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Comment Re:Note the common theme that many... (Score 1) 144

So, Bad Orange Man, as you say, fires a top appointee, now the new numbers are in, and your takeaway is these numbers are more credible? This is the same president who wanted to end the census early, and told us "alternative facts". It's hilarious to me that anyone could seriously think he actually wants accurate numbers on anything.

Submission + - Are DOGE's Claims of Social Security Payments to 150-Year-Olds Way Off Base? 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Fox News and other major news outlets reported that Elon Musk, who has been tasked with leading DOGE as a special government employee, spoke to reporters on Tuesday from the Oval Office of the White House with President Donald Trump and said DOGE found payments going to beneficiaries listed as being around the age of 150, though he didn't go into detail about the claims.

"There's crazy things, like, just a cursory examination of Social Security and we've got people in there that are about 150 years old," Musk said. "Now, do you know anyone that's 150? I don't. They should be in the Guinness Book of World Records, they're missing out. So, that's the case where, like, I think they're probably dead is my guess, or they should be very famous. One of the two," he added.

While BBC fact-checkers and the New York Times reported they could neither confirm nor deny Musk's claims, others on the web aren't buying Musk's story. Daily Kos contributor Lobachevsky offers this possible explanation for the 'crazy things' Musk credited his team for uncovering: "Reports say that his group at DOGE is made up of fairly young people. What those kids don’t realize is that Social Security uses VERY OLD computers. They’re programmed with an old version of the programming language COBOL. A bit of history. On May 20, 1875 a bunch of countries got together to create the International Bureau of Weight and Measures which established uniform standards of mass and length. Later on, the Bureau established rules for dates as well. The dates standard used a starting date of May 20 1875 to honor the creation of the Bureau. Old versions of COBOL use that date as a baseline. Social Security’s computers use that old version. Dates are stored as the number of days AFTER May 20 1875. So what happens if Social Security doesn’t know a birthdate? That field is empty in its records. Thus that person appears to have a birthday of May 20 1875-about 150 years ago. That’s why the crack team of youngsters Musk uses found 150-year-old people in Social Security getting benefits. It’s all really as simple—and as stupid—as that."

There are undoubtedly big fraud problems to solve at Social Security, just as there are at Musk-founded PayPal and other companies. But does Social Security truly have a material problem with paying people who are "about 150 years old," or is the problem here more one of misinformed sensationalism? And could Musk's DOGE team use a crash course in COBOL and other data representation arcana?

Submission + - DOGE Approved to Transfer Labor Dept Data Using PuTTY (nbcnews.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: NBC is reporting that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has received approval from the Labor Department to use software that could allow it to transfer vast amounts of data out of Labor’s systems, according to records seen by NBC News and interviews with two employees.

The approval for Musk’s team to use the remote-access and file-transfer software, known as PuTTY, has alarmed some of the Labor Department’s career employees. Musk, the head of DOGE, has dispatched subordinates throughout the government to radically overhaul or dismantle federal agencies with the backing of President Donald Trump.

Many of the details around DOGE’s actions have remained secret, though it has moved to gain access to large swaths of data held in the computer systems of individual agencies.

Concerns include the alleged use of artificial intelligence to analyze federal data and the alleged use of a computer server not familiar to government employees.

Transferring government data outside established protocols could have high stakes for anyone whose information is in those databases, because of the chance that more people would have access to their information than originally intended, increasing chances of a breach.

Two employees interviewed said that they considered the authorization to be a red flag because the DOGE members were new arrivals who, in their view, lacked sufficient vetting and experience for the access they were getting.

“We don’t know who they are, and we’re giving them free rein to extract whatever they want,” one employee said. “This is completely opposite of what we’d do to protect privacy.”

Submission + - US ICE Updates Immigration Raid Timestamps to Game Goggle Search Results (theguardian.com)

Submitted by TheReaperD
TheReaperD writes: News of mass immigration arrests has swept across the US over the past couple of weeks. Reports from Massachusetts to Idaho have described agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) spreading through communities and rounding people up. Quick Google searches for Ice operations, raids and arrests return a deluge of government press releases. Headlines include “ICE arrests 85 during 4-day Colorado operation”, “New Orleans focuses targeted operations on 123 criminal noncitizens”, and in Wisconsin, “ICE arrests 83 criminal aliens”.

But a closer look at these Ice reports tells a different story.

All the archived Ice press releases soaring to the top of Google search results were marked with the same timestamp and read: “Updated: 01/24/2025”.

So, it looks like rather than actually doing any immigration raids, they're simply changing the timestamps on raids dating back to 2008 to claim credit again for raids they did long. Once again, hype over substance.

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