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U.S. Government Database of Dad Jokes

gnicholas
31 replies
2d17h
mmaunder
18 replies
2d17h

Verified as gov site.

abirch
11 replies
2d17h

You know someone said that there will never be more than 100 requests per second in a meeting

morkalork
7 replies
2d17h

Yup and you know what? That's exactly the kind of detail I don't need a government IT worker sweating over. They should just pay the premium to cloud providers and move on to more important things

hamandcheese
3 replies
2d17h

I could not disagree more. Government already suffers a huge stigma of waste and overspending, no need to add to that stigma by overspending on checks notes a list of dad jokes.

That's not to say I'm not glad this exists - I am! But I don't think it deserves a large budget.

theendisney2
0 replies
2d16h

You can think that but dont tell your dad.

morkalork
0 replies
2d16h

Just toss the page into a pool that should be served to the public. No need to advance SOTA on a government budget to serve content.

8note
0 replies
2d16h

If it's running on some faas type thing, it's about free when not being used, so hardly a waste.

They certainly shouldnt be spending to scale a ton on dad jokes, in case it's very popular for a day

hgschmie
2 replies
2d16h

% host -t a fatherhood.gov fatherhood.gov has address 15.197.252.44 fatherhood.gov has address 3.33.237.102

% host -t ptr 44.252.197.15.in-addr.arpa 44.252.197.15.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer a05e7be9b6fd75377.awsglobalaccelerator.com.

% host -t ptr 102.237.33.3.in-addr.arpa 102.237.33.3.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer a05e7be9b6fd75377.awsglobalaccelerator.com.

It is on AWS.

yftsui
1 replies
2d16h

Isn't AWS Global Accelerator just the edge CDN (like Cloudflare) here? When the actual web server went down it will not able to cover it, looks like AWS Global Accelerator lacks the Cloudflare feature of showing you the last cached result.

EE84M3i
0 replies
2d14h

Global accelerator is an anycast solution that routes your traffic to an specific AWS region (an EC2 instance or load balancer) via AWS's backbone network. It improves latency mostly, but can also be used for cases where a static IP is required (zero-rated billing, customers using egress firewall rules, etc)

CloudFront is the AWS CDN offering.

SushiHippie
1 replies
2d17h

Next meeting: "our page went down because of a hacker attack!!"

xattt
0 replies
2d16h

“Well, Sir, they do call themselves Hacker News.”

heywoods
0 replies
2d17h

Or more than 100 families with a Dad around.

beanjuiceII
4 replies
2d17h

Ya you can tell a govt site when it falls over from a finger flick

eek2121
3 replies
2d17h

Nah, the US govt is actually usually pretty good these days about solid infrastructure, website designs, security practices, etc.

It is unknown why this particular website (if it ever existed?) got hugged to death, but much of the Government uses AWS govcloud and similar solutions.

edm0nd
0 replies
2d16h

FedRAMP vetted sites and vendors still get hacked too tho

beanjuiceII
0 replies
2d1h

eh i disagree, I've been in govt IT for 16 years working as a group that supports all agencies. I would definitely not say "much of the Government uses aws govcloud and similar solutions" but thats just my experience

DiggyJohnson
0 replies
2d17h

Seconded. At this particular point in my career “govcloud” sounds like a normal word. Our project has an overbuilt but robust cloud native architecture (even if I’m not a cloud services evangelist myself) that I think would surprise many folks in the private sector regarding its sophistication.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a lot of waste, inefficiency, and BS in government contracting. But some aspects of it are getting better. In our case, we were explicitly told by our “customer” to allocate more resources to scaling than we may in the private sector so that our application would not get hugged to death.

yieldcrv
0 replies
2d17h

Certified DHHS

julesallen
4 replies
2d16h

Redesigned the FDIC's online deposit insurance calculator to be 100% client side just before WAMU fell over and the crash that followed.

Before the three-step one pager it was a UX that only a mother could love on payday. The bigger problem was every time it would end up on somewhere like Yahoo finance (don't laugh, this was 2007 and earlier) it would fall over like this database. The key to scaling it seems pretty obvious today, write all the searchable data out to a single JSON file and have the browser poll that. It was doing multiple millions of user sessions a day I was told and couldn't have been deployed at a better time.

