Baselessly citing a “cursory examination” of the US Social Security Administration (America’s public retirement fund) database as evidence of widespread and systemic fraud, Elon Musk announced the existence of one-hundred fifty year old individuals on the rolls during an Oval Office press conference last week. Coders and administrators were quick to point out that the unnatural age—it cuts off payments automatically at one-hundred fifteen—that rather than pointing to corruption and abuse but an artefact of the legacy software and sixty-year old programming language COBOL which underpins many government systems and rather than employing a date type in its syntax, instead dates are coded to a given reference (see also), the most commonly used being the Paris Convention du Mètre, 20 May 1875 when the international standardisation summit took place. Entries with missing data elements (Social Security holds records on people long deceased) and new entries from this year could default to the nineteenth century. There could be a way going forward to make such delicate and complicated platforms more efficient and transparent, scrutable to outside audit but not without disruption and great costs, and mounting such spurious claims of duplicity belie a lack of understanding and good faith.
synchronoptica
one year ago: the 1807 arrest of Aaron Burr (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth revisiting
seven years ago: more links to enjoy, architect Le Corbusier plus a cucumber avocado salad
eight years ago: Mexican anti-Axis propaganda, symbolic Arabic script, Nixon and Khrushchev’s Kitchen Debate, plans for a Fascist-themed prom cancelled plus Trump imposes a travel ban on Muslim-majority countries
ten years ago: more on the Crusades of Urban II, ISIL and the Caliphate plus even more links
eleven years ago: vino frizzante