Another commentor pointed out a legitimate use case, but it’s not even worth thinking about that much. De-duplocated is usually a word you use in data science to talk aboutakong sure your dataset is “hygienic” and that you aren’t duplicating data points. A database is much different because it is less about representing data, and more about storing it in a way that allows you to perform transactions at scale - retrieval, storage, modification, etc. Relational databases are analyzed in terms of data cardinality which essentially describes tradeoffs in representation between speed of retrieval (duplications good) vs storage efficiency (duplications bad).
The issue is that Elon is so vague and so off the mark that it is very hard to believe that he even has the first clue about what he is a talking about. Even you are confused just by reading it. It is all a tactic to convince others that he is smarter than he is while doing extreme damage to the hardworking people that actually make this stuff possible. Have you noticed that the man has never come to a conclusion that wasn’t in his interests? This is not honest intellectualism, or discussion based on technical merit. It’s self serving propaganda.
absentbird@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Well, if someone changes their name you’d add a new record with the same SSN to hold their new name, that way it keeps the records consistent with the paperwork; old papers say their old name and reference the retired record, new papers use their new name and reference the new record.
You can use the SSN as the key to find all records associated with a person, it doesn’t have to be a single row per SSN, in fact that would make the data harder to manage and less accurate.