Can’t wait for Musk’s team to finally peel back these layers, realize that the code actually implemented the laws, and have to admit they are the idiots and apologize for wasting the government’s money on a poorly-run audit.
> Can’t wait for Musk’s team to finally peel back these layers, realize that the code actually implemented the laws […]
Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast had an episode on this: the hard part in replacing/updating government system is not the coding part. The hard part is understanding the policies that have been changed and modified over the decades.
See "This Is What Happens When Governments Build Software" (Jun 2023):
> There's a lot of frustration about the government's ability to build things in the US. Subways. Bridges. High-speed rail. Electricity transmission. But there's another crucial area where the public sector often struggles, and that is software. We saw it with the infamous rollout of Obamacare. We see it in the UX of the Treasury Direct website. And we saw it in the way state unemployment insurance systems broke during the pandemic. So why is it so hard for the public sector to build and maintain software? On this episode we speak with Jennifer Pahlka, the founder and former executive director of Code for America and author of the new book Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better, as well as Dave Guarino, who recently left the Department of Labor after working on upgrading the unemployment insurance system. Both have a long history of working on public sector software systems and they explain why the problem is so tricky.
One large component is that a lot of business rules and policies have been encoded into the software logic, and (re-)translating that into code in a new(er) language is part of the challenge.
> Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast had an episode on this: the hard part in replacing/updating government system is not the coding part. The hard part is understanding the policies that have been changed and modified over the decades.
That is the hard part in any system, not just government. Especially government, maybe, but not uncharacteristically and certainly not exclusively!
I have read similar things about payroll software. The thing about laws, regulations and payroll is: you do not get to adapt the rules to the software, the software has to implement everything exactly as prescribed. Even that one-off thing from 1977 that still influences a few pensions by a few cents a month.
I work for a company that employs ~5k people. There's an entire IT team just for payroll and it's bigger than Ops. When Elon says he and a handful of devs were going to fix the entirety of the Treasury dept on their own, they are either lying, or have no fucking idea what they're doing. Probably both.
> The thing about laws, regulations and payroll is: you do not get to adapt the rules to the software, the software has to implement everything exactly as prescribed.
You do not get to adapt the rules to the software. The government can look at the state of the rules, say "this rule is obsolete, inefficient or unnecessarily complicated" and enact a different rule.
They rarely do this, which is why having someone go through and make the attempt is potentially valuable.
> That is the hard part in any system, not just government.
Another episode from Odd Lots, "Why Corporate America Still Runs on Ancient Software That Breaks", with Patrick McKenzie (patio11 here at HN):
> Southwest Airlines had a disastrous holiday season, thanks in part to a software bug that left crews out of place and grounded thousands of flights. But Southwest isn't alone in having software in the headlines lately. The New York Stock Exchange recently had a software error that caused weird pricing on stocks and the FAA had its own computer issue that grounded planes earlier this month. So what's the deal with corporate software? Why do these crashes happen? And why does the user experience typically leave something to be desired? On this episode of the podcast we speak with Patrick McKenzie, an expert on engineering and infrastructure, who writes the Bits About Money newsletter and recently left payments company Stripe after six years. We talked about the challenges of keeping any software system alive after years of upgrades and updates, the distribution of tech talent across industries, and whether non-tech companies can close the gap with Silicon Valley.
FWIW they have instructions for downloading the whole thing, which mention that it is also downloadable from BitTorrent. So I think it is functionally impossible to delete Wikipedia.
I’d be more worried about propaganda being inserted.
I'm not worried about the data, and even losing the servers would be a hiccup. But whatever site is at www.wikipedia.org is, in the minds of the general public, Wikipedia.
Musks team wont be able to make any sweeping changes here that impact eligibility or payouts - thats the kinda thing where angry pensioners form a mob outside the white house and get front page coverage on every news outlet.
The code doesn't necessa8ry implement the laws. There could easily be a flag on each record that indicates "current recipent" with a value of "n" or "y". The code, in that case could be something like: if current recipient = y, then print check.
No one is wasting money. These audits must be done. I do think however that the chances of anyone over 115, or deceased, collecting money is extremely low.
Do you normally tweet your half baked “discoveries” as propaganda in an effort to undermine the government when performing an audit?
Edit: I really don’t think the way this audit is being conducted is out of a genuine love for America, or the American citizens, or even out of just wanting to do good work. This is very nakedly a dishonest, petty, and malicious investigation.
It's a government audit, not a private company, so the results will be made public regardless. If the audit finds that the computer code is actually correct according to the laws, but it's the laws themselves that are illogical, wasteful, or easy to defraud, that is still quite useful for the public to know. I agree using Twitter is unconventional but again, it's an audit of a massive public program to which virtually every American who pays taxes contributes (except, ironically, many government employees themselves)
None of this works the way you imagine it does.
Laws are by necessity interpreted. Courts do this all the time. Musk & his kids have zero knowledge, skill or authority in this regard.
System audits require a well defined structure and scope, context, methodology, governance. They take into consideration the IT systems, and the human systems and processes. They clearly define questions to be answered.
This is neither. It is a PR exercise to create an appearance of the regime doing “something” that sounds impressive to their base.
> Rule #1 of the new American oligarch: never admit a mistake
Is this really a new rule? By my understanding of history, this has been the standard operating procedure for governments since... well, since they became a thing. And when mistakes are admitted, they're done so very slowly. For example, it took the U.S. government nearly half a century to apologize for the Japanese internment camps.
There was at least the hope that the people in the government would, someday, apologize. Or, failing that, that they would pay at the ballot box come next election.
The new guard are far more like the old royalty of Europe. Look at their lifestyles and riches: how could they possibly be wrong? Back then it was called the divine right of kings: they were chosen by God - the literal creator and master of the universe - and thus, by definition, could not be wrong.
Today it's the absolution of the market: how could you possibly be that wealthy if you are a screw-up? It's hard to get rich, so those who have become so must be better than the conventional wisdom and decency. Any wrong move is written off as another move in a 4D chess game that the average person just can't understand.
He could go one step further and admit that his involvement with any sort of government personnel or logistics decision-making is a mistake until Congress gives his cadre of interns a statutory mandate to do what it's doing.
Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast had an episode on this: the hard part in replacing/updating government system is not the coding part. The hard part is understanding the policies that have been changed and modified over the decades.
See "This Is What Happens When Governments Build Software" (Jun 2023):
> There's a lot of frustration about the government's ability to build things in the US. Subways. Bridges. High-speed rail. Electricity transmission. But there's another crucial area where the public sector often struggles, and that is software. We saw it with the infamous rollout of Obamacare. We see it in the UX of the Treasury Direct website. And we saw it in the way state unemployment insurance systems broke during the pandemic. So why is it so hard for the public sector to build and maintain software? On this episode we speak with Jennifer Pahlka, the founder and former executive director of Code for America and author of the new book Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better, as well as Dave Guarino, who recently left the Department of Labor after working on upgrading the unemployment insurance system. Both have a long history of working on public sector software systems and they explain why the problem is so tricky.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMtOv6DFn1U
One large component is that a lot of business rules and policies have been encoded into the software logic, and (re-)translating that into code in a new(er) language is part of the challenge.
Related, "Why COBOL isn't the problem":
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41420217