the daily life. North Korea, USSR, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy.
>The citizens elect the government so how can you not care about poltiics?
I don't think there's a direct correlation between the ability to vote and caring about politics. People usually care about politics when it affects them negatively. I would guess that most people in most democratic systems don't have strong negative experiences with their governments and, thus, are not incentivized to care about politics.
Note that I'm not making an argument that they should not care. I think they should, but the very system that allows participation probably also decreases the incentive for most people to participate.
Alternatively people who say “I’m not political” are benefiting from the status quo and political direction of things (long term, not necessarily short term). They frame inaction as apolitical.
> People who say "I'm not political" are deflecting to avoid conflict
A great truth. Even isolating yourself from society like a hermit is still a political decision: you are rejecting society as it is, and prefer to live in your own solo society. That's politics.
I don’t think that’s totally accurate. If I live as a hermit but perform my civic duties like voting and paying any taxes, I don’t see how choosing to live in solitude is anything more than a lifestyle choice.
When this is discussed, what's being meant is that everday party politics are spilling out and overwhelming a project's or industry's individual, internal politics, which are often a completely disconnected meta.
Appealing to "well everything is connected" I'm not sure is useful. It's interesting from a semantics perspective the first few times you come across it maybe, then swaps around into being plain frustrating, then lands on just missing the point.
Finally, I think people who want to stay out of said party political meta I think are doing a pretty big favor to their mental health, and I really can't fault them one bit for it. No coincidence either.
"Party politics" is ill-defined, and so a "no politics" rule becomes an arbitrary hammer that bosses can use to smash employees. If I say "I'm going to get a COVID vaccine this afternoon" is that discussing party politics? In the UK, where I live, the vaccine was provided by the government, so I'm implicitly discussing the actions of the government. That is under any reasonable definition a discussion of politics.
"everyday party politics are spilling out and overwhelming a project's or industry's individual, internal politics" is how "no politics" rules are usually justified, but this was not what happened in the poster child cases of implementing "no politics" rules (37signals, Coinbase). 37signals in particular tried to spin it this way, but it was the actions of a group within the company approved by the founders that caused the problem. (Coinbase was just completely incoherent from the start. Their mission is something like "End economic inequality" which a reasonable person could take to mean anarchist or communist discussion is on topic.)
There's no way to define any modality of politics such that someone like you won't come around and start going off about how it's a leaky segmentation, and is actually just an excuse for censorship.
Every artificial segmentation of the real world is leaky. Just like the recognition that politics is everywhere, this too is not actually inquisitive. It's like arguing that stairsteps are chairs. They can be, but that doesn't make the word "chair" ill-defined.
> but this was not what happened in the poster child cases of implementing "no politics" rules
There is no such thing. These may be notable cases in your cohort, for me it's the first time I heard of these. And I've seen my fair share of these rules.
The covid vaccine example is a good one in terms of something in everyday life that is politicised.
It is also illustrates the problem with discussing politics in an international forum. The KCL study of covid conspiracy theories (carried out during the pandemic) found that in the UK young people and those who identified as left wing were more likely to believe conspiracy theories. I am pretty sure this is significantly different from the US. Also matches things I have heard (e.g. my daughter met people at university who refused the vaccine because "we don't trust the Tories".
It is pretty common for Americans to assume that the Conservatives are equivalent to Republicans, and Labour are like the Democrats, which is very far from the truth. It has always been far from the truth but the reasons why change - e.g. in the 80s Thatcher and Reagan were not far apart, but that that time Labour were far to the left of the Democrats (actual socialists).
> I think are doing a pretty big favor to their mental health, and
It your mental health is harmed while defending your political views it's possible your views are the issue.
For example if my view was that "domestic animals shouldn't be abused and penalties increased for such crimes" I wouldn't have mental health issues discussing this.
So if I now said some intentionally asinine garbage, e.g. about how dogs need to be disciplined and sometimes that necessarily involves a beating, and how if you disagree you're woke, that wouldn't make you very understandably very distraught?
Because it would make me pretty distraught, and I don't think that it's because anything is wrong with the idea of not abusing animals.
Even doing this mental exercise for the sake of this conversation is already extremely frustrating for me. I don't think this should surprise you.
The vast majority of people will get stressed talking to people they think are evil or against their values. Someone breaking down in tears because another person says they "don't give a fuck about the bloody Gazans" is not behaving particularly unusually.
The views don't matter as much as how strongly they are held.
> Someone breaking down in tears because another person says they "don't give a fuck about the bloody Gazans" is not behaving particularly unusually.
it might be reasonable if you have personal close links to Gaza (e.g. you are worried about family who live there), but otherwise it OUGHT to be very unusual.
I mean I think The Republican Incumbent was chosen specifically as a tool because he is so extreme, pervasive and demoralising and creeps into everything. Definitely by Russia, maybe also by our "friend" in the ME. Although it's not that reported on they are on friendly terms.
Disaffection lends itself easily to creating a Russia-style society. This all feels pretty Dugin-esque, and his proposition (return to values, reject interest/hope in politics because it is always flawed anyway, bind together under the state) fits perfectly, and is finding prominence at the perfect time.
Just my opinion, but to me this seems far more akin to Dugin than whatever Curtis Yavin is pushing
> That's because we got reliant on the funds from government
Not we, some people got reliant on the funds from government. It is always at the cost of someone else. The tax the rich and bourgeoisie mentality is what led to Mao Zedong and Stalin, but no-one wants to learn about history anymore.
Agree, but it goes both ways, with technology (that many of us here have helped create and maintain) also reaching out into every facet of society and community, many times in close symbiosis with the political powers that be, to the detriment of said society and community.
Not 100% sure what I wanted to say, maybe that said politics (and the political as a whole) wouldn't have invaded almost our entire lives without the help of technology.
What people mean when they say this is that they don't want to engage in party political and/or tribal political discussions. They don't want to do this because it just means rehearsing talking points.
People are not dumb. They know that politics is everywhere but they want to live and love and talk about things that are interesting.
Yep. It's also true of people who think they can simply move out of the US and that "solves" the problem too. America's problems are still (almost) everyone's problems too.
> A coalition of CVE Board members launched a new CVE Foundation "to ensure the long-term viability, stability, and independence of the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) Program."
The way their letter is worded it seems that they have a rainy day fund constituted to ride out the stormy next few week and I'm fairly certain they'll come back with more details as to how they'll be acquiring funding from now on in the next few days. Maybe paid access to an API, maybe donations from large companies that use the system, maybe something else ::shrug::
Hopefully a project as important as this doesn't just dissapear completely because of government pressure.
I wonder what level of compartmentalisation inside DHS means they didn't see this as having sufficient downsides?
I ask this, because I don't think anyone in the subject matter specialist space would have made a strong case "kill it, we don't need this" and I am sure if asked would have made a strong case "CRISSAKE WE NEED THIS DONT TOUCH IT" -But I could believe senior finance would do their own research (tm) and mis-understand what they saw in how other people work with CVE, and who funds it.
> I wonder what level of compartmentalisation inside DHS means they didn't see this as having sufficient downsides?
This was not a carefully-weighed decision based on a cost-benefit analysis. This was a political order, consistent with the administration's policy of "cut everything, recklessly, indiscriminately."
If I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt (which I hate), it's a shotgun approach; cut things relentlessly and see what falls apart. Chaos engineering applied to a country and / or the world.
That’s exactly what it is, and they said as much repeatedly while campaigning. Voters, in their zealotry against the perceived status quo, failed to realize how much of what we have right now you don’t want to cut recklessly, as well as just how reckless the people that they were choosing to do that job were.
wunderkind is a loanword, it's one of those cases of a German word being used but being odd in English since it's so similar.
Like kindergarten which is often speller as "garden".
Absolutely not. They are not broadly experts, and they are not making these decisions after careful consideration, as evidenced by their continual acts of stupidity and basic errors and cutting things despite having no idea what it is they are cutting. Musk got in an argument with someone who said DOGE cut funding for a cancer treatment program, and Musk was calling the person a liar, and the person provided evidence and Musk admitted it was an accident. They are a clown car of idiots who vastly overestimate their own knowledge and underestimate how much good the government actually does. They think they can just slash and burn and there will be no negative consequences because they think the government is worthless.
What's funny, and it might be because of the translation, but I first thought her book where all entrepreneurs are hidden away in a sort of parallel country was a dystopian satire and a joke about some people sense of self importance. Then I learned about her (and when the book was written too) and realised her book was to be read as it was written, 'seriously'. Which makes it silly, but a funny story.
She was an Objectivist. She considered social security to be "legalized plunder". Then when she needed it, she decided to take it.
One of her wonderful worldviews was to rejects altruism as a moral imperative, arguing that individuals should live for their own rational self-interest. Social security, based on the idea of supporting others, contradicts this principle.
It takes strong and complex social glue to create a place where millions can safely follow their own self-interest.
Which means anyone whose wisdom matches their self-interest is going to understand that different things have very different efficiencies at different scales.
And some things happen to be dramatically more efficient/person and more effective, the larger the scale they can be coordinated at.
>It takes strong and complex social glue to create a place where millions can safely follow their own self-interest.
This exactly. All of these people who profess to believe in objectivism could easily move to a failed state and do anything they want to with zero government intervention. But they don't do that. They want all of the benefits of a working government with none of the things required to actually create a working government.
Also, even if you don't need it yourself, it's far nicer to live in a society where people's basic needs can be met otherwise we end up living in some kind of Mad Max apocalyptic wasteland where people with nothing and nothing to lose roam the country looking for targets.
They've done their degrees and masters in Computer Science, and many of them dropped out. But they focused on AI, so I'm assuming this makes them great at statistics, but does this mean they are great at security? Given the way they've gone through a variety of departments, I'd say they aren't.
The DOGE crew are incompetent. Witness their firing of all the people who look after the nuclear stockpile and Ebola research.
Vampire capitalism. They want civilization to break down so they can offer a solution for profit. The enemies of all people and life on the planet are a tiny group of oligarchs and their supplicants.
I agree, given the right definition of “capitalism”.
Unfortunately “capitalism” has two quite different meanings. Which are rarely clarified in use.
Capitalism with a big C, a too common overarching ideology, gets bent to mean whatever the greedy, unethical and rich want it to mean so they can get more money.
But small c capitalism, evolving from both practical and ethical foundations, is a system so useful it has multiplied the benefits of civilization. But it is just one such system.
It can’t do everything, it needs other independent systems (justice, dispute resolution, rules of clarity, risk & trust limiting systems, for starters) to work, and extending it to places it doesn’t work causes great harm.
(Like when perversely applied to those enabling systems, in big C form, as is happening now.)
As if laws have any meaning to this administration, and anyone expecting this will only last four years instead of turning into one of those countries so much admired by the captain at the helm, is fooling themselves.
When the citizens realise this, the structures to clamp down any revolution will be in place.
"We are paying MITRE how much? Bigballs and co will write a better ststem in 1 week and have it integrated with xAI. How hard could it be? Send out a first draft of an xAI contract to our DHS contact"
This sort of thing is happening across the federal government. There is no rhyme or reason. DOGE has been given an unrealistic target for cuts and they're desperately cutting whatever they can get their hands on. If you look at the federal budget it's nearly impossible for DOGE to hit their stated goals without touching benefits like medicare and social security (which are off limits so far) so the only option is deep, deep cuts into the narrow slice of the federal budget that excludes those protected categories.
There is no rhyme or reason to what gets cut, other than someone under pressure to hit KPIs (dollars cut) was desperately searching for things that looked easy to cancel.
This is happening everywhere the federal government touches. Most people aren't aware of it until they come around and pull the rug on something that intersects with your own life.
Even my die-hard Republican distant relatives are suddenly shocked because programs they benefited from are being cut. They thought they voted for something different.
Like what exactly? I mean the guy ran on cutting the budget by 2 trillion. In his last term he gave tax breaks yo the rich. Where did they think the cuts were coming from?
He ran very hard on raising tarrifs. Which demonstrably raise prices (thats literally their goal.) But now people claim "I didn't vote for this."
In truth they voted for him because he was the Republican on offer and they're die-hard Republican. The Republican party has made no secret of its agenda for decades.
I get it, people are good at cognitive dissonance. But this is the place for blunt truth. They voted for this. I'm not letting Republicans got off the hook here. They voted for this.
Just like to my Republican friends who are upset that CVE is cut. You voted for this. The general public benefit from CVE even though they dont know it exists. Just like you benefitted from dozens of other programs you didn't know existed, but have also been cut.
That's the problem with cuts. They ultimately end up hurting everyone.
Now clearly there's some fat that could be trimmed. Companies do it all the time. Done well its good. Swinging a hatchet in a crowded elevator does not seem like "Done well".
When someone hands you a pencil, you don't wonder what variety of tree the wood came from, or what paint chemistry was used for the coating. It's a pencil. You might have broad opinions on whether the one in your hand is comfortable to use, and sharp - but you leave the details to the pencil makers.
About 70% of the population engage with politics the same way: Leave the details to the people who do this stuff for a living.
Do they expect to be disappointed? Sure, but everyone who engages with politics expects to be disappointed.
> In truth they voted for him because he was the Republican on offer and they're die-hard Republican. The Republican party has made no secret of its agenda for decades.
This is actually simply not true. The Republican party before the Tea Party looked nothing at all like this. Trump won the presidency last year riding a wave of distinctly not-your-typical-Republican lower class voters. As he rose the old guard Republican establishment formed the anti-Trump wing of the party until they were forced out one by one.
To put some numbers to this: Bush won the upper income brackets by 5+ points in 2000, with a lead that widened as you went up the income ladder. Trump lost the equivalent brackets in 2024 by 5+ points, a 10 point swing away from what Bush won them by. The lower brackets are even more stark, with a whopping 18-point swing towards Trump in the $30k-$50k bracket (inflation adjusted to $15k-$30k).
These numbers show that Trump is not a Republican in the George W Bush sense and he's certainly not a Republican in the Ronald Reagan sense. He's a populist and won on a populist agenda by putting together a coalition of rabid social conservatives (who probably really did go Bush in 2000) and poor people (who largely did not).
You are ignoring that trump rode to power explicitly by enabling the shittest of Republicans that already exist. To try and let republicans off the hook for supporting him, especially a 2nd time? Is hilarious
I'm upvoting you because you make a coherent argument, and votes here should be for that, not whether I agree with you or not.
I would agree he's not George Bush, much less Ronald Reagan. Nevertheless those who voted for Bush and Reagan also voted for Trump.
This has been "decades" in the making in the sense that since Obama was elected (in 2008), Republicans have embraced racism at the heart of their populist message. That swing rightward was made palatable to center republicans with a woman democratic candidate in 2016 (one not terribly well liked in democratic circles) and a black woman candidate in 2024.
While racism, and misogyny gather a bunch of votes, long-term distrust of institutions is sown, and fostered. Republican policy becomes protecting white guys, and especially old, rich, white guys.
Reagan was popular and competent, and worked for the good of America. Today's president is nothing like him, but wins because a bunch of people "vote Republican".
Populism is not an agenda it's a style. Also the majority of poor people voted Democrat, the majority of people with low education levels voted for Trump (which is not the same thing as dumb, although voting for Trump is dumb regardless of PhD or lack of HS diploma). There's overlap between low levels of education and income but if you define class by income then low income people mostly voted Dem
I'd say that the rhyme and reason are quite clear [0]. They published a playbook, and they are implementing it at a record pace.
> The NSC [National Security Council] staff will need to consolidate the functions of both the NSC and the Homeland Security Council (HSC), incorporate the recently established Office of the National Cyber Director, and evaluate the required regional and functional directorates.
> Given the aforementioned prerequisites, the NSC should be properly resourced with sufficient policy professionals, and the NSA should prioritize staffing the vast majority of NSC directorates with aligned political appointees and trusted career officials. - Project 2025, pg 52.
> ... History shows that an unsupervised NSC staff can stray from its statutory role and adversely affect a President and his policies. Moreover, while the NSC should be fully incorporated into the White House, it should also be allowed to do its job without the impediment of dually hatted staff that report to other offices. - Project 2025, pg 53.
The goal is to build up a political organisation to use as a weapon, and to scrap the rest - as a legal excuse to say that the political appointments will be necessary.
They have to find some gumbah to head the security dept,because the best one they had,left in a hurry. Heard he went to Denmark. ( I am really really kidding )
The ryme is Humpty Dumpty, had a great fall. Now China and Russian security forces step up their relentless attacks. Let's hope the white house falls first.
> Even my die-hard Republican distant relatives are suddenly shocked because programs they benefited from are being cut. They thought they voted for something different.
Out of curiosity, which programs? And is this enough to change their opinion about Trump, or do they still think it'll be worth it?
> This sort of thing is happening across the federal government. There is no rhyme or reason. DOGE has been given an unrealistic target for cuts and they're desperately cutting whatever they can get their hands on
You make it sound like poor DOGE employees are being forced to do this on this kind of schedule, which definitely isn't the impression I got. They're all a bunch of incompetent overconfident weirdos who think they know better and what to do. Is there any pressure to do anything quickly?
And the US federal budget is quite easy to trim. E.g. remove an aircraft carrier from the planned construction pipeline and you've saved $15 billion with no actual ramifications.
Remember, DOGE has nothing to do with money or "efficiency". It's a pure ideological dismantling of the Federal government aimed at eliminating oversight, regulations, assistance and entitlements as envisioned by ultra-conservatives for decades.
This isn't speculation or hyperbole, it's specifically laid out in their published plans: By hobbling or outright eliminating federal agencies responsible for executing the laws passed by Congress, the administration can circumvent the democratic process and impose their extreme vision of limited government on the country, regardless of popular support.
The U.S. system of government relies on established norms as much as it does law. Conservatives realized that they can ignore precedent with impunity if they had an executive willing to do so. They then spelled out exactly how, and are now enacting that plan.
Then SCOTUS's decisions last summer turbo boosted their agenda. The ruling that only Congress can hold the President legally accountable essentially means executive power is unchecked if the legislature is unwilling or unable to Impeach and convict. The President can now confidently ignore the law and judicial orders with a veneer of legality. And this is what he's doing.
(The fact that all this just so happens to benefit Russia after their decade long campaign to destabilize their opponents in the West is a topic for speculation.)
DOGE is about permanently altering how our country works modeled on the right wing worldview, plain and simple. Since that's their overall goal, they're not concerned where they swing the wrecking ball - it's all going to get destroyed eventually.
> The U.S. system of government relies on established norms as much as it does law.
And it's also happily breaking the law. The Executive doesn't legally have the power to allocate resources (or not), not to mention the power to arbitrarily suspend due process.
They are breaking down the federal government intentionally. DOGE was never going to hit their goals, they were impossible to hit. The goals were just cover to take full control over anything they can get their hands on.
> Even my die-hard Republican distant relatives are suddenly shocked because programs they benefited from are being cut. They thought they voted for something different.
They voted for others to be hurt and to lose benefits, not their “in group.” Surprise surprise, they are considered the waste by those they voted for.
I hate Trump as much as the next guy, but let's not take things out of context, he clearly seems to mean it in a "I want everyone" sense here, rather than just the poorly educated specifically.
> DOGE has been about fighting corruption and reducing wasteful spending
It absolutely staggers me that anyone can still say this with a straight face. I will ask this, though: as part of the DOGE fight against corruption and wasteful spending how many of Elon Musk's government contracts and subsidies have been cut?
Also ~12K IRS workers (7x per head ROI) and inspectors general (who actually get results and are fully accountable) have been cut. And our already bloated military budget is increasing to $1 trillion without an eye being batted. DOGE is theatre.
"A system’s function or purpose is not necessarily spoken, written, or expressed explicitly, except through the operation of the system. The best way to deduce the system’s purpose is to watch for a while to see how the system behaves. Purposes are deduced from behavior, not from rhetoric or stated goals.” —- Donella Meadows
I see at least three obvious reasons for the cuts:
1. Politically-motivated "purge the weak" Nazi stuff - Cutting Medicare, cutting Medicaid, cutting Social Security, cutting education, cutting anything that benefits people who are old, poor, queer, female, etc.
2. Privatization - NWS and NOAA are wonderful public services, and they'd rather profit from the data they produce. This is why taxes in the US are such a bitch to file, tax companies oppose any policy change that would make the paperwork easier for filers.
3. They might actually be Russian assets. Tearing down institutions that took generations to build makes space in the world for Russia to exert more influence. You can tell this is working because Europe is now wanting to re-arm.
It makes me sad. If I had a billion dollars I would still want to live in a better country. These guys only want a better world for themselves, and making everyone else into a permanent servant underclass only plays into that.
it might also be deliberate: that they actually don't think the government should be involved in this sort of thing. after all, someone could be making a profit on this, and that seems to be their highest value. if gov is involved, that makes it a communal effort, and you know what else starts with "commun-"?
yes, those reasons are stupid and ignorant AND intentional.
but is there any evidence against that interpretation?
Yes, there are apparently various ways of profiting from vulnerabilities. The interesting question would be whether any of the regime insiders have a way to profit.
I think it's more of a principle: if it looks like someone could charge money for it, they think that would make the country stronger, because all they understand is first-order profit. Trump's ethics is "get away with whatever you can".
For instance, most people find healthcare middlemen (pharmacy benefit managers, etc) to be grotesque parasites. But to a laissez-faire fundamentalist, they're smart for finding a way to liberate some profit, even laudable.
I love Hanlon's razor. Super-helpful in certain contexts: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
But, having known about it for a dozen years now, I also find it inadequate alone as a razor without the following caveats/corollaries:
Hubbard's corollary to Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system". ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor#Exceptions )
Or (HN) Nerdponx's punchier simplification: "When money is at stake, never attribute to incompetence what could be attributed to greed." ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41066724 )
Hanlon's Razor is susceptible to pathological inputs, causing unbounded runtime.
A large amount of things related to Trump fall into that category, and it's important to recognize when you need to instead treat it as a superposition: It is both malice and incompetence, unless the perpetrators decide to plead just one or the other.
Stupidity rarely has a consistent destructive track record. You score occasional wins. Only malice allows every decision to do damage. (The other razor, essentially - Occam)
Your words don't make any sense in this environment. The idea that any person at an agency could stand up to or convince the DOGE team of anything is preposterous.
Anything that weakens the US or puts our cybersecurity in a place that Russia can exfiltrate data will happen. This is not about the US needing anything and it's silly to think otherwise. See also the NLRB whistleblower and the security backdoors that DOGE demanded to allow data exfiltration and the subsequent death threats to the whistle blower.
You mindset is behind the times and needs to adjust to a, frankly, insane current reality.
> Your words don't make any sense in this environment. The idea that any person at an agency could stand up to or convince the DOGE team of anything is preposterous.
Your comment embraces and spreads the powerlessness they want you to feel and spread.
Of course you can stop them - like any other negotiation in life, especially non-friendly ones, you need to make it in Trump's interest either by carrot or stick. Trump has interests; identify them and identify your power in those regards ('power and interest' is the term), and use it.
Also, stop helping them make DOGE the scapegoat. It's Trump.
DOGE is doing this, it's not a "scapegoat", and Trump is not going to negotiate anything here, that's ridiculous.
What leverage do you have for the DOGE boys? What power? Resigning? Because on the Defense side of the government the best leverage that some teams have found is mass resignation, meaning that nothing happens.
There is no negotiating with bullies, it merely breeds more concessions.
> DOGE is doing this, it's not a "scapegoat", and Trump is not going to negotiate anything here, that's ridiculous.
DOGE follows Trump's direction and acts on his behalf, as you must know. They make a big deal out of DOGE so Trump's name is less attached to these actions. Then they can take much of the blame with them when they go away, with Trump and the GOP blaming them for 'excesses'.
> Trump is not going to negotiate anything here, that's ridiculous.
> What leverage do you have for the DOGE boys?
You don't understand how negotiations work. Everyone has interests, strengths and weaknesses, and power. You need to make it in Trump's interest to keep the CVE program.
Everyone saying they are helpless, and that anything else is ridiculous, are panicking. Very unfortunately - dangerously - many people legitimize the panic. It's so normalized that it's "ridiculous" not to panic.
Every day you continue this behavior, you fall further and further behind and lead others in that direction. Will you wake up in time?
> Isn't the US supposed to be the birthplace of modern democracy?
I would not dare not mention the revolutions in England and in France. And before that some Greece city states, and definitely Rome. The US declaration of independence is just another point.
It's just not practical to organize a rally to save a niche cybersecurity program. People are busy protesting to protect Medicaid and keep themselves out of foreign gulags, they can't divert the attention to CVE.
> You need to make it in Trump's interest to keep the CVE program.
This guy is ~80 years old and bragged about "person, woman, man, camera, TV." He recently got into a Tesler and exclaimed "everything's computer!" Have you seen the way his aids explain executive orders to him (like a child) before he signs them?
He doesn't have the foggiest notion of comprehension of what the CVE program is, or how it would benefit him. Unless you're greasing his wheels, it's not going to happen.
