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Submission + - US asked to kick UK out of Five Eyes ..

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: UK accused of political ‘foreign cyber attack’ on US after serving secret snooping order on Apple

US administration asked to kick UK out of 65-year-old UK-US Five Eyes intelligence sharing agreement after secret order to access encrypted data of Apple users

An unprecedented letter from the US Congress, released today, accuses the UK of “a foreign cyber attack waged through political means”. The claim refers to a Home Office secret demand last month (reported by Computer Weekly here, here and here) that Apple break the security protecting its Advanced Data Protection cloud security system to let British spies into anyone’s secure files. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.computerweekly.com...

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?

Comment Two Words: (Score 1) 545

by Pete Venkman (#47923897) Attached to: What To Expect With Windows 9
Missed opportunity. Windows 8 tried to tell users what they were supposed to want. 9 would be a good chance to give users what they actually want (hint: a usable desktop that 'just works' goes a long way)

Comment Health Insurance (Score 1) 570

by Pete Venkman (#47562983) Attached to: 35% of American Adults Have Debt 'In Collections'
I've had two doctors' offices try to turn my account over to collections. Both times it was because there was a problem with the insurance billing. I have health insurance but it doesn't help me any if there's a problem at the point of data entry. If a billing code is wrong, insurance won't pay. Both times I called the doctors' offices, spoke with the business managers, and told them I wouldn't pay until insurance did. Insurance won't pay to collections, so it magically got fixed. I'm sure I'm not the only person this happens to.

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