CDC data are disappearing

The trouble is, to talk about WHY Musk is attempting to seize control of parts of the US government and why the Trump administration is attempting to censor mass quantities of data would be a political conversation.

Hacker News isn't designed for this. The point at which it becomes mass censorship that computer hackers (in their capacity as The Internet) might take an active role in routing around, is more or less this point: you're quite correct that this is worrying, but up to this point it's been a deeply political conversation and only as it becomes mass censorship and control by technological means, does it become really on-message for Hacker News.

Hacking includes systems, not just code, and what Musk is doing certainly counts as systems hacking I would say.

Hell, Captain Crunch didn't even use a computer.

Oh, I don't disagree. I'm getting downvotes as if I didn't think this was Hacker News business. I think it became Hacker News business when unelected guys seized offices and computer systems and started doing… what? We don't know, but there's a lot of data deleting, censoring, and grant-freezing going on.

I'm leaning very hard into an HN 'tone' with this because this is Hacker News. There's other places where I can be a lot more direct, but the HN tone is perfectly valid as a response: being able to think dispassionately is both tactically and strategically useful as long as it's not purely used to obfuscate.

I fear HN folks have been sheltered from a lot of the reality of what's happening and led down the garden path BY intentionally asserting that tone anytime things get too assertive, but the tone still has its uses.

edit: woof! Ok ok, this is fully HN business and always was. Right on. Sorry I even suggested it could ever be otherwise. I didn't give my fellow nerds enough credit :)

> to talk about WHY Musk is attempting to seize control of parts of the US government and why the Trump administration is attempting to censor mass quantities of data would be a political conversation.

In an attempt to keep it non-political: perhaps they (DOGE) are trying to put a "freeze" on the records while they consider who to fire. That would imply DOGE does not trust the people who have access to the records not to alter them in their favor. (Irony, since DOGE is demanding trust themselves.) You might not agree with that reason, but it is a reason.