What could possibly go wrong? DOGE to rapidly rebuild Social Security codebase.
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Lots of people are going to stop getting checks. I can’t imagine a bigger shitshow for the gop, if elections continue to matter to them.
On a lighter note, would this be a good application for rust? (assuming it was done competently and well planned, unlike here). Memory safe and fast seem like nice points in its favor here.
On a lighter note, would this be a good application for rust? (assuming it was done competently and well planned, unlike here). Memory safe and fast seem like nice points in its favor here.
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You appear to be assuming both that the “old people” will live long enough* to vote again, and that free and fair voting** will ever happen in the future.
*Numerous of the *COVID deniers actually died in the hospitals, insisting that they could not have COVID because it was a hoax. If they had lived, they would surely have voted for Felon45 again.
**Putin always wins elections with a huge majority of the votes (recently: 88%). His opponents are either very clumsy and fall out of windows, or else they totally lack any self-preservation and keep dying in numerous other ways.
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Why has Trump injected this into everything? The whole "Like never seen before..." shit. It's not true ever when he says it and it's not true here. He shifted a fuckton of Nvidia cards from Tesla to his other company, that was his secret, the rest of it is standing up a server farm, which hasn't been a monumental task for anyone in decades. It's just in this case he diverted an order that I assume was supposed to teach his cars how to not hit fire trucks to now training another chatbot. Because what we really need now is another chatbot, we don't have enough.
He's an idiot fuckup, deciding to overhaul the SSA systems using a bunch of kids with an AI to help them isn't serious. This goes back to his "bring me your most salient pieces of code" email from when he took over Twitter and had people bringing printouts for him to look at.
I will mock, because he's a drugged out sociopath who really doesn't give a single shit about whether anyone gets hurt, as long as him and his kind get their end.
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Retired DevOps/SCM who still has some scripts updating COBOL to MicroFocus COBOL from the early 20-teens. COBOL works but is too wordy for the TL
R set. This is a "hack-a-thon" attitude, and the remaining knowledge will vanish so it will crash when our LawMakers update the rules for SSI, Taxes, Eligibility somewhere, and Payments. Gods, I can only hope this finally gets through to my MAGA family members on SSI. Naw, not an optimist.....
R set. This is a "hack-a-thon" attitude, and the remaining knowledge will vanish so it will crash when our LawMakers update the rules for SSI, Taxes, Eligibility somewhere, and Payments. Gods, I can only hope this finally gets through to my MAGA family members on SSI. Naw, not an optimist.....
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You mean like how Tesla somehow sold 8,653 cars over one weekend in Canada?
That's two cars a minute, out of just four outlets in Canada. Or out another way, just under 20% of ALL of 2024's Tesla sales in Canada, in just three days in January.
For someone talking about how much "waste, fraud and abuse" there is, Musk seems perfectly fine committing, you know - fraud, when getting government cash.
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I have been using by “my Social Security” with log in via Login.gov.
Today when logging in I was greeted either a message saying this was my first log in (it was not) and I needed to verify my identity (which I had previously done).
I went through the process of uploading photos of the front and back of my driver license and a photo of my face - but the ‘system’ couldn’t make the match. So I repeated the whole routine carefully getting good quality images. No luck.
Is this just coincidence? Or is it a way to force people into time consuming in-person verifications?
Today when logging in I was greeted either a message saying this was my first log in (it was not) and I needed to verify my identity (which I had previously done).
I went through the process of uploading photos of the front and back of my driver license and a photo of my face - but the ‘system’ couldn’t make the match. So I repeated the whole routine carefully getting good quality images. No luck.
Is this just coincidence? Or is it a way to force people into time consuming in-person verifications?
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Trump is a horrid incompetent fuckup who staffs his administration with unqualified fuckups.
SSA reliably gets checks out to over 70 million people each month. Those are people who rely on those checks coming on time to live.
Musk's gutting of USAID has killed people, He thought that was good fun and Republicans also praised it. Breaking Social Security could cause elderly people on fixed income to starve, he's also closing offices and killing telephonic support. You can't hear people plead for their check if you can't hear them at all. But don't worry, Musk will post a cheeky meme about it when it breaks.
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Try 40 something. My positive message for your future is you enjoy the bed you are making. Never forget you wanted this. Cheered for it. You eat your shit and enjoy it now.
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Yup. Not worth it.
Also I find the hostility towards the upper middle class ironic given your propensity to fellate any an all billionaires. Suck harder, maybe Elon will buy you a pony.