I don't think there's any reason to believe that Trump is mentally competent to understand what's happening here or engage in any kind of meaningful negotiation.
I'm curious by what means you think Trump can be bargained with.
Do you mean things like handsfull of like-minded countries selling t-bonds? No one in the R party has any leverage, and it's not clear that even a few US billionaires could exert any influence.
Do you really think Trump has ever heard of "CVE" or could comprehend them?
No, blaming "someone inside DHS" is what makes no sense. It 100% makes sense to blame DOGE and actual perpetrators. You can stop them only if you start to blame those who do the stuff you dont like instead of blaming everyone else except them.
No, it's definitely DOGE doing all of this. Each one of these young fools need to be named and shamed. The level of damage they have done is unprecedented. They will, in their later years, hopefully look back at this time in their life with a great deal of shame and embarrassment.
I have the feeling that there will be no redemption arc for those ones and the repenting would be for show before a court of public opinion.
I'm going to be to the point here, if you guys over there don't start to heavily push and organise, and I said it already, you're one Reichstag fire away from something very bad, and from my point of view, there is probably one kristallnacht pending in the mix.
This is not a hyperbole and if someone wonders why this has relevance to the discussions, in this case most of the people around here are blue team, and it does feel like the red team has already taken anything that wasn't attached and now taking the time to take what's bolted on...
I guess the silver lining of all this, is in their hubris, they forgot the bread and games motto, so they're might still be a chance to turn things around somewhat... But the window is closing at an impressive speed.
I'm an Australian. We have a guy called Clive Palmer, who has formed a party called (no joke) the "Trumpet of Patriots". It's certain nobody will vote for him. The opposition leader married himself to MAGA (and close to Trump) and now it appears like this will prevent him from winning.
It needs to be the "shame and embarrassment" Nazis felt at the end of WWII and not the traditional shame and embarrassment they are used to feeling after losing the civil war and Jim Crow laws. It will just happen again in a generation otherwise.
Nazi did not felt shame and embarrassment. They felt loss. They felt to be weak. Nazi and Germans felt sorry for themselves after the WWII. The feeling of sorry for stuff they have done to others is something Germany found a bit later, largely due to Nuremberg and general policies not allowing it to stay hidden.
Forget about them feeling sorry for anyone but themselves. They will feel resentful and as if they were being treated unfairly even when actual clear criminal investigation happens.
If you made this careful analysis, you'd hear "CRISSAKE WE NEED THIS DONT TOUCH IT" for almost everything (and it likely would be right for a significant portion but not everything).
That's why the current approach seems to be to axe everything, listen to how much screaming there is, then reinstate only the projects where the screaming is really loud.
You forget that their stated policy (and I don't doubt their commitment) is that whoever complains the loudest were probably scamming. That "honest people don't complain"
I can't believe what a bunch of bollocks this administration is. I couldn't believe it the first time, and this time I thought "Well at least I'm ready, it will be a lot like last time" and it's so much worse
A lot was lost in the midterms and Supreme Court appointments.
Hopefully these 4 years energize people to vote. I know protesting and direct action and so on are also important, but the gradient is not negative for voting for every office you can vote for in every election.
I'm scared that elections won't be secure, especially with the way the Republicans are trying to (arguably unconstitutionally) wield federal power to force individual states to change their systems in abrupt ways.
I fear the situation either ends badly or in a bloodshed. They aren't respecting the courts, so assuming they will accept defeat in elections is naive.
Given the current government has blown off an unanimous 9-0 supreme court decision, right now I can't feel too optimistic there will even be more elections.
I think there will be more elections, but I think they will be fraudulent, because I think Trump has shown he is adept at turning things around and then trying to pretend that what he's doing is analogous to what the other side has done.
For example, a lot of people have forgotten, but the phrase "fake news" originally came about in the wake of the 2016 election about all the (actually false) misinformation that was spread on social media in the run up to the election. Trump adeptly then co-opted the term, so any news he didn't like he could just call it "fake news", and who was to say any news he called fake was any less fake than what people were calling fake before?
My guess is the 2028 elections will be marked by fraud, and then when people protest or object, Trump and the Republicans will just say "Hey, you called all those Jan 6 protesters traitors and said the election was secure, how is now any different? Now you're all the traitors."
The only belief that gives me hope these days is "History will judge the complicit."
You are assuming there will be next elections that are free, fair, and matter.
Trump says a lot of things that ultimately doesn't matter, but he has also said, and is the type of brute to believe it, that he intends to stay in power. He and his cronies have successfully dismantled the checks and balances that should have prevented him from doing they, legally. IMO the only way he leaves the White House without stirring trouble is in a casket.
> Trump tells them they are OK. They are worthwhile.
The chasm between what Trump says (and what the propaganda says about him) and what he actually does is astounding. Most of his fans are completely uninformed of what he says and does. We've never had a president (and cabinet) with more conflicts of interest. He's been a pioneer at abusing power; tariffs on Canada because of a fentanyl crisis... give me a break!
We never ever told people they are losers for wanting a better life. One of the most popular candidates for the Dem ticket was Bernie Sanders. He actually wanted to cut our biggest budget line items and spend them on the things people worry about the most (healthcare, something most Americans worry about being able to afford).
Trump is a literal billionaire. How is him telling the sons of people who used to do manufacturing that they're okay any better than a Harvard educated lawyer saying he feels for them (Trump and Vance are both Ivy League educated, btw)?
I also want Americans to have a better life. I also think we spend way too much elsewhere instead of at home. A lot of Democrats think that and drive policies for that. Trump may care about that too, but you can't vote for who makes you feel good. You have to learn how to vote for who will actually improve your life. We are the rulers of America, we have to understand our economy, our government, etc. No one is going to do it for us. I'd much rather vote for someone who talks down to me and will deliver stability than a guy who hypes me up and tanks the economy
> The Democrats say "we feel your pain" Fuck them, truly. Voters do not want some Harvard educated lawyer to "feel their pain".
Yeah, apparently they want some billionaire who doesn't pay his taxes, who was given millions by his daddy, and who famously stiffed small business contractors at his buildings, to say he feels their pain.
That said, I actually upvoted your comment because right now it's heavily downvoted but I actually think there is an important point behind your comment. It may feel insane to me, but Trump is so beloved by his base because he was the first one to really acknowledge their anger and give it validity. "Make America Great Again" is a slogan that works because a lot of people have seen their financial and social position deteriorate over the past 30-40 years and they want to go back and they want someone to blame (even if going back is impossible and they're blaming the wrong people). Trump understood this, the Democrats didn't, or worse, branded anyone who harbored some of this anger as a bigot. This is basically how all fascist leaders come to power - the parallels with Mussolini are uncanny, right down to having a minor body part shot off in an assassination attempt.
Relevant recent example to me: a lot of folks can't understand the hypocrisy about bitching about inflation under Biden, but then saying "we'll hunker down" in response to the expected inflation from tariffs. The difference is the Trump base believes he is taking them "back to the promised land", and for better or worse Trump is definitely a man of action, so they're more willing to put up with temporary hardships if they think the direction is right. With Biden and the Dems, they just believe they'll get more of the "slow slide."
> Trump is so beloved by his base because he was the first one to really acknowledge their anger and give it validity. "Make America Great Again" is a slogan that works because a lot of people have seen their financial and social position deteriorate over the past 30-40 years and they want to go back and they want someone to blame (even if going back is impossible and they're blaming the wrong people).
I agree. And they're not wrong to want to go back or blame someone. We can "go back" in terms of increasing the QoL of our populace. Idk, the Democrats were always clear about wanting to uplift people. Obamacare and Medicare for All were extremely clear policy positions meant to uplift the common man. Eliminating student debt (a policy I don't agree with) was also obviously positioned to help people improve their economic and social standing.
I don't know why people say Democrats missed this and Trump saw it? The Democrats won on slogans that capitalized exactly this sentiment. Obama's "Hope" and "Yes we can" are obviously in a context where people didn't have hope or questioned whether we could.
I think he just got lucky against bad candidates, and we ascribe way too much to his branding and the other garbage. Clinton's branding was about HER (i.e. I'm with her), not about THE PEOPLE (biggest political branding mistake in the 21st century imo). And Harris never had the popularity to go to to toe with Trump.
Idk, I think people are mad, but I think the Democrats have spoken to that more authentically and proven themselves to actually do things that help the common man than Trump ever has
The Democrats were always constrained by what's reasonable, whereas Trump has been able to promise the sky, even though delivering it means the sky is now falling.
The real irony here is that a lot of ycombinator founders and the people reading HN were exactly the ones making this possible and now start to wonder why the snake eats its own tail.
Or they wanted this, because this could be part of the privatization of many government functions. They, or at least some of them, could see this as controlling this function for money. It's a regular stream too, the valuable subscription model and customers who really need the service (and if they don't, just add a new law in the name of IT security forcing firms to sign up).
exactly; I hope ycombinator and its proponents can enjoy living in the ancap fantasy land where you have to pay to be alerted for a climate change fueled mega hurricane (also caused by this exact same reckless, unregulated greed) because NOAA was disbanded. Billionaires shouldn't exist, but neither should millionaires.
Weren't there major problems with the current CVE implementation, especially with the waves of script kiddies and AI tools spamming the database and the fact that projects who take security seriously have little to no say in the "score" that gets assigned?
As an active consumer of CVEs: yea there are major problems. No there's nothing better and no I don't have any better ideas.
The scores are mostly useless, I would not care if they disappeared, I do not look at them. I don't really understand why people get so upset about garbage scores though. If a high CVSS score creates a bunch of work for you then your vuln mag process is broken IMO. (Or alternatively, you are in the business of compliance rather than security. If you don't like working in compliance, CVSS scores aren't the root cause of your misery).
Having a central list of "here's a bunch of things with stable IDs that you might or might not care about" is very valuable.
Yeah, most businesses need window cleaners too. If you're a window cleaner and you complain about all the birds shitting on windows, I dunno what to tell ya.
If you're working in compliance either
A) you're stuck in your compliance job, that sucks, CVSS scores aren't the reason why though.
and then a random 9.8 critical comes that affects some software you have in a way that makes it a 0 in your environment but it doesn't matter cause the cve tanks your organizational Security Score (tm) by 10 arbitrary points and management is wondering when you'll secure the company again because the Security Score is their only tangible deliverable to measure success
I disagree that it is Way Better than before. A judgement call is worth more than a team wasting effort chasing irrelevant pseudo-vulnerabilities being reported as vulnerabilities. A broken yardstick is worse than no yardstick.
Spot on. Vulnerability scanners that make up an organizational Security Score (TM) tend to operate at the wrong level of abstraction, flagging some library somewhere that never runs and has nothing to do with your production flow or architecture, or some test keys with zero security impact. Go explain that to management, because obviously the security tools are right and you are wrong. This sad state of affairs is unfortunately the best that the security industry has been able to deliver. Trying to wrangle complexity by adding more complexity is the craziest notion to me. Yes, no scoring scheme is perfect, but when the scheme introduces more noise, what have we gained (well, security vendors gain, but what have organizations gained).
Yeah like when we bundled in a .js library for client side date processing that has a CVE affecting node.js servers with high score. Our auditors don’t care they tag the whole app as high risk. It doesn’t even run on the server!
Incompetent auditors don't detract from the classification system, though. If we removed every data point auditors misinterpret or don't care to understand, we may as well remove all metrics.
the auditors that sign off on your security to meet your clients requirements usually know way less about your security posture than your clients do
its all just surface-level box-checking. most companies required to get 'penetration tests' just get an overpriced Nessus scan sold as a pentest and that meets their reqs.
Solving this problem in a generalized way is really hard.
Maybe I have a dependency on Foo which has a critical vulnerability in a feature that I don't use. I suppress the warning and all is well. Then two weeks later someone on my team decides to use that feature, not knowing that there's a problem with it. Now we're fucked, and we'll never know because the vulnerability has been suppressed.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of good. It is(was?) a very useful and important system.
Trump must be receiving a lot of emails from companies wanting to fill the void, and I bet the Trumpiest of them all is going to be awarded a contract worth 10x the budget CVE had, and do a much worse job.
Most tracking tools have exception processes. But yeah, security as a product family instead of a simple score seems to be a foreign concept at most companies.
I feel that. So tired of management being completely uninterested in actual, actionable security holes but getting wildly spun up because they saw a notice with a big scary number that has absolutely no relevance in our architecture.
The scores were never going to be that accurate across people's environments (IDK how much other places relied on them, places I worked never did that much) and issues with the scores don't seem to be a good justification to torch the whole CVE system anyway.
This^ and to add to that, at the very least MITRE assigned IDs which is great. Plus they did an initial scoring, which, well… will never be perfect like you said and I’m sure these things evolve throughout time and get better (not talking necessarily CVSS vX).
What a shame on this current gov. administration, if you can even call it that.
I think the question everyone in this thread should ask is: why is it the government's job to do this, especially given the prior widespread view that they're doing a bad job? Is the software industry so immiserated by poverty that it cannot organize its own distribution of security bulletins? Clearly not: GitHub already runs its own vuln tracking scheme that's better integrated with the tooling we use for open source software. The industry routinely sets up collaborations like standards bodies, information sharing groups and more. And there is as whole ecosystem of security companies to help you understand vulns in your stack.
So there seems nothing specific to CVEs that requires government involvement, but the existence of the tax funded scheme does discourage the creation of competitors that might function better.
But, to CVE or not to CVE ... that is not the question. US deficit spending is out of control. This sort of thing had to happen some day. It's what Europeans in the 2010s called "austerity" and it always makes some people scream but this graph:
... is not sustainable. Up to 1984 overall US debt was stable. Since then its growth rate became dangerous. Debt/GDP ratio is now worse than just after WW2. The federal government is currently spending more on interest than on defense or Medicare:
The US is currently getting its first taste of what parts of Europe started going through in 2008, and unfortunately there's bad news: the cuts you're seeing now are mostly cosmetic. They're what can be done within the current framework of laws, sort of, with lots of bending of the rules and creative interpretations of them and maybe some oversteps. But it's just the start of what's needed. Large scale reform of the laws themselves will be required regardless of whoever wins the next elections.
Getting a bit tired of posts like this (no offense), something dumb / nefarious happens like funding is cut for <useful thing>, then someone posts an off the cuff comment or question like, "wasn't this <useful thing> not that useful because <superficial reason>?".
Why do people do this, to down play all the destruction of the last few months? Seems to be some type of coping mechanism.
you like to say word 'bikeshedding', adoption of formal intellectualish sounding terminology even when inappropriate is orange-site affliction I advise against. I am saying this for your own sake... speak truths with POWER
Maybe you don't see how it's bikeshedding. Ah well, let me try to explain.
It's because it's like if someone had forgotten to validate the user's role in an endpoint in a Django app, and someone said that they should have used Rails because it's easier to understand. In reality both are easy enough to understand to be able to do an authorization check, and the framework isn't the issue. So the person suggesting Rails is bikeshedding.
Likewise, if someone made another vulnerability database it would likely have the same issue, and this isn't really the place to solve it. If somehow this does trigger the realization to solve it, then it will be by luck.
We're getting into pedantic arguments, but bikeshedding is when multiple people argue to death about the easy stuff because it's easy, and don't argue at all about the actually hard stuff, because none of them know enough to argue about it. I don't know what your example is, but it's not bikeshedding.
I had argued for a less pedantic take, but I guess by replying to you I'm being pedantic. It seems to me that my example not only is bikeshedding by the definitions I find but also that to me it fits your definition of it. It's easier to talk about what framework you think is best than it is to talk meaningfully about process, which is more relevant place to look to prevent serious bugs, assuming both frameworks are capable. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding
Bikeshedding is when people need to make a decision on something, and keep talking and talking about the easy stuff. Your example of someone offering a driveby opinion isn't an instance of a group of people needing to make a decision.
Ah, it wasn't a driveby opinion how I imagined it, and I've experienced stuff like it in the past. It would then go into talking about rails features and libraries that could save the day, and the django counterparts. The decision that needed to be made would be what action to take to prevent a similar issue from occurring in the future.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but bikeshedding is when you say "OK guys we need to figure out the architecture of this complicated new service" and then there's a bunch of debate on libraries and frameworks and very little debate on the actual (hard) problem it needs to solve.
This makes me wonder what other stuff most people don't know exists but is important to our society has quietly disappeared in the last few weeks. We know about this one because we know it's important. What are the things we don't know about?
https://www.project2025.observer/ lists a few. Of course, those are only the agencies the Trump people know about and explicitly want to destroy, but it's a start.
NIST maintains the National Vulnerability Database (NVD).. This is a key piece of the nation’s cybersecurity infrastructure. There is a growing backlog of vulnerabilities.. based on.. an increase in software and, therefore, vulnerabilities, as well as a change in interagency support.. We are also looking into longer-term solutions to this challenge, including the establishment of a consortium of industry, government, and other stakeholder organizations that can collaborate on research to improve the NVD.
> Security and vulnerability handling in software is of ever increasing importance. Recent events have adversely affected many project's ability to identify and ensure these issues are addressed in a timely manner. This is extremely worrying.. Until recently many of us were relying not on the CVE project's data but on the NVD data that added that information.
Five years ago (2019), I helped to organize a presentation by the CERT Director from Carnegie Mellon, who covered the CVE backlog and lack of resources, e.g. many reported vulnerabilities never even receive a CVE number. It has since averaged < 100 views per year, even as the queue increased and funding decreased, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmC65VrnBPI
I did find this post to be non-helpful and confusing. It would be helpful to edit it (or write differently in the future) to clarify that the sudden defunding event occurring today is separate and not related to the previous funding cuts. If that's the case.
Is there no connection between 2025 funding cuts and previous ones? e.g. If a year of work after the previous cuts resulted in an open-data collaboration between NVD and commercial vendors to share a subset of CC0 vulnerability metadata, could that industry collective now argue for government to share (with companies) the burden of funding an open, decentralized program for CVE tracking? Commercial vendors could still offer additional metadata and analytics, over and above the public baseline.
> A bipartisan bill that would establish a nonprofit foundation aimed at boosting private-sector partnerships at the National Institute of Standards and Technology was reintroduced in the House and the Senate.. the proposed foundation structure was described as replicating similar nonprofits that support public-private partnerships at other science agencies.. we encourage a strategy that leverages NIST’s leadership and expertise on standards development, voluntary frameworks, public-private sector collaboration, and international harmonization.. NIST’s funding has been in focus following a budget cut of roughly 12% to $1.46 billion in fiscal year 2024.
Edit_2: is there a shortage of database rows, or people to write a shell script? Why not pre-allocate N CVE IDs for every CNA, while a new plan is worked out? At least one random commercial vendor could foresee the shutdown early enough to reserve CVEs.
> Garrity posted on LinkedIn, “Given the current uncertainty surrounding which services at MITRE or within the CVE Program may be affected, VulnCheck has proactively reserved 1,000 CVEs for 2025,” adding that Vulncheck “will continue to provide CVE assignments to the community in the days and weeks ahead.”
> Moving forward, cybersecurity companies will have to “fill the void” .. NVD said in April [2024] that it is “working to establish a consortium to address challenges in the NVD program and develop improved tools and methods.” .. CISA acknowledged the concerns and outrage of the security community and said it is starting an enrichment effort called “Vulnrichment," which will add much of the information described by Garrity to CVEs.
Vulnerability enrichment was mentioned in many talks. However, most organizations seem to handle it internally. There doesn’t appear to be momentum toward a shared or open source solution – at least not yet.
Following your comment's reference leads to a claim of NVD needing 300 to 550 million (?!) per year, but only receiving 4 million in funding. If anyone has pre-2024 data on NVD or MITRE CVE funding, that would be helpful, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43701532
> Since February 2024, the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) National Vulnerability Database (NVD) has encountered delays in processing vulnerabilities.. caused by factors such as software proliferation, budget cuts and changes in support.. NIST, an agency within the United States Commerce Department, saw its budget cut by nearly 12% this year.
Reading that article closely it says nothing about an NVD budget cut, only a NIST one. They were trackijg the changes after NIST's budget was cut, not NVD's. As pointed out below, CISA announced a cut and then NIST more than made up for it by reallocating funds, for an NVD funding increase, even though NIST had their overall budget cut.
One of your references has budget numbers that are two orders (?!) of magnitude higher than the CISA number. Hopefully someone can chime in with granular historical data for NIST NVD and MITRE-via-NIST CVE funding.
I've noticed that there's a post like this in most articles on HN that could be construed as negative for the current administration: some vague false statement followed by either a factually incorrect explanation or some quote that does not support the statement.
Your post has now been edited to be factually correct. But the misleading implication that this abrupt cut is part of some other cuts that started before remains.
The post (currently AND previous to comments being moved here from a different HN thread) links to the official _2024_ (not 2025) statement about NVD cutbacks. Here's a 3000 word article with quotes from Linux Foundation and commercial vendors, around the same time, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43700884
I think it’s ignorance and arrogance. The US seems to be on a path to lose technological and science leadership. The current leadership doesn’t seem to understand things that aren’t flashy. I wonder when they’ll dial back on food safety. I am sure RFK knows some vitamins that protect against salmonella
important to note: the US's food safety is already really bad. salmonella isn't a thing you have to worry about in first world countries. can't wait to see what plague demon spawns out of a food industry running amok after the FDA gets gutted.
> important to note: the US's food safety is already really bad. salmonella isn't a thing you have to worry about in first world countries.
There were 65,000 cases of salmonellosis in the EU in the most recent data I could find (2022). Thats a lower per capita rate than the US, but definitely not zero.
I agree that it’s not zero, but according to CDC, the US sees about 1.35 million cases per year in a population of about 346 million, which is about 390 cases per 100,000 people. Your figure for the EU over a population of 447 million in 2022 gives 14.5 cases per 100,000 people, or more than a factor of 26 less.
Being 26 times less worried about something translates, at least for most things, for me, to not being worried about it any more.
Salmonella and it causes are very regional in EU. Places like Finland have basically 0 cases of salmonella caused by domestic poultry products per year. If there salmonella is found from any chicken in the flock, the whole flock will be quarantined and generally fully slaughtered (meat & eggs must be pasteurized after the slaughter if they are sold). In 2023 0.1% of the tested flocks had salmonella.
"The vast majority of chicken processed in the United States is not chilled in chlorine and hasn't been for quite a few years," says Dianna Bourassa, an applied poultry microbiologist at Auburn University, "So that's not the issue."
I don't think he's considered a small gov conservative. He increased spending last time and has continued so far this term. His tariffs are one of the biggest expansions in gov interference in modern history. They are also attempting to significantly expand executive power beyond even 9/11 terrorism days.
Reduce government spending; since it's not actually a government organization (as far as I can tell, I never looked into it before), other organizations can fund it. How much goes into this organization a year anyway? I'm seeing a Mitre corporation that does lots of other stuff too that has a revenue of 2.2 billion a year.
Multi-trillion-dollar companies benefit from and contribute to this system, surely they can spare 0.01% of their revenue to this bit of critical infrastruture?
Yes, you can also run such a system based on donations. But I personally think that such a system is important enough to be paid for by the government. When you run on donations, there will always be conflicts of interest and the risk of running out of funds.
But yeah, Mitre being a private organization that was paid for by the government was a problem.
Yes, I'm sure corporations funding the CVE system would go wonderfully.
"It would be best if we don't see any severe CVEs for our products this quarter, if you want our funding next quarter."
Reduce spending. Steelmanning (not actually believing this): it probably cost a lot for what is essentially a database, and can be done cheaply by private sector (Google, Microsoft).
Threat intelligence firm Flashpoint noted in March 2024 it was aware of 100,000 vulnerabilities with no CVE number and consequently no inclusion in NVD. More worryingly, it said that 330 of these vulnerabilities (with no CVE number) had been exploited in the wild.. Since the start of 2024 there have been a total of 6,171 total CVE IDs with only 3,625 being enriched by NVD. That leaves a gap of 2,546 (42%!) IDs.
Despite all those private companies and various OSS projects being willing to contribute ideas, infrastructure and code, they have somehow failed to coalesce into a decentralized replacement for NVD, built on CC0 data and OSS tooling.
I tried to look over the history and I only see a funding increase, CISA cut $3.7 million at the end of 2023 for the next year and in response NIST reallocated extra funding to NVD: $8.5 million in 2024
A funding shortfall and strain isn't a funding cut. And from what I see there was a funding increase.
> According to NIST, while the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) is processing incoming CVEs at the same rate as before the slowdown in spring and early summer 2024, a 32 percent jump in submissions last year means that the backlog continues to grow.
> CISA had previously been supporting the NIST NVD program with approximately $3.7 million per year in interagency funding, which they have discontinued
2024
> While NIST has since reallocated $8.5 million to NVD for fiscal years 2024 and 2025
Assuming that's spread over both years it wasn't as big of an increase as I said, but is still an increase even inflation adjusted.
> 2025 article claims 30% increase in 2024 workload
Underfunding in the face of more workload isn't itself a funding cut.
