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Our government runs on a 60-year-old coding language, and now it’s falling apart. read.medium.com/7QgPLvQ
Despite its age and that many programmers have moved onto C and Java, COBOL is still a widely used programming language.

Today, nearly half the world’s banking systems run on it, per Reuters, and more than 80% of card-based transactions use the code. read.medium.com/7QgPLvQ
The scarcity of COBOL programmers has led to increased interest in startups like COBOL Cowboys, made up of older, experienced programmers who have the know-how to operate these systems. reuters.com/article/us-usa…
COBOL debuted in 1960 and was largely used on IBM mainframes for business tasks like accounting.

The @USGAO has repeatedly warned about the use of legacy programming languages for critical systems. read.medium.com/7QgPLvQ
GAO considers COBOL a legacy language, which means agencies have trouble finding staff that knows how to write the code at all.

And when they can, the specialist contractors charge a premium. read.medium.com/7QgPLvQ
It also means that when a system breaks, there might not be somebody there to fix it.

And that’s where New Jersey finds itself now, with a sagging system and lack of qualified engineers. northjersey.com/story/news/new…
Bill Hinshaw, who runs COBOL Cowboys, says that the 60-year old programming language still has some life in it.

“We’re dealing with more and more people who want to modernize COBOL,” Hinshaw says. “COBOL is not going away.”

read.medium.com/7QgPLvQ
Still, governments relying on a system too arcane for most working engineers can be perceived as a structural failure. read.medium.com/7QgPLvQ
"Back in 2014, the prevalence of COBOL drew some concern from the trade newspaper American Banker.”

thenewstack.io/cobol-everywhe…
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OneZero
@ozm
NEW: Here's an exhaustive analysis of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidates' email campaigns.

In an election marked by a crowded field and a lack of certainty, there were a few consistent patterns. read.medium.com/GmeAppx
Using @chrisgherbert’s repository of campaign messages politicalemails.org, @ozm analyzed 2,749 emails the archive gathered from Democratic primary candidates in a three-month period ending March 3, Super Tuesday.

read.medium.com/GmeAppx
Presidential campaigns send a lot of email — a LOT.

Candidates intensify their pleas for money and support in the week or two before announcing the suspension of their campaigns, but dropping out didn’t stop the messages from coming either.

read.medium.com/GmeAppx
Read 12 tweets
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OneZero
@ozm
NEW: Live facial recognition has been in use in the capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires, for nearly a year. read.medium.com/h3AMFwZ
In January, @nytimes published a story about London’s adoption of live facial recognition systems, warning that the West is heading toward a future “of constant surveillance.”

But that future is already here for the people of Buenos Aires. read.medium.com/h3AMFwZ
The cameras are operated by the city’s ministry of security, and operate in the city’s train stations, both within the stations and facing the street, according to documents obtained by an Argentinian civil rights organizations called @adcderechos. read.medium.com/h3AMFwZ
Read 3 tweets
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OneZero
@ozm
Meet Whit Diffie, the man who invented public key cryptography.

This is the untold story of the man that made mainstream encryption possible. read.medium.com/UOFJD7Q
In honor of longtime tech journalist @StevenLevy’s new book, 'Facebook: The Inside Story,' we share an excerpt of an earlier Levy book, ‘Crypto.’

It’s about a man who ran in the opposite direction of Facebook’s data exploitation and privacy breaches. read.medium.com/UOFJD7Q
"Diffie didn’t read until he was 10 years old. There was no question of disability, he simply preferred that his parents read to him, which seemingly they did, quite patiently."

read.medium.com/UOFJD7Q
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