Aujourd'hui, dernier jour de vacances à la montagne. Ne me sentant pas en grande forme, je n'ai pas skié de la semaine pour ne pas me blesser. C'était sans compter la descente en luge familiale proposée par mon mari, 1,5km, qui m'a value une double entorse du genou. VDM

One thing I've learned by going through our reader submissions over the years is that WTFs never start with just one mistake. They're a compounding sequence of systemic failures. When we have a "bad boss" story, where an incompetent bully puts an equally incompetent sycophant in charge of a project, it's never just about the bad boss- it's about the system that put the bad boss in that position. For every "Brillant" programmer, there's a whole slew of checkpoints which should have stopped them before they went too far.

With all that in mind, today we're doing a news roundup about the worst boss of them all, the avatar of Dunning-Kruger, Elon Musk. Because over the past month, a lot has happened, and there are enough software and IT related WTFs that I need to talk about them.

For those who haven't been paying attention, President Trump assembled a new task force called the "Department of Government Efficiency", aka "DOGE". Like all terrible organizations, its mandate is unclear, its scope is unspecified, and its power to execute is unbounded.

Now, before we get into it, we have to talk about the name. Like so much of Musk's persona, it's an unfunny joke. In this case, just a reference to Dogecoin, a meme currency based on a meme image that Musk has "invested" in. This is part of a pattern of unfunny jokes, like strolling around Twitter headquarters with a sink, or getting your product lines to spell S3XY. This has nothing to do with the news roundup, I just suspect that Musk's super-villain origin story was getting booed off the stage at a standup open-mic night and then he got roasted by the emcee. Everything else he's ever done has been an attempt to convince the world that he's cool and popular and funny.

On of the core activities at DOGE is to be a "woodchipper", as Musk puts it. Agencies Musk doesn't like are just turned off, like USAID.

The United States Agency for International Development handles all of the US foreign aid. Now, there's certainly room for debate over how, why, and how much aid the US provides abroad, and that's a great discussion that I wouldn't have here. But there's a very practical consideration beyond the "should/should not" debate: people currently depend on it.

Farmers in the US depend on USAID purchasing excess crops to stabilize food prices. Abroad, people will die without the support they've been receiving.

Even if you think aid should be ended entirely, simply turning off the machine while people are using it will cause massive harm. But none of this should come as a surprise, because Musk loves to promote his "algorithm".

Calling it an "algorithm" is just a way to make it sound smarter than it is; what Musk's "algorithm" really is is a 5-step plan of bumper-sticker business speak that ranges from fatuous to incompetent, and not even the fawning coverage in the article I linked can truly disguise it.

For example, step 1 is "question every requirement", which is obvious- of course, if you're trying to make this more efficient, you should question the requirements. As a sub-head on that, though, Musk says that requirements should be traceable directly to individuals, not departments. On one hand, this could be good for accountability, but on the other, any sufficiently complex system is going to have requirements that have to be built through collaboration, where any individual claiming the requirement is really just doing so to be a point of accountability.

Step 2, also has a blindingly obvious label: "delete any part of the process you can". Oh, very good, why didn't I think of that! But Musk has a "unique" way of figuring out what parts of the process can be deleted: "You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10 percent of them, then you didn’t delete enough."

Or, to put it less charitably: break things, and then unbreak them when you realize what you broke, if you do.

We can see how this plays out in practice, because Musk played this game when he took over Twitter. And sure, it's revenue has collapsed, but we don't care about that here. What we care about are stupid IT stories, like the new owner renting a U-Haul and hiring a bunch of gig workers to manually decommission an expensive data center. Among the parts of the process Musk deleted were:

• Shutting down the servers in an orderly fashion
• Using the proper tools to uninstall the server racks
• Protecting the flooring which wasn't designed to roll 2,500lb server racks
• Not wiping the hard drives which contained user data and proprietary information
• Not securing that valuable data with anything more than a set of Home Depot padlocks and Apple AirTags

And, shockingly, despite thinking this was successful in the moment, the resulting instability caused by just ripping a datacenter out led Musk to admit this was a mistake.

So let's take a look at how this plays out with DOGE. One of the major efforts was taking over the Treasury Department's IT systems. These are systems which handle $5 trillion in payments every year. And who do we put in change? Some random wet-behind-the-ears dev with a history of racist posts on the Internet.

Ostensibly, they were there to "audit" payments, so was their access read only? Did they have admin access? Were they actually given write access? Could they change code? Nobody is entirely certain. Even if it was only read-only, there are plenty of questions about what kind of security risk that constitutes, which means forensic analysis to understand the breach, which is being called the largest data breach in history.

Part of the goal was to just stop payments, following the Muskian "Break things first, and unbreak them if it was a mistake," optimization strategy. Stop paying people, and if you find out you needed to pay them, then start paying them again. Step 2 of the "algorithm".

