5 ms·

Reminds me of the old limestone mine where federal employees still maintain a paper-based database system. Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/20

• ptah 7y ago
  I wonder how much of this data got hacked and sold on dark web :) my guess is nil
  • Aromasin 7y ago
    I wonder how much data can be processed compared to a modern "hackable" system? My guess is close to nil. How much of it gets lost? How much of the paper is duplicated for backups? How much time is spent looking through filling cabinets for relevant data? How is data transmitted - physically mailed, or faxed, or scanned and emailed, which is hackable anyway? There are costs to both practices.
    • jacobush 7y ago
      How much useful data hides forever "lost" in "big data".
      • mulmen 7y ago
        I'm not sure I follow. Do you mean it's hard to find a single record out of many or that new insights can be discovered in aggregate? The former is simply not true, databases exist for this purpose. The latter seems obvious.
        • jacobush 7y ago
          I mean, gathering all kinds of junk may make you loose sight of what you really are about. See for instance various self-criticism from within the three letter agencies, about how operational capabilities were lost in favour of hoovering up as much data as possible. Most of which is useless. When compiling and processing data is very painful, you make sure you compile and process the best data you can find. I'm not saying we should go back to clay tablets or anything. I'm just saying in any rapid technology transition, we risk loosing the good with the bad.
          • mulmen 7y ago
            I don't think I agree with this line of thinking. How can we determine data is "useless" if we do not analyze the data? New technology may have good and bad aspects but that doesn't mean it prevents us from doing what works.
            • jazzyjackson 7y ago
              Analyzing the data becomes more difficult as you put quantity over quality wrt how you're structuring data and where its coming from. There's a database somewhere of Do Not Fly suspicious people, but how was it compiled? Should we put any weight on these lists of names? I think this is what OP was alluding to, when it is more painful to collect and organize data, you make sure the data is worth collecting and organizing. See also "Worse is Better"
              • mulmen 7y ago
                I don’t agree that we have to make a trade off between quality and quantity of data. That seems like a false choice to me.
    • dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      People are getting their retirement checks. Clearly it's processing enough data.
      • mulmen 7y ago
        Do you know that though? does the system know if it misses someone? How long does it take? The linked article suggests employees are banking months of vacation time in anticipation of the long delays in processing.
    • Johnny555 7y ago
      I wonder how much data can be processed compared to a modern "hackable" system Probably not much -- I'd expect that single record lookups are relatively fast, but large scale analysis across large datasets is nearly impossible. Probably more of a "feature" of a government database than a drawback - the government should be doing as little as possible with our data.
    • ptah 7y ago
      filing systems are fairly robust. it's down to trade-offs. valuable data is better kept offline and the costs can actually be less than keeping it in cloud database
  • komali2 7y ago
    On the other hand, it can cause issues if it gets forgotten. I used to explore the steam tunnels under my university. One of our favorite places to get into was this massive room full of forgotten athletic equipment beneath a basketball stadium scheduled to be torn down in a couple years. In the middle of that massive room was an unlocked filing cabinet full of about 3 decades worth of employee information. Addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, social security numbers, all sorts of goodies. We obviously never did anything with it but like. Damn.
    • perl4ever 7y ago
      G.U.E. Tech?
      • komali2 7y ago
        Oh, no, University of Houston.
  • mulmen 7y ago
    Depends on your definition of hack. If you mean “compromise” the only safe assumption is all of it. Has any employee read a document then relayed what they saw to a third party outside the facility? Or pocketed/copied a document? Or altered a document? Or destroyed a document? How would you know? How can you assume they have not?
    • ptah 7y ago
      how easy is it to leak millions of records? digital data it takes seconds to do, hauling filing cabinets out of that facility is exponentially harder almost intractable
• dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >“On a daily basis, we would get from five to 50 e-mails, asking everybody to take time out of their day to search their desks for case files,” the former worker said. That worker said the experience of hunting down lost paperwork and lost files inside an underground cavern had been bad enough to force a career change. >The worker’s new job: setting off explosives. >“I’m handling live ordnance on a daily basis, just to get out of there,” said the worker, whose company blasts holes in the ground for oil and gas wells. “One of the five worst jobs in the world was a great alternative to being down there.” Since when is getting to blow shit up one of the worst jobs in the world? Sure it might be more dangerous than pushing papers but it's still every teenager's dream job along with astronaut and monster truck driver. Edit: I forgot I'm on a board where the prevailing groupthink is that the slightest physical danger is to be avoided at all costs.
  • etrevino 7y ago
    > Since when is getting to blow shit up one of the worst jobs in the world? I know you're joking, but it's a scary dangerous job.
    • dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      Most explosives (especially the kinds used commercially) are very stable. It's a feature. I can't see it being any more dangerous than anything that involves standing on the side of the road (tow truck driver, garbage man, cop) or working at height (various construction and maintenance trades). The only reason it could be scary is because people fear what they're unfamiliar with.
    • DuskStar 7y ago
      So's being an astronaut. Flying on a NASA rocket has a historic fatality rate of like 1.5%, and that doesn't stop people from dreaming of it. (Thanks, Space Shuttle. You never should have survived into the 21st century)
  • Arn_Thor 7y ago
    > Since when is getting to blow shit up one of the worst jobs in the world? Since the guy that does that job agrees with that statement! I think he might be an authority on how he feels about it