> While NIST has since reallocated $8.5 million to NVD for fiscal years 2024 and 2025, this funding remains a fraction of the $300 million to $400 million estimated to be needed annually to fully restore capacity, with an additional $120 million to $150 million required to prevent further system “deterioration.”
Did NVD receive 300MM annual funding pre-2024? That would be a 98% funding cut.
For decades, the US could be counted upon to fund things with little immediate benefit but massive long-term positive externalities. I don't think its likely that the republican party will "go back to normal" post-Trump, so we can all kiss the long-term reputation building that American hegemony relied upon goodbye. Short of a great depression-esque political reset, I do not see things changing for the better.
> I really can't think of a non- nefarious justification for this
Tragedy of the commons - NVD and the CVE project havr been backlogged and facing funding issues for a couple years now, and most security vendors are either cagey about providing vulns in a timely manner (as it can reduce their own comparative advantage), or try upsell their own alternative risk prioritization scores.
Every company will gladly use NVD and CVE data, but no one wants to subsidize it and help a competitor, especially in an industry as competitive as cybersecurity.
Probably the thinking goes that someone in the international community will step in. CVE is in practice a global registry for all, thus "Why should the USA Department of Homeland Security pay for all the freeloaders".
Still shortsighted and stupid, but it's plausible this is intended as leverage to get someone else to pony up.
Why? This administration is not acting in good faith, you don't have to act as if they are. People and institutions doing that is part of how we got here in the first place.
I still find it wild that so many people are trying to frame these decisions through a political lens. This is the actions of a foreign bad actor dismantling critical institutions from within, not "bad policy".
> I still find it wild that so many people are trying to frame these decisions through a political lens.
Why? The decisions are pretty well politically aligned with the ideology which detests the size and scope of the government (realistically, those aspects which the ideologues feel are not in their interest). What is unexpected is the swiftness and the brutality of action, but revolutions tend to be messy, and make no mistake, this is a revolution.
> This is the actions of a foreign bad actor
Now this sounds like a coping strategy: everything is so preposterous it couldn't possibly be homegrown. Foreign influence and underhanded actions are as old as human interactions, but IMO outright plants can't succeed without a massive economic and power asymmetry between the adversaries.
lol, coping strategy? I'm not American and have no reason to 'cope' with anything. There is enough evidence to make a strong allegation about Trump being a Russian asset.
The entire world seems to be able to 'cope' with that assessment.
They are not. Trump is no libertarian or small government guy. The build the wall guy is the opposite of that. Even with stuff like social security he usually at least rhetorically claimed to be for more benifits (as long as it goes to "real Americans") and he is all for increasing police and military spending. And generally spending more on stuff that gives him money. Plus giant tax increases (tarrifs). He doesn't care much if government is dismembered as long as it owns the libs and gets rid of the public corruption prosecutors/others who might stand up to him
Trump's actions towards Putin are highly irrational. Maybe he's being blackmailed, maybe he's being bought, maybe he just has likes Putins style but there is a reason people suspect him despite it being unlikely in the general case.
> He doesn't care much if government is dismembered
This is exactly the process that conservatives take to privatise services into their own friends pockets. Destroy services until they're ineffective and use it as an excuse to privatise it.
There's no such thing as small government, only large sprawling private services that the government hands money to.
Imagine being eaten alive by a cackling hyena that ambushed you and all the while being like "hmm what is the appropriate steelman here? why do I deserve this? why is this just?"
In reality this would never happen so all these people playing steelman are just detached/insulated.
That's a good idea to raise during the budget time or with some warning ahead of time. But even discussing the cost of CVE program itself is likely a waste of time and money. When trying to deal with 2tn deficit, looking at things that historically got ~$5M is just a distraction. And the lack of it may cost even more given how many existing agreements/contracts rely on cve to be a thing - maybe just in gov lawyers having to rewrite things.
Selling bonds is not the same thing as a family budget being in the red. Either you know this and you're making this argument in bad faith, or you don't and, well...
Listen, I hate the debt, but we have an income problem, not a spending problem. The military looks like a waste, but it does more than build bombs i.e research etc.
The issue we have is that republican every chance they get since the 1970s have cut taxes. And then blamed democrats for causing the deficits. We don't need smaller governments. We need a reasonable tax system that taxes people. It can be progressive like it was before we decided rich people just need it easier than poor people.
Yes, I will pay more taxes sign me up, especially if they can finally fix the roads and fund research. The problem is my taxes as a middle-class person go up and rich people get a tax cut. It's stupid. I like water provided by government utilities, I like planes that don't crash into stuff because there are air traffic controllers. These things used to work because we paid for them. When you buy cheap you get cheap.
Yeah republicans claim to want to run the government like a business, but the first thing a business should do when they have a deficit is raise revenue! And especially in the case of the US government, the the only barriers to doing that are self-imposed.
Military also employs a bunch of people who otherwise would be poor. Also provides a gentrification path for a bunch of previously poor people extending throughout their lives.
This is an absolute pittance compared to the total budget. And considering the current administration wants a $4T tax cut they are not interested in trimming the deficit at all.
Yep, DOGE is a song and dance distraction. If they were serious about lowering the deficit they wouldn't have laid off ~12K IRS workers (whom show a 7x ROI per head.) They also wouldn't be asking to increase the military budget to $1 trillion per year. Trump has spent 1/3 of his days in office so far golfing; $30 million+ so far paid to Trump properties for the privilege of that. This is the biggest capture in US history and it's all out in the open.
We don’t need to spend tax dollars to increment sequential integers.
The “CVE program” can be done by a volunteer or two in spare time. It’s not some major operation, it’s just a registry of integers that can live on GitHub.
You manage the system and not the CVEs themselves. The simplist thing would be a list of numbers that correspond to Google docs. The owner of the Google doc can share it with the needed parties and eventually set it as public.
You truly believe that the CVE database (and others like CWE) are only about assigning serial numbers to random reports, don't you? I see people underestimating and understanding the work of others in matters like this. Is that a trend now?
I saw this same behavior quite a while back. While I'm out of the CVE game these days, it seems that there is a forever rotating new group of people who simply don't and can never see the complexities on the process.
I think it's a testament to the previous stewardship that it appears so simple.
No I don't believe that, but it might as well operate like that. The extra stuff isn't truly needed and was being outsourced to the companies that own the products since it wasn't providing much value. Take a look at Daniel's blog posts about CVEs for curl for what happens when you let them handle it.
Grok becoming an artificial nepobaby running the entire CVE program with zero oversight sounds so fucking funny I don't even care, PLEASE god make this real holy shit I can't breathe at the thought
Why would they spend money to replace it? The idea is to weaken and destroy the US and its institutions. Giving Palantir money might mean that security improves, and that goes against their goals. They have already demanded that Russia stop being treated as a cybersecurity threat in other areas of the government, this is a way to ensure that systems are vulnerable to attack.
Exactly. The Trump admin is well on its way tanking the USD with tariffs and getting every country (including the penguins) mad at us. The rationalization given by the admin for tariffs (trade imbalance) make zero sense, and they haven't offered anything else.
The latest contract[1] (I hope this is the right one) for MITRE's involvement with CVE and CWE programs was USD$29.1m for the period 2024-04-17 to 2025-04-16 with optional extension of expenditure up to USD$57.8m and to an end date of 2026-04-16.
Seemingly MITRE hasn't been advised yet whether the option to extend the contract from 2025-04-16 to 2026-04-16 will be executed. And there doesn't appear to be any other publicly listed approach to market for a replacement contract.
I can't figure out why the hue and cry wasn't raised until the very last minute. Did they not know a month ago that they were running out of time? Is it standard practice for the government not to say they're going to extend the contract until the day beforehand or something?
This is a chance for the EU to step up and take over. If the US government won't pay for the CVE program, the EU surely could. Many EU countries already run a program like this to server their own interests, and I believe the EU does as well.
If the US is willing to give up influence and control over the cybersecurity sector, we should accept that gift and use it to our advantage.
> Hearing a bit more on this. Apparently it's up to the CVE board to decide what to do, but for now no new CVEs will be added after tomorrow. the CVE website will still be up.
Basically when any software/library/whatever has a vulnerability, they have to communicate that out themselves, in some format.
If I'm developing a product built on 20 libraries, it won't just be a matter of scanning CVEs for major vulnerabilities any more, so I'm more likely to miss one.
"always update" doesn't always work, when to manage a product you realistically have to version pin.
So, while arguably true, there wont be a single source of truth of new cve's. It doesn't however mean there wont be.
I would imagine the only SANE option would be some kind of git repository where CNA's can collaborate. Probably run some code across to make the website that people can easily access.
Is MITRE's CVE program redundant with NIST's National Vulnerability Database? I'm having a hard time telling how the two are related, or if NVD is simply performing the same service as MITRE.
NIST NVE relies on the CVE program. (vulnerabilities get reported, MITRE assigns CVEs and publishes them, NIST then copies that list and adds their own scoring etc to it)
Who is still stunned by these things? They want you to be stunned; they want you to tell everyone else that you're stunned to spread feelings of terror and powerlessness. If you actually are stunned, you are stunningly ignorant. If you are not and still saying it, perhaps to emphasize your unhappiness, you are a 'useful idiot'. Either way, if you are saying it, you are a useful idiot.
You should have known decades ago: The GOP impeached a President for lying about sex; they fabricated intelligence to invade another country (killing thousands of Americans and 100,000+ Iraqis) - and that was all before 2004. They've voted almost unanimously, multiple times, to bankrupt the country (by refusing to authorize debt for existing obligations). Nobody (i.e., the Dems failed to) stopped them or made them pay a price, so why wouldn't they keep doing those things. (Edit: And if you object because the analysis criticizes one side and therefore you reject it as partisan, that's a big part of the reason nothing was done.)
This time they published Project 2025, telling you what they were going to do.
Project 2025 literally calls for dismantling the DHS. Seems pretty unsurprising that the CVE database wouldn’t be in the list of things they’d care to maintain in that process.
It’s a reckless move to cut funding so abruptly, but taking a step back from the short-term chaos, it probably is an anomaly that this was government funded. All of private tech relies on it, and private tech is big enough to pay for it. I hope that the trillion dollar babies consider this an opportunity to pool together to form a foundation that funds this, and a bunch of other open source projects run by one random person in Nebraska.
Ah yes the old “well can’t concerned citizens band together, form a committee, collect revenue and fund things that are in the common interest” answer you hear from small government types that makes me think you lot don’t really understand what government actually is.
> it probably is an anomaly that this was government funded. All of private tech relies on it, and private tech is big enough to pay for it.
I mean doesn't big tech and the people they give salary money to pay taxes? Ground transportation companies rely on public roads and but we fund it because having the infrastructure is an economic multiplier.
I'm not arguing in favor of funding the CVE program, I just don't think that's a good reason.
Opinions vary on what the purpose of government is, but if you take the view that the government's priorities should be providing services that are impossible, inefficient, or unethical to provide privately, then I don't see the CVE program making the cut, when the tech industry is collectively flush with resources and has every incentive to form an industry consortium to take it over.
The US has made at least hundreds of billions of dollars from it's tech companies and has had a dominance over global tech for a long time. The tech industry has brought a crazy amount of money and power to the US so it makes sense the US puts extra effort to support it.
The US isn't supporting it out of charity, it's good for US businesses to have someone coordinating this for everyone. Why would we want to rely on other countries to be supporting our tech sector? At least now we are subject to only the capricious whims of our own government, as little comfort as that is right now (if another country was funding it we would be relying on the whims of a foreign government, which isn't ideal when tech is the golden goose of your modern economy).
The CVE program was started over 25 years ago. It is very reputable (until yesterday) and it was very much in the interest of the US to be seen as the stewards of this.
The funding requirements can't be that high and I'm willing to bet that other countries and entities would have happily stepped up if they had the chance.
Up until recently CVE was very centralized and only in the last few years have there been steps in more decentralization with CNAs taking more responsibility, Red Hat as a CNA of last-resort etc.
So, the cost of doing all of this work has already been shifted partially (!) away from the US but I have not seen any movement towards e.g. moving the program to a foundation which could have been done.
Personally I would conclude that it was the responsibility of the US to pay for this because they wanted to and it was in their best interest to control this program.
They have the chance to step up now. Every Comercial company that is supposedly so reliant on this for their very existence has the opportunity today. They can fund it.
What commercial company is going to "fund" this? It's such a strange idea, disconnected from the real world. You may as well say "companies can start doing road maintenance, as they are so reliant on them for their very existence."
And perhaps if there had been more than a days notice, some consortium could be pulled together, but who's going to pay? Why would private companies do this, how do they profit? CVE program was the roads that everybody could drive on.
The basic lack of understanding of how the world works is killing the US. Why do people think we have such a massive GDP? Where do people think that comes from? We've given control of everything in society over to our dumbest and greediest members that have no clue about how anything works.
I mention this in another comment. The infrastructure for an alternative is already partially in place.
In my opinion it's mostly the industry needing to adapt to a new setup that needs to happen. It was just "easy" to rely on what's already there. A lot of company policies need to be adapted etc.
Because USA was a superpower that can afford it easily. Taking the leadership in everything is quite cheap price to pay when the other end of the bargain is everyone else has to follow you.
Now of course USA is ceasing (voluntarily, by stripping down every international soft power effector in government) to be a superpower, to the great glee of dictators all around the world.
The "we can't afford being great" is a direct admission that USA is no longer a superpower. And is not going to become great again, just another nation again (at whims of China).
Don't worry, that will also end soon. Regimes that require political subservience from universities, like the current US administration, inevitably result in poor research capabilities in the long run.
It's a near certitude that Russia and China each have databases of exploitable software errors and prize zero days.
It was to the advantage of the US and allies to coordinate and lead in tracking and fixing such errors.
Multiple countries, companies, and individuals contributed finding and fixing bugs.
The administrative task of keeping track was one part of a greater picture, a part that came with first to be advised and other perks.
It's not that the US had a responsibility to take on the lead admin task, more that in past times the US saw an advantage to being at the centre of global action.
This is just another part of increasing US isolationism.
In public spaces like this, though on the face of it the argument might appear to be with the toddler, it's also about batting down the idiocy and not letting it swamp out basic common sense and reason.
Bluesky has a different tact that also works: block and hide and don't engage. However in forums like HN, where earnestness and questions are so prevalent, leaving these baiting questions and statements unanswered instead leaves them as bastions of the mind rot. Because these toddler-level arguments are being repeated daily through propaganda channels all over the internet, and if they are never answered, the constant swarm of propaganda takes in even more people.
I do sometimes wonder how different HN would be if it had "block". Mind you I think few people are getting their propaganda from here, it's more likely to be downstream of other well-poisoners.
The private sector zero day market collapsed last year with Zerodium - corporate bug bounties, nation states in-housing offensive security operations, and the democratization of knowhow destroyed the Zero Day market.
As a newly minted cynic, this seems like a cynical play to save someone's budget.
Step 1: Post discreetly to a forum with minimal information and an absurdly short deadline
Step 2: Phone your friend, the former board member, to make your case on LinkedIn
Step 3: Ring up a friendly journalist and give them a tip
Step 4: Reference the insuing chaos as justification for keeping your project funded
Note that the article carefully avoids pinning the blame on DOGE or the Whitehouse while heavily implying it. MITRE is technically a private entity, albeit a non-profit. And the very last paragraph of the article states:
> A CISA spokesperson told CSO, “CISA is the primary sponsor for the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure (CVE) program… Although CISA’s contract with the MITRE Corporation will lapse after April 16, we are urgently working to mitigate impact and to maintain CVE services on which global stakeholders rely.”
To be clear, the point isn't to say that the CVE program isn't valuable, nor is it to say that it's good for a shenanigan like this to be necessary.
The point is that, unless you're directly involved in this subject (not impacted—involved), it's probably best to maintain a "wait and see" attitude rather than succumb to catastrophizing this news.
Have you seen proof that this is what has been happening? Your explanation is much more convoluted than "DHS cut funding, like the administration has said it is going to do".
Am I missing something or was this literally announced with less than 24 hours of warning that one of the critical components to the cyber security landscape was disappearing.
What the fuck are you supposed to do about this. This is something that should have had multiple MONTHS of warning in order to allow those who depend on the CVE infrastructure to plan what to do next with their security posture.
Consider this part of the attack on the American infrastructure, economy, and society. Attacks do not abide by laws, official procedures, or come with warnings.
It’s astounding that the users here watched all the horrendous things going on and ignored them. But now the CVE numbers are gone it’s shocking and too far.
Come again? This is Hacker News, a heavily moderated forum with a narrow focus. We don't discuss Israel or El Salvador here (unless it's tech related.)
I would hope the folks that frequent HN would not be so insular as to only read what happens on HN and not read any other news source.
If you’ve somehow missed Trump’s systematic dismantling of academic freedom or his disappearing of folks he doesn’t like, then we have a far bigger problem than the limits of what is discussed on HN.
Please, this place has permeated with Trump rage since before he took office. The only way you could think he was ignored is to not have read any comments.
There are quite a few threads on hackernews that were cautiously optimistic about doge with, frankly, pretty naive libertarian takes about how the government works.
The government is not particular (in the sense of particularism) and cannot be easily tuned to fix particular problems; rather, its best solutions come through institutional procedure and design, such as the tension between the FAA and the NTSB that, at a first glance, would seem like obviously needless duplication and waste.
It is a broad, blunt, wasteful instrument to solve broad, blunt problems in a way that may not be the best but that work far, far better than alternatives that have been tried.
That the effort to treat government like a personal budget has ended up destroying important things is a sad inevitability of such efforts. I hope it goes remembered.
Reminds me of Trump's first term where he said if we stopped testing for Covid, we'd stop catching new cases and case numbers would go down. If you stop testing for vulnerabilities then vulnerabilities go down. Easy stuff.
No, more seriously, just like with shutting down NOAA services, it seems the goal is to:
1. cut services (we saved taxpayer money!!)
2. at some point later: oh, we actually need those services
3. pay <insert your favorite vendor here, preferably one connected to Musk> to provide the service (see! we don't need to pay gov employees!!) (fine print: the vendor costs 2-3x the original cost). But by then no one is looking at the spending numbers anymore.
And here lies the problem. Even from a libertarian perspective DOGE is counterproductive because maintaining a system is much more cost effective than starting it anew.
Especially when you cut something recklessly, figure out in month that you need back that capability right now and have very little leverage to negotiate with private providers.
When you look at the last cutting effort in the Clinton administration the difference in jarring.
Combine that with the fact that with a few exceptions DOGE has been cutting the most cost effective programs (i can’t think of a better bang for buck science program than NOAA) it’s saved very little vs the amount of pain it has caused.
> This sounds like looking for lemonade in a genocide.
It really doesn't. This level of catastrophising has no point. It would be nice if CVE continued to exist, but it wasn't close to perfect, and perhaps it can continue in another form. There's no particular reason the US taxpayer has to sponsor global security threat tracking any more than any other taxpayer or customer.
Some companies are already clueless when it comes to CVE management. Probably won’t see the effects immediately but give it a few more years for new generation of vulns to be created/found and we will be back to early 2000s level security.
Open season on American corporations for domestic and foreign hackers.
If program isn’t brought back then CVE database likely to be fragmented amongst the “private” CVE databases.
Sec Corp A has 700 well documented CVEs but Sec Corp B has 702 CVEs in their database since NIST funding pulled. What do corps do? Maybe some of them with massive budgets setup contracts with both to get “full spectrum coverage”. Maybe other non-technical companies that think of IT as strictly a cost will go with the cheapest or forego it all together.
Who knows maybe we get ~~~free labor~~~ open source community to pick up the slack?
This country with the orange man administration is quickly going to shit. Not in a “I dislike {opposing party} way” either. In a “I dislike authoritarian regimes” way.
I find it a little incredible people are still talking about "four years".
They tried to reject the election result and do a coup, and were rewarded for it by getting back into power. They are refusing to follow the law or the courts. They are sending people to gulags in foreign countries. All the checks and balances were destroyed last time. The party has been stripped of anyone who would fight the admin or reject this illegality. They have set up a power grab over elections.
There will not be free and fair elections in four years unless they are simply too incompetent to rig it, the rubicon was crossed long ago. Without mass protest that makes it impossible for them to hold power, American democracy is dead.
They have tried to do it, they say they want to do it, they have the ability to do it, they are actively doing it, and no one is stopping them. How are people still acting like in four years they are going to neatly hand over power to be prosecuted for their crimes?
Organizing mass protests isn't something you do instead of organizing electoral opposition. Even in countries that haven't had fair elections for a while, people generally still organize opposition and talk about how they're going to vote. The best way to ensure your opponents retain power is to go around telling people it's too late and they've already won.
I'm not saying people should not organise to vote, I'm objecting to the framing of "in four years this will be over" or "in four years we can fight this", if you are waiting for elections to solve this alone, that's a mistake. Elections alone won't be enough. It's not too late to do anything, it is too late for just voting against it to be enough.
It's more likely to boost the zero day black market. I don't know if I want to attribute this to idiocy (indiscriminate cost cutting), greed (contracts for their crony pals) or malice (hoarding and trading 0 days).
It seems phrasing it in the form of a joke was too much.
I was trying to convey (with levity/humor) WHY it should continue to be funded as well as the argument that should be made to the one currently in control of the spineless US Congress.
Yes, fixing the vulnerabilities is important. However what the government probably does gain from it is an inside advantage in the lead time for vulnerabilities to protect against, as well as to exploit on adversaries.
For those reading, a fair few of my recent posts were downvoted after this comment, and it was initially flagged.
If I violated some rule so be it, and I could care less about internet points, but it certainly feels like suppression of individuals based on individual posts which is a behaviour that could end up being the death of hn.
Yes, as it would be a public good to everyone to be able to know where the potholes(that aren't profitable to fix for these private companies apparently) are so they can avoid them.
They might take a step back and realize that it would be more cost-effective to just own the roads, in which case your thought experiment ends where we are, because where we are was a place reasoned to(to an extent).
I don't see why this should be publicly funded, so I don't really see an issue with this. The industry benefits from having a CVE database, so the industry should fund it.
The insane number of downvotes you’re getting for saying basic common sense stuff, it’s why we should push for stricter political rules here in HN.
You didn’t say something wrong or controversial, just an opinion.
Some ideologies love to pay things with other people’s wallets, and they’ll do whatever they can to pursue this.
No, "the industry" is all of us alive in the 21st century who depend on software to make material decisions and to be resilient to attacks and tampering. We were all funding it, and now surely we will see some big tech company now assume responsibility from the federal government (please god don't let it be Oracle...)
If there are any Europeans here, I'd love to make my vulnerability database that's accumulated from all linux security trackers and the CVE/NVD open source if I can manage to find some folks who'd help with maintenance.
Currently hosting costs are unclear, but it should be doable if we offer API access for like 5 bucks / month for private and 100 / month for corporate or similar.
Already did a backup of the NVD in the last couple hours, currently backing up the security trackers and OVAL feeds.
Gonna need some sleep now, it's morning again.
My project criteria:
- hosting within the EU
- must have a copyleft license (AGPL)
- must have open source backend and frontend
- dataset size is around 90-148 GB (compressed vs uncompressed)
- ideally an e.V. for managing funds and costs, so it can survive me
- already built my vulnerability scraper in Go, would contribute it under AGPL
- already built all schema parsers, would contribute them also under AGPL
- backend and frontend needs to be built
- would make it prerendered, so that cves can be static HTML files that can be hosted on a CDN
- needs submission/PoC/advisory web forms and database/workflow for it
- data is accumulated into a JSON format (sources are mixed non standard formats for each security tracker. Enterprise distros use odata or oval for the most parts)
If you are interested, write me on linkedin.com/in/cookiengineer or here.
Honest question: Does this not already exist?
- https://vulnerability.circl.lu/
- https://osv.dev/
- https://vuldb.com/
And a few others?
https://www.enisa.europa.eu/news/another-step-forward-toward...
> https://euvd.enisa.europa.eu/
They already did it. Great!
Maybe we can ask them how to contribute to their software, as it seems to be proprietary at the moment?
edit: lol, their manifest.json is still the React boilerplate: https://euvd.enisa.europa.eu/manifest.json
Other authorities: https://www.cve.org/programorganization/cnas
The CVE program is really important. This Administration is truly the example of the D.O.G.E. - Department Of Gaffes and Errors
OSV is made by Google/Alphabet and therefore also prone to Trump intervention (see Gulf of Mexico executive order).
The circl.lu might be actually a potential cooperation partner.
(Vuldb is down right now)
you've slept just 3 hours? Go back to bed..
Maybe just a toilet break (see the bio): > Fun fact: All my comments have been written on the toilet. I don't use social media anywhere else.
Taking TDD to a level it’s never been before
Yep, toilet and now back to bed :D
https://xkcd.com/1369/
hmm? it's already daytime in Europe where he's located
The main costs definitely not hosting and can be quite significant. MITRE had $2.37B revenue in 2023, most if it contributions. I don't know how much of it can be attributed to the CVE, but I assume it's not an insignificant part of it: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/422...