Speaking of payments, many people in the US depend on payments from the Social Security Administration. This organization, founded in 1935 as part of the New Deal, handles all sorts of benefits, including retirement benefits. According to Musk, it's absolutely riddled with fraud.

What are his arguments? Well, for starters, he worries that SSNs are not de-duplicated- that is, the same SSN could appear multiple times in the database.

Social Security Administration has, since the 1940s, been trying to argue against using SSNs as identifiers for any purpose other than Social Security. They have a history page which is a delightful read as a "we can't say the Executive Orders and laws passed which expanded the use of SSNs into domains where they shouldn't have been used was a bad idea, but we can be real salty about it," document. It's passive-aggression perfected. But you and I already know you should never expect SSNs to be a key.

Also, assuming the SSA systems are mainframe systems, using flat file databases, we would expect a large degree of denormalization. Seeing "unique" keys repeated in the dataset is normal.

On the same subject, Musk has decided that people over 150 years old are collecting Social Security benefits. Now, one could assume that this kind of erroneous data pattern is fraud, or we could wonder if there's an underlying reason to the pattern.

Now, I've seen a lot of discussion on the Internet about this being an epoch related thing, which is certainly possible, but I think the idea that it's related to ISO8601 is obviously false- ISO8601 is just a string representation of dates, and also was standardized well after COBOL and well after SSA started computerizing. Because the number 150 was used, some folks have noted that would be 1875, and have suspected that the date of the Metre Convention is the epoch.

I can't find any evidence that any of this is true, mind you, but we're also reacting to a tweet by a notorious moron, and I have to wonder: did he maybe round off 5 years? Because 1870 is exactly 65 years before 1935- the year Social Security started, and 65 years is the retirement age where you can start collecting Social Security. Thus, the oldest date which the SSA would ever care about was 1870. Though, there's another completely un-epoch related reason why you could have Social Security accounts well older than 150 years: your benefits can continue to be paid out to your spouse and dependents after your death. If an 80 year old marries a 20 year old, and dies the next day, that 20 year old could collect benefits on that account.

The key point I'm making is that "FRAUUUDDDD!!1111!!!" is really not the correct reaction to a system you don't understand. And while there may be many better ways to handle dates within the SSA's software, the system predates computers and has needed to maintain its ability to pay benefits for 90 years. While you could certainly make improvements, what you can't do is take a big "algorithm" Number 2 all over it.

Which, with that in mind, the idea that these people are trying to get access to a whole slew of confidential taxpayer information is I'm sure going to go *great.

There are so, so many more things that could be discussed here, but let's close with the DOGE website. Given that DOGE operates by walking into government agencies and threatening to call Elon, there are some serious concerns over transparency. Who is doing what, when, why and with what authority? The solution? Repost a bunch of tweets to a website with a .gov domain name.

Which, you'd think that spinning up a website that's just that would be easy. Trivially easy. "Security issues" shouldn't even be part of the conversation. But in actuality, the database was unsecured and anyone could modify the site.

In the end, the hacked website is really just Elon Musk's "algorithm" improved: instead of breaking things that are already working, you just start with a broken website.

Aujourd'hui, après des jours à le sniffer, à le feuler, à se barrer en courant à son contact, mon chat a finalement essayé le panier-moumoute rose. Mais uniquement parce que le panier-moumoute noir était occupé, et que les coups de tatane n'ont pas suffi à virer l'autre chat. VDM

Aujourd'hui, et comme d’habitude, mon chat me réveille à 3h du mat en miaulant. Comme d’habitude, je lui ouvre la porte. Il ne rentre pas et je sors pour voir qui le rend si excité. Le réponse se trouve sous mon pied, car j’ai marché sur une souris à moitié dévorée. VDM

Last year, we spent our Christmas looking at some Christmas movies and specials, and rated them based on the accuracy of their portrayal of the IT industry. We're going to continue with that this year. Just like last year, we'll rate things based on a number of floppy disks- 💾💾💾💾💾 means it's as accurate as Office Space, whereas 💾 puts it someplace down around Superman III.

Gremlins

Technology has conquered the world, but none of it actually works. As Mr. Futterman (played by the classic character actor Dick Miller) points out: they've all got gremlins in them. Except, thanks to a goofy dad's last minute Christmas gift and some careless 80s teens, the gremlins aren't just taking over technology, but the entire town with their goofy violence.

This was the most mentioned film left out last year. As far as tech industry representation, we've got a lot to discuss here. First, the father who purchases Gizmo- the Mogwai that becomes the source of all the gremlins- is an inventor. This is the 80s, and thus we're all recovering from the fads of Rubik's Cubes and Pet Rocks, so Randy Petlzer is trying to crash whatever the next fad is. He's got a collection of goofy gadgets, including the orange juicer above, which is itself a premonition of the Juicero startup, itself a goofy disaster of venture capital.