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Twenty bucks says they're going to claim that they somehow "lost" the original code.
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What is your complaint are you are arguing they are not called so?
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I like your optimism that any of us will get to vote again in the future!
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A few modest observations about Elon wanting to rebuild SSA's codebase...
1) Should it be done? Absolutely, but done right.
2) Let's look at scope. Tesla's annual revenue is about $100 billion. Amazon's annual revenue is something like $600 billion. Social Security annual benefits given out is around $1.6 TRILLION, or $1600 billion. The size of SSA's business is 16 times that of Tesla, almost three times that of Amazon. I'm certain Tesla and Amazon have bigger codebase, but ... 16 times? "Just feed it to an AI." Sure...
3) Elon likes to "move fast and break things." I don't think we should lose sight of the fact that if THIS thing breaks, Grandma doesn't eat.
1) Should it be done? Absolutely, but done right.
2) Let's look at scope. Tesla's annual revenue is about $100 billion. Amazon's annual revenue is something like $600 billion. Social Security annual benefits given out is around $1.6 TRILLION, or $1600 billion. The size of SSA's business is 16 times that of Tesla, almost three times that of Amazon. I'm certain Tesla and Amazon have bigger codebase, but ... 16 times? "Just feed it to an AI." Sure...
3) Elon likes to "move fast and break things." I don't think we should lose sight of the fact that if THIS thing breaks, Grandma doesn't eat.
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What actually spurred this DOGE effort wasn't the fraud (which the inspector general found to be minimal) or inefficiency. It was when they saw the database was named MADAM. Can't have that! And merely renaming it to something palatable to white supremacists, like Trump did with the Gulf of Mexico, apparently wasn't sufficient.
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Indeed, surprised a bunch of vibe coders considered Java "modern".
I spend a lot of time in the language, and it does the job, but it's not modern, even for someone who started coding in Pascal....
<insert joke about GC pausing to throw ElonOutToTheDumpster>
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What could possibly go wrong?
Well, the conversion will be started by Elon’s subordinate who will need help. A government contract for $100 billion dollars will be awarded to SAIC, Halliburton, Raytheon, or other. After six months Elon’s subordinate quits citing unexpected responsibilities elsewhere. More contractors are called in because outside software experts express misgivings about security, efficiency, and robustness. An additional $100 billion dollars is awarded. Delays, confusion, and changes pushes the budget to add an additional $100 billion.* Finally in dismay, the project is postponed indefinitely because Republicans aren’t interested. The old COBOL backups are restored (assuming Musk’s subordinate created any) and it was decided to leave things as they are, at least until Social Security is cancelled, in which hearings are scheduled for the next session assuming Republicans take control of Congress.
* all amounts are estimates and may differ in amounts up to $1 trillion dollars, adjusted for inflation, lawyer fees, miscellaneous expenses, and AI costs which are projected to decrease over time.
Well, the conversion will be started by Elon’s subordinate who will need help. A government contract for $100 billion dollars will be awarded to SAIC, Halliburton, Raytheon, or other. After six months Elon’s subordinate quits citing unexpected responsibilities elsewhere. More contractors are called in because outside software experts express misgivings about security, efficiency, and robustness. An additional $100 billion dollars is awarded. Delays, confusion, and changes pushes the budget to add an additional $100 billion.* Finally in dismay, the project is postponed indefinitely because Republicans aren’t interested. The old COBOL backups are restored (assuming Musk’s subordinate created any) and it was decided to leave things as they are, at least until Social Security is cancelled, in which hearings are scheduled for the next session assuming Republicans take control of Congress.
* all amounts are estimates and may differ in amounts up to $1 trillion dollars, adjusted for inflation, lawyer fees, miscellaneous expenses, and AI costs which are projected to decrease over time.
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They’re going to use AI to do it because that’s the only way they can do anything and they’re going to screw it up.
