Beehaw
  • Communities
  • Create Post
  • search
    Search
  • Login
  • Sign Up
Chris Remington ( remington@beehaw.org ) MA to Technology · 2 years ago

The Government’s Computing Experts Say They Are Terrified

www.theatlantic.com

external-link
message-square
24
link
fedilink
102
external-link

The Government’s Computing Experts Say They Are Terrified

www.theatlantic.com

Chris Remington ( remington@beehaw.org ) MA to Technology · 2 years ago
message-square
24
link
fedilink
Four IT professionals lay out just how destructive Elon Musk’s incursion into the U.S. government could be.
alert-triangle
You must log in or # to comment.
  • Powderhorn ( Powderhorn@beehaw.org ) 
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    32
    ·
    2 years ago

    Well, at least the terror in the U.S. is confined to the government’s computing experts.

    • OpenStars ( OpenStars@piefed.social ) 
      cake
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      2 years ago

      Precious few others seem even to be aware of what is going on.

      Except ofc for those cheering it along. 😢

      • Powderhorn ( Powderhorn@beehaw.org ) 
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        18
        ·
        2 years ago

        The ones cheering it on are even less aware that it’s eventually coming for them.

        • OpenStars ( OpenStars@piefed.social ) 
          cake
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          15
          ·
          2 years ago

          Gasp, surely you jest, surely they won’t eat their faces off as well? /s

          • Powderhorn ( Powderhorn@beehaw.org ) 
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            2 years ago

            Leopard, is that you?

            • OpenStars ( OpenStars@piefed.social ) 
              cake
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              2 years ago

              Step-leopard, what are you doing down there?

              • Powderhorn ( Powderhorn@beehaw.org ) 
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                2 years ago

                Just making sure you’re clean.

  • bobs_monkey ( bobs_monkey@lemm.ee ) 
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    25
    ·
    2 years ago

    We really need a protest movement in itself to get rid of Elmo. Say what you will about Trump, but that dingus is far more dangerous than trump ever could be.

    • HeadfullofSoup ( HeadfullofSoup@kbin.earth ) 
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      36
      ·
      2 years ago

      Protest won’t work with nazis you need resistance

      • melp ( melp@beehaw.org ) 
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        2 years ago

        This

    • themurphy ( themurphy@lemmy.ml ) 
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      2 years ago

      The most fucked up part is that I disagree, but not because I think Elon is any better than you do.

      • bobs_monkey ( bobs_monkey@lemm.ee ) 
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        2 years ago

        How do you mean?

        • themurphy ( themurphy@lemmy.ml ) 
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          2 years ago

          I think Trump is even worse.

          • AmosBurton_ThatGuy ( AmosBurton_ThatGuy@lemmy.ca ) 
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            9
            ·
            2 years ago

            He’s at least gonna die soon, musk will unfortunately be around a lot longer unless someone Luigi’s that sub human scumbag. Honestly I feel musk is even worse than trump.

            • MagicShel ( MagicShel@lemmy.zip ) 
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              2 years ago

              The worst people live forever. See: Kissinger.

              • Powderhorn ( Powderhorn@beehaw.org ) 
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                2 years ago

                The worst people always have the best health coverage.

  • jdeath ( jdeath@lemm.ee ) 
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    2 years ago

    ok this article was a hilarious shit show. full of gems like

    The former Treasury official told us that mainframes—and COBOL, the ancient programming language they often run—are really good for what they do,

    ffs

    • Justin ( jlh@lemmy.jlh.name ) 
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      2 years ago

      if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. I’ve worked plenty of private sector jobs where they use COBOL somewhere in the company

      • jdeath ( jdeath@lemm.ee ) 
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 years ago

        so have i. this is the technology community, after all. for a couple years i worked for a major cruise line and each ship had an AS400 on board. so I’m familiar with mainframes, and sure they are un-removable for a number of reasons. but that statement was stupid

    • melp ( melp@beehaw.org ) 
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 years ago

      I’ve had conversations with people who work in various gov sectors and you’d be very amused. Social security and the IRS aren’t that much better.

      • sp3ctr4l ( sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ) 
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        2 years ago

        I worked at a large import export firm based out of Seattle a decade ago. All of their internal and external accounting ultimately relied on COBOL as well.

        A single guy maintained it all… he also wrote it all, originally. Got back from the Vietnam war, learned COBOL with his GI Bill, went to work for this company, stayed for his whole life.

        He kept telling the board that they needed to find a replacement, or three, for him, when he retired.

        They did not, at least not before he retired, and I left several months later due to every system I relied on to do my work breaking down after he left.

        • Powderhorn ( Powderhorn@beehaw.org ) 
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 years ago

          Gotta love a single point of failure where that point itself sounded the alarm.

      • jdeath ( jdeath@lemm.ee ) 
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        2 years ago

        yeah i work in tech (at a bank rn) and the mainframes are hilarious. a constant source of downtime, and insanely overpriced hardware to boot.

        literally i can’t think of any downtime our services have had in the last six months that wasn’t caused by the mainframe’s downtime. this is dozens of cases.

        but they will basically never be replaced. maybe in 100 years? ha

        • morbidcactus ( morbidcactus@lemmy.ca ) 
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          2 years ago

          I worked in primary metals for a while, core business applications still ran on mainframes, they had a project to move some of them to SAP that apparently had the same timelines as nuclear fusion (perpetually x years away).

Technology

technology

Subscribe from Remote Instance

Create a post
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !technology@beehaw.org

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

  • Free and Open Source Software
  • Programming
  • Operating Systems

This community’s icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

Visibility: Public
globe

This community can be federated to other instances and be posted/commented in by their users.

  • 124 users / day
  • 545 users / week
  • 1.9K users / month
  • 4.92K users / 6 months
  • 5.11K local subscribers
  • 43.7K subscribers
  • 6.44K Posts
  • 107K Comments
  • Modlog
  • mods:
  • Chris Remington ( remington@beehaw.org ) 
  • alyaza [they/she] ( alyaza@beehaw.org ) 
  • TheRtRevKaiser ( TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org ) 
  • gyrfalcon ( gyrfalcon@beehaw.org ) 
  • rs5th ( rs5th@beehaw.org ) 
  • coldredlight ( coldredlight@beehaw.org ) 
  • Leigh ( SemioticStandard@beehaw.org ) 
  • TheRtRevKaiser ( TheRtRevKaiser@kbin.social ) 
  • BE: 0.19.15
  • Modlog
  • Legal
  • Instances
  • Docs
  • Code