The EU should just buy MITRE. Move it to the EU and make it a EU based project.
I don't think the EU has any interest in this. They've been aware of the risk of relying on the US for software security for years, but AFAIK there have been no efforts to do anything about it. Maybe the current situation will kick some butts into gear ...
Off topic: your username is very appropriate given the situation.
https://www.enisa.europa.eu/topics/vulnerability-disclosure
>They've been aware of the risk of relying on the US for software security for years, but AFAIK there have been no efforts to do anything about it.
Indeed. Just as Germany knew their economy is vulnerable to Russian gas and did nothing about it, even after the 2014 invasion of Crimea. Just as the west knew moving their entire manufacturing sector to one country would make them vulnerable, but choose to ignore it because it was too profitable.
I never EVER saw politicians act proactively for the good of the nation or the people, all they do is act reactively after the shit hits the fan to control public opinion and blame someone else to make sure they get re-elected, that's it.
Once you realize our rulers aren't competent at their jobs or acting in the peoples' best interest, it all makes sense. They're in it for the grift and to enrich their monopolistic friends in the private sector, to make sure line goes up in the next quarter, that's it.
Yes, I know there are good politicians out there who care and fight for their local communities, but they never make it to rule at national or international stage and actually change the rotten system because the status quo doesn't allow that.
> I never EVER saw politicians act proactively for the good of the nation or the people,
This is almost certainly because those cases don't make the news.
Yup.
Politicians react to the public when it stands up. Otherwise it will follow other agenda's.
That is why it is critical to have an informed public. When journalism has to compete with corporate owned Fake News and Entertainment, journalism dies, and democracy will follow. Then, add the spy business of Big Tech in the mix, with algorithmic silo's. The people don't even realize they are locked up in a jar, where they live on a diet of cultural engineering.
Now, pause a moment and think about what happens when you add AI-models to the mix. Your daughter, your neighbor will be totally brain-wrecked.
It's certainly because they have a belief based in ideology, not fact.
They do where I live, but those are drops in the bucket compared to the industrial scale theft(wealth transfer) the central government operates.
Perfect exmple of the "one-deep" conservative response.
PP is looking for a pattern, finding, and abstaining from questioning or contextualizing it:
Engaging only with the first or most obvious layer of an issue—never going deeper into context, nuance, or systemic causes.
The quickest counterexample that comes to mind is Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It has returned billions to American citizens.
I'm gonna have to stop engaging with you here if you start a comment by accusing someone to be a conservative.
If your first reaction is putting people into political/ideological camps in order to make their arguments weaker and easier to attack form a holier than though political/ideological angle, it's game over for me as I like to judge actions objectively based on the outcomes, not conservative vs democrat, left vs right, etc. since corruption and incompetence is colorblind.
I don't care which side of the political isle did what, I'm pointing at the systemic failures of the entire system built like a house of cards by all political parties, which collapsed as no thought was put into building it, and only chased short term profits at the expense of long term security. Trying to finger point a single political side only detracts from the issue which is the classic "divide and conquer" tactic politicians have been using to deflect blame and get away with it.
Germany had with under the best deal for gas possible with Russia, I don’t understand the sentiment calling it a vulnerability. There is still a working pipeline available and Russia stated clearly if would continue delivering gas, if Germany wants to.
Except what Russia states and what Russia does are only aligned when it serves Russia. Russia stopped delivering gas through NordStream 1. After that, Germany took note of the danger and decided it would do better without that dependency.
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/9/2/russias-gazprom-k...
> Germany took note of the danger and decided it would do better without that dependency.
So they just swapped dependencies. And it's not that the new dependency will have no strings attached.
Diversifying while keeping russian energy in the loop, as part of a risk-management strategy, would make more sense. Completely cutting off russian energy just gives more bargaining power to their new energy provider.
> There is still a working pipeline available and Russia stated clearly if would continue delivering gas, if Germany wants to.
You conveniently leave out that minor detail that it was RUSSIA who stopped the gas.
Germany tried hard to keep it going, even making a sanction-exemption or a Siemens turbine repaired in Canada, which according to Russia was needed. Only that when they were to receive it nothing happened, gas stopped anyway.
Nordstream 1 which had if I recall correctly one working turbine left and went into inspection during which an oil spill was noticed and the restart of the service was postponed. Shortly after Nordstream 1 Pipeline A + B and Nordstream 2 Pipeline A was been blown up. It’s up to debate if the oil spill which was uncovered during the inspection which postponed the gas delivery was a political move. The turbine, which underlies sanctions, should have been still in transit during that time and even if delivered useless.
There is still Nordstream 2 Pipeline B intact available to deliver gas and it uses Russian made turbines compared to Nordstream 1.
The whole discussion is very special to say the least if you leave out that some adversary blow up the infrastructure.
Russia refused to accept the turbine! It was in Germany, and Russia blocked the delivery.
"Moskau blockiert offenbar Weitertransport von Nord-Stream-1-Turbine" ("Moscow apparently blocks further transport of Nord Stream 1 turbine") -- https://www.rnd.de/politik/russland-blockiert-offenbar-weite...
I'm German, I followed those developments closely at the time. Russia refused to deliver gas! The blowing up of the pipes happened quite some time after that!
You also don't mention that German Gasprom, which controlled German gas reserves, emptied them just before the war! -- https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/gas-speicher-in-deuts... (German, paywall), -- https://www.zeit.de/news/2022-01/21/ungewoehnlich-leere-gass...
That shows that Russia prepared for using gas as an economic weapon against Germany especially well before they even started the war.
From the Zeit article:
German
> "Die Gasflüsse über die deutschen Grenzen sind unüblich niedrig für diese Jahreszeit - mit Ausnahme von Nord Stream 1, die sind konstant hoch", sagt Fabian Huneke. Es sei verwunderlich, dass vor dem Hintergrund der hohen Preise und der hohen Nachfrage die Gaslieferkapazitäten Richtung Europa so wenig genutzt würden. "Wenn Gazprom sich marktrational verhalten würde, würden sie die Gaslieferungen nach Europa auch durch die Pipelines, die durch Belarus und die Ukraine führen, verstärken." Den Grund für dieses Verhalten sieht der Energiemarktexperte in der Ukraine-Krise.
English, translated by Google
> "The gas flows across the German borders are unusually low for this time of year - with the exception of Nord Stream 1, which are consistently high," says Fabian Huneke. It is surprising that, given the high prices and high demand, the gas delivery capacities to Europe are so little used. "If Gazprom behaved in a market-rational manner, they would also increase gas supplies to Europe through the pipelines that run through Belarus and Ukraine." The energy market expert sees the reason for this behavior in the Ukraine crisis.
Except that Russia did not deliver (not any meaningful amount anyways), when the pipelines were still intact. And yes, they pretended to be willing, firing off a series of excuses sufficiently transparent to make it clear between the lines that it's a demonstration of power. Get your history straight: "Russia stated clearly if would continue" has between zero and negative value.
NordStream 1 had been stopped from Russian side for nearly 4 months before this, with constantly shifting goal post excuses.
>I don’t understand the sentiment calling it a vulnerability
MFW German leaders and HN commenters see no vulnerability in this.Someone please stop the planet, I wish to get off, my sanity can't handle this level of stupidity anymore.
[1] https://natoassociation.ca/a-timeline-of-russian-aggression/
> Someone please stop the planet, I wish to get off, my sanity can't handle this level of stupidity anymore.
News from an American here, on an antidepressant and deathly fat from stress eating:
I’m worried about the eventual welfare of those protesting. I’m hearing that people of color are being told by their pastor to stay home rather than protest so as not to risk being used as scapegoats.
My family and friends are divided and still dividing over politics. I recently was crazily ranted to by big-personality entrepreneur immigrant that told me his story of how easy it was to come to the states, rags-to-riches, and how they were supporter of the administration because “they don’t want to pay taxes for illegals”. Part of the half of the U.S. that supports the administration isn’t just brainwashed, but has a very strong, angry, and desperate look, and the other part says “just wait four years and it will be over”, but it won’t; before the election, this party used gerrymandering and legal action to ensure that election, then post-election replaced election officials and many government officials.
The DOE is claiming anti-semitism and the need to have viewpoint diversity to deny funding to schools that are known for their open viewpoints.
And yet somehow I’m still surprised when they kill the CVE program.
It’s an ever-escalating circus of chaos, because our administration thinks this was needed to ensure U.S. interests, because those vulnerable in the U.S. were manipulated by outside actors and internal power-hungry politicians and zealots, and all is spun to just feed into the chaotic nationalism that is trying to one-up every other dictator that has ever lived.
To top all of this off, AI, which I use daily, will take my job before I retire, and I have no backup plan.
Despite all of this, I have the will to live, to support those whom I love (even the crazy ones), and to try to make the world better. I continue to pray for direction on all of this.
Follow the money...
"German journalist dubbed the ‘Putin connoisseur’ had secret book deal with Russian oligarch" - https://www.icij.org/investigations/cyprus-confidential/germ...
"Russia's best friends in Germany: AfD and BSW" - https://www.dw.com/en/russias-best-friends-in-germany-afd-an...
"12 Germans who got played by Putin" - https://www.politico.eu/article/blame-germany-russia-policy/
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MITRE is a non-profit. All the EU has to do is reach out to MITRE and be willing to fund the project.
I know that they are a 501(c)3, but they have significant revenue and intellectual property, so in order to do the lift and shift, there would need to be some money changing hands to accomplish it. Not only that, but being owned by the EU gives the ability for MITRE employees to have the option to immigrate to the EU to protect against any retaliation.
I cannot believe I am typing that second sentence, but here we are.
> Not only that, but being owned by the EU gives the ability for MITRE employees to have the option to immigrate to the EU to protect against any retaliation.
According to which rule would "owning by the EU" result in an option to immigrate? Immigration is handled on a per country basis. I don't see how the EU provide such an option.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2009/50/oj
The EU has agreed upon programs in order to bring in, through an immigration policy, high skilled persons from non-member states. More importantly, working within the member nations, as to which member nation would want MITRE to be located within their borders, is not something that is a hard sell given that it has economic advantages for whichever state(s) onboard MITRE.
> The EU has agreed upon programs in order to bring in, through an immigration policy, high skilled persons from non-member states.
Where in this is the option that the EU provides an option to immigrate because the EU owns something?
I'm very well aware of knowledge workers. It's not something the EU can provide as an option. What you linked to is the legal framework around how EU members can provide such a thing.
That still leaves decisions on who to admit to states. As far as I can see its main effect is to allow people admitted to one country as highly skilled to travel to (not live in) other countries?
The EU can accomplish it with diplomacy. It’s unknown technology in America, but diplomacy and asking to work together is truly powerful.
> The EU can accomplish it with diplomacy.
Agree. It'll likely happen that way. Still, dislike the initial incorrect assertion.
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I think all the big companies that owe their ongoing business should band together and fund it. No way an organization like this should rely on just one sponsor.
I think that I'm in favour of pricing in externalities like this.
What cross-industry organisations exist that could coordinate?
This should be work for the ENISA: https://www.enisa.europa.eu/
https://www.enisa.europa.eu/topics/vulnerability-disclosure
They have a tender going on tracking best practices: https://www.enisa.europa.eu/procurement/vulnerability-disclo...
So they will take 12 months to select for the tender...18 months pondering on the report...and in 3 years they make a tender out for a solution...
oh but you forgot the mandatory time before they even start considering the tender.
looking at average speed of bureaucracy in EU it will take roughly a year to set date for a meeting that will set the date for actual meeting which will decide if this will go forward or not....
(if you think i'm joking - i'm basing this on proposed EU initiative for nuclear power which started with setting a date of meeting to setup a meeting to draft an agenda)
Sir Humphrey ran that meeting if I recall correctly
100% - I wonder if this is partly by design.
This would be hilarious. That would be a good thumb in the eye to the current administration who complained long and loud about how Obama let ICANN leave US possession. Just imagine the campaign commercials in 2026,
>The POTUS transferred our cyber defenses to the EU
Ouch
Well, that's kind of the point? The current administration doesn't care about cyber defense, any less than it cares about protecting the environment, protecting consumers, having top-notch universities and research, foreign aid etc. etc. Actually, it takes pride in not caring about all of these things.
My guess is that they feel they are supplying something the whole world is benefiting from, and they believe that unfair. That ignores the fact that the US benefits immensely from this, and that they benefit domestically from providing that benefit more widely by getting a lot of free contributions from the outside. But the US foots the bill of those who do get payed, so its unfair...
This american admin doesnt seem to understand the benefits of leadership. Like being de facto currency, ability to operate while deep in debt, etc.
It's so unfair that I have an great job so I can treat my friends to dinner all the time! I hate being rich.
It's rather "I know I'm rich, but why do friends expect ME to pay for dinner all the time? It's so unfair!".
Its a bit like when you are a two-bit loser but have a private island where you can do whatever you like, and invite every celebrity you can find over to party every weekend, then start complaining that they haven't paid any of the island running costs and that they are all spongers because you are the main attraction of the island parties.
And at the best restaurants! And I get to choose the restaurant! And choose when we eat! And pick the appetizers, drinks, entrees, and desert!
So instead I will allow myself to be robbed and we'll all share the cost of a low-key restuarant. Or maybe let's charge each other to eat together, yeah!
Not to mention the administration aren't going to be held accountable for, or actually be impacted by, the harms that come for their actions.
> The current administration doesn't care about cyber defense, any less than it cares about protecting the environment
On the contrary, I would argue that they deeply care about the environment. The REAL point of all those tit-for-tat tariffs with China including with small mail/packages are to drastically cut cargo/shipping emissions. The threatening of annexation of Canada? That was really to get ~70% reduction in air passenger traffic BECAUSE they care about the environment. Same with creating a few high profile border horror story incidents against nationals from allied countries. The real point of it? Reduce transoceanic air passenger loads and save the environment. /s
You need to make that /s more prominent.
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Try to talk to the people from the Sovereign Tech Fund, they have a history of sponsoring security relevant projects in the EU.
> Sovereign Tech Fund
It's actually been upgraded to the Sovereign Tech Agency now
And maybe the sidn fund?
Nlnet for opensource
Yes, maybe reach out to Michiel Leenaars from the NLNet foundation. But IIRC NLNet mostly funds shorter development tracks, not ongoing upkeep/maintenance.
Maybe something to bring up to one of these e.V.'s if it ends up being difficult to get started: Codeberg.org, nlnet.nl, ccc.de
Codeberg might be a nice cooperation partner for hosting the git repositories. Gonna write them!
I'm also visiting the local CCC chapters here this week, maybe it makes sense to have a separate e.V. where the CCC chapters are beneficiaries?
+1 for ccc.de
Looks like some people are already getting things moving: https://www.thecvefoundation.org/
I would email someone like Patch My PC they seem good stewards of stuff open source from my vague looking and they are good people. They may just host a clone of it that's open.
(Spain, doing storage and web hosting) What usually worries me the most is the administrative or management part, which I don't know how big would be for this project...
Try if you can find some help here https://openssf.org/
There are already many security trackers, why writing a new one? The issue is paying people to handle the advisories.
I agree with you there. Before CISA got sacked / taken down, they were working together with the BSI and other CERT agencies on a vulnerability exchange format.
This might be the optimum time to implement CSAF and to lead by example when it comes to vulnerability disclosures.
I’m interested to help! I added you on LinkedIn, so will message there after you accept. :)
I'm not European but I'd love to help.
Depending on deployment strategy I could help with Kubernetes stuff.
The European, GDPR compliant subnet of the Internet Computer could suit your needs. The app would be decentralized out of the box and it can't be shut down by a single entity like a traditional cloud provider or nation state. Hosting 100GB costs about 500$ per year [0]. This is not a traditional hosting provider, it's a decentralized cloud. Reach out on the forum [1] or to me if this sounds like a good fit to you (I think it does, from your list of requirements).
[0] https://internetcomputer.org/docs/building-apps/essentials/c... [1] https://forum.dfinity.org/
Or just use a normal host where hosting 100GB costs about $60.00 per year.
messaged on linkedin fyi
Im also interested in helping
Great idea. I'm interested in helping. I'll dm you.
Why EU?
Canada may be another friendly option
> Canada may be another friendly option
Until the US decides to push through with Praxis Nation plan and annexes Greenland, that is.
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The AGPL is a nonfree (and nonsensical) license.
There’s nothing wrong with normal GPL.
Is there a non-free license approved by FSF and OSI and compatible with DFSG?
To the "I wish HN would stay out of politics" crew.
You can stay out of politics, but politics will always come and find you.
HN and founders will say "no politics here" on the regulated internet, drinking regulated water, eating regulated food, breathing regulated air.
Apart from the few maniacs On Here who seek out the unregulated intentionally. Raw milk (all those tasty diseases). "Research chemicals" (don't hear so much about that lately, but there were whole microdosing fads).
Raw milk is delicious, my ancestors have been drinking it for millennia.
And we enjoyed our milkborne tuberculosis, typhoid, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and septic sore throat thoroughly, too. The risks actually doubled the joys. Why does a supposedly enlightened society step all over my right to choose which eliminated diseases to bring back?
Will all of these things be free of micro plastics and other contaminants?
If so, is there a signup page?
To play devil's advocate - it's horrible when gaming, programming, business or even porn forums get overrun by politics.
It's not that the political topics are unimportant but all my feeds just end up looking the same as each other and the same as a newspaper app. I hate election nights because of this.
"porn forums" is a thing?
Games are inherently political, like all art.
I think it's a stretch to suggest _all_ are, I'm not sure I could believe that a game like Super Hexagon is political. Would it be political to paint the tree in your backyard, or to draw a picture of your cat?
People trying to ignore politics are like fish trying to ignore water.
Not talking about politics is itself a political position (in favor of status quo).
Depends. We’re a small, very international startup and have a super strict “no politics” policy. Politics and work are not a good combination when you’re employing people from all over the world.
But I would not consider it a political statement to adopt this policy.
I think it exists two different general ideas of what politic mean.
For some (including me), politics are, following the oldest definition: 'how do I and fellow humans organize ourselves to live together' this often leads to a belief that everything is politics (for me it's true, but it's a belief, not a fact).
For other, I think that when they say politics, they think of geopolitics and partisanship, which is fair, because it's how politicians and political journalists themselves define politics. For this group, hopefully, not everything is politics.
So to me, this disagreement about wether or not all is political is often semantic rather than ideologic.
Your statements are incoherent. Politics is decision making and power relationships within groups of people. It is 100% a political statement to adopt this policy as it exercises power over a group. You cannot function as a group without politics. "Where do y'all want to go for lunch" is also politics, as it involves group decision making and power relationships (Do you go to the vegetarian place? Do you avoid the spicy place?) It's a completely banal decision but it is still politics.
If what you want is a "don't piss off your coworkers by discussing topics unrelated to work that you know will annoy people" policy, that is fine, but don't pretend you are not engaging in politics.
The politics of saying "no politics" is that you are drawing some line that separates some political issues into "politics" and others into "not politics". Because to truly avoid all politics is impossible; even if you believe banal, purely intra-personal politics are not political so much of the basic organization of a business & capitalism are politics. "Should we allow remote work" for example is a deeply political question that ties deeply into discussions about the rights/value of neurodivergent & disabled people in the workplace. To say 'I don't believe in God' is a deeply political and dangerous statement in some parts of the world, but fairly banal where I live. To contrast, in Indonesia, it is technically _unconstitutional_ to not believe in a "one and almighty God"
I wish people were at least honest about "no politics" to mean "lets avoid to unsafe, potentially divisive issues relative to our geographic location, and take the basic tenets of neoliberal, capitalistic society to be assumed". And yeah, that is a more than reasonable policy. Its a difficult policy in international spaces, because its very hard to not trespass that line when political contexts differ so strongly across the globe
> take the basic tenets of neoliberal, capitalistic society to be assumed
Well, then any discussion about an illiberal oclocratic executive (such as 47's) should be fair game...
"Politics" is a stupid word because everyone has a different idea about what it means and so they all talk past each other.
The word “politics” is vague, and that only makes banning political discussions worse if it only becomes political when the higher-ups don’t like it.
Say your company has a possibility of working with some client company who is directly or indirectly involved with cause X. If it is “political” to talk about not working with them because of X, but it is “not political” to talk about working with them, then you see what I mean.
It doesn’t have to be a destructive conversation: one employee might say we should avoid them, but you might say we need to work with them because we need the money now and can drop them later when we are in a better place. Other employees could talk how cause X is not that unethical for reasons. If someone balks at a point of view incompatible with theirs and is incapable of expressing a viewpoint in a way that respects other views, maybe that someone is not mature enough and next time your HR can avoid that type.
I am torn.com player which is a MMORPG as far removed from politics as can be. But when large part of dev team are ukrainians that were suddenly unable to work from clearly political reasons you can't ignore it.
First, “no politics” is not a political statement to me, more of an implicitly adopted political position.
Personally, if I have a personal political position and my colleague has an opposite one, I don’t see why we can’t talk about it. If you have a workplace rule about no politics during working hours, you better have this rule for all non-work discussions at work, or I personally would feel uncomfortable.
— If politics talk happens at work too much and affects productivity, then it is a problem, but then it is a problem with any non-work topic.
— If it causes heated debate, ruins morale, and makes people dislike each other, then it is a problem, but then it is a problem with any topic that causes heated debate. For some people it’s golf, for some philosophy, for some music. How many topics should be banned?
Are you from the US? In the last 15 years it has become impossible for two people to reasonably disagree over political positions because of how much vitriol is thrown around on the attention markets—even if both individuals themselves are rather tame. When having an otherwise normal political opinion makes you a racist bigot or a beta cuck because the opposition is so determined to get their way at any cost, no, you can’t just talk politics at work and have a cohesive team. Someone will feel oppressed.
Work is about making money. Politics is a distraction unless there’s an issue that directly affects the business. Then it’s fair game. Like this one. Many teams of individuals will have to figure out how to navigate this situation so discussing it in context is apropos and can be done objectively.
> When having an otherwise normal political opinion makes you a racist bigot or a beta cuck because the opposition is so determined to get their way at any cost
If someone calls me a racist bigot or a beta cuck, that is a problem. That problem also has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with someone not being emotionally mature enough or equipped to handle a discussion with someone who has different views, or someone having a mental breakdown.
I am not from the US, but I had enjoyed some reasonable conversations with people from the US (among other countries) with very different views, and I was never called names. There are awkward moments when you have to hear something you don’t agree with, but that is most of life if you ever interact with people.
The key is to be like an HTTP server: liberal in terms of what you can accept, but strict with what you put out there.
> Work is about making money.
You have just thrown another political position into the mix, I hope you realize that?
How do you define politics? For example, are employees allowed to be LGBTQ? Are they allowed to mention their relationships to colleagues?
Being straight is also pretty much political at this point. With the way it's being slipped into the culture (all that trad stuff, images of lifestyle to aspire to, etc.) and has become (has always been perhaps) a part of political messaging and campaigning, heterosexuality is political. Even within the heterosexuality itself and its expressions, there's still politics - "what's the right way to do it" and such. (not saying this like 'oh those poor straight people' but just that, it is all, all political)
For what it’s worth, I completely agree, I just thought LGBTQ was a clearer example because of how different it is seen in different parts of the world, and how it is at the same time an inescapable part of many people’s identity.
One might argue that it's even more important to discuss international politics these days, considering how interconnected the world is and how so many countries seem to be facing many of the same issues.
No it’s not. It’s having discipline to not pollute unrelated conversations with your politics. I am very against the status quo but I don’t complain about it to a bunch of anonymous usernames on a forum focused on technology.
You can believe something without proselytizing.
Technology and the consequences of using technology are inherently highly political.
New or improved technologies shape communities.
Ignoring that is a political statement as well.
Just see how online media has changed discourse, how Amazon changed retail business, how business analytics change the way businesses work, how always being connected changes relations, ...
When developing technologies one can be Wernher von Braun "(where the rockets land and whether they contain explosives is) not my department" or one can consider consequences.Both are a political position, with consequences.
> You can believe something without proselytizing.
You can talk about politics without proselytising. Why should discussing a topic even invoke the words like “belief” and “proselytising”?
Not only stating an opinion is compatible with a constructive discussion that could lead to a mutual adjustment of opinions—in fact, stating your opinion is a pre-requisite to having it changed!
Not being able or willing to freely exchange and converge on opinions with people whom you routinely meet in real life, only discussing them online in your respective bubbles, is a sure way to having only more and more wildly incompatible and divisive opinions, and I suspect it is exactly what has been happening in recent years.
Things are often inherently political.
It's in favor of not having relationships break down in your community/company.
Only a small percentage of people are able to handle fundamental disagreements calmly and without it bleeding over to other interactions.
Will the SE and sales guy work as well together if the former knows the latter donates half his commission money to organizations that help kill babies?
