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.
this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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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.