Submission + - DOGE to Rewrite SSA Codebase in "Months" (wired.com)

Submitted by frank_adrian314159 on Friday March 28, 2025 @03:19PM

frank_adrian314159 writes: According to an article in Wired, Elon Musk has appointed a team of technologists from DOGE to "rewrite the code that runs the SSA in months". This codebase is currently 10 million lines of COBOL and handles record keeping for all American workers and payments for all Social Security recipients. Given that the code has to track the byzantine regulations dealing with Social Security, it's no wonder that the codebase is this large. What is in question, though is whether a small team can rewrite this code "in months". After all, what could possibly go wrong?

Submission + - How Did Open Source Get Broken? (dev.to) 3

Submitted by frank_adrian314159 on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @06:48AM

frank_adrian314159 writes: By now, most of the internet knows about the famous Log4Shell exploit, and if you don't, it's easy to get a sense of how disastrous it's been. To drive the point home: the US Department of Homeland Security is warning people about it.

There's been a lot of hand-wringing about how open source software, the lifeblood of many businesses today, is often totally unpaid and unthanked work, with some hot takes like 'Open source needs to grow the hell up.' and 'Open source' is broken.

What I want to touch on is something that's been bothering me for the past few days, and solidified after seeing Bloomberg's piece–the fact that the log4j developers had this massive security issue dumped in their laps, with the expectation that they were supposed to fix it. How did that happen? How did a group of smart, hard-working people get roped into a thankless, high-pressure situation with absolutely no upside for themselves? ...

It is this communal mythology I want to talk about, this great open source brainwashing that makes maintainers feel like they need to go above and beyond publishing source code under an open source license–that they need to manage and grow a community, accept contributions, fix issues, follow vulnerability disclosure best practices, and many other things. ...

In reality what is happening, is that open source maintainers are effectively unpaid outsourcing teams for giant corporations. The [engineer who reported the issue] told the log4j team: 'Please hurry up'

Submission + - Is the concept of "Cyberspace" stupid? (salon.com)

Submitted by

frank_adrian314159

on Tuesday February 12, 2013 @05:53PM

frank_adrian314159 writes: "In an article titled "Stop Pretending Cyberspace Exists", Salon writer Michael Lind notes that "Some ideas make you dumber the moment you learn of them. One of those ideas is the concept of 'cyberspace.'” He says that analogizing cyberspace as a real place leads to an inability to think logically about laws, rules, and how and when the governments could or should intervene to regulate the Internet. He states that such a debate is essential, but that that an "[invasion of] a mythical Oz-like kingdom called cyberspace is just as dopey" when talking about governments and corporations taking a larger role in online communications. Is Lind right? Does the notion of cyberspace make the debate over its governance less fruitful?"

Submission + - New Music Boss Worse Than Old Music Boss (wordpress.com)

Submitted by

frank_adrian314159

on Thursday May 24, 2012 @01:19PM

frank_adrian314159 writes: "David Lowery, musician (Cracker, Camper Van Beethoven), producer (Sparklehorse, Counting Crows), recording engineer (Archers of Loaf, Lamb of God), and geek (programmer, packet radio operator, ex-CBOT quant) talks about the economics of the music business and how the "old boss" — the record labels — have been replaced by the new boss — file downloading services, song streaming, and commercial online music stores. His take? Although the old boss was often unfair to artists, artists are making even less money under the new boss. Backed with fairly persuasive data, he shows that, under the new distribution model, artists — even small independent ones — are exposed to more risk while making less money. In addition, the old boss was investing in the creation of new music, while the new boss doesn't. This article is lengthy, but worth the attention of anyone interested in the future of music or music distribution."

Submission + - Boeing CEO Says Outsourcing Didn't Pay (nwsource.com) 2

Submitted by frank_adrian314159 on Tuesday February 08, 2011 @05:54PM

frank_adrian314159 writes: The Seattle Times reports that Boeing's CEO is saying that the cost overruns on the 787 "Dreamliner" were greatly exacerbated by the company's heavy use of outsourcing. Although it is now fairly well accepted that outsourcing provides little cost savings and what cost savings there are often get spent in increased management costs and rework, the outsourcing drive goes on. It's nice to see a major industry figure saying that all is not so rosy as the MBAs would have us think.

Submission + - RIAA to Appeal Thomas-Rasset Ruling (news8.net)

Submitted by frank_adrian314159 on Friday January 29, 2010 @07:35PM

frank_adrian314159 writes: The RIAA will appeal the ruling that reduced Jammie Thomas-Rasset's $1.92 fine for file sharing to $54,000.
"It is a shame that Ms. Thomas-Rasset continues to deny any responsibility for her actions rather than accept a reasonable settlement offer and put this case behind her," said RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth.

Joe Sibley, an attorney for Thomas-Rasset, said his client would not settle for the $25,000 that the RIAA has asked for.
"Jammie is not going to agree to pay any amount of money to them," Sibley said, adding that it doesn't matter to Thomas-Rasset whether the damages are $25,000 or $1.92 million.

In addition, Thomas-Rasset's attorneys say that, win or lose, they plan to appeal the constitutionality of the fine.