An independent inventor with no real business model but a bunch of goofy ideas also thinks he's a genius. Where have I heard that before? At least, he did "read the manual" (listened to the instructions given to him by the very 80s orientalist stereotype) and even communicated them, so credit to that. But nobody actually followed those instructions anyway, which leads to all the chaos. Do you think I used the word "goofy" enough to describe this movie? It's very goofy, and I think it's gotten goofier with age, honestly. Without nostalgia, I wouldn't call it good, but it is goofy.

The highlight of the film is Phoebe Cates's monologue about why she hates Christmas: a grisly tale about her father's death.

Rating: 💾

The Apartment

Bud Baxter has an apartment conveniently close to work- so convenient that all the executives at his company bring their mistresses there. It's great for Bud's career, but less good for his reputation and his own personal love life.

So, this may be a stretch as Christmas movies go. It takes place around Christmas, but doesn't have a lot of Christmas themes. You know what it does have? A load of entitled management types who not only control Bud's life around the office, but his life at home, and definitely don't care about how that affects him. If this were in 2024, they'd be using bossware to track him and smart door locks to keep him out of his own house.

Rating: 💾💾💾

The Knight Before Christmas

A modern gal in Ohio has given up on love. A 14th century knight is magically transported to Ohio. Together, they discover the true meaning of Christmas- and love.

This is Netflix's stab at a Hallmark level Christmas movie. The whole thing revolves around the Ohio town having a Christmas tradition of erecting a "Christmas Castle" and doing a pseudo-Ren Faire thing every Christmas which is not, as far as I know, a thing anywhere, except perhaps a few small towns in Europe, where they have naturally occurring castles. Our gallant knight gets to be flummoxed by modern technology, like the Alexa, but basically figures all this stuff out over the course of a few days.

For IT accuracy, this is definitely:

Rating: 💾

However, it's also worth noting that the plot kicks off with our modern gal hitting the befuddled knight with her car at the Christmas Castle. They go to the hospital, where everyone assumes he's an actor from the Castle, and now has amnesia after being hit by a car. Since he has no ID, instead of providing medical care for what they believe to be severe brain damage, they just… let her take him home with her. So, if we were rating this for accurately representing the health care system in the US:

Rating: 💉💉💉💉💉

The Bear: Feast of the Seven Fishes

"The Bear" focuses on Carmy, who is trying to turn his deceased brother's sandwich shop into a Michelin rated fine-dining restaurant. This episode flashes back to a Christmas before his brother died, and shows us what his family life was like, as his mother prepares the traditional "Feast of the Seven Fishes" for Christmas.

So, unlike Christmas Castles, Feasts of Seven Fishes are real. I grew up with the loud Italian family. My grandmother was so Italian she came through Ellis Island and also had one of these to point at her Christmas Tree. We did not do the complete Feast of the Seven Fishes, because nobody wanted to work that hard, but deep fried kippers were always featured. These were whole fish, which you'd eat. Bones, faces and all. That was fine, but I was honestly really there for the ginettes (everyone else calls them anise cookies, but we called them ginettes).

Our Christmas wasn't as stressful as Carmy's, and while folks got drunk, it was strictly "the old guys drink too much and fall asleep in their chairs" levels of drunk.

Rating: 🍝🍝🍝🍝🍝

Dominic the Donkey

When Santa wants to visit his "paisans" in Italy, his reindeer can't handle the hills- so he relies on his friend, Dominic, the Italian Christmas Donkey.

Look, I had to suffer through this song growing up, so now you do to. Hit play. Put it on loop. You're trapped in here with us. Jingety jing! HEE HAW HEE HAW! IT'S DOMINIC THE DONKEY.

Rating: 🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏🫏

The Iron Giant

An alien war-bot crashes on Earth and gets amnesia, forgetting that it's a war-bot. Young Hogarth befriends the bot, and adventures ensue. Meanwhile 1950s Fox Mulder tries to track down the "monster" and put a stop to the Communist threat it represents.

I know what you're saying: "there's nothing Christmas here!" But, based on this list so far, amnesia is a Christmas tradition! Setting that aside, I'm not religious, but if we're talking about keeping the "Christ" in "Christmas", you can't do better than a giant robot who dies for our sins and is reborn days later. Honestly, the Bible could have used more giant robots. Maybe a Godzilla or two. While the movie leans hard into Superman as its metaphor for heroism, Superman has frequently been appropriated as a Christ metaphor. Which, there's a whole lot to unpack there, given that Superman's creators were Jewish.

This story features incompetent government agents trying to regulate technology they don't understand. While the film colors it in with Red Scare tones, it echoes the same constant shrieking from the FBI and NSA that regular citizens shouldn't have access to strong encryption (and they need a magical backdoor into all encryption algorithms to keep you SAFE). Or the countless "think of the children!" bills that attempt to police the Internet and always fail. Or the classic "Felony Contempt of Business Model"- the sections of the DMCA that make it illegal for you to refill your printer cartridges or jailbreak your phones.

Rating: 💾💾💾