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@mac_ack @sun sadly my cobol book got left behind in #yqr 's hackerspace & was lost when it was shut down i think but probably wouldn't have answered the question conclusively either way

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dilbert 1 (sun@shitposter.world)'s status on Saturday, 15-Feb-2025 05:29:53 JST

dilbert 1

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Jeff "never puts away anything, especially oven mitts" Cliff, Bringer of Nightmares 🏴‍☠️🦝🐙 🇱🇧🧯 🇨🇦🐧

@jeffcliff @mac_ack it probably wouldn't because a lot of values in COBOL were platform-specific or changed with upgraded versions.

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Jeff "never puts away anything, especially oven mitts" Cliff, Bringer of Nightmares 🏴‍☠️🦝🐙 🇱🇧🧯 🇨🇦🐧 (jeffcliff@shitposter.world)'s status on Saturday, 15-Feb-2025 05:29:54 JST

Jeff "never puts away anything, especially oven mitts" Cliff, Bringer of Nightmares 🏴‍☠️🦝🐙 🇱🇧🧯 🇨🇦🐧

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@mac_ack @sun thinks otherwise of course https://shitposter.world/notice/Ar7VxcwIdjY8x1pmD2

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Jeff "never puts away anything, especially oven mitts" Cliff, Bringer of Nightmares 🏴‍☠️🦝🐙 🇱🇧🧯 🇨🇦🐧 (jeffcliff@shitposter.world)'s status on Saturday, 15-Feb-2025 05:29:55 JST

Jeff "never puts away anything, especially oven mitts" Cliff, Bringer of Nightmares 🏴‍☠️🦝🐙 🇱🇧🧯 🇨🇦🐧

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Jeff "never puts away anything, especially oven mitts" Cliff, Bringer of Nightmares 🏴‍☠️🦝🐙 🇱🇧🧯 🇨🇦🐧

@mac_ack ie you're also using ANSI standard they are using ISO standard

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lainy (lain@lain.com)'s status on Sunday, 16-Feb-2025 03:37:11 JST

lainy

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Jeff "never puts away anything, especially oven mitts" Cliff, Bringer of Nightmares 🏴‍☠️🦝🐙 🇱🇧🧯 🇨🇦🐧

@mac_ack @jeffcliff I don’t even know why it should be so unlikely. Every time they try to visit those 110 year old retirees in Japan they turn out to have been dead long ago and it was just their kids collecting checks.

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dilbert 1 (sun@shitposter.world)'s status on Sunday, 16-Feb-2025 03:38:53 JST

dilbert 1

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Jeff "never puts away anything, especially oven mitts" Cliff, Bringer of Nightmares 🏴‍☠️🦝🐙 🇱🇧🧯 🇨🇦🐧

@jeffcliff @mac_ack COBOL is fixed record based or something like that, if you don't set a field it's going to be whatever. is in that memory location (initiailized to zeros)

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Jeff "never puts away anything, especially oven mitts" Cliff, Bringer of Nightmares 🏴‍☠️🦝🐙 🇱🇧🧯 🇨🇦🐧 (jeffcliff@shitposter.world)'s status on Sunday, 16-Feb-2025 03:38:54 JST

Jeff "never puts away anything, especially oven mitts" Cliff, Bringer of Nightmares 🏴‍☠️🦝🐙 🇱🇧🧯 🇨🇦🐧

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@mac_ack surely *something* happens though when you don't define a date

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Password Man (mac_ack@hidamari.apartments)'s status on Sunday, 16-Feb-2025 03:38:55 JST

Password Man

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Jeff "never puts away anything, especially oven mitts" Cliff, Bringer of Nightmares 🏴‍☠️🦝🐙 🇱🇧🧯 🇨🇦🐧

@jeffcliff there is no concept of default date in either implementation

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Jeff "never puts away anything, especially oven mitts" Cliff, Bringer of Nightmares 🏴‍☠️🦝🐙 🇱🇧🧯 🇨🇦🐧 (jeffcliff@shitposter.world)'s status on Sunday, 16-Feb-2025 04:06:06 JST

Jeff "never puts away anything, especially oven mitts" Cliff, Bringer of Nightmares 🏴‍☠️🦝🐙 🇱🇧🧯 🇨🇦🐧

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lainy

@lain @mac_ack related: https://jheor.org/post/2682-ig-nobel-prize-winning-research-longevity-claims-may-reflect-lousy-birth-and-death-recordkeeping-more-than-accurate-human-lifespans

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Nicholas Conrad (nicholas@aklp.club)'s status on Sunday, 16-Feb-2025 05:02:09 JST

Nicholas Conrad

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Although using cringe nicknames like that adds a serious credibility down-ranking for me, I've seen this claim made in a few different posts, so for the sake of argument let's say it is true. Nobody I've seen offering this claim has even attempted to explain why auto-paying social security for people who don't have valid birthdays in the system is in any way less concerning or worthy of investigation.

dilbert 1 likes this.

Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem: repeated this.

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Jeff "never puts away anything, especially oven mitts" Cliff, Bringer of Nightmares 🏴‍☠️🦝🐙 🇱🇧🧯 🇨🇦🐧 (jeffcliff@shitposter.world)'s status on Sunday, 16-Feb-2025 05:16:30 JST

Jeff "never puts away anything, especially oven mitts" Cliff, Bringer of Nightmares 🏴‍☠️🦝🐙 🇱🇧🧯 🇨🇦🐧

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@nicholas @mac_ack @sun > Nobody I've seen offering this claim has even attempted to explain why auto-paying social security for people who don't have valid birthdays in the system is in any way less concerning or worthy of investigation.

in another thread someone pointed out the 'why' here -- because people old enough to have had paper record(anyone on old age-based social security, whatever it's called down there) may not have had it and it's more cost effective to just have the local government office just know who people are than to actually bother to collect birthdays for everyone in a systematic way.

it's a generational culture gap - 2 generations ago, the idea of collecting even that kind of basic data on people even for a government was seen as a lot of work nowadays(and probably suspicious) now it's just an entry in a database, that if the system has been working since birth should be automatically there

in the past -- your proof of birthday like your proof of anything else was *your* responsibility to have the documentation for *on paper*. there wasn't necessarily a central location where that data was stored, and if it was, there was no guarantee that they would actually have the data or even if they did that they would be ever able to retrieve it.

1976's alan westin's "databanks in a free society" described the current state of things in the 40s-70s generally and what a mess it was.

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