• dan1101@lemm.ee
    255·
    11 days ago

    That’s weird, I thought I used SQL databases from government agencies regularly. Guess I was mistaken.

    • Susaga@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2321·
      11 days ago

      If you and Elon disagree about something, just assume he’s wrong about it. If you both agree on something, THEN you might be mistaken.

        • oo1@lemmings.worldEnglish
          11·
          11 days ago

          I hope the screenshot dude is also going to stop this unquestioning belief in the things people say or claim without evidence.

          Those first two paragraphs look like a tendency to prefer hero-worship to critical thought; that seems to be a fairly widespread problem in humans from long before this latest batch of demagogues.

          There’s also a hint of “I’m not an ‘expert’ in it so I can’t (be bothered) to understand anything about it” also a very depressingly common attitude.

          • frezik@midwest.social
            26·
            11 days ago

            We all have to rely on somebody to be an expert in fields outside our own. Years ago, if Elon said “Falcon 9 launch yesterday failed due to xyz”, I assumed he had the actual experts giving him notes. The Xhitter debacle showed how much he doesn’t listen to those people.

            • jballs@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              15·
              11 days ago

              It’s kind of funny, but we all do this to some extent. I used to think most people on Reddit were super smart. If someone says stuff with authority, then it’s easy to believe what they’re saying and assume they know what they’re talking about.

              But then every once in a while, I’d come across a topic that I know deeply about - and the comment would just be blatantly wrong, but still have tons of up votes. It really made me start second guessing all the other comments I had read and thought were smart, but it’s an easy trap to fall into.

              I guess what I’m really saying, is that you all are a bunch of morons, probably.

            • oo1@lemmings.worldEnglish
              14·
              11 days ago

              I just dont get why you have to assume that though?

              Maybe I’m a pessimist, but I’ve met and worked with enough humans that I think the best assumtion is that they’re all full of shit until they prove otherwise.

              It’s fine to rely on experts for some things, but if those experts aren’t subject to independent scrutiny or directly independent of the claim or sunjecy under test, or can’t give clear testable /replicable evidence, I’d just not put much weight on their testimony as a source of evidence.

      • dan1101@lemm.ee
        35·
        11 days ago

        Indeed. I’m starting to think I can’t trust what that Musk guy says.

  • i_stole_ur_taco@lemmy.ca
    2401·
    11 days ago

    Elon’s shock and fury about the database key sounds like he got a report from an out-of-breath 20 year old DOGE kid who thinks they’re hot shit and discovered some massive flaw.

    Elon also seems like the kind of person that believes a database schema is all that’s needed to govern a population.

  • CodexArcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    184·
    11 days ago

    I’m sure folks on here know this, but you know, there’s also that 10K a day that don’t so…

    What makes this especially funny, to me, is that SSN is the literal text book example (when I was in school anyway) of a “natural” key that you absolutely should never use as a primary key. It is often the representative example of the kinds of data that seems like it’d make a good key but will absolutely fuck you over if you do.

    SSN is not unique to a person. They get reused after death, and a person can have more than one in their lifetime (if your id is stolen and you arduously go about getting a new one). Edit: (See responses) It seems I’m misinformed about SSNs, apologies. I have heard from numerous sources that they are not unique to a person, but the specifics of how it happens are unknown to me.

    And they’re protected information due to all the financials that rely on them, so you don’t really want to store them at all (unless you’re the SSA, who would have guessed that’d ever come up though!?)

    It’s so stupid that it would be hilarious if people weren’t dying.

    • senkora@lemmy.zip
      46·
      11 days ago

      Small correction to an otherwise great explanation: SSNs are not recycled after death.

      **Q20:  *Are Social Security numbers reused after a person dies?*****A:  No. We do not reassign a Social Security number (SSN) after the number holder’s death. Even though we have issued over 453 million SSNs so far, and we assign about 5 and one-half million new numbers a year, the current numbering system will provide us with enough new numbers for several generations into the future with no changes in the numbering system.

      https://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html

        • KamikazeRusher@lemm.ee
          36·
          11 days ago

          Nah. It’s worked for 50 years and if we get another 30 then it’s done its job well. Government is supposed to review and adjust things as time goes on and Social Security Numbers weren’t intended to uniquely identify citizens. They probably expected an overhaul to be done by 2020.

