$2 million a year is wildly insignificant for the federal government.

Less than one cent per year per person in federal taxes.

Ntrails an hour ago | parent | next [-]

And yet the number of projects with similarly insignificant costs is large, and they do add up.

The argument cannot be "this money doesn't matter", it has to be "this represents good value for money" (imo)

They literally don’t add up. Just look at a pie chart of the US government budget. The administrative state is a bargain.

Departments like the EPA are so small that they have to be put in the “other” umbrella that makes up 1% of federal spending (go to the Agency tab):

sad, the spending chart doesn't load in my version of firefox, and both links in the caption also have page-load issues. very sad.

	▲	Sabinus a minute ago \| parent [-]
		Works for me on 158.0.1

ninjagoo 19 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> "this represents good value for money" (imo)

Wouldn't you say this archive represents good value for the money?

A nation that forgets its past is a nation that repeats its mistakes.

This is so disingenuous. We all know where the money goes.

parineum an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The epa doesn't have access to the federal budget

	▲	Grombobulous 40 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That’s not really the point, the point is that $2 million isn’t a lot of money for a service that is for the benefit of over 300 million people.

pfisch an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Ok, but I could replicate this process and archive for under $20,000k per year(probably way under) and set it up in less than 1 day with claude...

I’ll come back in 3 days and you can share the link with your web archive. I’ll Venmo you $20 for your Claude pro subscription.

	▲	nomel 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Looking at the 2024 to 2025 archive, it's around 1TB/year: https://app.browsertrix.com/explore/usgov-archive/collection... If that's true, something has clearly gone wildly wrong with the, most likely several, departments involved/created with maintaining this. I suspect if you look at the breakdown, it's 90% administrative costs, with the rest being inflated Cisco contracts, or whatever other parasite latched on. As others have said, it's been archived already.

fooqux an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

You've obviously never worked in government before. The technology is likely not the issue; the bureaucracy is.