Some projects you get lucky with I suppose. I check it out every once in a while and the UX is basically still the same.

gottorf
3 replies
2d15h

Sounds like you're in a good position to make a lot of people's dreams come true: could you make the TreasuryDirect webapp not so terrible to use? :-)

jdewerd
2 replies
2d12h

My prayers were answered when they removed the infernal virtual password keyboard.

gottorf
0 replies
2d2h

That was infernal indeed, but the rest of it still needs a ton of work. Accidentally double-click on a link? Goodbye, session!

ericrallen
0 replies
1d3h

I can’t remember if I’ve ever encountered a UI that annoyed me as much as that virtual password entry.

I ended up getting locked out of my account due to some issue trying to enter what my password manager generated for me and eventually just gave up on ever converting the one small paper bond I was given as a kid to a digital one.

If the goal was to frustrate people away from converting paper bonds, they certainly succeeded.

gabrielsroka
1 replies
2d17h

I got a 504

selimthegrim
0 replies
2d15h

Would that this area code was associated with responsible fatherhood.

daemonologist
1 replies
2d15h

I was curious just how much traffic a front-page HN post generates and found this excellent post: https://blog.royalsloth.eu/posts/how-much-traffic-comes-from... In their case traffic peaked just under 10000 requests per hour.

(RoyalSloth's blog survived the hug while hosted on Hetzner's smallest 1 vCPU instance.)

gnicholas
0 replies
2d15h

I was on the cheapest plan Heroku offers when my startup hit #1. Things got sluggish so I had to spin up another dyno, but it was fine after that. Of course things depend heavily on time of day and day of week. Since it's currently the holidays in much of the world, things could be slower than normal.

dylan604
0 replies
2d17h

After clicking through a few, its kind of timely to go with today's other post about how random is random.

blondin
0 replies
2d16h

what a missed opportunity to utilize http status code 418

ashton314
0 replies
2d16h

Actually a feature designed to prevent depletion of the strategic pun reserve.

nostromo
17 replies
2d17h

You'll never guess what bill funded this site...

... the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 of course!

It's in Sec 7103: Grants for Healthy Marriage Promotion and Responsible Fatherhood

cdot2
9 replies
2d17h

Efforts to reduce single motherhood probably serve to reduce welfare expenses more than most other efforts

eru
7 replies
2d16h

On those grounds, you can probably argue that any spending anywhere reduces the deficit in the long run.

EDIT: to clarify, an argument that providing dad-jokes leads to less single motherhood (which then leads to less spending) is so tenuous, that if you accept it, you can accept almost any kind of mental gymnastics.

I agree that reducing single motherhood would probably lead to less spending. It's the connection to dad-jokes that tenuous (at least without any further evidence).

callalex
3 replies
2d16h

Can you explain how your statement follows from the parent? To me it reads like a slippery slope type statement.

eru
2 replies
2d16h

Almost any kind of spending that anyone, including the government, does is coupled with some arguments about the benefits it brings.

For most claimed benefits, it doesn't require a lot of mental gymnastics to find some arguments why they would reduce some spending in the long run.

If you give me an example as a challenge, I can (most probably) spin you the argument of how it reduces spending.

callalex
1 replies
2d10h

I still don’t understand why that’s an argument against government spending.

eru
0 replies
2d7h

It's not an argument against government spending, nor was it intended as one. What makes you think so?

It's an argument against this specific argument for government spending.

Making bad arguments is excessively easy, independent of whether the thing argued for is good or bad, or true or false.

To give a simple example: consider a faulty proof of Pythagoras' theorem. See eg https://www.cut-the-knot.org/pythagoras/FalseProofs.shtml

Pointing out flaws in these purported proofs is not an argument against Pythagoras' theorem; it's still true after all. It's merely an argument against the faulty arguments.

cdot2
1 replies
2d15h

My comment was in response to the comment above mine. Not to the article directly.

eru
0 replies
2d14h

Oh, I wasn't even complaining about using government money for dad jokes.

I don't know whether it's a good use of tax money (probably not), but it's such a minuscule amount in the grand scheme of things, that it doesn't really matter.

Eg repealing the Jones act would do a lot more, if one wanted to get riled up about something. It's basically a very inefficient re-distribution from Hawaiians to a few domestic ship owners.

User23
0 replies
2d16h

How does that follow?

asah
0 replies
2d15h

These jokes contribute to single motherhood.

hattmall
5 replies
2d16h

What a change, now the government penalizes marriage through the ACA. I wonder why the shift from promoting to penalizing marriage.

analog31
3 replies
2d15h

ACA was a bag of compromises intended to increase health care access without disrupting the insurance industry. It succeeded on both counts.

willcipriano
2 replies
2d14h

Remember when we were told that insurance companies would go bankrupt without the individual mandate and then it was ruled unconstitutional and not implemented after the first few years and insurance companies made more money than ever?

