• DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
        2·
        2 months ago

        I kind of doubt it. It’s been known that he’s a fraud of a coder for a while, that seems like a clear riff.

        Enough that I was really disappointed when Some More News talked about Zip2 like he was the sole founder and therefore must have been good at coding at some point.

        Btw, the guy he and his brother founded the company with died at 51.

        As a megarich techie… With the dirt on Elon’s real capabilities.

        Interesting.

        (It was a fishbone… That caused a heart attack?)

  • i_stole_ur_taco@lemmy.ca
    6·
    2 months 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.

    • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 months ago

      Database schema = “Not fraudulant”, what’s so hard about that? Login credentials don’t even need to be encrypted if you say no fraud before you log in, and cross your fingers. It’s basic programming knowledge, come on man. Also throw some salt over shoulder and slaughter a goat for good measure just in case.

  • dan1101@lemm.ee
    4·
    2 months ago

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

    • Susaga@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      2 months 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
          01·
          2 months 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
            1·
            2 months 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
              1·
              2 months 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
              0·
              2 months 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.

      • cm0002@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 months ago

        If it’s tech he doesn’t know shit about it, I learned that years ago during the Twitter acquisition days

        He sounds like a CEO who “knows enough to fuck shit up, not enough to know how to fix it, but thinks they do” AKA the worst executive known to IT

  • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
    3·
    2 months 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
      • CleoTheWizard@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        They were more competent bozos. They ran Germany the way that your stupid friend gets laid more often because they aren’t smart enough to be embarrassed by themselves and they know only one goal.

        Whereas these guys run America like an ugly stupid person that insists that no, actually, they have already in fact convinced you to sleep with them despite what your words say and the goal is to confuse you into bed.

        • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          2 months ago

          The best decision that nazis ever made was not to indiscriminately purge the military and bureaucracy. Purges certainly did happen but they were focused on the political class and very targeted elsewhere.

          They kept the systems people depended on running well to not immediately create massive public backlash… they also got lucky as hell. The military and populace were deeply bitter after WW1 and they leveraged grand gestures to great effect while changing relatively little administratively. The fucks in the US are making flaccid grand gestures while tearing down systems people actually depend on.

  • GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml
    2·
    2 months 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

  • Jorn@lemm.ee
    1·
    2 months ago

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

  • CodexArcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    2 months 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.

    • vormadikter@startrek.website
      0·
      2 months 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.

      • mesa@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        It doesn’t. There is no truely unique ID in the US.

        Source: myself. Worked on health insurance and it was hell.

        • CodexArcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          It’s wild too. I’ve been in the hospital a lot lately and in addition to a bar-code wristband, every healthcare worker, before doing anything with me (the patient) will ask my full name and either birthday or address and then double-check it against the wrist band. This is to make sure, at every step, that they didn’t accidentally swap in some other patient with the same name. (Not so uncommon, lots of men have their father’s name.)

          Meanwhile in like Iceland, everyone gets assigned a personal GPG key at birth so you can just present you public cert as identification, not to mention send private messages and secure your state-assigned crypto-wallet. Not saying such a system is without flaw but it seems a lot better than what we’re doing!

    • senkora@lemmy.zip
      0·
      2 months 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
          1·
          2 months 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.

  • -☆-@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

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

    Cool cool cool

    • Cargon@lemmy.ml
      01·
      2 months 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
        0·
        2 months 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
          01·
          2 months ago

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

  • Randelung@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 months ago

    Of course. Everyone who’s ever used a DB knows it’s BS. As long as the data is structured - which it a) is because he was able to make assertions about it and b) fucking Excel files are enough - it CAN be imported and SQL’d on. Even Excel has built in support for fuck’s sake, not to mention Python and PowerQuery.

    The dude is a self-certified moron - he probably struggles with the concept of PKI, too.

  • SilentKettle@lemmy.wtf
    0·
    2 months ago

    Musk seems to think Musk is a tech genius, but really he was just born into money and used it to buy a bunch of companies. In fairness he was able to recognise which companies to buy, doesn’t mean he knows anything about databases though.

    • Whirlybird@aussie.zone
      02·
      2 months ago

      If you think that every single system in the government does use SQL, there’s another retard in here…

        • Whirlybird@aussie.zone
          02·
          2 months ago

          I think you might overestimate your reading comprehension. Musk is clearly talking about specific systems here. The person I replied to is either an idiot for thinking he knows for a fact that that specific system uses SQL, or is an idiot for thinking that every government system uses SQL.

          • The_Lorax@sh.itjust.works
            0·
            2 months ago

            Dude, musk literally said “this retard thinks the government uses SQL”. That implies that the government does not use SQL, which is false. The user you replied to said “This retard thinks that the government doesn’t use SQL”. This is not a claim that every government system uses SQL, or even a claim that a specific system uses SQL. The claim is simply that the government uses SQL, which is true.

            • Whirlybird@aussie.zone
              02·
              2 months ago

              If you ignore literally all context, sure.

              That’s not how people actually having an honest conversation work though.

  • dragonlobster@programming.dev
    0·
    2 months ago

    It’s hard to figure out what he’s talking about , when he says the “whole social security database”. Like in which tables are they duplicated? Does it mean the entire row is duplicated or just the SSN, it might make sense to be duplicated depending on the schema. Is it an append only db, so there might be updated columns on the same ssn and you need to filter by the latest update timestamp? Who knows.

    But also, saying that there’s a “social security database” and then following that up by the govt “doesn’t use SQL” so… the db is actually just a spreadsheet? A .txt file? The SSNs are just written down in someone’s notebook? Lol

    • frezik@midwest.social
      0·
      2 months ago

      SSNs are reused. Someone dies and their number gets reassigned. The database could easily be keeping track of all previous assignments for any given SSN.

      Remember, SSNs are designed for social security and nothing else. They got picked up as a unique ID by private interests as a hack. They were never supposed to be as widespread in use as they are. The federal government using it this way is the specific, designed use case.