Turning the question around, will the SE and sales guy work as well together if the former knows the latter donates half his commission money to FSF while the other is hard advocate for commercial software?
Politics are across all layers, including at technology decisions.
I have friendly relationships with a few people who have political opinions some of which are opposite to mine.
> Will the SE and sales guy work as well together if the former knows the latter donates half his commission money to organizations that help kill babies?
A friend of mine is a vegan. Anywhere he works, to him, most of his coworkers not just help kill conscious beings that have self-awareness and feel pain, they literally eat them. Does this mean talking about what you have for lunch should be banned? Does this mean he should throw a fit any time he talks to a non-vegan?
Incidentally, we sometimes have good debates about the nature of consciousness, the effectiveness of individual veganism on reducing suffering, utilitarianism and deontology, vegan food options, etc. I feel being converted and I don’t mind it.
but letting > the SE and sales guy
never find out about their shared passion is kind of cruel, too?
It's not uncommon for one side to come out with their position/interpretation/belief whether it's passion or not.
Maybe at a work function, team party, conference, etc.
It’s really a question of time and place. There are many foundational topics in life, such as politics, religion, and philosophy. But it’s not always helpful or appropriate to discuss them in a particular setting.
That said, HN already has an extremely wide range of subject matter, so I wouldn’t say politics should be out of place here. It can, though, become a divisive distraction that disrupts other conversations, so I can appreciate that some limits are needed.
> The ancient Greek understanding of an “idiot” referred to someone who was a private citizen or a person who did not actively participate in public life or politics.
I view the archive.org, Wikipedia, CVE program, and Linux Kernel to all have had discussions on HN about how to they should be funded. Is that kind of politics the kind that people wish that HN stayed out from?
Everything is political now by design. It's meant to reach into every facet of society and community and restructure it.
Everything was always political. Laws, the economy, conflcit. How is any person not affected by these? The government is responsible for all or a large part of how a country functions.
People who say "I'm not political" are deflecting to avoid conflict
One of the benefits a working democracy conveys to its citizens is that they largely don't have to care about politics. They can trust that government action is relatively consistent over time, that laws will be enforced fairly enough, that their property will be protected to a reasonable degree, that the currency will be reasonably stable, that the roads will be maintained, that some public transport will be available, that sudden wars won't erupt around them, and so on.
That's what makes working democracies successful. But it seems that it also makes democracies vulnerable because people don't realize they have these benefits because they live in a working democracy. They start to think these benefits have nothing to do with politics and are just the way things are, like the laws of nature.
Interestingly, I believe that the reality is exactly the opposite: on the political regimes' spectrum of democratic -> authoritarian -> totalitarian only the middle one doesn't require people's participation. Both democracy and totalitarism need to be actively maintained by significant part of the population, otherwise they converge to the "natural" state of things - authoritarian order. None of the stuff you listed (fair laws, property rights, etc.) occur naturally once it has been set up at some point in past. That's why they talk about "checks and balances" all the time, and they are impossible without active participation.
Yeah, I should have phrased this better. When I said that
>citizens (...) largely don't have to care about politics
I didn't mean that it wasn't harmful if they didn't care; I meant that there was no clear, immediate incentive.
What distinction are you making between authoritarian and totalitarian here?
I think the most significant distinction is exactly that:
Authoritarian - leaves people alone in general as long as they stay out of politics. Examples: 90% of regimes throughout human history. Almost all post-soviet countries, almost all of Middle East and Africa, Singapore, etc.
Totalitarian - forces people into actively participating in leader's political goals and penetrates the daily life. North Korea, USSR, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy.
>One of the benefits a working democracy conveys to its citizens is that they largely don't have to care about politics
The citizens elect the government so how can you not care about poltiics?
>The citizens elect the government so how can you not care about poltiics?
I don't think there's a direct correlation between the ability to vote and caring about politics. People usually care about politics when it affects them negatively. I would guess that most people in most democratic systems don't have strong negative experiences with their governments and, thus, are not incentivized to care about politics.
Note that I'm not making an argument that they should not care. I think they should, but the very system that allows participation probably also decreases the incentive for most people to participate.
Alternatively people who say “I’m not political” are benefiting from the status quo and political direction of things (long term, not necessarily short term). They frame inaction as apolitical.
> People who say "I'm not political" are deflecting to avoid conflict
A great truth. Even isolating yourself from society like a hermit is still a political decision: you are rejecting society as it is, and prefer to live in your own solo society. That's politics.
I don’t think that’s totally accurate. If I live as a hermit but perform my civic duties like voting and paying any taxes, I don’t see how choosing to live in solitude is anything more than a lifestyle choice.
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When this is discussed, what's being meant is that everday party politics are spilling out and overwhelming a project's or industry's individual, internal politics, which are often a completely disconnected meta.
Appealing to "well everything is connected" I'm not sure is useful. It's interesting from a semantics perspective the first few times you come across it maybe, then swaps around into being plain frustrating, then lands on just missing the point.
Finally, I think people who want to stay out of said party political meta I think are doing a pretty big favor to their mental health, and I really can't fault them one bit for it. No coincidence either.
Two things:
"Party politics" is ill-defined, and so a "no politics" rule becomes an arbitrary hammer that bosses can use to smash employees. If I say "I'm going to get a COVID vaccine this afternoon" is that discussing party politics? In the UK, where I live, the vaccine was provided by the government, so I'm implicitly discussing the actions of the government. That is under any reasonable definition a discussion of politics.
"everyday party politics are spilling out and overwhelming a project's or industry's individual, internal politics" is how "no politics" rules are usually justified, but this was not what happened in the poster child cases of implementing "no politics" rules (37signals, Coinbase). 37signals in particular tried to spin it this way, but it was the actions of a group within the company approved by the founders that caused the problem. (Coinbase was just completely incoherent from the start. Their mission is something like "End economic inequality" which a reasonable person could take to mean anarchist or communist discussion is on topic.)
There's no way to define any modality of politics such that someone like you won't come around and start going off about how it's a leaky segmentation, and is actually just an excuse for censorship.
Every artificial segmentation of the real world is leaky. Just like the recognition that politics is everywhere, this too is not actually inquisitive. It's like arguing that stairsteps are chairs. They can be, but that doesn't make the word "chair" ill-defined.
> but this was not what happened in the poster child cases of implementing "no politics" rules
There is no such thing. These may be notable cases in your cohort, for me it's the first time I heard of these. And I've seen my fair share of these rules.
The covid vaccine example is a good one in terms of something in everyday life that is politicised.
It is also illustrates the problem with discussing politics in an international forum. The KCL study of covid conspiracy theories (carried out during the pandemic) found that in the UK young people and those who identified as left wing were more likely to believe conspiracy theories. I am pretty sure this is significantly different from the US. Also matches things I have heard (e.g. my daughter met people at university who refused the vaccine because "we don't trust the Tories".
It is pretty common for Americans to assume that the Conservatives are equivalent to Republicans, and Labour are like the Democrats, which is very far from the truth. It has always been far from the truth but the reasons why change - e.g. in the 80s Thatcher and Reagan were not far apart, but that that time Labour were far to the left of the Democrats (actual socialists).
> I think are doing a pretty big favor to their mental health, and
It your mental health is harmed while defending your political views it's possible your views are the issue.
For example if my view was that "domestic animals shouldn't be abused and penalties increased for such crimes" I wouldn't have mental health issues discussing this.
Funnily enough, one of the UK's odder, more intense, and probably mentally ill domestic terror campaigns was carried out by anti-vivisectionists.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Huntingdon_Animal_Cruelty)
Were they anti vivisectionists? Or animal testing opponents who called animal testing vivisection?
So if I now said some intentionally asinine garbage, e.g. about how dogs need to be disciplined and sometimes that necessarily involves a beating, and how if you disagree you're woke, that wouldn't make you very understandably very distraught?
Because it would make me pretty distraught, and I don't think that it's because anything is wrong with the idea of not abusing animals.
Even doing this mental exercise for the sake of this conversation is already extremely frustrating for me. I don't think this should surprise you.
The vast majority of people will get stressed talking to people they think are evil or against their values. Someone breaking down in tears because another person says they "don't give a fuck about the bloody Gazans" is not behaving particularly unusually.
The views don't matter as much as how strongly they are held.
> Someone breaking down in tears because another person says they "don't give a fuck about the bloody Gazans" is not behaving particularly unusually.
it might be reasonable if you have personal close links to Gaza (e.g. you are worried about family who live there), but otherwise it OUGHT to be very unusual.
Why?
I mean I think The Republican Incumbent was chosen specifically as a tool because he is so extreme, pervasive and demoralising and creeps into everything. Definitely by Russia, maybe also by our "friend" in the ME. Although it's not that reported on they are on friendly terms.
Disaffection lends itself easily to creating a Russia-style society. This all feels pretty Dugin-esque, and his proposition (return to values, reject interest/hope in politics because it is always flawed anyway, bind together under the state) fits perfectly, and is finding prominence at the perfect time.
Just my opinion, but to me this seems far more akin to Dugin than whatever Curtis Yavin is pushing
What is "ME" referring to?
"Middle East" is the usual expansion, and fits in context here.
The "friend" could be Israel or some person like Mohammed bin Salman.
Everything already was, you just didn't recognize it because it was to your benefit / in your interests.
That's because we got reliant on the funds from government. Maybe it's time to break the dependency.
> That's because we got reliant on the funds from government
Not we, some people got reliant on the funds from government. It is always at the cost of someone else. The tax the rich and bourgeoisie mentality is what led to Mao Zedong and Stalin, but no-one wants to learn about history anymore.
Agree, but it goes both ways, with technology (that many of us here have helped create and maintain) also reaching out into every facet of society and community, many times in close symbiosis with the political powers that be, to the detriment of said society and community.
Not 100% sure what I wanted to say, maybe that said politics (and the political as a whole) wouldn't have invaded almost our entire lives without the help of technology.
Technology without politics is a pipe dream, even the FOSS licenses depend on politics.
Saying "I'm not political" is also a privilege. It means that society hasn't come and made your very existence political. (I'm trans.)
This quote is essentially unworkable. Everything you say, or choose not to say, inevitably advances some political perspective over another.
What we should really aim for is thoughtful, civilized, and maybe even aesthetically pleasing discourse. That’s what educated people strive for.
Trying to “avoid politics” is like collecting seashells while a tsunami is rolling in.
100% agree, staying out of politics has been a luxury not everyone has, it's totally unavoidable now.
What people mean when they say this is that they don't want to engage in party political and/or tribal political discussions. They don't want to do this because it just means rehearsing talking points.
People are not dumb. They know that politics is everywhere but they want to live and love and talk about things that are interesting.
Apolitical person: Ugh politics is so dumb
Same person: Why is the world organized in such a dumb way?
The problem is not political topics, it is how people discuss them.
Yep. It's also true of people who think they can simply move out of the US and that "solves" the problem too. America's problems are still (almost) everyone's problems too.
"You can stay out of politics, but politics will always come and find you."
No, it's just recognising that it is silly to talk about politics, as certain views are just downvoted.
Of all places I find this one the most shielded from this behavior as long as you're civil.
> A coalition of CVE Board members launched a new CVE Foundation "to ensure the long-term viability, stability, and independence of the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) Program."
> https://www.thecvefoundation.org
https://mastodon.social/@serghei/114346660986059236
So if the govt stops paying them they'll continue to do the work for free?
The way their letter is worded it seems that they have a rainy day fund constituted to ride out the stormy next few week and I'm fairly certain they'll come back with more details as to how they'll be acquiring funding from now on in the next few days. Maybe paid access to an API, maybe donations from large companies that use the system, maybe something else ::shrug:: Hopefully a project as important as this doesn't just dissapear completely because of government pressure.
More likely they will seek funding from companies and other organizations, as every other foundation/consortium of this kind does.
I wish this hadn't happened.
I wonder what level of compartmentalisation inside DHS means they didn't see this as having sufficient downsides?
I ask this, because I don't think anyone in the subject matter specialist space would have made a strong case "kill it, we don't need this" and I am sure if asked would have made a strong case "CRISSAKE WE NEED THIS DONT TOUCH IT" -But I could believe senior finance would do their own research (tm) and mis-understand what they saw in how other people work with CVE, and who funds it.
> I wonder what level of compartmentalisation inside DHS means they didn't see this as having sufficient downsides?
This was not a carefully-weighed decision based on a cost-benefit analysis. This was a political order, consistent with the administration's policy of "cut everything, recklessly, indiscriminately."
Destroy, destroy, destroy. Promise to rebuild but don't. Take it all.
Did they promise to rebuild?
If I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt (which I hate), it's a shotgun approach; cut things relentlessly and see what falls apart. Chaos engineering applied to a country and / or the world.
That’s exactly what it is, and they said as much repeatedly while campaigning. Voters, in their zealotry against the perceived status quo, failed to realize how much of what we have right now you don’t want to cut recklessly, as well as just how reckless the people that they were choosing to do that job were.
There are various glorious futures floating around about how this will make America better, stronger, more independent.
So much for the wunderkinds in DOGE.
They were able to eliminate all open CVE's while cutting costs at the same time. Amazing!
Soon to be powned, by their own extreme short sightedness. Duh.
Soon to be? They already failed to deploy a website safely by exposing the db. https://www.404media.co/anyone-can-push-updates-to-the-doge-...
Maybe "they" want to do the pwning with less coordinated resistance. Doing away with CVEs would help with that objective.
@bigballs, please save U.S.
I think you mean wonder kids.
wunderkind is a loanword, it's one of those cases of a German word being used but being odd in English since it's so similar. Like kindergarten which is often speller as "garden".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wunderkind_(disambiguation)
I think the GP was making a reference to the Apple TV show “Ted Lasso”.
“Wunderkind” mispronounced as “Wonder Kid” is a running joke in that show.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TedLasso/comments/132rw9v/what_the_...
"tariff as wunderwaffe" often comes to mind these days.
Many of these terms originate during the Nazi regime and thus aren't used lightly in Germany anymore.
Other example includes: Endgegner (final boss) or Endlösung (final solution)
I would suggest to avoid such terms.
Wunderkind and Endgegner are used lightly in Germany.
The parallels to Nazi Germany's striking but impractical weapons seemed intended every time I heard or read Wunderwaffe in English.
Many did in the golden age of German research, then to be destroyed by those mentioned.
Either the philosophers or the mathematicians/physicists likely coined them.
> Endgegner
I did not know about this, thanks for die Vorwarnung. In context, I'd assume "ultimate enemy" (Gegner=opponent) as "final boss" sounds videogame.
Same thing.
Given that the Kids at DOGE are all computer experts, this reeks of a calculated move.
Absolutely not. They are not broadly experts, and they are not making these decisions after careful consideration, as evidenced by their continual acts of stupidity and basic errors and cutting things despite having no idea what it is they are cutting. Musk got in an argument with someone who said DOGE cut funding for a cancer treatment program, and Musk was calling the person a liar, and the person provided evidence and Musk admitted it was an accident. They are a clown car of idiots who vastly overestimate their own knowledge and underestimate how much good the government actually does. They think they can just slash and burn and there will be no negative consequences because they think the government is worthless.
Until, like Ayn Rand, they actually need the government. Then they'll be complaining how the government doesn't provide services.
My knowledge of Ayn Rand stops at having read a book (and considered it silly), when did she need the government and complained about it?
Medicare and social security after a lung cancer diagnosis (from being a heavy smoker)
https://www.openculture.com/2016/12/when-ayn-rand-collected-...
What's funny, and it might be because of the translation, but I first thought her book where all entrepreneurs are hidden away in a sort of parallel country was a dystopian satire and a joke about some people sense of self importance. Then I learned about her (and when the book was written too) and realised her book was to be read as it was written, 'seriously'. Which makes it silly, but a funny story.
She was an Objectivist. She considered social security to be "legalized plunder". Then when she needed it, she decided to take it.
One of her wonderful worldviews was to rejects altruism as a moral imperative, arguing that individuals should live for their own rational self-interest. Social security, based on the idea of supporting others, contradicts this principle.
It takes strong and complex social glue to create a place where millions can safely follow their own self-interest.
Which means anyone whose wisdom matches their self-interest is going to understand that different things have very different efficiencies at different scales.
And some things happen to be dramatically more efficient/person and more effective, the larger the scale they can be coordinated at.
>It takes strong and complex social glue to create a place where millions can safely follow their own self-interest.
This exactly. All of these people who profess to believe in objectivism could easily move to a failed state and do anything they want to with zero government intervention. But they don't do that. They want all of the benefits of a working government with none of the things required to actually create a working government.
It is in your self interest to have a strong social safety net, because one day you might need it too.
Also, even if you don't need it yourself, it's far nicer to live in a society where people's basic needs can be met otherwise we end up living in some kind of Mad Max apocalyptic wasteland where people with nothing and nothing to lose roam the country looking for targets.
They are clueless kids at their first job, following the orders of their hero. You think they’ll resist when the boss tells them, “cut everything”?
No. [0] I wouldn't say they are computer experts. [1][2]
[0] https://www.404media.co/anyone-can-push-updates-to-the-doge-...
[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355895/doge-musk-nlrb-...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-14/doge-staf...
I think expert is not the right word for what looks like mostly rookies.
They've done their degrees and masters in Computer Science, and many of them dropped out. But they focused on AI, so I'm assuming this makes them great at statistics, but does this mean they are great at security? Given the way they've gone through a variety of departments, I'd say they aren't.
The DOGE crew are incompetent. Witness their firing of all the people who look after the nuclear stockpile and Ebola research.
Vampire capitalism. They want civilization to break down so they can offer a solution for profit. The enemies of all people and life on the planet are a tiny group of oligarchs and their supplicants.
Not unlike the manga Berserk
This isn't capitalism, any more than arson, burglary, or extortion is capitalism. Get some new material.
To be fair, we don't yet know how capitalism ends.
I agree, given the right definition of “capitalism”.
Unfortunately “capitalism” has two quite different meanings. Which are rarely clarified in use.
Capitalism with a big C, a too common overarching ideology, gets bent to mean whatever the greedy, unethical and rich want it to mean so they can get more money.
But small c capitalism, evolving from both practical and ethical foundations, is a system so useful it has multiplied the benefits of civilization. But it is just one such system.
It can’t do everything, it needs other independent systems (justice, dispute resolution, rules of clarity, risk & trust limiting systems, for starters) to work, and extending it to places it doesn’t work causes great harm.
(Like when perversely applied to those enabling systems, in big C form, as is happening now.)
> any more than arson, burglary, or extortion is capitalism
Indeed.
> cut everything, recklessly, indiscriminately
Mostly discriminately, tbh.
https://mathstodon.xyz/@johncarlosbaez/114000054766059217 Ah yes, like the woke DEI grants for “Homotopical macrocosm for higher category theory” for having the prefix homo-
Get a hold of yourself
> I wonder what level of compartmentalisation inside DHS means they didn't see this as having sufficient downsides?
The National Vulnerability Database has been unable to keep up with the flow of CVEs for over a year now:
- https://anchore.com/blog/national-vulnerability-database-opa...
- https://www.cyberreport.io/news/cve-backlog-update-the-nvd-s...
- https://www.ibm.com/think/insights/cve-backlog-update-nvd-st...
- and many, many, many others
It has been a complete disaster for months. At this point, perhaps the thinking is to radically change approaches?
No, we’re in a middle of a coup. Palantir or some other odious company will get paid 100x more to do something.
People will not submit vulns as happily to such business.
Most of vulns will go unaddressed because company like palantir will most likely want only really good vulns like 0-click RCE.
MITRE has a trademark on the term CVE.
As if laws have any meaning to this administration, and anyone expecting this will only last four years instead of turning into one of those countries so much admired by the captain at the helm, is fooling themselves.
When the citizens realise this, the structures to clamp down any revolution will be in place.
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> "kill it, we don't need this"
"We are paying MITRE how much? Bigballs and co will write a better ststem in 1 week and have it integrated with xAI. How hard could it be? Send out a first draft of an xAI contract to our DHS contact"
This sort of thing is happening across the federal government. There is no rhyme or reason. DOGE has been given an unrealistic target for cuts and they're desperately cutting whatever they can get their hands on. If you look at the federal budget it's nearly impossible for DOGE to hit their stated goals without touching benefits like medicare and social security (which are off limits so far) so the only option is deep, deep cuts into the narrow slice of the federal budget that excludes those protected categories.
There is no rhyme or reason to what gets cut, other than someone under pressure to hit KPIs (dollars cut) was desperately searching for things that looked easy to cancel.
This is happening everywhere the federal government touches. Most people aren't aware of it until they come around and pull the rug on something that intersects with your own life.
Even my die-hard Republican distant relatives are suddenly shocked because programs they benefited from are being cut. They thought they voted for something different.
>>They thought they voted for something different
Like what exactly? I mean the guy ran on cutting the budget by 2 trillion. In his last term he gave tax breaks yo the rich. Where did they think the cuts were coming from?
He ran very hard on raising tarrifs. Which demonstrably raise prices (thats literally their goal.) But now people claim "I didn't vote for this."
In truth they voted for him because he was the Republican on offer and they're die-hard Republican. The Republican party has made no secret of its agenda for decades.
I get it, people are good at cognitive dissonance. But this is the place for blunt truth. They voted for this. I'm not letting Republicans got off the hook here. They voted for this.
Just like to my Republican friends who are upset that CVE is cut. You voted for this. The general public benefit from CVE even though they dont know it exists. Just like you benefitted from dozens of other programs you didn't know existed, but have also been cut.
That's the problem with cuts. They ultimately end up hurting everyone.
Now clearly there's some fat that could be trimmed. Companies do it all the time. Done well its good. Swinging a hatchet in a crowded elevator does not seem like "Done well".
> Where did they think the cuts were coming from?
When someone hands you a pencil, you don't wonder what variety of tree the wood came from, or what paint chemistry was used for the coating. It's a pencil. You might have broad opinions on whether the one in your hand is comfortable to use, and sharp - but you leave the details to the pencil makers.
About 70% of the population engage with politics the same way: Leave the details to the people who do this stuff for a living.
Do they expect to be disappointed? Sure, but everyone who engages with politics expects to be disappointed.
> In truth they voted for him because he was the Republican on offer and they're die-hard Republican. The Republican party has made no secret of its agenda for decades.
This is actually simply not true. The Republican party before the Tea Party looked nothing at all like this. Trump won the presidency last year riding a wave of distinctly not-your-typical-Republican lower class voters. As he rose the old guard Republican establishment formed the anti-Trump wing of the party until they were forced out one by one.
To put some numbers to this: Bush won the upper income brackets by 5+ points in 2000, with a lead that widened as you went up the income ladder. Trump lost the equivalent brackets in 2024 by 5+ points, a 10 point swing away from what Bush won them by. The lower brackets are even more stark, with a whopping 18-point swing towards Trump in the $30k-$50k bracket (inflation adjusted to $15k-$30k).
These numbers show that Trump is not a Republican in the George W Bush sense and he's certainly not a Republican in the Ronald Reagan sense. He's a populist and won on a populist agenda by putting together a coalition of rabid social conservatives (who probably really did go Bush in 2000) and poor people (who largely did not).
You are ignoring that trump rode to power explicitly by enabling the shittest of Republicans that already exist. To try and let republicans off the hook for supporting him, especially a 2nd time? Is hilarious
I'm upvoting you because you make a coherent argument, and votes here should be for that, not whether I agree with you or not.
I would agree he's not George Bush, much less Ronald Reagan. Nevertheless those who voted for Bush and Reagan also voted for Trump.
This has been "decades" in the making in the sense that since Obama was elected (in 2008), Republicans have embraced racism at the heart of their populist message. That swing rightward was made palatable to center republicans with a woman democratic candidate in 2016 (one not terribly well liked in democratic circles) and a black woman candidate in 2024.
While racism, and misogyny gather a bunch of votes, long-term distrust of institutions is sown, and fostered. Republican policy becomes protecting white guys, and especially old, rich, white guys.
Reagan was popular and competent, and worked for the good of America. Today's president is nothing like him, but wins because a bunch of people "vote Republican".
Populism is not an agenda it's a style. Also the majority of poor people voted Democrat, the majority of people with low education levels voted for Trump (which is not the same thing as dumb, although voting for Trump is dumb regardless of PhD or lack of HS diploma). There's overlap between low levels of education and income but if you define class by income then low income people mostly voted Dem
> They thought they voted for something different.
They voted for the leopards to eat other people’s faces, not their’s.
I'd say that the rhyme and reason are quite clear [0]. They published a playbook, and they are implementing it at a record pace.
> The NSC [National Security Council] staff will need to consolidate the functions of both the NSC and the Homeland Security Council (HSC), incorporate the recently established Office of the National Cyber Director, and evaluate the required regional and functional directorates.
> Given the aforementioned prerequisites, the NSC should be properly resourced with sufficient policy professionals, and the NSA should prioritize staffing the vast majority of NSC directorates with aligned political appointees and trusted career officials. - Project 2025, pg 52.
