Elon Musk's favorite supposed data expert, who he's retweeted at least a dozen times, claims she can only process 60,000 rows of data before her "hard drive overheats".

Perhaps someone should rescue her from where she's apparently stuck twenty years in the past, which is the only possible explanation for those hardware limitations and the apparent lack of access to cloud compute.

Unless, of course, she's just completely making shit up.

#USpol #USpolitics

@molly0xfff Her query may also have non-linear complexity, 60k rows is nothing.

@molly0xfff

Wait, what?

How poorly set up is her database that she can only run 60k rows? I can do that trivially on sqlite running on a raspberry pi.

My assumption is that she's simply lying, but I'm now awake pre-6am wondering if it would be possible to do that on purpose with modern hardware and software. Even indexing improperly and then doing joins on string columns wouldn't give that sort of anti-performance.

@passenger Perhaps if she moved the hard drive from where she left it on the radiator...

@molly0xfff 🙂 20 years ago brings me to 2005 where my trusty few-years-old single core 600MHz sun workstation would run *grep* over 60k lines in a text file in a few secs without anything overheating.

@buherator @molly0xfff I am suspecting that you have an "excel" data expert...

@molly0xfff it fits in memory anyway 🤷‍♀️

@molly0xfff You've gotta be doing something specially dumb to have 60k rows trip you up. I've played with spreadsheets with more rows....

@LovesTha @molly0xfff whoa whoa whoa, how do your spreadsheets go beyond 65536 rows? /s

(The quoted number is suspiciously close to this)

@molly0xfff (I was doing something particularly dumb)

@molly0xfff Well Im no db-guy, but this sounds like utter BS.

@molly0xfff even excel can do that

@skinnylatte @molly0xfff Seriously, I bet a good programmer could get that workable on a TI-83.

@drsbaitso @skinnylatte @molly0xfff maybe its an amiga :D

@molly0xfff or she's working on data on an offline network to avoid data leakages or Intel on what she is working on...what type de data she is working on? 🙂

@SecurityWriter @Viss @drsbaitso @skinnylatte @molly0xfff could probably processed the data whilst playing a banging sound tracker in the background you philistine.

@molly0xfff 60000 records, like about what an average router from 10 years ago has in its routing table?

@molly0xfff also, this reply captures the X vibe perfectly:

@skinnylatte @molly0xfff
Actually Excel (until 2003) had a row limit of 65,536.
This could mean she is using Excel 2003 to process her data 🤡
(this doesn't "explain" the harddisk overheating 🤪)

@SecurityWriter @Viss @drsbaitso @skinnylatte @molly0xfff whilst you play defender of the crown waiting for it to finish.

@molly0xfff Maybe somebody should get a computer from this century before trying to do data analysis?

@LovesTha @molly0xfff the old 32-bit Excel limit was 64k, right? Maybe they are stuck on Office 2005. Which is funny in so many ways in my Head. Starting from 'Excel?' to my new head canon that they rejected to upgrade because they hated the ribbon layout.

@develin @molly0xfff have they removed that limitation yet? I know libreOffice copied that limit so people abusing the roll over had compatibility.

@LovesTha @develin @molly0xfff Both Excel and LibreOffice Calc now support 1048576 rows.

@molly0xfff The *hard-drive* is what overheated?

@aspensmonster @molly0xfff I'm guessing he's calling the tower "hard drive" – a lot of clueless users do this.

@molly0xfff In my 30+ years of working with computers I've never had a "hard drive overheat".

@GuillaumeRossolini @LovesTha @molly0xfff I've used a spreadsheet where rows from 65536 onwards were wrong, but that was a bug in the tool that generated the spreadsheet from another data source.
Excel from "twenty years in the past" might not handle it though.

@armb @LovesTha @molly0xfff yeah that’s a given, but if this person is using excel (and so outdated), that’s not a great look 😂

@buherator @molly0xfff

Feels like AI Chatbots making up stories.

@buherator @molly0xfff Got that blue checkmark, of course.

@molly0xfff Is ‘My hard drive overheated’ the new ‘My dog ate my homework’?

@buherator @molly0xfff 🤦🏼‍♂️

@molly0xfff She should learn Excel. It’s a good tool for people at her skill level.

@molly0xfff Their hardware is up to date, but the issue is that they have it set up in a bathhouse so they don't miss the weekly "conservative family values" meeting.

@molly0xfff oh, I can believe someone in a government is using a old copy of Excel as part of their workflow
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54423988

@molly0xfff I'm looking forward to sharing this with the storage team at work.

@molly0xfff 60000 rows?
I forgot how to count that low.

@buherator @molly0xfff 60k rows is a telltale Excel mark, so either they try looking credible for beginners or it’s indeed a “fact” easily parroted by AI

Even if they were trying to run some blockchain database on his laptop and did the queries in the most inefficient way this problem still wouldn't manifest.

@molly0xfff *smdh*

@aral @molly0xfff it really does hurt the brain

@molly0xfff This is because her database is on chain. Not only does each query overheat her hard drive, it also costs $100,000 in gas fees.

@sophieschmieg @molly0xfff I had too, but then I talked to somebody trying to do some analysis using Excel, and they reminded me that some tools indeed have trouble with that size of data set.

@Viss @aral @molly0xfff Less than an Excel worksheet...

@rubinjoni @Viss @molly0xfff I literally built a database DESIGNED not to scale (because Small Web) and it can churn 60,000 rows and spit it out as if it was chewing gum.

60,000 rows is not a challenge unless you’re on a Commodore 64.

@buherator @molly0xfff Hmmm
- large data set
- 60k rows

Pick one, it can't be both.

@molly0xfff Not to give too much benefit of the doubt, but she *is* currently working in the government…