The insurance industry could've tolerated quite a bit of disruption. The ACA was successful in ensuring the donor class got to keep the profit levels they are accustomed to, the only thing it was ever designed to do.

tzs
1 replies
2d11h

The ACA was successful in ensuring the donor class got to keep the profit levels they are accustomed to, the only thing it was ever designed to do.

So it reducing the number of uninsured by many millions was just an unintentional consequence, or what?

willcipriano
0 replies
2d4h

Health insurance != Healthcare.

Now a bunch of people are paying hundreds a month for a ten thousand dollar deductible. Those people already pay for socialized medicine (the US spends the most on socialized medicine per captia), so I don't see that as a win as much as a gift to the insurance companies.

lotsofpulp
0 replies
2d16h
friend_and_foe
0 replies
2d3h

These levels of irony shouldn't be possible! You could probably fuel a FTL spacecraft using this stuff, and it would probably work better than running it on government money.

imperio59
12 replies
2d17h

Our tax dollars hard at work on the important issues.

kube-system
4 replies
2d16h

Yes, it is: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/12/12/u-s-child...

It may seem silly on the surface, but solving issues at the root is often way more effective than treating the symptoms. In plain words: we're better off solving crime by having a kid grow up in a healthy household, rather than throwing that kid in prison after they commit a crime, who may in turn have a kid who grows up in an unhealthy household without a father.

alchemist1e9
3 replies
2d15h

Just so I’m clear - you are then saying that Federal government spending on this is something you support?

segfaltnh
0 replies
2d14h

I do. I doubt it cost much in relative terms, and it's drawn a lot of attention to the issue of fatherhood and spawned a lot of debate.

kube-system
0 replies
2d13h

Yes, and I wish we spent 100x on initiatives like this, that attempt to influence behavior for the better.

Bnichs
0 replies
1d3h

It's an line to draw in terms of spending given how absolutely nothing this is in terms of spending. This website probably costs about half that of a single one of the millions of shells made for the US military in a year.

eru
2 replies
2d16h

Joke's on you: those are not my tax dollars. Foreigners get those premium dad jokes free of charge.

(Though I wonder whether the Chinese can claim dumping with the WTO? That's what the Americans do with Chinese goods that are delivered cheaper than they would like to compete with.)

fnordpiglet
1 replies
2d16h

Realistically we borrowed me the money from you.

eru
0 replies
2d16h

That's probably true. My adopted home of Singapore holds enough foreign reserves to more than back every Singapore dollar they issued. In practice, 'foreign reserves' is mostly another name for US government debt.

karmajunkie
1 replies
2d17h

frankly id rather have a database of dad jokes than more bombs

labster
0 replies
2d16h

Why not both? Slava Ukraini, dad jokes slava!

noSyncCloud
0 replies
2d17h

...Yes?

PepperdineG
0 replies
2d16h

Ernest Scribbler helped win WWII for the British with a joke that was over 60,000 times as powerful as Britain's great pre-war joke.

mcculley
9 replies
2d3h

That there is a Federally funded Natural Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse at fatherhood.gov and not an equivalent motherhood.gov reminds me of Paul Graham's "What You Can't Say" [0][1][2].

How much suffering could we avoid for children if we could convince more pregnant women to not smoke and drink and consume drugs?

[0]: https://www.paulgraham.com/say.html [1]: https://paulgraham.com/resay.html [2]: https://paulgraham.com/saynotes.html

lern_too_spel
6 replies
2d3h

You mean like this? https://health.gov/myhealthfinder/pregnancy/doctor-and-midwi...

"Don’t smoke or drink alcohol"

mcculley
5 replies
2d3h

It is apparently not working. Maybe it should be at motherhood.gov.

lern_too_spel
4 replies
2d2h

Mothers get this kind of advice during prenatal care. Fathers have fewer touch points with parenting educators.

mcculley
3 replies
2d2h

In my experience, many mothers are not getting any prenatal care. Many are pregnant before they know it and do not discontinue activities which will harm their child.

lern_too_spel
2 replies
2d2h

That's a problem. Is the solution to defund father education programs?

mcculley
1 replies
2d1h

Absolutely not. I think we should fund a Natural Responsible Motherhood Clearinghouse and host it at motherhood.gov. But telling women to be responsible mothers is not as politically easy as telling men to be responsible fathers.

lern_too_spel
0 replies
22h56m

But telling women to be responsible mothers is not as politically easy as telling men to be responsible fathers.