> ... History shows that an unsupervised NSC staff can stray from its statutory role and adversely affect a President and his policies. Moreover, while the NSC should be fully incorporated into the White House, it should also be allowed to do its job without the impediment of dually hatted staff that report to other offices. - Project 2025, pg 53.
The goal is to build up a political organisation to use as a weapon, and to scrap the rest - as a legal excuse to say that the political appointments will be necessary.
[0] https://www.project2025.observer/
They have to find some gumbah to head the security dept,because the best one they had,left in a hurry. Heard he went to Denmark. ( I am really really kidding )
The ryme is Humpty Dumpty, had a great fall. Now China and Russian security forces step up their relentless attacks. Let's hope the white house falls first.
> Even my die-hard Republican distant relatives are suddenly shocked because programs they benefited from are being cut. They thought they voted for something different.
Out of curiosity, which programs? And is this enough to change their opinion about Trump, or do they still think it'll be worth it?
> This sort of thing is happening across the federal government. There is no rhyme or reason. DOGE has been given an unrealistic target for cuts and they're desperately cutting whatever they can get their hands on
You make it sound like poor DOGE employees are being forced to do this on this kind of schedule, which definitely isn't the impression I got. They're all a bunch of incompetent overconfident weirdos who think they know better and what to do. Is there any pressure to do anything quickly?
And the US federal budget is quite easy to trim. E.g. remove an aircraft carrier from the planned construction pipeline and you've saved $15 billion with no actual ramifications.
Who knows whether it will happen, but in principle DOGE is working under some time pressure as they're scheduled to be dissolved in mid-2026.
Remember, DOGE has nothing to do with money or "efficiency". It's a pure ideological dismantling of the Federal government aimed at eliminating oversight, regulations, assistance and entitlements as envisioned by ultra-conservatives for decades.
This isn't speculation or hyperbole, it's specifically laid out in their published plans: By hobbling or outright eliminating federal agencies responsible for executing the laws passed by Congress, the administration can circumvent the democratic process and impose their extreme vision of limited government on the country, regardless of popular support.
The U.S. system of government relies on established norms as much as it does law. Conservatives realized that they can ignore precedent with impunity if they had an executive willing to do so. They then spelled out exactly how, and are now enacting that plan.
Then SCOTUS's decisions last summer turbo boosted their agenda. The ruling that only Congress can hold the President legally accountable essentially means executive power is unchecked if the legislature is unwilling or unable to Impeach and convict. The President can now confidently ignore the law and judicial orders with a veneer of legality. And this is what he's doing.
(The fact that all this just so happens to benefit Russia after their decade long campaign to destabilize their opponents in the West is a topic for speculation.)
DOGE is about permanently altering how our country works modeled on the right wing worldview, plain and simple. Since that's their overall goal, they're not concerned where they swing the wrecking ball - it's all going to get destroyed eventually.
> The U.S. system of government relies on established norms as much as it does law.
And it's also happily breaking the law. The Executive doesn't legally have the power to allocate resources (or not), not to mention the power to arbitrarily suspend due process.
That plus privatising a lot of it. Kills two birds with one stone, eliminate regulation and fill your pockets with cash.
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Smug, cryptic remarks aren't helpful. If you have a point, say it.
They are breaking down the federal government intentionally. DOGE was never going to hit their goals, they were impossible to hit. The goals were just cover to take full control over anything they can get their hands on.
> Even my die-hard Republican distant relatives are suddenly shocked because programs they benefited from are being cut. They thought they voted for something different.
They voted for others to be hurt and to lose benefits, not their “in group.” Surprise surprise, they are considered the waste by those they voted for.
There is no in-group and out-group, there is only Trump.
A comment has been deported to El Salvador, in its place
Trump in Nevada: 'I Love the Poorly Educated' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpdt7omPoa0
I hate Trump as much as the next guy, but let's not take things out of context, he clearly seems to mean it in a "I want everyone" sense here, rather than just the poorly educated specifically.
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> DOGE has been about fighting corruption and reducing wasteful spending
It absolutely staggers me that anyone can still say this with a straight face. I will ask this, though: as part of the DOGE fight against corruption and wasteful spending how many of Elon Musk's government contracts and subsidies have been cut?
Also ~12K IRS workers (7x per head ROI) and inspectors general (who actually get results and are fully accountable) have been cut. And our already bloated military budget is increasing to $1 trillion without an eye being batted. DOGE is theatre.
The Verge: Elon Musk's DOGE figured out one thing: if you control the computers, you control everything. - https://youtube.com/shorts/XSKXIUuDV1c
The Moving Goal Posts in Musk’s DOGE Cuts: Why Elon Musk and his team have struggled to make the spending cuts they promised - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/us/politics/elon-musk-dog... | https://archive.today/GPDNY - April 14th, 2025
Elon Musk dramatically lowers his DOGE spending cut targets (again) - https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/elon-mus... - April 11th, 2025
See How Government Spending Is Up Even as Musk Touts Savings: Musk team’s $150 billion in savings barely dents $6.8 trillion in spending largely on autopilot, WSJ analysis finds - https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-doge-government-sp... | https://archive.today/DGGhX - April 11th, 2025
"A system’s function or purpose is not necessarily spoken, written, or expressed explicitly, except through the operation of the system. The best way to deduce the system’s purpose is to watch for a while to see how the system behaves. Purposes are deduced from behavior, not from rhetoric or stated goals.” —- Donella Meadows
I see at least three obvious reasons for the cuts:
1. Politically-motivated "purge the weak" Nazi stuff - Cutting Medicare, cutting Medicaid, cutting Social Security, cutting education, cutting anything that benefits people who are old, poor, queer, female, etc.
2. Privatization - NWS and NOAA are wonderful public services, and they'd rather profit from the data they produce. This is why taxes in the US are such a bitch to file, tax companies oppose any policy change that would make the paperwork easier for filers.
3. They might actually be Russian assets. Tearing down institutions that took generations to build makes space in the world for Russia to exert more influence. You can tell this is working because Europe is now wanting to re-arm.
It makes me sad. If I had a billion dollars I would still want to live in a better country. These guys only want a better world for themselves, and making everyone else into a permanent servant underclass only plays into that.
it might be ignorance; it might be malice.
it might also be deliberate: that they actually don't think the government should be involved in this sort of thing. after all, someone could be making a profit on this, and that seems to be their highest value. if gov is involved, that makes it a communal effort, and you know what else starts with "commun-"?
yes, those reasons are stupid and ignorant AND intentional.
but is there any evidence against that interpretation?
> someone could be making a profit on this
Yes, there are apparently various ways of profiting from vulnerabilities. The interesting question would be whether any of the regime insiders have a way to profit.
I think it's more of a principle: if it looks like someone could charge money for it, they think that would make the country stronger, because all they understand is first-order profit. Trump's ethics is "get away with whatever you can".
For instance, most people find healthcare middlemen (pharmacy benefit managers, etc) to be grotesque parasites. But to a laissez-faire fundamentalist, they're smart for finding a way to liberate some profit, even laudable.
Hanlon's razor. I also tend to impute malice to things I don't like, but I think it's hard to go past stupidity.
Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
(Leaving aside that there's plenty of evidence of malice here.)
I love Hanlon's razor. Super-helpful in certain contexts: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
But, having known about it for a dozen years now, I also find it inadequate alone as a razor without the following caveats/corollaries:
Hubbard's corollary to Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system". ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor#Exceptions )
Or (HN) Nerdponx's punchier simplification: "When money is at stake, never attribute to incompetence what could be attributed to greed." ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41066724 )
Hanlon's Razor is susceptible to pathological inputs, causing unbounded runtime.
A large amount of things related to Trump fall into that category, and it's important to recognize when you need to instead treat it as a superposition: It is both malice and incompetence, unless the perpetrators decide to plead just one or the other.
Stupidity rarely has a consistent destructive track record. You score occasional wins. Only malice allows every decision to do damage. (The other razor, essentially - Occam)
They were at the mercy of 20 year olds from doge. I wonder when doge enters the NSA & NRO WHAT information will they steal & put in their hard drives.
All of this is criminal behavior on the the current regime.
Your words don't make any sense in this environment. The idea that any person at an agency could stand up to or convince the DOGE team of anything is preposterous.
Anything that weakens the US or puts our cybersecurity in a place that Russia can exfiltrate data will happen. This is not about the US needing anything and it's silly to think otherwise. See also the NLRB whistleblower and the security backdoors that DOGE demanded to allow data exfiltration and the subsequent death threats to the whistle blower.
You mindset is behind the times and needs to adjust to a, frankly, insane current reality.
> Your words don't make any sense in this environment. The idea that any person at an agency could stand up to or convince the DOGE team of anything is preposterous.
Your comment embraces and spreads the powerlessness they want you to feel and spread.
Of course you can stop them - like any other negotiation in life, especially non-friendly ones, you need to make it in Trump's interest either by carrot or stick. Trump has interests; identify them and identify your power in those regards ('power and interest' is the term), and use it.
Also, stop helping them make DOGE the scapegoat. It's Trump.
DOGE is doing this, it's not a "scapegoat", and Trump is not going to negotiate anything here, that's ridiculous.
What leverage do you have for the DOGE boys? What power? Resigning? Because on the Defense side of the government the best leverage that some teams have found is mass resignation, meaning that nothing happens.
There is no negotiating with bullies, it merely breeds more concessions.
> DOGE is doing this, it's not a "scapegoat", and Trump is not going to negotiate anything here, that's ridiculous.
DOGE follows Trump's direction and acts on his behalf, as you must know. They make a big deal out of DOGE so Trump's name is less attached to these actions. Then they can take much of the blame with them when they go away, with Trump and the GOP blaming them for 'excesses'.
> Trump is not going to negotiate anything here, that's ridiculous.
> What leverage do you have for the DOGE boys?
You don't understand how negotiations work. Everyone has interests, strengths and weaknesses, and power. You need to make it in Trump's interest to keep the CVE program.
Everyone saying they are helpless, and that anything else is ridiculous, are panicking. Very unfortunately - dangerously - many people legitimize the panic. It's so normalized that it's "ridiculous" not to panic.
Every day you continue this behavior, you fall further and further behind and lead others in that direction. Will you wake up in time?
Currently the "discussion of leverage" you are talking about is out of the hands of the leaders who run these programs.
The amount of disrespect you have shown for someone that is just telling you 99% of federal workers have absolutely no leverage says a lot.
Isn't the US supposed to be the birthplace of modern democracy? When did you guys forget about protests and rallies?
> Isn't the US supposed to be the birthplace of modern democracy?
I would not dare not mention the revolutions in England and in France. And before that some Greece city states, and definitely Rome. The US declaration of independence is just another point.
It's just not practical to organize a rally to save a niche cybersecurity program. People are busy protesting to protect Medicaid and keep themselves out of foreign gulags, they can't divert the attention to CVE.
That's fine, protests aren't surgical tools anyway. As long as people are protesting, it's OK.
> You need to make it in Trump's interest to keep the CVE program.
This guy is ~80 years old and bragged about "person, woman, man, camera, TV." He recently got into a Tesler and exclaimed "everything's computer!" Have you seen the way his aids explain executive orders to him (like a child) before he signs them?
He doesn't have the foggiest notion of comprehension of what the CVE program is, or how it would benefit him. Unless you're greasing his wheels, it's not going to happen.
he sure understand two things.
one it costs the us and is needed by everyone, so he thinks but paying it someone will pick it up and then the us will be the free loader.
second, he understands that helps he and his pals wash dirty money.
I don't think there's any reason to believe that Trump is mentally competent to understand what's happening here or engage in any kind of meaningful negotiation.
I'm curious by what means you think Trump can be bargained with.
Do you mean things like handsfull of like-minded countries selling t-bonds? No one in the R party has any leverage, and it's not clear that even a few US billionaires could exert any influence.
Do you really think Trump has ever heard of "CVE" or could comprehend them?
No, blaming "someone inside DHS" is what makes no sense. It 100% makes sense to blame DOGE and actual perpetrators. You can stop them only if you start to blame those who do the stuff you dont like instead of blaming everyone else except them.
No, it's definitely DOGE doing all of this. Each one of these young fools need to be named and shamed. The level of damage they have done is unprecedented. They will, in their later years, hopefully look back at this time in their life with a great deal of shame and embarrassment.
I have the feeling that there will be no redemption arc for those ones and the repenting would be for show before a court of public opinion.
I'm going to be to the point here, if you guys over there don't start to heavily push and organise, and I said it already, you're one Reichstag fire away from something very bad, and from my point of view, there is probably one kristallnacht pending in the mix.
This is not a hyperbole and if someone wonders why this has relevance to the discussions, in this case most of the people around here are blue team, and it does feel like the red team has already taken anything that wasn't attached and now taking the time to take what's bolted on...
I guess the silver lining of all this, is in their hubris, they forgot the bread and games motto, so they're might still be a chance to turn things around somewhat... But the window is closing at an impressive speed.
I'm an Australian. We have a guy called Clive Palmer, who has formed a party called (no joke) the "Trumpet of Patriots". It's certain nobody will vote for him. The opposition leader married himself to MAGA (and close to Trump) and now it appears like this will prevent him from winning.
The rest of the world is mostly against Trump.
It needs to be the "shame and embarrassment" Nazis felt at the end of WWII and not the traditional shame and embarrassment they are used to feeling after losing the civil war and Jim Crow laws. It will just happen again in a generation otherwise.
Nazi did not felt shame and embarrassment. They felt loss. They felt to be weak. Nazi and Germans felt sorry for themselves after the WWII. The feeling of sorry for stuff they have done to others is something Germany found a bit later, largely due to Nuremberg and general policies not allowing it to stay hidden.
Forget about them feeling sorry for anyone but themselves. They will feel resentful and as if they were being treated unfairly even when actual clear criminal investigation happens.
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If you made this careful analysis, you'd hear "CRISSAKE WE NEED THIS DONT TOUCH IT" for almost everything (and it likely would be right for a significant portion but not everything).
That's why the current approach seems to be to axe everything, listen to how much screaming there is, then reinstate only the projects where the screaming is really loud.
So the dumbest way to do anything. Got it.
Please read Isaacson biography of Musk.
The "Musk algorithm" is described in detail, and can be summed up as a "reverse Chesterton's fence"
"If you are not forced to reinstitute 10% of the rules you slashed, you have not slashed enough".
What happens while the 10% are slashed is left as an exercise to the voter.
Hopefully, the cve db will be deemed part of the 10%.
You forget that their stated policy (and I don't doubt their commitment) is that whoever complains the loudest were probably scamming. That "honest people don't complain"
Man, I just can’t even muster the snark I usually have for these sorts of boneheaded decisions.
This sucks, plain and simple.
I can't believe what a bunch of bollocks this administration is. I couldn't believe it the first time, and this time I thought "Well at least I'm ready, it will be a lot like last time" and it's so much worse
> it will be a lot like last time
A lot of people seemed to have had this theory, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
A lot was lost in the midterms and Supreme Court appointments.
Hopefully these 4 years energize people to vote. I know protesting and direct action and so on are also important, but the gradient is not negative for voting for every office you can vote for in every election.
I'm scared that elections won't be secure, especially with the way the Republicans are trying to (arguably unconstitutionally) wield federal power to force individual states to change their systems in abrupt ways.
I fear the situation either ends badly or in a bloodshed. They aren't respecting the courts, so assuming they will accept defeat in elections is naive.
Maybe that's the only way that people can learn.
Yes, the next elections are all I have to look forward to really.
Given the current government has blown off an unanimous 9-0 supreme court decision, right now I can't feel too optimistic there will even be more elections.
I think there will be more elections, but I think they will be fraudulent, because I think Trump has shown he is adept at turning things around and then trying to pretend that what he's doing is analogous to what the other side has done.
For example, a lot of people have forgotten, but the phrase "fake news" originally came about in the wake of the 2016 election about all the (actually false) misinformation that was spread on social media in the run up to the election. Trump adeptly then co-opted the term, so any news he didn't like he could just call it "fake news", and who was to say any news he called fake was any less fake than what people were calling fake before?
My guess is the 2028 elections will be marked by fraud, and then when people protest or object, Trump and the Republicans will just say "Hey, you called all those Jan 6 protesters traitors and said the election was secure, how is now any different? Now you're all the traitors."
The only belief that gives me hope these days is "History will judge the complicit."
> Hopefully these 4 years energize people to vote
You are assuming there will be next elections that are free, fair, and matter.
Trump says a lot of things that ultimately doesn't matter, but he has also said, and is the type of brute to believe it, that he intends to stay in power. He and his cronies have successfully dismantled the checks and balances that should have prevented him from doing they, legally. IMO the only way he leaves the White House without stirring trouble is in a casket.
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> Trump tells them they are OK. They are worthwhile.
The chasm between what Trump says (and what the propaganda says about him) and what he actually does is astounding. Most of his fans are completely uninformed of what he says and does. We've never had a president (and cabinet) with more conflicts of interest. He's been a pioneer at abusing power; tariffs on Canada because of a fentanyl crisis... give me a break!
We never ever told people they are losers for wanting a better life. One of the most popular candidates for the Dem ticket was Bernie Sanders. He actually wanted to cut our biggest budget line items and spend them on the things people worry about the most (healthcare, something most Americans worry about being able to afford).
Trump is a literal billionaire. How is him telling the sons of people who used to do manufacturing that they're okay any better than a Harvard educated lawyer saying he feels for them (Trump and Vance are both Ivy League educated, btw)?
I also want Americans to have a better life. I also think we spend way too much elsewhere instead of at home. A lot of Democrats think that and drive policies for that. Trump may care about that too, but you can't vote for who makes you feel good. You have to learn how to vote for who will actually improve your life. We are the rulers of America, we have to understand our economy, our government, etc. No one is going to do it for us. I'd much rather vote for someone who talks down to me and will deliver stability than a guy who hypes me up and tanks the economy
> The Democrats say "we feel your pain" Fuck them, truly. Voters do not want some Harvard educated lawyer to "feel their pain".
Yeah, apparently they want some billionaire who doesn't pay his taxes, who was given millions by his daddy, and who famously stiffed small business contractors at his buildings, to say he feels their pain.
That said, I actually upvoted your comment because right now it's heavily downvoted but I actually think there is an important point behind your comment. It may feel insane to me, but Trump is so beloved by his base because he was the first one to really acknowledge their anger and give it validity. "Make America Great Again" is a slogan that works because a lot of people have seen their financial and social position deteriorate over the past 30-40 years and they want to go back and they want someone to blame (even if going back is impossible and they're blaming the wrong people). Trump understood this, the Democrats didn't, or worse, branded anyone who harbored some of this anger as a bigot. This is basically how all fascist leaders come to power - the parallels with Mussolini are uncanny, right down to having a minor body part shot off in an assassination attempt.
Relevant recent example to me: a lot of folks can't understand the hypocrisy about bitching about inflation under Biden, but then saying "we'll hunker down" in response to the expected inflation from tariffs. The difference is the Trump base believes he is taking them "back to the promised land", and for better or worse Trump is definitely a man of action, so they're more willing to put up with temporary hardships if they think the direction is right. With Biden and the Dems, they just believe they'll get more of the "slow slide."
> Trump is so beloved by his base because he was the first one to really acknowledge their anger and give it validity. "Make America Great Again" is a slogan that works because a lot of people have seen their financial and social position deteriorate over the past 30-40 years and they want to go back and they want someone to blame (even if going back is impossible and they're blaming the wrong people).
I agree. And they're not wrong to want to go back or blame someone. We can "go back" in terms of increasing the QoL of our populace. Idk, the Democrats were always clear about wanting to uplift people. Obamacare and Medicare for All were extremely clear policy positions meant to uplift the common man. Eliminating student debt (a policy I don't agree with) was also obviously positioned to help people improve their economic and social standing.
I don't know why people say Democrats missed this and Trump saw it? The Democrats won on slogans that capitalized exactly this sentiment. Obama's "Hope" and "Yes we can" are obviously in a context where people didn't have hope or questioned whether we could.
I think he just got lucky against bad candidates, and we ascribe way too much to his branding and the other garbage. Clinton's branding was about HER (i.e. I'm with her), not about THE PEOPLE (biggest political branding mistake in the 21st century imo). And Harris never had the popularity to go to to toe with Trump.
Idk, I think people are mad, but I think the Democrats have spoken to that more authentically and proven themselves to actually do things that help the common man than Trump ever has
The Democrats were always constrained by what's reasonable, whereas Trump has been able to promise the sky, even though delivering it means the sky is now falling.
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The real irony here is that a lot of ycombinator founders and the people reading HN were exactly the ones making this possible and now start to wonder why the snake eats its own tail.
Or they wanted this, because this could be part of the privatization of many government functions. They, or at least some of them, could see this as controlling this function for money. It's a regular stream too, the valuable subscription model and customers who really need the service (and if they don't, just add a new law in the name of IT security forcing firms to sign up).
The missing funding is something like 2 million dollars. Any US company could make this issue go away in an instant.
Its not a money problem, its a understanding problem.
Shouldn't the most powerful country has something like this? Being even in the forefront of it?
The USA was doing cyberprotection against Russia and cyberattacks across the world.
Now suddenly it doesn't need it anymore?
Like just did Russia go away (or has russia won and sits now in the white house)?
We will see. I understand that money shouldn't be an issue but trust might be, no?
exactly; I hope ycombinator and its proponents can enjoy living in the ancap fantasy land where you have to pay to be alerted for a climate change fueled mega hurricane (also caused by this exact same reckless, unregulated greed) because NOAA was disbanded. Billionaires shouldn't exist, but neither should millionaires.
You don't need MITRE
For-profit private journaling is working really well for academia!
Sorry, I made the mistake of installing PyPy.
I assume that this comment should go somewhere else or I'm not able to decipher the message ;)
PyPy's logo is a snake eating its tail.
Cool thanks!
Weren't there major problems with the current CVE implementation, especially with the waves of script kiddies and AI tools spamming the database and the fact that projects who take security seriously have little to no say in the "score" that gets assigned?
As an active consumer of CVEs: yea there are major problems. No there's nothing better and no I don't have any better ideas.
The scores are mostly useless, I would not care if they disappeared, I do not look at them. I don't really understand why people get so upset about garbage scores though. If a high CVSS score creates a bunch of work for you then your vuln mag process is broken IMO. (Or alternatively, you are in the business of compliance rather than security. If you don't like working in compliance, CVSS scores aren't the root cause of your misery).
Having a central list of "here's a bunch of things with stable IDs that you might or might not care about" is very valuable.
> you are in the business of compliance rather than security.
So, most businesses. They all need their ISO/NIST/HIPAA/etc certs.
Yeah, most businesses need window cleaners too. If you're a window cleaner and you complain about all the birds shitting on windows, I dunno what to tell ya.
If you're working in compliance either
A) you're stuck in your compliance job, that sucks, CVSS scores aren't the reason why though.
B) you enjoy compliance.
C) you should change jobs.
and then a random 9.8 critical comes that affects some software you have in a way that makes it a 0 in your environment but it doesn't matter cause the cve tanks your organizational Security Score (tm) by 10 arbitrary points and management is wondering when you'll secure the company again because the Security Score is their only tangible deliverable to measure success
It’s Way Better than what we had before: software vendors making even arbitrarier decisions about how to classify them.
There are far too many bad actors for us to operate as an industry with no yardstick.
I disagree that it is Way Better than before. A judgement call is worth more than a team wasting effort chasing irrelevant pseudo-vulnerabilities being reported as vulnerabilities. A broken yardstick is worse than no yardstick.
Spot on. Vulnerability scanners that make up an organizational Security Score (TM) tend to operate at the wrong level of abstraction, flagging some library somewhere that never runs and has nothing to do with your production flow or architecture, or some test keys with zero security impact. Go explain that to management, because obviously the security tools are right and you are wrong. This sad state of affairs is unfortunately the best that the security industry has been able to deliver. Trying to wrangle complexity by adding more complexity is the craziest notion to me. Yes, no scoring scheme is perfect, but when the scheme introduces more noise, what have we gained (well, security vendors gain, but what have organizations gained).
This is my research field. Do you have any input you can think of at the top of your head?
And it's not enough to explain it to management, you also need to explain it to your ISO auditors, your customers et cetera ad nauseam.
Yeah like when we bundled in a .js library for client side date processing that has a CVE affecting node.js servers with high score. Our auditors don’t care they tag the whole app as high risk. It doesn’t even run on the server!
Incompetent auditors don't detract from the classification system, though. If we removed every data point auditors misinterpret or don't care to understand, we may as well remove all metrics.
the auditors that sign off on your security to meet your clients requirements usually know way less about your security posture than your clients do
its all just surface-level box-checking. most companies required to get 'penetration tests' just get an overpriced Nessus scan sold as a pentest and that meets their reqs.
while this is true it in no way diminishes the value that orgs like cve provide
Solving this problem in a generalized way is really hard.
