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Government Open Source IT Technology

Open-Source Developer and Manager David Recordon Named White House Director of Technology (zdnet.com) 51

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: President-elect Joe Biden's transition team announced that David Recordon, one of OpenId and oAuth's developers, has been named the White House Director of Technology. Recordon most recently was the VP of infrastructure and security at the non-profit Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Foundation. Before that, Recordon was Facebook's engineer director. There, he had led Facebook's open-source initiatives and projects. Among other programs, this included Phabricator, a suite of code review web apps, which Facebook used for its own development. He also led efforts on Cassandra, the Apache open-source distributed database management system; HipHop, a PHP to C++ source code translator; and Apache Thrift, a software framework, for scalable cross-language services development. In short, he's both a programmer and manager who knows open-source from the inside out.

Recordon learned to program at a public elementary school. According to the Biden-Harris transition team, he's spent his almost two-decade career working at the intersection of technology, security, open-source software, public service, and philanthropy. Looking forward to the challenges Recordon faces in his new position, he wrote on LinkedIn: "The pandemic and ongoing cybersecurity attacks present new challenges for the entire Executive Office of the President, but ones I know that these teams can conquer in a safe and secure manner together."
The report notes that Recordon served as the first Director of White House Information Technology during President Barack Obama's term of office, working on IT modernization and cybersecurity issues. He's also served as the Biden-Harris transition team's deputy CTO.
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Open-Source Developer and Manager David Recordon Named White House Director of Technology

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  • ... Turn on the TV news.

    No comment.

    • ... Turn on the TV news.

      No comment.

      Oh, you are just too foreign to American customs. We always celebrate the election of a new President by rioting and storming the Capitol.

      It's just good, clean, Christian, wholesome fun!

      That poor joke said, it's really just sad and shameful to see this.

      • That poor joke said, it's really just sad and shameful to see this.

        Yup. We've become the shithole country the con artist talked about. On his watch.

      • So, the whole world is watching America melt down. You have no place lecturing anyone on democracy anymore. Trump has destroyed that, just as he has tried to destroy all the international institutions America has helped build since WW2. They will be rebuilt, with or without the US of course. I'm expecting Biden to make America relevant to the world again. Will be nice to have a normal adult in charge.

        What is more concerning however, is this; What if the Retrumplicans (I'll refrain from any allusion to

        • Re:What scares me (Score:4, Insightful)

          by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @06:38PM (#60904568) Journal

          The Constitution will prevail. The reality is that not as many Republican lawmakers were as pro-Trump as they felt they had to be. Some, like Tom Cruz, are still under the delusion that the Trump faction of the GOP is a lion they can tame, but for the most part I think the party itself is just trying to hold its breath until January 20th. What happens after that? Probably some more unrest. Hotheads always get a good deal of attention, but the demographic shift which has been happening since at least 2008 is still moving away from these kinds of sentiments. Churches of all sorts, but in particular Evangelical churches, are losing membership, and that is where the bulk of Trump's support comes.

          I don't think many conservative voters will ever be happy that Biden won, but I think the lessons of last November and of yesterday's Georgia Senate elections are pretty clear. Yes, Trump had some hardcore core supporters, but many of his other supporters will begin melting away. The US has seen unrest before, and it always feels like doomsday in the midst of it. But if the US could survive its violent birth, the Civil War, the unrest of the Depression, the unrest of Civil Rights and Vietnam protests in the 1960s, then it can survive even a bunch of self-declared militias. Those arrested by police for breaking into the Capitol Building will find an unfriendly Attorney General ready to mete out justice.

          One hopes that at least some Republicans have been scared straight, and realize that words have consequences. You can enter fierce partisan debates with the opposing party, indeed that has been the American way even since the Continental Congress tried to reach unanimity on the Declaration of Independence, but calling for armed partisans to show up in the Capitol and try to overthrow the elected house of the people, no one is going to back that. Except for the current President, who, I doubt, really cares about consequences at all, and seems to get off on stirring the pot. But since he's decided he wants to be a rival to Rupert Murdoch, I doubt even that career step will be successful. Besides, he'll be too busy in a New York court room for the next while to be launching an insurgency.

          • I saw Moped Jesus break a window and climb into the Capitol Building.

          • by necro81 ( 917438 )

            Some, like Tom Cruz, are still under the delusion that the Trump faction of the GOP is a lion they can tame...

            The conflation of Ted Cruz [google.com] with Tom Cruise [google.com] is...just...priceless - something really special.

      • That poor joke said, it's really just sad and shameful to see this.

        What's really sad is that we're talking a few hundred idiots doing this. Everything I've seen talks about "hundreds" invading the Capital Building. Not thousands or tens of thousands.

        So Trump can't even muster a decent number of fanatic followers (probably because everyone is talking about NFL standings now, and not caring a hill of beans about the election (which is a done deal by this point)).

        • That poor joke said, it's really just sad and shameful to see this.

          What's really sad is that we're talking a few hundred idiots doing this. Everything I've seen talks about "hundreds" invading the Capital Building. Not thousands or tens of thousands.

          So Trump can't even muster a decent number of fanatic followers (probably because everyone is talking about NFL standings now, and not caring a hill of beans about the election (which is a done deal by this point)).

          Good thing because Capitol security seemed completely unprepared for more than a couple dozen.

      • The impression I'm getting is that sometime today a deal will be reached and Trump will be on his way to Argentina on some donor's private jet. Then we can all get vaccinated, and life will return to normal.

  • How is this good? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @06:08PM (#60904498)

    We have someone who worked in the inner depths of Facebook and is going to be working at some of the highest levels of the government. How in any way is this a good thing?

    • He knows PHP and can set up an Apache server. He knows relational databases. These must be firsts for anyone at this level. He should be congratulated.
    • Would you rather have Yet Another Fortune 500 CTO with zero actual knowledge of software development?

      Regardless of its faults, Facebook is an example of enterprise software that actually works, and the fact that Recordon became Engineering Director at that company aged only 23 indicates he is an extremely smart individual. FB taking him back in that same role after he finished his first stint in government shows his directorship wasn't a fluke, either. And he's spent the past 3 years working at the CZI Foun

      • by cusco ( 717999 )

        It's the first appointment that I've noticed that wasn't a lobbyist, party crony, or drum-beating warmonger. If only there were more of them.

  • by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @06:09PM (#60904500)

    This is serious. Come back Trump, your incitement to insurrection is forgiven.

  • An administration calmly going about it's business. How odd.

  • ...for the next two weeks.

  • (Joe Biden) is not my president - and never will be.
    • Trump lost, fuck your feelings.
      • by rlwinm ( 6158720 )
        Trump lost. MAGA is more than the Trump administration. It's a movement and a popular one at over 50% of US citizens. I am still expecting lots of sweet liberal tears in the future.
    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      Good, where will you be emigrating to? That Libertarian paradise of Somalia? The kleptocracy of Russia? Or maybe a front row seat to watch Britain circle the drain after Brexit?

  • This would imply that Recordon is an SJW who will be seeing to it that AI is not racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, islamophobic, or even arachnophobic.

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. -- Thomas Edison

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