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.
The statement “this [guy] thinks the government uses SQL” demonstrates a complete and total lack of knowledge as to what SQL even is. Every government on the planet makes extensive and well documented use of it.
The initial statement I believe is down to a combination of the above and also the lack of domain knowledge around social security. The primary key on the social security table would be a composite key of both the SSN and a date of birth—duplicates are expected of just parts of the key.
If he knew the domain, he would know this isn’t an issue. If he knew the technology he would be able to see the constraint and following investigation, reach the conclusion that it’s not an issue.
The man continues to be a malignant moron
The initial statement I believe is down to a combination of the above and also the lack of domain knowledge around social security. The primary key on the social security table would be a composite key of both the SSN and a date of birth—duplicates are expected of just parts of the key.
Since SSNs are never reused, what would be the purpose of using the SSN and birth date together as part of the primary key? I guess it is the one thing that isn’t supposed to ever change (barring a clerical error) so I could see that as a good second piece of information, just not sure what it would be adding.
Note: if duplicate SSNs are accidentally issued my understanding is that they issue a new one to one of the people and I don’t know how to find the start of the thread on twitter since I only use it when I accidentally click on a link to it.
https://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html
Q20: Are Social Security numbers reused after a person dies?
A: No. We do not reassign a Social Security number (SSN) after the number holder’s death. Even though we have issued over 453 million SSNs so far, and we assign about 5 and one-half million new numbers a year, the current numbering system will provide us with enough new numbers for several generations into the future with no changes in the numbering system.
Take this with a grain of salt as I’m not a dev, but do work on CMS reporting for a health information tech company. Depending on how the database is designed an SSN could appear in multiple tables.
In my experience reduplication happens as part of generating a report so that all relevant data related to a key and scope of the report can be gathered from the various tables.
A given SSN appearing in multiple tables actually makes sense. To someone not familiar with SQL (i.e. at about my level of understanding), I could see that being misinterpreted as having multiple SSN repeated “in the database”.
Of all the comments ao far, I find yours the most compelling.
The SSN is likely to appear in multiple tables, because they will reference a central table that ties it all together. This central table will likely only contain the SSN, the birth date (from what others have been saying), as well as potentially first and last name. In this table, the entries have to be unique.
But then you might have another table, like a table listing all the physical exams, which has the SSN to be able to link it to the person’s name, but ultimately just adds more information to this one person. It does not duplicate the SSN in a way that would be bad.
It is common for long lived databases with a rotating cast of devs to use different formats in different tables as well! One might have it as a string, one might have it as a number, and the other might have it with hyphens in the same database.
Hell, I work in a state agency and one of our older databases has a dozen tables with databases.
- One has the whole thing as a long int: 222333444
- One has the whole thing as a string: 2223334444 (which of course can’t be directly compared to the one that is a long int…)
- One has separate fields for area code and the rest with a hyphen: 222 and 333-4444
- One has the whole thing with parenthesis, a space, and a hyphen as a string: (222) 333-4444
The main reason for the discrepancy is not looking at what was used before or not understanding that they can always change the formatting when displayed so they don’t need to include the parenthesis or hyphens in the database itself.
My guess would be around your note. If someone mistakenly has two SSNs (due to fraud, error, or name changes), combining DOB helps detect inconsistencies.
Some other possibilities, and I’m just throwing out ideas at this point:
- Adding DOB could help with manual lookups and verification.
- Using SSN + DOB ensures a standard key format across agencies, making it easier to link records.
- Prevents accidental duplication if an SSN is mistyped.
- Maybe the databases were optimized for fixed-length fields, and combining SSN + DOB fit within memory constraints.
- It was easier to locate records with a “human-readable” key. Where as something like a UUID is harder for humans to read or sift through.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
Because SQL is everywhere. If Musk knew what it was, he would know that the government absolutely does use it.
This explanation makes no sense in the context of OP’s question, given the order of comments…
“The government” is multiple agencies and departments. There is no single computer system, database, mainframe, or file store that the entire US goverment uses. There is no standard programming language used. There is no standard server configuration. Each agency is different. Each software project is different.
When someone says the government doesn’t use sql, they don’t know what they are talking about. It could be refering to the fact that many government systems are ancient mainframe applications that store everything in vsam. But it is patently false that the government doesn’t use sql. I’ve been on a number of government contracts over the years, spanning multiple agencies. MsSQL was used in all but one.
Furthermore, some people share SSNs, they are not unique. It’s a common misconception that they are, but anyone working on a government software learns this pretty quickly. The fact that it seems to be a big shock goes to show that he doesn’t know what he is doing and neither do the people reporting to him.
Not only is he failing to understand the technology, he is failing to understand the underlying data he is looking at.
Yeah, obviously ol’ boy is tripping if he thinks SQL isn’t used in the government.
Big thing I’m prying at is whether there would be a legitimate purpose to have duplicated SSNs in the database (thus showing the Vice Bro doesn’t understand how SQL works).
I’m not aware of any instance where two people share an SSN though. The Social Security Administration even goes as far as to say they don’t recycle the SSNs of dead people (its linked a couple times in other comments and Voyager doesn’t let me save drafts of comments, I’ll make an edit to this comment with that link for you).
Can you point me to somewhere showing multiple people can share an SSN?
Edit: as promised: The Social Security FAQ page
Assuming the whole “duplicate SSN” thing isn’t just a complete fabrication, we have no idea what table he was even looking at! A table of transactions e.g. would have a huge number of duplicate SSNs.
The fact that SSN aren’t singular identifiers has been public knowledge for quite a while. ID analytics has shown in over a decade of studies that some people have multiple SSN attached to their name, while some (over five million) SSN are used by three or more living individuals. If you search “ID analytics SSN” you’ll find loads of articles reporting on this dating back to 2010 and a bit before.
I mean I don’t know a ton about SQL but one thing to keep in mind about SSNs is they were not originally meant to be used for identification but because we have no form of national id and places still needed a way to verify who you are people just started using SSNs for that since it’s something everyone has and there wasn’t really a better option. So now the government has been having to try and make them work for that and make them more secure. The better solution would be to make some form of national id that is designed to be secure but Republicans and people like Musk would probably call that government overreach or a way to spy and track people.
My wife has a tax payment history under two different legal names which share a single SSN
Hmmm, well I can’t speak to how the actual databases are put together, so maybe they would have that as two separate unique primary keys with a duplicated SSN.
But it really seems like bad design if they out it together that way…
This is from 15 years ago, so I don’t know how much has changed since then. But this sounds like the sort of thing they mean.
https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/odds-someone-else-has-your-ssn-one-7-6c10406347
Because a simple query would have shown that SSN was a compound key with another column (birth date, I think), and not the identifier he thinks it is.
Why would one person, one SSN ever have two different birth dates? That sounds like an issue all onto itself.
I think what he means is that the unique identifier for a database record is a composite of two fields: SSN + birth date. That doesn’t mean that SSN to birth date is a one-to-many relation.
But they are implying SSN to SSN+Birthdate is a one-to-many relationship. Since SSN to SSN should be one-to-one, you can conclude the SSN to Birthdate is one-to-many, right?
A weak example would be my grandma. She was born before social security and was told as a kid she was born in 1938. Because I guess in the olden days, you just didn’t need to pass your birth certificate around for anything, it wasn’t until she went to get married at ~age 25 that she needed her birth certificate and when she got it, it actually said she was born in 1940 (I forget the actual years, but I remember it was a two year and two day gap between dates).
Its a weak example that should apply to only a microscopic portion of the population, but I could see her having some weird records in the databases as a result.
Edit: brain dropped out and I forgot part of a sentence.