But don’t worry, they’ll blame the screw ups on dem sabotage via illegal immigrants and attempts to steal votes or money something something
But don’t worry, they’ll blame the screw ups on dem sabotage via illegal immigrants and attempts to steal votes or money something something
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And here's the part everyone gets wrong about government work. If you are too much of an outlier for the bank, the bank simply refuses to take you as a customer. So it's easy for banks to optimize their system because they just reject the long tail of weirdo customers. If a customer walks into your restaurant and says 'I'm on a liquid diet and am allergic to the following 87 things, what can you serve me', you're going to say 'nothing, sorry' and they'll have to leave and find food elsewhere. When you're the VA and that customer is a veteran and they have that condition because they took an artillery round on behalf of the American public, you're going to figure out how to prepare that meal.What midsize bank deals with tens of trillions of dollars and has 400 million customers?? lol “midsize bank level software transition”
Government doesn't get to define its market. Musk has repeatedly revealed that he's never looked at a paystub and been curious what that OASDI acronym stands for, because he assumed a 6 year old getting SS benefits was fraud, when that 6 year old is just the 'S' in that acronym. And when your customer is 6, there's a whole bunch of added shit you gotta add to your system to service that customer - powers of attorney, trusts, shit like that. Same goes for the 'D' in that acronym, as a LOT of SS recipients cannot visit an office or call on the phone. You gotta accommodate them as well. You know what my mom's bank 100% could not do? They couldn't handle an investment in a trust. At all. That didn't make it through the last software rewrite so we had to move her bank.
The whole fucking point of government is that whatever you do has to work for every last goddamn person in the country - it's 100%. You don't get to choose your customers. You have to accommodate the weirdest goddamn corner case you never even thought of. And the way you normally do that is with human beings. Someone who can listen to the need, recognize there's no fucking way the software can do that or the procedure manual was prepared for, and work the system to get the necessary outcome. Banks have the benefit of simply stopping the exercise after the easy 90% is done. Government does not.
That's what makes public service work hard.
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one of my friends in highschool was drafted by Sun to go down south and help develop its Java suite
and I’m old as disco ( graduated in ‘86)
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Sure am glad they’re saving us money by finding all this waste, fraud and abuse.
Trying to figure out how COBOL is committing fraud.
Anyone? Anyone?
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If the world's top programmers were tasked with this job, it would take years.
This is the ultimate expresssion of the Dunning Kruger effect. And when they fail, it should be off to jail.
This is the ultimate expresssion of the Dunning Kruger effect. And when they fail, it should be off to jail.
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Especially since I do not believe anyone even asked for this or approved the expenditure
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"“If you weren't worried about a whole bunch of people not getting benefits or getting the wrong benefits, or getting the wrong entitlements, or having to wait ages, then sure go ahead,”"
Narrator voice: They absolutely do not care. They're going to break everything and blame Biden.
Narrator voice: They absolutely do not care. They're going to break everything and blame Biden.
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Given the large amount of enterprise code in Java at banks and businesses, at least you don’t have the ”the last COBOL knowledgeable developer on this system retired 5 years ago” problem.
But yeah, there’s countless interfaces to other agencies with other systems. That whole file of “people who we think are dead” thing that SSA maintains and distributes to other agencies. That’s what prompted that last IG study.
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Just the guy in charge of it all. Clearly you're being intentionally dense.
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See, I don's see a lot of evidence that the codebase is a problem. SS transitioned nearly all beneficiaries to direct deposit quite successfully. They have never missed a payment at scale. Their website has some challenges but looking at those, they tend to be policy issues, not code ones. For instance it took me 3 months to get my SS web account set up. Why? Because SSA relies on credit reporting agencies to validate identity (policy problem that the government has not addressed this problem itself) and the credit agency they use had my birth year off by one, and it took a while to correct that (understandable given the race condition between the credit agency relying on SSA data to do that and SSA relying on the credit agency to verify it.) In the end a very nice woman at SSA over the course of a few calls sorted it out for me. None of that problem is solvable in code within the SSA.
I'm sure there's some efficiency gains of fractions of %s that can be achieved (can't be more given that SSA has a less than 1% administrative overhead) but that's hardly a 'throw the code out' problem.
What does seem to be the problem is that Musk and Trump are big mad that 6 year olds receive SS benefits, which is what the law allows (because it's Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance and the 6 year old could easily be a beneficiary of Social Security recipients under the survivorship part of the program.) This is not a code or data failure, but a profound failure to understand the very nature of the thing they are trying to 'fix'. This is a category error.
Could the website be better? Sure. But the website isn't part of the SSA codebase. It's an interface to the codebase, just as there are interfaces throughout the country from state agencies, credit agencies, payroll companies, and dozens if not hundreds of other categories. You cannot process payroll without that interface, and it sounds like all of those interfaces are about to get rewritten.
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Java has a special type, BigDecimal (IIRC), to handle currency like COBOL does. It was added specifically to aid the transition from COBOL to Java.
Few other languages, especially mainstream languages, and especially especially systems languages like C and Rust, care about computation with currency. It's not integer, and can't be handled or rounded the same way as floats.
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