          They fact that we haven’t reworked portions of it and rely on SSNs to identify citizens shows that we haven’t had a forward-thinking Congress in the last 20 years at minimum.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          3·
          11 days ago

          well tbf, the standard coming from computing is doubling the bits until it stops being a problem, or with ipv6 practically having more IPs than there are atoms in the entire planet of earth (i think i did the calculation a while ago, and it was like, most of the atoms in earth, so like, not quite, but for all intents and purposes, might as well be)

      • invertedspear@lemm.ee
        3·
        11 days ago

        So they’ve issued almost half the possible numbers, current US population is actively using 1/3rd of them. I think unless there is a major drop in birth rates “several generations” is two. Either my great grandkids will be reusing dead people SSNs or there will be 10 digit numbers which is going to be a problem for any systems that coded it as char(9).

        • Trainguyrom@reddthat.comEnglish
          1·
          10 days ago

          Ongoing trends would indicate a significant drop in birth rate is extremely likely. Major cities will most likely be facing population shrinkage by the end of the century

    • vormadikter@startrek.website
      30·
      11 days ago

      Thanks for (starting to) explain this concept to people not accustomed to how the US does their shit.

      See, where i live, we used to have for example a Tax-Number. That was a thing the taxdepartment used to identify a person. But if you move from city a to city b, that numbers changes. So if you move a lot, you will have numerous of these.
      Now, some 15 years back, the Tax-ID was introduced (fellow residents at this point will lnow it might be Germany) and this number is a one-in-a-kind ID that will only be assigned to you. They create it shortly after birth. My sons first registraion ID was this, before anyrhing else. You will also get a uniqie healthcare-ID that also works like that.

      So…how does that work in the US and why is habing a changing number that is not unique helpful? Or what is Elon not getting? I dont get it either because I dont know how this works for you.

      Thanks in advance to shed light on this.

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
      9·
      11 days ago

      I don’t know all the ways but my identity was stolen and I never knew until my attorney was looking at something else for me in conjunction with the social security commission where I lived, and it popped up under a different name. They then accessed my records using other information, and it was the same number. It took a long time to get it sorted. A few years.

    • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      21·
      11 days ago

      (if your id is stolen and you arduously go about getting a new one)

      I thought I had lost mine once and got a new SSN card, they don’t give you a new number, it’s the same number

  • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
    1313·
    11 days ago

    You know, the thing that always seemed really scary about the OG Nazis is that they were competent, intelligent, put-together people that were just fucking evil. Then you look at the US Nazis and the fucking bozo density is off the charts, but they seem to be succeeding anyway.

    Three possibilities come to mind:

    • These bozos are going to find out, hard and soon.
    • The OG Nazis were actually bozos too.
    • Competence and intelligence doesn’t actually matter in running a fascist regime
      • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
        1·
        9 days ago

        The high leadership were absolute bozos, except for their propaganda guy (Goebel?). And at the lower levels, they had good engineering (still do). Thankfully the higher ups were more interested in building an über-weapon (because that’s good propaganda) than actually winning the war.

        Let’s hope the current crop of nazis se their downfall faster. Actually, fuck hope. Let’s make them.

      • Whateley@lemm.eeEnglish
        37·
        11 days ago

        Hitler and Himmler believed in “World Ice Theory” which was put forth by some German crackpot who stated the base matter of all reality was ice.

        • borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          233·
          11 days ago

          Every German person I’ve ever met talks so confidently about shit that you just kinda assume they know what they’re talking about, until they start talking about a domain you’re an expert in and you realize they’re actually kinda dumb but with good vocabulary.

    • josefo@leminal.space
      13·
      11 days ago

      OG Nazis were master manipulators, dressed cool as fuck and their propaganda machine was one of the best ever. Intelligent? There is no hard evidence of that, and their military strategies were poorly thought. They had fucking cool weapons and equipment, so maybe good engineers were involved, but that’s it.

    • AGreenPurple@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
      12·
      11 days ago

      Just look at the military decisions Hitler made, that was luckily an incompetent guy thinking he’s smarter than everyone else. That rings a bell, doesn’t it?

      In the long run, making less stupid decisions wouldn’t most likely have changed the outcome, but even more people would likely have died (and unfortunately the people executing the murder of the Jews weren’t as incompetent as their glorious leader).

      • Boomkop3@reddthat.com
        2·
        11 days ago

        A lot of behaviour in politics is emotionally driven, and sustained by the lazyness of voters not learning how the system they live in works.

        If anything, I think this requires more emotional intelligence and perhaps acting skills.

    • Preston Maness ☭@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      6·
      11 days ago

      You know, the thing that always seemed really scary about the OG Nazis is that they were competent, intelligent, put-together people that were just fucking evil. Then you look at the US Nazis and the fucking bozo density is off the charts, but they seem to be succeeding anyway.