Maybe I have a dependency on Foo which has a critical vulnerability in a feature that I don't use. I suppress the warning and all is well. Then two weeks later someone on my team decides to use that feature, not knowing that there's a problem with it. Now we're fucked, and we'll never know because the vulnerability has been suppressed.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of good. It is(was?) a very useful and important system.
Trump must be receiving a lot of emails from companies wanting to fill the void, and I bet the Trumpiest of them all is going to be awarded a contract worth 10x the budget CVE had, and do a much worse job.
Most tracking tools have exception processes. But yeah, security as a product family instead of a simple score seems to be a foreign concept at most companies.
I feel that. So tired of management being completely uninterested in actual, actionable security holes but getting wildly spun up because they saw a notice with a big scary number that has absolutely no relevance in our architecture.
The scores were never going to be that accurate across people's environments (IDK how much other places relied on them, places I worked never did that much) and issues with the scores don't seem to be a good justification to torch the whole CVE system anyway.
This^ and to add to that, at the very least MITRE assigned IDs which is great. Plus they did an initial scoring, which, well… will never be perfect like you said and I’m sure these things evolve throughout time and get better (not talking necessarily CVSS vX).
What a shame on this current gov. administration, if you can even call it that.
Why isn't it a good justification?
I think the question everyone in this thread should ask is: why is it the government's job to do this, especially given the prior widespread view that they're doing a bad job? Is the software industry so immiserated by poverty that it cannot organize its own distribution of security bulletins? Clearly not: GitHub already runs its own vuln tracking scheme that's better integrated with the tooling we use for open source software. The industry routinely sets up collaborations like standards bodies, information sharing groups and more. And there is as whole ecosystem of security companies to help you understand vulns in your stack.
So there seems nothing specific to CVEs that requires government involvement, but the existence of the tax funded scheme does discourage the creation of competitors that might function better.
But, to CVE or not to CVE ... that is not the question. US deficit spending is out of control. This sort of thing had to happen some day. It's what Europeans in the 2010s called "austerity" and it always makes some people scream but this graph:
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/natio...
... is not sustainable. Up to 1984 overall US debt was stable. Since then its growth rate became dangerous. Debt/GDP ratio is now worse than just after WW2. The federal government is currently spending more on interest than on defense or Medicare:
https://www.crfb.org/blogs/interest-costs-have-nearly-triple...
The US is currently getting its first taste of what parts of Europe started going through in 2008, and unfortunately there's bad news: the cuts you're seeing now are mostly cosmetic. They're what can be done within the current framework of laws, sort of, with lots of bending of the rules and creative interpretations of them and maybe some oversteps. But it's just the start of what's needed. Large scale reform of the laws themselves will be required regardless of whoever wins the next elections.
> why is it the government's job to do this?
Because the private sector can't see past their profit motive to the national defense motive.
I don't know of anyone who doesn't quickly become exhausted after running a CVE scanner on their code.
This will get lost in the noise, but i think you mean cvss.
CVE is simply identification of a flaw, not a scoring system.
Sure. There's also major problems with the video encoding pipeline at my big tech job. Let's just delete it
Getting a bit tired of posts like this (no offense), something dumb / nefarious happens like funding is cut for <useful thing>, then someone posts an off the cuff comment or question like, "wasn't this <useful thing> not that useful because <superficial reason>?".
Why do people do this, to down play all the destruction of the last few months? Seems to be some type of coping mechanism.
> Weren't there major problems with the current CVE implementation
Absolutely. And if the headline was "DHS proposes improvements and streamlining to the CVE program" we'd all probably be cheering.
Leaping from "This is Flawed" to "Let's kill This" is a logical fallacy. A flawed security registry is clearly better than no security registry.
There are a lot of logical fallacies. Have you heard of the sunk-cost one? Or fallacy fallacy maybe? Or ten-tendril eschatomon fallacy?
In honesty to say "logical fallacy" is spoddy, I advise against for aesthetic reason.
These sound like downstream effects of funding stress to me, no?
This is bikeshedding. The point is an authoritative process and an identifier
All this does is help Putin and other rich grifters.
you like to say word 'bikeshedding', adoption of formal intellectualish sounding terminology even when inappropriate is orange-site affliction I advise against. I am saying this for your own sake... speak truths with POWER
It's a legitimate term. It's like criticizing use of the word startup or demanding someone put a dash in frontend or backend.
term is real... but is more like criticizing misuse of word startup. to be even more accurate it is what I said and not anything else
Maybe you don't see how it's bikeshedding. Ah well, let me try to explain.
It's because it's like if someone had forgotten to validate the user's role in an endpoint in a Django app, and someone said that they should have used Rails because it's easier to understand. In reality both are easy enough to understand to be able to do an authorization check, and the framework isn't the issue. So the person suggesting Rails is bikeshedding.
Likewise, if someone made another vulnerability database it would likely have the same issue, and this isn't really the place to solve it. If somehow this does trigger the realization to solve it, then it will be by luck.
We're getting into pedantic arguments, but bikeshedding is when multiple people argue to death about the easy stuff because it's easy, and don't argue at all about the actually hard stuff, because none of them know enough to argue about it. I don't know what your example is, but it's not bikeshedding.
I had argued for a less pedantic take, but I guess by replying to you I'm being pedantic. It seems to me that my example not only is bikeshedding by the definitions I find but also that to me it fits your definition of it. It's easier to talk about what framework you think is best than it is to talk meaningfully about process, which is more relevant place to look to prevent serious bugs, assuming both frameworks are capable. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding
Bikeshedding is when people need to make a decision on something, and keep talking and talking about the easy stuff. Your example of someone offering a driveby opinion isn't an instance of a group of people needing to make a decision.
Ah, it wasn't a driveby opinion how I imagined it, and I've experienced stuff like it in the past. It would then go into talking about rails features and libraries that could save the day, and the django counterparts. The decision that needed to be made would be what action to take to prevent a similar issue from occurring in the future.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but bikeshedding is when you say "OK guys we need to figure out the architecture of this complicated new service" and then there's a bunch of debate on libraries and frameworks and very little debate on the actual (hard) problem it needs to solve.
This makes me wonder what other stuff most people don't know exists but is important to our society has quietly disappeared in the last few weeks. We know about this one because we know it's important. What are the things we don't know about?
https://www.project2025.observer/ lists a few. Of course, those are only the agencies the Trump people know about and explicitly want to destroy, but it's a start.
If you work on OSS software on CVE management, then you already know that NVD funding reductions have been ongoing for more than a year.
April 2024, https://nvd.nist.gov/general/news/nvd-program-transition-ann...
Sep 2024, Yocto Project, "An open letter to the CVE Project and CNAs", https://github.com/yoctoproject/cve-cna-open-letter/blob/mai...> Security and vulnerability handling in software is of ever increasing importance. Recent events have adversely affected many project's ability to identify and ensure these issues are addressed in a timely manner. This is extremely worrying.. Until recently many of us were relying not on the CVE project's data but on the NVD data that added that information.
Five years ago (2019), I helped to organize a presentation by the CERT Director from Carnegie Mellon, who covered the CVE backlog and lack of resources, e.g. many reported vulnerabilities never even receive a CVE number. It has since averaged < 100 views per year, even as the queue increased and funding decreased, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmC65VrnBPI
I did find this post to be non-helpful and confusing. It would be helpful to edit it (or write differently in the future) to clarify that the sudden defunding event occurring today is separate and not related to the previous funding cuts. If that's the case.
Is there no connection between 2025 funding cuts and previous ones? e.g. If a year of work after the previous cuts resulted in an open-data collaboration between NVD and commercial vendors to share a subset of CC0 vulnerability metadata, could that industry collective now argue for government to share (with companies) the burden of funding an open, decentralized program for CVE tracking? Commercial vendors could still offer additional metadata and analytics, over and above the public baseline.
Edit_1: found a proposed bill, April 2025, https://fedscoop.com/public-private-partnerships-bill-nist-h...
> A bipartisan bill that would establish a nonprofit foundation aimed at boosting private-sector partnerships at the National Institute of Standards and Technology was reintroduced in the House and the Senate.. the proposed foundation structure was described as replicating similar nonprofits that support public-private partnerships at other science agencies.. we encourage a strategy that leverages NIST’s leadership and expertise on standards development, voluntary frameworks, public-private sector collaboration, and international harmonization.. NIST’s funding has been in focus following a budget cut of roughly 12% to $1.46 billion in fiscal year 2024.
Edit_2: is there a shortage of database rows, or people to write a shell script? Why not pre-allocate N CVE IDs for every CNA, while a new plan is worked out? At least one random commercial vendor could foresee the shutdown early enough to reserve CVEs.
> Garrity posted on LinkedIn, “Given the current uncertainty surrounding which services at MITRE or within the CVE Program may be affected, VulnCheck has proactively reserved 1,000 CVEs for 2025,” adding that Vulncheck “will continue to provide CVE assignments to the community in the days and weeks ahead.”
I am now more confused and not less.
Do you have any visibility into pre-2024 funding for the NIST NVD and MITRE CVE programs?
MITRE CVE/CWE contract, $29M for 2024-2025, https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_70RCSJ24FR0000018...
What has been ongoing for more than a year?
The funding appears to have been cut off today, and both of these comments seem to talk about continuing work and how important it is.
Do you mean to say that some form of threat to the NVD has been around for over a year now? Just want to be sure I'm parsing correctly!
Yes, NVD funding cuts and a growing CVE backlog began in late 2023.
May 2024, https://therecord.media/nist-database-backlog-growing-vulnch...
> Moving forward, cybersecurity companies will have to “fill the void” .. NVD said in April [2024] that it is “working to establish a consortium to address challenges in the NVD program and develop improved tools and methods.” .. CISA acknowledged the concerns and outrage of the security community and said it is starting an enrichment effort called “Vulnrichment," which will add much of the information described by Garrity to CVEs.
The second VulnCon event took place last week and no silver bullet has appeared, https://ygreky.com/2025/04/vulncon-2025-impressions/
That says nothing about a funding cut, see my comment below
Following your comment's reference leads to a claim of NVD needing 300 to 550 million (?!) per year, but only receiving 4 million in funding. If anyone has pre-2024 data on NVD or MITRE CVE funding, that would be helpful, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43701532
There is nothing in that article mentioning funding reductions.
That article is about how the volume of software vulnerabilities are increasing, resulting in difficulty keeping up by the CVE and NVD projects.
Please stop spamming this thread with political spin.
Both CVE (MITRE contract) and NVD are funded by NIST, https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/100795-understandi...
> Since February 2024, the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) National Vulnerability Database (NVD) has encountered delays in processing vulnerabilities.. caused by factors such as software proliferation, budget cuts and changes in support.. NIST, an agency within the United States Commerce Department, saw its budget cut by nearly 12% this year.
Reading that article closely it says nothing about an NVD budget cut, only a NIST one. They were trackijg the changes after NIST's budget was cut, not NVD's. As pointed out below, CISA announced a cut and then NIST more than made up for it by reallocating funds, for an NVD funding increase, even though NIST had their overall budget cut.
One of your references has budget numbers that are two orders (?!) of magnitude higher than the CISA number. Hopefully someone can chime in with granular historical data for NIST NVD and MITRE-via-NIST CVE funding.
I've noticed that there's a post like this in most articles on HN that could be construed as negative for the current administration: some vague false statement followed by either a factually incorrect explanation or some quote that does not support the statement.
What is incorrect about the post above? There are citations from multiple reputable news outlets for each claim.
People who actually work with CVEs have been posting about this problem on HN for 18 months.
Your post has now been edited to be factually correct. But the misleading implication that this abrupt cut is part of some other cuts that started before remains.
Anyone that silently edits their posts after being called out for misleading statements or lies is arguing in bad faith.
If you still have a cached copy of their original post you should publicly edit your earliest reply with their original quote.
The post (currently AND previous to comments being moved here from a different HN thread) links to the official _2024_ (not 2025) statement about NVD cutbacks. Here's a 3000 word article with quotes from Linux Foundation and commercial vendors, around the same time, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43700884
NVD != CVE
NIST owns the budget for both NVD and CVE, contracting MITRE to operate the CVE program.
NIST budget was cut 12% in FY 2024 (Oct 2023 - Sep 2024).
An earlier bill to supplement NIST funding has been reintroduced in 2025, https://fedscoop.com/public-private-partnerships-bill-nist-h...
Why do you post this on a comment that is neither of those things then?
I'm trying to steelman but I really can't think of a non- nefarious justification for this
I think it’s ignorance and arrogance. The US seems to be on a path to lose technological and science leadership. The current leadership doesn’t seem to understand things that aren’t flashy. I wonder when they’ll dial back on food safety. I am sure RFK knows some vitamins that protect against salmonella
important to note: the US's food safety is already really bad. salmonella isn't a thing you have to worry about in first world countries. can't wait to see what plague demon spawns out of a food industry running amok after the FDA gets gutted.
> important to note: the US's food safety is already really bad. salmonella isn't a thing you have to worry about in first world countries.
There were 65,000 cases of salmonellosis in the EU in the most recent data I could find (2022). Thats a lower per capita rate than the US, but definitely not zero.
I agree that it’s not zero, but according to CDC, the US sees about 1.35 million cases per year in a population of about 346 million, which is about 390 cases per 100,000 people. Your figure for the EU over a population of 447 million in 2022 gives 14.5 cases per 100,000 people, or more than a factor of 26 less.
Being 26 times less worried about something translates, at least for most things, for me, to not being worried about it any more.
Salmonella and it causes are very regional in EU. Places like Finland have basically 0 cases of salmonella caused by domestic poultry products per year. If there salmonella is found from any chicken in the flock, the whole flock will be quarantined and generally fully slaughtered (meat & eggs must be pasteurized after the slaughter if they are sold). In 2023 0.1% of the tested flocks had salmonella.
According to https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11945640/ most of the outbreaks in humans (where exact cause was found) were caused by foreign vegetables.
On other hand countries like Italy find positive samples from 27% of their flocks ( https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa... ). USA doesn't do testing at that level as far I understand, I only found that 8% of the tested chicken parts have salmonella (https://www.propublica.org/article/salmonella-chicken-usda-f...).
That’s just not true.
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/15/nx...
At least American chicken is chlorinated:
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/15/nx...
From the the very article you linked
"The vast majority of chicken processed in the United States is not chilled in chlorine and hasn't been for quite a few years," says Dianna Bourassa, an applied poultry microbiologist at Auburn University, "So that's not the issue."
the guy is ultimate small gov. he wants to rip it out by the roots.
I don't think he's considered a small gov conservative. He increased spending last time and has continued so far this term. His tariffs are one of the biggest expansions in gov interference in modern history. They are also attempting to significantly expand executive power beyond even 9/11 terrorism days.
Small enough to fit in a uterus, big enough to kidnap and shoot citizens
Reduce government spending; since it's not actually a government organization (as far as I can tell, I never looked into it before), other organizations can fund it. How much goes into this organization a year anyway? I'm seeing a Mitre corporation that does lots of other stuff too that has a revenue of 2.2 billion a year.
Multi-trillion-dollar companies benefit from and contribute to this system, surely they can spare 0.01% of their revenue to this bit of critical infrastruture?
> surely they can spare 0.01% of their revenue
They would, if we made companies pay their taxes.
Yes, you can also run such a system based on donations. But I personally think that such a system is important enough to be paid for by the government. When you run on donations, there will always be conflicts of interest and the risk of running out of funds.
But yeah, Mitre being a private organization that was paid for by the government was a problem.
MITRE is a non-profit, it receives about $1.5B from the federal government, and another almost $2B from Virginia.
Yes, I'm sure corporations funding the CVE system would go wonderfully. "It would be best if we don't see any severe CVEs for our products this quarter, if you want our funding next quarter."
It's incredibly foolish. Whatever the justification is, it doesn't matter as much as the horrible outcome.
This is one of those things the government does for the benefit of the whole.
Reduce spending. Steelmanning (not actually believing this): it probably cost a lot for what is essentially a database, and can be done cheaply by private sector (Google, Microsoft).
Privatize all teh things?
April 2024 article on the result of NVD funding cutbacks, with comments by Linux Foundation OpenSSF, security startups like ChainGuard and commercial vendors, https://www.securityweek.com/cve-and-nvd-a-weak-and-fracture...
Despite all those private companies and various OSS projects being willing to contribute ideas, infrastructure and code, they have somehow failed to coalesce into a decentralized replacement for NVD, built on CC0 data and OSS tooling.I tried to look over the history and I only see a funding increase, CISA cut $3.7 million at the end of 2023 for the next year and in response NIST reallocated extra funding to NVD: $8.5 million in 2024
A funding shortfall and strain isn't a funding cut. And from what I see there was a funding increase.
Would appreciate a pointer to the source, thank you.
2025 article claims 30% increase in 2024 workload, https://www.securityweek.com/mitre-signals-potential-cve-pro...
> According to NIST, while the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) is processing incoming CVEs at the same rate as before the slowdown in spring and early summer 2024, a 32 percent jump in submissions last year means that the backlog continues to grow.
Can search these for the links
2023
> CISA had previously been supporting the NIST NVD program with approximately $3.7 million per year in interagency funding, which they have discontinued
2024
> While NIST has since reallocated $8.5 million to NVD for fiscal years 2024 and 2025
Assuming that's spread over both years it wasn't as big of an increase as I said, but is still an increase even inflation adjusted.
> 2025 article claims 30% increase in 2024 workload
Underfunding in the face of more workload isn't itself a funding cut.
Thanks for the pointer. Is this a lobbying org? https://www.fdd.org/analysis/policy_briefs/2025/03/21/delaye...
> While NIST has since reallocated $8.5 million to NVD for fiscal years 2024 and 2025, this funding remains a fraction of the $300 million to $400 million estimated to be needed annually to fully restore capacity, with an additional $120 million to $150 million required to prevent further system “deterioration.”
Did NVD receive 300MM annual funding pre-2024? That would be a 98% funding cut.
300 million would’ve been a quarter of the NIST budget. Doubt.
Yeah, bizarre site.
MITRE CVE/CWE budget is more transparent than NVD since it's a contract, listed on USAspending.gov.
This neo-liberal approach has no place for soft diplomacy, which is what US hegemoney relies on.
This isn't just a rapid disassembly of economic structures, any trust and goodwill is completely obliterated as well.
For decades, the US could be counted upon to fund things with little immediate benefit but massive long-term positive externalities. I don't think its likely that the republican party will "go back to normal" post-Trump, so we can all kiss the long-term reputation building that American hegemony relied upon goodbye. Short of a great depression-esque political reset, I do not see things changing for the better.
> I really can't think of a non- nefarious justification for this
Tragedy of the commons - NVD and the CVE project havr been backlogged and facing funding issues for a couple years now, and most security vendors are either cagey about providing vulns in a timely manner (as it can reduce their own comparative advantage), or try upsell their own alternative risk prioritization scores.
Every company will gladly use NVD and CVE data, but no one wants to subsidize it and help a competitor, especially in an industry as competitive as cybersecurity.
The process seems to be to dismantle anything not nailed down in government.
Now if you want that (even just funding) to be a thing ... you have to go through Trump & Co and pay your bribe to get it back up.
Probably the thinking goes that someone in the international community will step in. CVE is in practice a global registry for all, thus "Why should the USA Department of Homeland Security pay for all the freeloaders".
Still shortsighted and stupid, but it's plausible this is intended as leverage to get someone else to pony up.
> I'm trying to steelman
Why? This administration is not acting in good faith, you don't have to act as if they are. People and institutions doing that is part of how we got here in the first place.
I still find it wild that so many people are trying to frame these decisions through a political lens. This is the actions of a foreign bad actor dismantling critical institutions from within, not "bad policy".
Surely there's an antibody response.
> I still find it wild that so many people are trying to frame these decisions through a political lens.
Why? The decisions are pretty well politically aligned with the ideology which detests the size and scope of the government (realistically, those aspects which the ideologues feel are not in their interest). What is unexpected is the swiftness and the brutality of action, but revolutions tend to be messy, and make no mistake, this is a revolution.
> This is the actions of a foreign bad actor
Now this sounds like a coping strategy: everything is so preposterous it couldn't possibly be homegrown. Foreign influence and underhanded actions are as old as human interactions, but IMO outright plants can't succeed without a massive economic and power asymmetry between the adversaries.
lol, coping strategy? I'm not American and have no reason to 'cope' with anything. There is enough evidence to make a strong allegation about Trump being a Russian asset.
The entire world seems to be able to 'cope' with that assessment.
They are not. Trump is no libertarian or small government guy. The build the wall guy is the opposite of that. Even with stuff like social security he usually at least rhetorically claimed to be for more benifits (as long as it goes to "real Americans") and he is all for increasing police and military spending. And generally spending more on stuff that gives him money. Plus giant tax increases (tarrifs). He doesn't care much if government is dismembered as long as it owns the libs and gets rid of the public corruption prosecutors/others who might stand up to him
Trump's actions towards Putin are highly irrational. Maybe he's being blackmailed, maybe he's being bought, maybe he just has likes Putins style but there is a reason people suspect him despite it being unlikely in the general case.
> He doesn't care much if government is dismembered
This is exactly the process that conservatives take to privatise services into their own friends pockets. Destroy services until they're ineffective and use it as an excuse to privatise it.
There's no such thing as small government, only large sprawling private services that the government hands money to.
Force of habit. We don't have a framework for talking under these circumstances, so we apply our outdated ones.
As you say, that's exactly what got us here. But the alternatives are very unclear, and seem deeply unpleasant.
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It is the belief that it is not in good faith that makes it more important that you try to steelman it.
If the steelmanning fails then you can you can be even more confident that it is in bad faith.
>> I'm trying to steelman
> Why?
It's a sensible practice and good practice
Imagine being eaten alive by a cackling hyena that ambushed you and all the while being like "hmm what is the appropriate steelman here? why do I deserve this? why is this just?"
In reality this would never happen so all these people playing steelman are just detached/insulated.
We have a 2tn deficit. If Congress wants to fund this, they need to make it mandatory spending and raise taxes.
That's a good idea to raise during the budget time or with some warning ahead of time. But even discussing the cost of CVE program itself is likely a waste of time and money. When trying to deal with 2tn deficit, looking at things that historically got ~$5M is just a distraction. And the lack of it may cost even more given how many existing agreements/contracts rely on cve to be a thing - maybe just in gov lawyers having to rewrite things.
Selling bonds is not the same thing as a family budget being in the red. Either you know this and you're making this argument in bad faith, or you don't and, well...
Or cut from $877B in defense spending instead?
https://usafacts.org/government-spending/
Listen, I hate the debt, but we have an income problem, not a spending problem. The military looks like a waste, but it does more than build bombs i.e research etc.
The issue we have is that republican every chance they get since the 1970s have cut taxes. And then blamed democrats for causing the deficits. We don't need smaller governments. We need a reasonable tax system that taxes people. It can be progressive like it was before we decided rich people just need it easier than poor people.
Yes, I will pay more taxes sign me up, especially if they can finally fix the roads and fund research. The problem is my taxes as a middle-class person go up and rich people get a tax cut. It's stupid. I like water provided by government utilities, I like planes that don't crash into stuff because there are air traffic controllers. These things used to work because we paid for them. When you buy cheap you get cheap.
Yeah republicans claim to want to run the government like a business, but the first thing a business should do when they have a deficit is raise revenue! And especially in the case of the US government, the the only barriers to doing that are self-imposed.
Military also employs a bunch of people who otherwise would be poor. Also provides a gentrification path for a bunch of previously poor people extending throughout their lives.
Yes, a big part of the size is because the military is a massive and horrendously inefficient jobs, education, housing, and healthcare program.
Don't forget all the beak-wetting that happens along the way when signing contracts etc. That's where an actual difference could be made.
This is an absolute pittance compared to the total budget. And considering the current administration wants a $4T tax cut they are not interested in trimming the deficit at all.
Yep, DOGE is a song and dance distraction. If they were serious about lowering the deficit they wouldn't have laid off ~12K IRS workers (whom show a 7x ROI per head.) They also wouldn't be asking to increase the military budget to $1 trillion per year. Trump has spent 1/3 of his days in office so far golfing; $30 million+ so far paid to Trump properties for the privilege of that. This is the biggest capture in US history and it's all out in the open.
Republicans control Congress, this is bait
Dear god, you don't just stop running government completely because you have a deficit.
We don’t need to spend tax dollars to increment sequential integers.
The “CVE program” can be done by a volunteer or two in spare time. It’s not some major operation, it’s just a registry of integers that can live on GitHub.
Thanks for volunteering to manage the "300-600 CVEs each month"!
The world needs more volunteers like you.
I imagine most of those CVEs not being anything meaningful and just script kiddies trying to put something on their portfolio
all the meaningful ones will show up on HN
Make that 3,000-4,000 on average per month, according to NISTs stats on CVEs for last year. ~40,000 for 2024.
You manage the system and not the CVEs themselves. The simplist thing would be a list of numbers that correspond to Google docs. The owner of the Google doc can share it with the needed parties and eventually set it as public.
