from Hacker News

Social Security Website Crashes Blamed on Doge Software Update

by molybdenum_plus on 4/8/25, 4:13 AM with 4 comments

• by superkuh on 4/8/25, 4:34 AM

  >Apparently, it is unfair that the United States has to buy rare earth metals from other countries because they are not naturally found domestically.

  This off-topic aside at the end being false doesn't really matter to the rest of the claims of the article. But...

  For the most part rare earths are found in the USA and there are inactive mines which could be resumed. But once you remove the host material from the ground, and the rare earths from it, it becomes "concentrated" low level radioactive waste that is so expensive to dispose of that it is no longer economically viable to mine the rare earths from it.

  ref: https://www.epa.gov/radiation/tenorm-rare-earths-mining-wast... (2024)

  ref: Critical Minerals and TENORM: How Do Permitting Reform and Executive Branch Actions Address Radioactivity? (2023) https://www.pnnl.gov/sites/default/files/2023-11/Remplex%20S... (pdf, EPA)

• by Woodi on 4/8/25, 6:27 AM

  They moved fraud check earlier in the process and that dos'ed something because of number of checks. So... substantial number of social numbers was filtered as not-a-fraud before fraud checks ? Interesting logic :)

  Also article do not confirm headline that it's doge soft that do crashing because it is fraud check (pre-doge) subsystem crashing?

  But firing peoples just before more work is needed don't look very smart, they was some country spies or what??