      Not every fascist and Nazi needed to be competent, intelligent, and put-together. Just enough of them. I suppose we’ll find out in real-time if they have amassed sufficient numbers this go 'round.

    • quirzle@lemmy.zipEnglish
      32·
      11 days ago

      Replace “dumb kid” with half dozen of my boomer relatives, and you’re spot-on.

      • doleo@lemmy.oneEnglish
        12·
        11 days ago

        and the dumb kids, unfortunately. I did a spot with some non-US teenagers, in a class recently. The topic was “name a person you admire and why”. Guess whose filthy name came up…

  • quirzle@lemmy.zipEnglish
    96·
    11 days ago

    Calling someone a retard for believing something that’s obviously true is straight out of the flat-Earther playbook.

  • Jorn@lemm.ee
    86·
    11 days ago

    He got community-noted for being wrong. Per usual, it’s only a matter of time before he deletes his post.

  • GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml
    86·
    11 days ago

    Elon starting to comment on technical matters was the moment I learned he was actually completely beyond incompetent, since I have some actual expertise on the subject. Right around the time he bought Twitter and commented publicly on its architecture.

    This is further evidence to that point

    • suy@programming.devOP
      39·
      11 days ago

      Ah, a classic watch. :-)

      Elon probably thinks that SQL is MS SQL Sever, MySQL, or some such.

    • jballs@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      11 days ago

      Lol had never seen that before, but Jesus Christ that is a painful depiction of my life.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    69·
    11 days ago

    Lmao we’re gonna get to watch eel-on-musk and all of his dipshit wünderkinds speedrun through all of the pitfalls a junior DBA / data engineer is liable to make, and they’re gonna do it on prod, and prod is the US government.

    What could possibly go wrong

      • notabot@lemm.ee
        18·
        11 days ago

        An UPDATE without a WHERE clause that doesn’t get noticed for a week or two. Your data’s hosed and you can’t really cope with reverting to your last known good backup. Bonus points if you haven’t tested your recovery procedures recently. Then he runs around screeching about how the data is obviously fraudulent and he’s a genius for finding it.

    • Bob Robertson IX @discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      12·
      11 days ago

      He’s going to dedupe the social security databases, thinking that he’s screwing over trans people because he thinks they are the only people who change their names… not realizing that the vast majority of married women have at least two names associated with their SSN.

  • -☆-@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    672·
    11 days ago

    A government official known for performing a nazi salute just broadcast an ableist slur.

    Cool cool cool

    • Cargon@lemmy.ml
      121·
      11 days ago

      Civilized people should really coopt the word “removed” to mean Republican. I mean, they have the ® next to their names to remind us already.

      Then when someone takes offense you can just say

      Jesus Titty-Fucking Christ, Carol. Just because someone has a mental disability doesn’t make them a Republican!"

      • NuclearDolphin@lemmy.mlEnglish
        32·
        11 days ago

        Way to throw disabled people under the bus because you aren’t clever enough to find another way to insult their intelligence.

        Also using the phrase “civilized people” makes you sound like you’d fit in with the other Republicans.

        • Cargon@lemmy.ml
          31·
          11 days ago

          Jesus Titty-Fucking Christ, Carol. Just because someone has a mental disability doesn’t make them a Republican.

  • شاهد على إبادة@lemm.ee
    61·
    11 days ago

    Isn’t Oracle a big government supplier with millions if not billions worth of contracts?

    Elon is a fraud but for someone who claims he created one of the Web’s first e-commerce sites this level of ignorance is embarrassing

    • Boomkop3@reddthat.com
      21·
      11 days ago

      He paid some people to pretend he’s the founder, then used that title to build a reputation of being genius and what not. And he’s been getting rich off of investor capitol ever since.

      I don’t know which company he did and didn’t start himself. But I know he definitely didn’t write the code behind ebay or paypal

      • jonne@infosec.pub
        7·
        11 days ago

        His first venture was a business directory on the internet (ie. The yellow pages, but online). No idea if he or this brother actually wrote any code for it, or if they hired someone. Wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t do any actual work for that project either.

  • bdonvr@thelemmy.club
    611·
    11 days ago

    Everything uses SQL. The world fucking runs on SQL

    (yes I know SQL isn’t something that you can “run” something on yadda yadda…)

  • Salamander@mander.xyz
    531·
    11 days ago

    Someone needs to explain to Musk how to debug with the JSON so that the ipv6 GUI does not overflow into the git API front-end