I’m a tech interested guy. I’ve touched SQL once or twice, but wasn’t able to really make sense of it. That combined with not having a practical use leaves SQL as largely a black box in my mind (though I am somewhat familiar with technical concepts in databasing).
With that, I keep seeing [pic related] as proof that Elon Musk doesn’t understand SQL.
Can someone give me a technical explanation for how one would come to that conclusion? I’d love if you could pass technical documentation for that.
because he doesn’t understand that SSNs aren’t globally unique when you account for time.
Barry Allen born in 1905 has SSN 123-44-5678. Barry died in 1983.
Clark Kent was born in 1996 with SSN 123-44-5678.
Musks assumption of a deduplicated DB table ignores the fact that SSNs were never designed to be GUIDs. he lacks the fundamentals of basic data modeling and critical thinking needed to understand a simple construct that a child could grasp.
This is why he doesn’t understand SQL. He also doesn’t understand COBOL, which SSNs were built on top of.
This isn’t because Elon Musk is an idiot.
#Elon Musk is a criminal.
Also he doesnt know what an SCD is.
Elon Musk is also an idiot. He thinks he’s smart enough to quickly understand complex situations and complex problems about which he knows next to nothing, within just a few minutes.
Most people would only try to claim that level of understanding in areas with which they have professional experience or about which they’re extremely geeky. He does it with everything, and nobody can be an expert in everything, and everybody knows that except for narcissistists.
I suppose for non-tech people it might be convenient to assume that because someone knows something about some kind of tech, they therefore know a lot about all kinds of tech, and the reality is that’s just not true. There are so many fields that are totally different. But if it did, actually he would look even more idiotic, because Twitter is a train wreck, so clearly he’s incompetent in tech field, right?
The sheer size of the federal government and its age would mean there are thousands of databases out there. Some may be so old that they predate RDBMS/SQL.
That alone makes his comment come from a place of ignorance. Of course it’s confident ignorance. The worst kind.
I don’t follow. Wouldn’t that lend credence to his assertion that it’s incorrect to assume that everything in government is SQL?
People here are being irrationally obtuse about the possibility that an agency that’s existed since the 1930s may keep business-critical records on legacy systems predating relational databases. Systems serving a national agency may not migrate databases frequently.
What’s he’s arguing is that the government doesn’t use SQL at all.
Definitely “Confidently Incorrect” material.
The Social Security FAQ page (Q 20, specifically) says that they do not do re-use of old SSNs when people die.
The SSN is 9 digits long; so technically they would have to start re-using them after the billionth one. Given the current population size, and how many people have been born/died since its implementation - it’s fair to say they haven’t had to re-use any figures yet.
The number is structured though. Some positions represent things like the geographic region you were born in, others relate to the year you were born. That drastically cuts down the available numbers as the entire range isn’t available in all situations.
https://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/geocard.html
They have several generations to go. Literally not a problem for us or our grandchildren.
Not to mention, anyone who has worked in the US gets a SSN, not just citizens or current residents.
I know a bunch of people over here in europe who have them after working a few months/ years in the US.
Right. Fingers crossed we figure out national IDs before then.
Papers please
Lol talk about burying the lede… The issue here is that the government absolutely uses SQL to traverse a DB and anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot.
Naw, I definitely meant to be asking about duplication of data in databases (vs if the government actually uses SQL).
Sorry to have communicated that so poorly. Everyone seems to be taking the angle you’re arguing though. Guess I’ll need to work on that.
Wait, SSNs weren’t designed to be GUIDs? I mean, I fully follow that they aren’t and we’ve had to reuse them when the circle of life does its thing, but I thought they were just designed poorly and we found out the hard eay they don’t work as GUIDs. What purpose were they designed for if not to act as GUIDs?
They were designed to be only used for the administration of social security. Since they were sending monthly checks, they needed a way to know that the person going to the office and saying their address changed was who they said they were. This was at a time before driver’s licences were common and they didn’t have any other type of ID, and there were just a lot fewer people.
Later on the SSN started to be used by banks and other entities even though it was never meant for that, and the risks associated with the relatively insecure design just compounded, because instead of just fraudulently claiming someone else’s social security checks (which, unless the target died, would probably be figured out within a month), it opened up all sorts of extra avenues for fraud.
Elin musk is a (criminal) scammer, he always has been.
He was fired for incompetence from his own company
Pretty much everything he’s promised for every company he has headed had been a lie. Tesla full self driving? Lie. Hyperloop? All lies to successful kill high speed rail and start a movement that wasted billions of dollars including tax payer money. Even SpaceX, the least shit of all, is shit. Once you really look at it, its all promises with no results and lots of cheering when millions of tax payer dollars -yet again- blow up in the sky.
The guy has one quality: convincing people that he’s smart even though he literally doesn’t know shit
Elon Musk’s degree is in economics. He might be a script kiddie.
But I was assured he was a materials engineer, rocket scientist, computer programmer, and businessman extraordinaire!
I’m not arguing that Elon musk is anything but an absolute tool.
SS numbers have 999 million options. Are we already repeating them?
We have over 300 million people in the US right now. Social security started in the US in 1935 with just over 127 million people then.
Yeah, we probably have gone through 999 million options by now.
I don’t think we’ve gone through 999 million options yet. Only about 350 million people have been born since 1933, so even if we add all 127 million US citizens alive in 1935, that’s just over half of the possible social security numbers.
The reason we’ve likely reused numbers is because they weren’t randomly assigned until like 2011. Knowing that I was born in 1995 in Wichita, KS, you could make an educated guess at the first three digits of my SSN
We have 335 million people in this country literally right now. I don’t think “350 million born since 1933” makes sense. There gotta be a lot of churn just from early deaths alone.
Edit: number fixin
Not every person in the United States was born in the United States and even temporary workers can get a SSN
I mean you can check my math, I just added up all the births per year in this article
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/06/12/how-many-people-were-born-the-year-you-were-born/111928356/
Rounding to one significant figure, it’s 311.9 million people born in the US between 1933 and 2018. Adding an average of 4 million births per year since then, it’s 335.9. I rounded up to 350 to bring it to a nice round number
A bit of research tells me that around 44.8 million of us are first generation immigrants, so 291.1 million were born here. Is it reasonable to assume that 291.1 out of the 335.9 million people born since 1933 have survived so far? I have absolutely no idea, I’m not a professional census taker
Well, I think this is twice in the same thread where my intuition was considerably off base. Lesson learned, I suppose.
Said this elsewhere, but wanted to be sure you had the chance to see the linked material. The Social Security FAQ page (Q 20, specifically) says that they do not do re-use of old SSNs when people die.
Just read that, and it says they’ve only issued 453 million numbers so far. Huh. I really thought it would’ve been a lot more than that.
I don’t want to come off as a bot spamming this in a bunch of different comment threads, but The Social Security FAQ page (Q 20, specifically) says that they do not do re-use of old SSNs when people die.