There’s nothing stopping them from hosting a massive instance. But people aren’t forced to move there to interact with them.

And I keep zoning out in the exact same place too…

You’ve described that in a completely disingenuous way.

silently goes to German GitHub to learn German words

If they can’t change what’s essentially a variable name without issues then should they be doing the job?

They have a reason. You just don’t like it.

I don’t think we can be. We’d be paralyzed if we tried to be wholly serious.

If they weren’t in plain text how could we check to make sure it’s still there?

I wouldn’t put it past them to experience numbers in the per second realm, especially as new data posts and everyone is rushing to grab it.

Held back by his environment.

I laughed but really I know when the last good database and systems people left government to be replaced by contractors. It was Bush’s first term. Since then everything has been just putting a new front end on the back end government programmers created in the 1990’s.

Just so you know census data is very heavily queried. Everything from civil engineering to economics wants to look at that dataset every day.

Oh I just curled up into a fetal ball at the thought of that…

Login? Why would I do that? Aren’t the credentials in the code? I just hit the go button.

What makes you think they’re uneducated?

But why even? There’s no risk to changing it and some risk to keeping it. That’s the reason for the push to change it. Keeping something just because it’s tradition isn’t a good idea outside ceremonies.

Yeah, I wonder if he’s just taking his time or he’s trying to keep some stuff as closed? I’ll admit it’s been about a year since I even looked at code but I feel it, calling me to abandon all life except the glowing screen again.

Not even as a jumping off point? I’d have to get into it on my computer but it certainly looks like at least a partial build has been posted from poking around with my phone. Loops isn’t terribly complex.

You’re welcome to grab the code and make something better.

I don’t think it was just asking. They say they stayed until they were threatened with arrest. I think it was a situation where the office staff had nothing else they could do for them. In which case the applicant is told they have to leave, or be trespassed by police officers. It’s not a threat for just asking a question, it’s a threat for disrupting the office after all the answers available have been given. At least that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Which is why I suggest going back in a few months when they might have better guidance and thus, better answers. I do sympathize but the majority of civil servants aren’t trying to be mean or cruel. They want to approve people.