You truly believe that the CVE database (and others like CWE) are only about assigning serial numbers to random reports, don't you? I see people underestimating and understanding the work of others in matters like this. Is that a trend now?
I saw this same behavior quite a while back. While I'm out of the CVE game these days, it seems that there is a forever rotating new group of people who simply don't and can never see the complexities on the process.
I think it's a testament to the previous stewardship that it appears so simple.
No I don't believe that, but it might as well operate like that. The extra stuff isn't truly needed and was being outsourced to the companies that own the products since it wasn't providing much value. Take a look at Daniel's blog posts about CVEs for curl for what happens when you let them handle it.
How do you get your volunteers in the first place and manage them so you know it's time to get a new one if the quality of their work is slipping?
Yet so far no volunteer has emerged and people who do run CNA are pretty busy with it.
I think sneak would volunteer to do it since it is pretty simple according to them.
Any work people don't understand must be easy and replaceable by chatgpt. Just look at how easy people here think farming is.
Grok becoming an artificial nepobaby running the entire CVE program with zero oversight sounds so fucking funny I don't even care, PLEASE god make this real holy shit I can't breathe at the thought
There were some, short-lived, projects/groups trying to run their own processes. DWF is one that I recall, though it is dead again:
https://lwn.net/Articles/851849/
Found the blackhat
Who needs volunteers? Let AI handle it!
This is like saying the patent system is just an incrementing counter.
Have you seen the patents they have been giving out lately?
Root cause: Layer 8 failure
https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/l/layer8.htm
My tinfoil hat says they want to privatize this through one of the administrations friends. A disastrous decision here.
Why would they spend money to replace it? The idea is to weaken and destroy the US and its institutions. Giving Palantir money might mean that security improves, and that goes against their goals. They have already demanded that Russia stop being treated as a cybersecurity threat in other areas of the government, this is a way to ensure that systems are vulnerable to attack.
Exactly. The Trump admin is well on its way tanking the USD with tariffs and getting every country (including the penguins) mad at us. The rationalization given by the admin for tariffs (trade imbalance) make zero sense, and they haven't offered anything else.
Palantir is about to get a contract.
I thought that the point of the CVE database is to improve security, not wreck it?
s/is/was/
Or worse, NSO Group
I’m sure a much better private sector alternative will appear any day, in line with conservative dogma.
The latest contract[1] (I hope this is the right one) for MITRE's involvement with CVE and CWE programs was USD$29.1m for the period 2024-04-17 to 2025-04-16 with optional extension of expenditure up to USD$57.8m and to an end date of 2026-04-16.
Seemingly MITRE hasn't been advised yet whether the option to extend the contract from 2025-04-16 to 2026-04-16 will be executed. And there doesn't appear to be any other publicly listed approach to market for a replacement contract.
[1] https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/jsp/viewLinkController.jsp?age...
I can't figure out why the hue and cry wasn't raised until the very last minute. Did they not know a month ago that they were running out of time? Is it standard practice for the government not to say they're going to extend the contract until the day beforehand or something?
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The white house prefers chaos. This will certainly be a step in that direction.
Long term its probably good to have a less US-centric world.
This is a chance for the EU to step up and take over. If the US government won't pay for the CVE program, the EU surely could. Many EU countries already run a program like this to server their own interests, and I believe the EU does as well.
If the US is willing to give up influence and control over the cybersecurity sector, we should accept that gift and use it to our advantage.
What are the implications of this? No more centralized store of vulnerability information?
According to Brian Krebs: https://infosec.exchange/@briankrebs/114343835430587973
> Hearing a bit more on this. Apparently it's up to the CVE board to decide what to do, but for now no new CVEs will be added after tomorrow. the CVE website will still be up.
Basically when any software/library/whatever has a vulnerability, they have to communicate that out themselves, in some format.
If I'm developing a product built on 20 libraries, it won't just be a matter of scanning CVEs for major vulnerabilities any more, so I'm more likely to miss one.
"always update" doesn't always work, when to manage a product you realistically have to version pin.
So, while arguably true, there wont be a single source of truth of new cve's. It doesn't however mean there wont be.
I would imagine the only SANE option would be some kind of git repository where CNA's can collaborate. Probably run some code across to make the website that people can easily access.
It's going to be a mess.
They surprise is: they won't. This will weaken the West.
This is dangerously stupid.
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Is MITRE's CVE program redundant with NIST's National Vulnerability Database? I'm having a hard time telling how the two are related, or if NVD is simply performing the same service as MITRE.
NIST NVE relies on the CVE program. (vulnerabilities get reported, MITRE assigns CVEs and publishes them, NIST then copies that list and adds their own scoring etc to it)
Once they fire everyone at NIST, they’ll have that in common.
Phew, no new annoying CVE reports in my Docker images from today
Why cant wikipedia foundation step in? They have millions of dollars.
> In a stunning development
Who is still stunned by these things? They want you to be stunned; they want you to tell everyone else that you're stunned to spread feelings of terror and powerlessness. If you actually are stunned, you are stunningly ignorant. If you are not and still saying it, perhaps to emphasize your unhappiness, you are a 'useful idiot'. Either way, if you are saying it, you are a useful idiot.
You should have known decades ago: The GOP impeached a President for lying about sex; they fabricated intelligence to invade another country (killing thousands of Americans and 100,000+ Iraqis) - and that was all before 2004. They've voted almost unanimously, multiple times, to bankrupt the country (by refusing to authorize debt for existing obligations). Nobody (i.e., the Dems failed to) stopped them or made them pay a price, so why wouldn't they keep doing those things. (Edit: And if you object because the analysis criticizes one side and therefore you reject it as partisan, that's a big part of the reason nothing was done.)
This time they published Project 2025, telling you what they were going to do.
Project 2025 literally calls for dismantling the DHS. Seems pretty unsurprising that the CVE database wouldn’t be in the list of things they’d care to maintain in that process.
It’s a reckless move to cut funding so abruptly, but taking a step back from the short-term chaos, it probably is an anomaly that this was government funded. All of private tech relies on it, and private tech is big enough to pay for it. I hope that the trillion dollar babies consider this an opportunity to pool together to form a foundation that funds this, and a bunch of other open source projects run by one random person in Nebraska.
Ah yes the old “well can’t concerned citizens band together, form a committee, collect revenue and fund things that are in the common interest” answer you hear from small government types that makes me think you lot don’t really understand what government actually is.
> it probably is an anomaly that this was government funded
Companies can definitely fund it. But to be fair the gov, including NIST, also relies on CVE.
> it probably is an anomaly that this was government funded. All of private tech relies on it, and private tech is big enough to pay for it.
I mean doesn't big tech and the people they give salary money to pay taxes? Ground transportation companies rely on public roads and but we fund it because having the infrastructure is an economic multiplier.
I'm not arguing in favor of funding the CVE program, I just don't think that's a good reason.
Opinions vary on what the purpose of government is, but if you take the view that the government's priorities should be providing services that are impossible, inefficient, or unethical to provide privately, then I don't see the CVE program making the cut, when the tech industry is collectively flush with resources and has every incentive to form an industry consortium to take it over.
A modern Open Group, perhaps?
ah yes, let private entities pay for it. then when there is a vulnerability with one of those entities' software, they can pay a bit more to bury it!
I'm surprised that it was USA's responsibility to fund this in the first place. Why weren't other countries providing funds?
The US has made at least hundreds of billions of dollars from it's tech companies and has had a dominance over global tech for a long time. The tech industry has brought a crazy amount of money and power to the US so it makes sense the US puts extra effort to support it.
The US isn't supporting it out of charity, it's good for US businesses to have someone coordinating this for everyone. Why would we want to rely on other countries to be supporting our tech sector? At least now we are subject to only the capricious whims of our own government, as little comfort as that is right now (if another country was funding it we would be relying on the whims of a foreign government, which isn't ideal when tech is the golden goose of your modern economy).
The CVE program was started over 25 years ago. It is very reputable (until yesterday) and it was very much in the interest of the US to be seen as the stewards of this.
The funding requirements can't be that high and I'm willing to bet that other countries and entities would have happily stepped up if they had the chance.
Up until recently CVE was very centralized and only in the last few years have there been steps in more decentralization with CNAs taking more responsibility, Red Hat as a CNA of last-resort etc. So, the cost of doing all of this work has already been shifted partially (!) away from the US but I have not seen any movement towards e.g. moving the program to a foundation which could have been done.
Personally I would conclude that it was the responsibility of the US to pay for this because they wanted to and it was in their best interest to control this program.
They have the chance to step up now. Every Comercial company that is supposedly so reliant on this for their very existence has the opportunity today. They can fund it.
What commercial company is going to "fund" this? It's such a strange idea, disconnected from the real world. You may as well say "companies can start doing road maintenance, as they are so reliant on them for their very existence."
And perhaps if there had been more than a days notice, some consortium could be pulled together, but who's going to pay? Why would private companies do this, how do they profit? CVE program was the roads that everybody could drive on.
The basic lack of understanding of how the world works is killing the US. Why do people think we have such a massive GDP? Where do people think that comes from? We've given control of everything in society over to our dumbest and greediest members that have no clue about how anything works.
Ask the person I was responding to:
> I'm willing to bet that other countries and entities would have happily stepped up if they had the chance.
I mention this in another comment. The infrastructure for an alternative is already partially in place.
In my opinion it's mostly the industry needing to adapt to a new setup that needs to happen. It was just "easy" to rely on what's already there. A lot of company policies need to be adapted etc.
Because USA was a superpower that can afford it easily. Taking the leadership in everything is quite cheap price to pay when the other end of the bargain is everyone else has to follow you.
Now of course USA is ceasing (voluntarily, by stripping down every international soft power effector in government) to be a superpower, to the great glee of dictators all around the world.
The "we can't afford being great" is a direct admission that USA is no longer a superpower. And is not going to become great again, just another nation again (at whims of China).
I’m surprised that the world’s greatest universities are in the United States. Why weren’t other countries providing funds?
Don't worry, that will also end soon. Regimes that require political subservience from universities, like the current US administration, inevitably result in poor research capabilities in the long run.
It's called providing leadership. Worth the money. China will happily fill the void.
It's a near certitude that Russia and China each have databases of exploitable software errors and prize zero days.
It was to the advantage of the US and allies to coordinate and lead in tracking and fixing such errors.
Multiple countries, companies, and individuals contributed finding and fixing bugs.
The administrative task of keeping track was one part of a greater picture, a part that came with first to be advised and other perks.
It's not that the US had a responsibility to take on the lead admin task, more that in past times the US saw an advantage to being at the centre of global action.
This is just another part of increasing US isolationism.
> It was to the advantage of the US and allies to coordinate and lead in tracking and fixing such errors.
From what I understand of the article, none of these allies were funding it.
> Multiple countries, companies, and individuals contributed finding and fixing bugs.
Clearly that itself isn't enough. Someone has to pay for maintaining this service. It appears that no one other than USA spent money in funding it.
Why would other companies pay for it if they had never been asked?
Why would it be shut down without asking for others to fund it, if it's some sort of burden on the US?
Programs like this pay for themselves many times over. There are only two reasons for cutting this: absolute idiocy, or active sabotage of the US.
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Funnily this was on the front page recently: https://seths.blog/2025/04/how-to-win-an-argument-with-a-tod...
Don't bother; they're a brand new user trying to cause trouble
In public spaces like this, though on the face of it the argument might appear to be with the toddler, it's also about batting down the idiocy and not letting it swamp out basic common sense and reason.
Bluesky has a different tact that also works: block and hide and don't engage. However in forums like HN, where earnestness and questions are so prevalent, leaving these baiting questions and statements unanswered instead leaves them as bastions of the mind rot. Because these toddler-level arguments are being repeated daily through propaganda channels all over the internet, and if they are never answered, the constant swarm of propaganda takes in even more people.
I do sometimes wonder how different HN would be if it had "block". Mind you I think few people are getting their propaganda from here, it's more likely to be downstream of other well-poisoners.
So is this going to instantly break a bunch of tools like Trivy?
vibe coding could not have come at a worse moment.
Just tell the AI: "Make this code secure" /s
I guess their new business model is to sell zero days to the highest bidder
The private sector zero day market collapsed last year with Zerodium - corporate bug bounties, nation states in-housing offensive security operations, and the democratization of knowhow destroyed the Zero Day market.
So who will maintain it then? Either the EU or China I suppose. They can easily fund it.
Maybe the Dutch should go ahead.
ENISA in Europe has the mandate of building a EU vulnerability database for the NIS 2 directive anyway and it's coming soon...
And CIRCL in Luxembourg are providing vulnerability-lookup which can also assign IDs but in a more decentralized way: https://www.vulnerability-lookup.org/documentation/
VulnerableCode can help with discovery etc. https://vulnerablecode.readthedocs.io/en/latest/introduction...
So, parts of this are already in place and I assume this will be a big boost towards a new vulnerability ecosystem.
This sounds like good news, thanks!
Do we already have an ETA for the ENISA vulnerability database?
Anyone feel confident that the companies who benefit massively from MITRE are even now planning to step in and provide significant funding?
As a newly minted cynic, this seems like a cynical play to save someone's budget.
Step 1: Post discreetly to a forum with minimal information and an absurdly short deadline
Step 2: Phone your friend, the former board member, to make your case on LinkedIn
Step 3: Ring up a friendly journalist and give them a tip
Step 4: Reference the insuing chaos as justification for keeping your project funded
Note that the article carefully avoids pinning the blame on DOGE or the Whitehouse while heavily implying it. MITRE is technically a private entity, albeit a non-profit. And the very last paragraph of the article states:
> A CISA spokesperson told CSO, “CISA is the primary sponsor for the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure (CVE) program… Although CISA’s contract with the MITRE Corporation will lapse after April 16, we are urgently working to mitigate impact and to maintain CVE services on which global stakeholders rely.”
To be clear, the point isn't to say that the CVE program isn't valuable, nor is it to say that it's good for a shenanigan like this to be necessary.
The point is that, unless you're directly involved in this subject (not impacted—involved), it's probably best to maintain a "wait and see" attitude rather than succumb to catastrophizing this news.
Have you seen proof that this is what has been happening? Your explanation is much more convoluted than "DHS cut funding, like the administration has said it is going to do".
These explanations are not mutually exclusive.
LOL this is Amazing... Holy shit
Am I missing something or was this literally announced with less than 24 hours of warning that one of the critical components to the cyber security landscape was disappearing.
What the fuck are you supposed to do about this. This is something that should have had multiple MONTHS of warning in order to allow those who depend on the CVE infrastructure to plan what to do next with their security posture.
CVE-zero: the attack is coming from inside the White House.
Consider this part of the attack on the American infrastructure, economy, and society. Attacks do not abide by laws, official procedures, or come with warnings.
How much was this contract worth?
If it was $5000/yr it's very different to if it's $5M/year for what amounts to little more than an instance of mediawiki.
$44M/year?
https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_70RCSJ23FR0000015...
Why is this sponsored by such an American gov entity?
I guess it's one of those things you never think about until it goes wrong.
The world would do well to move this kind of stuff out of the US quickly, just like ICANN and stuff.
Because gov infra also relies on CVE?
Good, less government involvement is better for everyone.
Bad guys helping out bad guys--it's what mobsters do.
This industry relentlessly lionized Trump and Musk, elevating them to positions of power and handing them the power to destroy at will.
This is your moment! Enjoy it!
It’s astounding that the users here watched all the horrendous things going on and ignored them. But now the CVE numbers are gone it’s shocking and too far.
> It’s astounding that the users here watched all the horrendous things going on and ignored them.
Many most voted and most commented submissions were the other things.
Come again? This is Hacker News, a heavily moderated forum with a narrow focus. We don't discuss Israel or El Salvador here (unless it's tech related.)
I would hope the folks that frequent HN would not be so insular as to only read what happens on HN and not read any other news source.
If you’ve somehow missed Trump’s systematic dismantling of academic freedom or his disappearing of folks he doesn’t like, then we have a far bigger problem than the limits of what is discussed on HN.
Please, this place has permeated with Trump rage since before he took office. The only way you could think he was ignored is to not have read any comments.
There are quite a few threads on hackernews that were cautiously optimistic about doge with, frankly, pretty naive libertarian takes about how the government works.
The government is not particular (in the sense of particularism) and cannot be easily tuned to fix particular problems; rather, its best solutions come through institutional procedure and design, such as the tension between the FAA and the NTSB that, at a first glance, would seem like obviously needless duplication and waste.
It is a broad, blunt, wasteful instrument to solve broad, blunt problems in a way that may not be the best but that work far, far better than alternatives that have been tried.
That the effort to treat government like a personal budget has ended up destroying important things is a sad inevitability of such efforts. I hope it goes remembered.
Europe needs to save the world!
For now, historical CVE records will be available at GitHub:
https://github.com/CVEProject
Let me guess: Trump is going to make China pay for it.
dupe of a dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43700258
I'm not sure, but the current article looks to have somewhat more information in it, so I've merged that thread hither instead.
Just seeing HN mad like this makes things like these so much worth it.
Reminds me of Trump's first term where he said if we stopped testing for Covid, we'd stop catching new cases and case numbers would go down. If you stop testing for vulnerabilities then vulnerabilities go down. Easy stuff.
That's exactly what they're saying about the HHS cuts and the measles outbreak.
So easy having the brain of a toddler.
What I don't get is why people make things up and then get angry at the thing they made up. Is there not enough real things to be angry at?
Just what is needed with an adversary during and asymmetrical trade war.
I’m betting CVE will get sponsored by a security company or Cloudflare.
Now would be a great time for a major tech company to support them (or, even better, a consortium).
CVE was anti-American woke.
No, more seriously, just like with shutting down NOAA services, it seems the goal is to:
1. cut services (we saved taxpayer money!!)
2. at some point later: oh, we actually need those services
3. pay <insert your favorite vendor here, preferably one connected to Musk> to provide the service (see! we don't need to pay gov employees!!) (fine print: the vendor costs 2-3x the original cost). But by then no one is looking at the spending numbers anymore.
Slick moves.
And here lies the problem. Even from a libertarian perspective DOGE is counterproductive because maintaining a system is much more cost effective than starting it anew.
Especially when you cut something recklessly, figure out in month that you need back that capability right now and have very little leverage to negotiate with private providers.
When you look at the last cutting effort in the Clinton administration the difference in jarring.
Combine that with the fact that with a few exceptions DOGE has been cutting the most cost effective programs (i can’t think of a better bang for buck science program than NOAA) it’s saved very little vs the amount of pain it has caused.
Heeeeey but he runs Tesla like this and it's an hyper-valued company!!!1! He cannot be wrong, he is a genius!!
Trump stupidity hurts the country and world.
But maybe this is an opportunity to do CVE better.
> But maybe this is an opportunity to do CVE better.
Okay, how? This sounds like looking for lemonade in a genocide.
> This sounds like looking for lemonade in a genocide.
It really doesn't. This level of catastrophising has no point. It would be nice if CVE continued to exist, but it wasn't close to perfect, and perhaps it can continue in another form. There's no particular reason the US taxpayer has to sponsor global security threat tracking any more than any other taxpayer or customer.
Some companies are already clueless when it comes to CVE management. Probably won’t see the effects immediately but give it a few more years for new generation of vulns to be created/found and we will be back to early 2000s level security.
Open season on American corporations for domestic and foreign hackers.
If program isn’t brought back then CVE database likely to be fragmented amongst the “private” CVE databases.
Sec Corp A has 700 well documented CVEs but Sec Corp B has 702 CVEs in their database since NIST funding pulled. What do corps do? Maybe some of them with massive budgets setup contracts with both to get “full spectrum coverage”. Maybe other non-technical companies that think of IT as strictly a cost will go with the cheapest or forego it all together.
Who knows maybe we get ~~~free labor~~~ open source community to pick up the slack?
This country with the orange man administration is quickly going to shit. Not in a “I dislike {opposing party} way” either. In a “I dislike authoritarian regimes” way.
These four years are going to be the death of all of us.
I find it a little incredible people are still talking about "four years".
They tried to reject the election result and do a coup, and were rewarded for it by getting back into power. They are refusing to follow the law or the courts. They are sending people to gulags in foreign countries. All the checks and balances were destroyed last time. The party has been stripped of anyone who would fight the admin or reject this illegality. They have set up a power grab over elections.
There will not be free and fair elections in four years unless they are simply too incompetent to rig it, the rubicon was crossed long ago. Without mass protest that makes it impossible for them to hold power, American democracy is dead.
They have tried to do it, they say they want to do it, they have the ability to do it, they are actively doing it, and no one is stopping them. How are people still acting like in four years they are going to neatly hand over power to be prosecuted for their crimes?
Organizing mass protests isn't something you do instead of organizing electoral opposition. Even in countries that haven't had fair elections for a while, people generally still organize opposition and talk about how they're going to vote. The best way to ensure your opponents retain power is to go around telling people it's too late and they've already won.
I'm not saying people should not organise to vote, I'm objecting to the framing of "in four years this will be over" or "in four years we can fight this", if you are waiting for elections to solve this alone, that's a mistake. Elections alone won't be enough. It's not too late to do anything, it is too late for just voting against it to be enough.
War with China and doing enough reprehensible acts to stoke protests to declare martial law to stay in power indefinitely.
I feel like we're only a few weeks away from someone "home grown" experiencing an "administrative error." The slide into madness continues.
More like only a few days away, honestly.
Wait until they start a war against Albania.
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Now the NSA can hoard more 0days and the general public suffers. Win win for this administration
It's more likely to boost the zero day black market. I don't know if I want to attribute this to idiocy (indiscriminate cost cutting), greed (contracts for their crony pals) or malice (hoarding and trading 0 days).
¿Por qué no los tres?
Conservatives who depend on regular CVE updates for the security and livelihood of their company: don't do that!
DOGE: haha liberal tears
Mr. President, Do you want China to get the reports instead, or do you want the NSA to have a lead time where the vuln's are useful tools?
It seems phrasing it in the form of a joke was too much.
I was trying to convey (with levity/humor) WHY it should continue to be funded as well as the argument that should be made to the one currently in control of the spineless US Congress.
Yes, fixing the vulnerabilities is important. However what the government probably does gain from it is an inside advantage in the lead time for vulnerabilities to protect against, as well as to exploit on adversaries.
If you /s/China/Russia/, when asking Trump, it’s no longer a rhetorical question.
For those reading, a fair few of my recent posts were downvoted after this comment, and it was initially flagged.
If I violated some rule so be it, and I could care less about internet points, but it certainly feels like suppression of individuals based on individual posts which is a behaviour that could end up being the death of hn.
Meh. It's not like I was going to ask the facist autocracy about my software vulnerabilities.
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if only there were 188 other countries and an entire private sector in each one that could fund this thing they are also affected by
Good. CVEs were the poster boy of goodharts law for the longest time. Most security vulnerabilities behind CVEs are utterly meaningless.
Why is the government responsible for CVEs again?
Every now and then the government decides to fund things. Public schools, roads, police, firemen, GPS, NOAA, cybersecurity, government cheese, etc.
"the government" aka "We the people". It is in all our interest. This is like asking why the government is responsible for roads.
> This is like asking why the government is responsible for roads.
Thought experiment:
If roads were built by private companies, could a Government justify the expense maintaining a database of all the potholes?
Yes, as it would be a public good to everyone to be able to know where the potholes(that aren't profitable to fix for these private companies apparently) are so they can avoid them.
They might take a step back and realize that it would be more cost-effective to just own the roads, in which case your thought experiment ends where we are, because where we are was a place reasoned to(to an extent).
Pot holes do not enable fraud, ransom schemes, data breaches, denial of essential services to millions of people, and so on.
only one country pays but all benefit from it. It should be funded by all who benefit like UN.
I don't see why this should be publicly funded, so I don't really see an issue with this. The industry benefits from having a CVE database, so the industry should fund it.
There are going to be all kinds of messed up incentives if this is funded from industry.
True, although Google's Project Zero seems to be run pretty well.
Different goals, not cve related.
Like what?
Don't open source developers and users of their software also benefit from the CVE database?
If it were privately funded, what incentive would these private companies have to track bugs for these open source projects that don't make money?
The insane number of downvotes you’re getting for saying basic common sense stuff, it’s why we should push for stricter political rules here in HN.
You didn’t say something wrong or controversial, just an opinion. Some ideologies love to pay things with other people’s wallets, and they’ll do whatever they can to pursue this.
Especially the L guy who downvoted this after 10 seconds. get a life
Because secure systems benefit the public generally, not just the corporations that make a profit operating those systems.
The industry won’t want to fund it. It’ll want to profit from it.
No, "the industry" is all of us alive in the 21st century who depend on software to make material decisions and to be resilient to attacks and tampering. We were all funding it, and now surely we will see some big tech company now assume responsibility from the federal government (please god don't let it be Oracle...)
so "all" should pay, not only US taxpayers.
So you trust industry now?
Same question would be for government funded agencies.