But as I said, we do that already, and far more directly as part of women's healthcare. It is not a men's health issue, so it can't be done through existing systems. The effectiveness of telling women to be responsible mothers, which you objected to earlier, does not negate the fact that we do tell them, so your political narrative does not make sense.

addicted
1 replies
2d3h

Paul Graham is obviously saying these things.

The “I‘n being suppressed because I can’t say these things” articles by extremely well placed people who constantly say these things is tedious.

mcculley
0 replies
2d3h

I think we read different essays. Graham did not complain that he was being suppressed.

SeanKilleen
9 replies
2d17h

"Dadabase" was right there.

lelandfe
5 replies
2d17h

What's an avant-garde artist's favorite way to store information?

nullhole
1 replies
2d17h

Ceci n'est pas une blague.

pugworthy
0 replies
2d16h

Take my a well considered upvote for a clever reply.

Biganon
1 replies
2d9h

An Arp table?

lelandfe
0 replies
2d2h

Ooh, this one I had to look up for both sides. Well played

adonovan
0 replies
2d15h

A distributed Léger?

hotsauceror
2 replies
2d15h

That’s what my travel mug says. Best Father’s Day gift ever.

Here’s a freebie for you new dads:

What do you call a spider with twenty eyes?

A spiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiider.

rareitem
0 replies
2d14h

You call it a S20r

mark-r
0 replies
2d3h

Only works in print unfortunately.

sand500
3 replies
2d16h

I don't get this one:

Did you hear about the two satellites that got married?

The wedding wasn't much, but the reception was incredible.

Should the punchline be "out of this world"?

qbrass
0 replies
2d15h

That would be the punchline for a kids joke. As a dad joke, it subverts the expected punchline with something even cheesier.

Snow_Falls
0 replies
2d2h

reception is a play on words, in an actual wedding it would mean the that the attendees had a good reaction. In the sense that the newly weds are satellites, the reception can also refer to radio signal reception.

2OEH8eoCRo0
0 replies
2d16h

Signal reception

TaurenHunter
2 replies
2d17h
lawgimenez
0 replies
2d16h

I’m using dadjokes.io, would recommend.

czottmann
0 replies
2d5h

Thanks for the links! I spent my free morning setting up a Mastodon bot [1] posting one joke per hour, the APIs made it easy and the whole thing made me laugh.

[1]: https://mastodon.social/@pleasestop

rossdavidh
1 replies
2d17h

So, I read one, went into the next room and told it to my 18-year old daughter, and got an exasperated smile, just like every dad joke should. Five out of five stars, would recommend.

Dalewyn
0 replies
2d16h

50 out of 50 stars was right there!

mise_en_place
1 replies
2d16h

These are funny, but there is something jarringly dystopian about the words "National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse".

peyton
0 replies
2d16h

The one for irresponsible fathers is called the “Office of Child Support Enforcement,” for better or for worse.

itsthecourier
1 replies
2d17h

i believe we need an strategic reserve of these, Biden need to step in

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS
0 replies
2d16h

Biden need to step in

I agree, slapstick is very funny

akulbe
1 replies
2d17h

I've been using this in my shell profile for a few years now:

curl -H "Accept: text/plain" https://icanhazdadjoke.com/

quink
0 replies
2d16h

`-m 1` might be good with that.

TriangleEdge
1 replies
2d16h

Distributed Dadnial of Service is happening I think.

sundvor
0 replies
2d16h

Slashdotted!

xwowsersx
0 replies
2d17h

Why did the HTTP 504 Gateway Time-out error go to therapy? It had too many unresolved issues that kept dragging on

vwcx
0 replies
2d15h

That domain participates in the US gov's digital analytics program but the page demand isn't registering: https://analytics.usa.gov/

rho138
0 replies
2d17h

Browses to motherhood.gov, iphone _freaks out_.
joecool1029
0 replies
2d16h

504 Timed Out isn't as funny as a 410 Gone

jasoneckert
0 replies
2d15h

Does anyone know what backend dadabase they use to store these jokes?

digitalsushi
0 replies
2d16h

I worry for the server's uptime ... its days are numbered