See the post on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/provisionalidea.bsky.social/post/3lhujtm2qkc2i
According to many comments, the US government DOES use SQL, and Musk is not understanding much what’s going on.
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Sounds like he got confused looking at a view of a join.
https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1889062581848944961
thought the replies would be better. Some people deducted that it uses plain text.
If SSN based fraud is the program then let’s establish an actual federal identification number. Even the Social Services bureau tried to get everyone to not use it as the end all source of truth. They only created it for social security benefits, literally only that purpose.
He got community-noted for being wrong. Per usual, it’s only a matter of time before he deletes his post.
More likely, he’ll delete the community note
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
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.
Yep, and any attempt to replace them with a purpose designed government ID has gotten conspiracy nuts to shut it down
It’s LotusNotes all the way down
Or mongoDB 🙄
Probably something bespoke/legacy.
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.
Ok genuine question, what is the difference between a SQL database and a simple Excel spreadsheet?
People yell at you if you use an excel spreadsheet as a database
Does anyone yell if I use SQL?
Only the programmers that have to run queries in it because that’s their job. 😭
only is its sqlite.
Storage data structures. Database tables are designed for fast read/write. Excel is designed for fast simultaneous parallel computation.
To get a sense of what this looks like, you can read more about their data structures; Databases typically store data in what’s called a “B Tree” and spreadsheets typically store as a format that can be easily converted into a “Directed Acyclic Graph” (although Excel lets you turn off the “acyclic” part if you allow circular references).
Although, with Excel specifically, there’s probably not much difference since it has some database functionality now.
In the context of this tweet most important differences are:
SQL is a language for querying databases.
Most common used databases are relational databases. With relational databases you can setup, well, relations and constraints.
Imagine you have 2 tables (2 excel sheets) one with people, and one with home ownership. You can set the following constraint: (1) each person shows up only once in the people table. And the following relation: (2) every home owner must refer to an existing person in people table.
When modifying the table contents, the system checks if no constraints or relations are violated.
Excel, just like a badly designed relational databse, would, for example, have no problem with duplicate people, or home ownership referring to non-existant people.
I spent more than I’d like to admit wondering “what the fuck is a wel relation?!”
I get what you say but excel even the 98 version can do duplicate/missing data constraints.
A whole lot. Too much to cover in one post in any kind of detail.
A modern relational database management system (RDBMS) is a highly optimized beast. How it accesses storage is very carefully considered. It has a whole mini language for defining relations between data. There are tools for debugging specific queries to make them faster. They index data with tradeoffs between read and write speeds. There are sophisticated locking mechanisms so multiple users can read and write at the same time. They have transactions where many alterations can be packed up together and written efficiently at once. Those transactional alterations are atomic, meaning there are guarantees that all of them happen or none of them happen. The entire thing is based on set theory, and it has survived attacks by many other pretenders to the throne for decades.
And if you’re using Oracle, you can get all that while paying a highly optimized pricing model set up by the best financial advisors Larry Ellison can find to maximize value extraction from your company.
SQL is a language used to manage and interact with most relational databases so it is used often to describe relational databases. There are many tables in a relational database, each is very much like an excel tab. The excel spreadsheet can have many tabs relating to each other. So kinda similar. However a relational database is better defined, more functions and forced relationships, and most important space efficenct. Excel takes probably 100-1000 times more space, and that is best case.
The amount of data, sql is designed to manage large datasets, millions of rows. Excel has its limits.
He used to be regarded as tony stark. Nah he is Justin Hammer. Steals ideas implements them shit and has no idea about anything
I get your point but I disagree. I think both Tony Stark and Justin Hammer are more competent than Elon.
Hammer was no where near as good as Tony but he did make some good stuff.
I would say he’s more like Obadiah Stane, an opportunist taking credit for others work.
True. Atleast Hammer knew his weapons and could sell them alone
He is like tony stark in a timeline where Tony stark decided to join the terrorists instead of building the suit to escape. Oh and in this timeline Tony Starks brain has been rotted away by ketamine
Yeah. That is Hammer
The worst kind of stupid doesn’t need to learn about databases because it’s just common sense.
“Our databases only store in RAM because I AM THE ELECTRICITY BATTERY MASTER”
You save quite a lot of time when working on a database if it’s stored in RAM compared to tape, so it does make sense to use that technology
Yeah in memory databases can be super fast.
till the power goes out
It in Elon’s case, catches fire and locks you in
Then you lose your database quickly, so it’s still fast
My use case is primarily real time data capture - raw log is written to disk and can be recovered from, although at that point we’d have fallen back on the secondary as primary would now be suspect.
At which point you have to slurp down a few hundred terabytes from the other datacenters when the power turns back on.
This is why Google datacenter managers hesitate to turn off the power even when an employee is in the process of getting electrocuted.
You have to link a source for something that offhandedly horrific
Whenever Elon speaks of programming, he just spouts the most delusional Point-Haired Boss bullshit imaginable. Truly, he has been promoted to the level of his incompetence.
(It is also highly ironic considering the Dilbert creator’s politics.)
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.
In fairness he was able to recognise which companies to buy
I think this is just survivorship bias. There are millions of wealthy individuals investing in companies every single day. Occasionally these gambles pay off and make people extremely wealthy.
Most of the time the people who succeed just spend their incredibe wealth and live a quiet happy life.
But there are others who crave attention. These individuals bully their way into prestigious positions and pretend that they’re leading the company.
Elon is that kind of person. He started wealthy, bet his money on companies that succeeded. Then took the CEO role so he would get credit for the companys’ successes.
If ever people dare stop paying attention to him he’ll do something drastic to recapture the spotlight on.
He’s the kind of person who will stand on stage and do a nazi salute just because he wants you to look at him.
It’s easy to gamble if money isn’t yours. If your day to day survival depends on every dollar, then you don’t have the freedom to dick around with investments.
It’s easy to gamble if money isn’t yours.
To my knowledge Musk is gambling with his own money, not hedge fund capital or something.
If your day to day survival depends on every dollar, then you don’t have the freedom to dick around with investments.
But, yes, this is correct. If you’re extremely wealthy then you can keep gambling. If you fail you still have a million other chances. So you’re kind of guaranteed to succeed eventually.
Whereas the common person has one chance. If they fail that’s it.
He also apparently watched a lot of SeaQuest DSV, and is trying to make it a reality. Hyperloop: SeaQuest. Electric cars: SeaQuest. Big car dashboard screens: SeaQuest. Magic Space Science: SeaQuest. CyberTruck…Apple Mouse ADB gen 1-ish wrapped in aluminum foil. I guess what I find most fascinating is that I have similar mental maladies to him, but I learned instead of just being perpetually dumb. It is actually disappointing that he chose to not learn and just ride the walrus instead. No idea why anyone worships him.
OT: You reminded me that i never watched seaquest more than a few episodes and i will have to do that now. does it still hold up for someone who loved TNG and Voyager?
As someone who does systems administration which includes numerous government owned database servers, this is news to me.
dis what you get for working with 19 year old kids with inflated egos whom you only hired to worship you. Also when someone who is not an expert in a field has the confidence to make grand claims about practices in that field, it is a very nice litmus paper telling you that person is generally bullshitting.
REAL GOVERNMENTS USE EXCEL SHEETS /j
Wasn’t it the uk or something that messed up a vote due to excel’s row limit?
I think it was something to do with COVID stats during the initial outbreak, but yes, yes it was the UK government and their bizarre love affair with stupid tech choices.
The only ‘transparency’ he’s shown is screenshots of basic spreadsheets that don’t actually clarify anything. His minions are just sending him spreadsheets extracted from systems they don’t understand, and he’s just making decisions based on whether the title of the program sounds woke or not.
It’s going to be fun when he fucks with some Wall Street Equity fund’s money.
