
A new report shows that DOGE’s assault on federal employees and contracts isn’t reducing federal spending at all.

A new report shows that DOGE’s assault on federal employees and contracts isn’t reducing federal spending at all.
Photo: Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg/Getty Images
In theory, the experts at the Elon Musk–helmed Department of Government Efficiency are reviewing federal-government operations and getting rid of “waste, fraud, and abuse,” along with any policies inconsistent with Donald Trump’s directives, in order to reduce federal budget deficits and public borrowing. By now, it’s clear there isn’t much actual “reviewing” going on. Instead, DOGE is following the [Silicon Valley model of “moving fast and breaking things,”](https://nymag.
Apple and Musk Clash Over Satellite Expansion Plans
Apple AAPL -2.66%decrease; red down pointing triangle is clashing with Elon Musk in its push to eliminate cellphone dead spots with satellite technology.
The iPhone maker is investing heavily in satellite-based communications that keep users connected in places where traditional wireless signals aren’t available. Musk’s SpaceX, meanwhile, has launched more than 550 satellites that provide cellphone connectivity via its Starlink service.
To build capacity, the companies are competing for valuable spectrum rights—airwaves to carry their signals—which are in limited supply. Apple’s outer-space investments have drawn Musk’s ire, people fam
OpenAI's viral Studio Ghibli moment highlights AI copyright concerns
ChatGPT's new AI image generator is being used to create memes in the style of Studio Ghibli, reigniting copyright concerns.
It’s only been a day since ChatGPT’s new AI image generator went live, and social media feeds are already flooded with AI-generated memes in the style of Studio Ghibli, the cult-favorite Japanese animation studio behind blockbuster films such as “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Spirited Away.”
In the last 24 hours, we’ve seen AI-generated images representing Studio Ghibli versions of Elon Musk, “The Lord of the Rings“, and President Donald Trump. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even seems to have made his new profile picture a Studio Ghibli-style image, presumably made with GPT-4o’s native image generator. Users seem to be uploading existing images and pictures into ChatGPT and asking the chatbot to r
In a world where everyday life seems engineered to keep us busy, distracted, and divided, it’s worth pausing to ask: Who really benefits from...
The original was posted on /r/antiwork by /u/SnooGiraffes8275 on 2025-02-07 15:23:26+00:00.
In a world where everyday life seems engineered to keep us busy, distracted, and divided, it’s worth pausing to ask: Who really benefits from the way things are run? Every day, we're nudged into thinking our struggles are just part of life—but take a closer look. The structures we live under are built to reward a select few, while the majority of us work hard and wonder why our efforts barely scratch the surface of what we deserve.
In these turbulent times our collective struggle calls us to break free from the chains of a system engineered to keep us divided and subjugated. The modern robber-barons—Elon Musk, Ma
U.S. Senate approves government funding extension after failing to meet shutdown deadline while Elon Musk’s business in China sparks controversy
The new legislation extends government funding until March 14, provides $US100 billion for disaster-hit states and $US10 billion for farmers.
TLDR:
The US Senate has passed legislation to extend public funding and end a temporary government shutdown after missing a midnight deadline.
The new legislation looks to extend government funding until March 14, provide $US100 billion for disaster-hit states and $US10 billion for farmers.
Government funding will extend until March 14, after president-elect Donald Trump has been sworn into office.
The US Senate has passed legislation to extend public funding and end a temporary government shutdown after missing a midnight deadline to avert the closure.
The temporary shutdown came after the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed legislation on Friday aimed at averting a midnight closure at Capitol Hill in Washington, in defiance of president-elect Donald Trump's demand to approve trillions of
Republican vice presidential nominee says ‘Germans and other nations’ – not Russia – would ‘have to fund Ukraine’s reconstruction’
JD Vance has suggested that American support for NATO should be predicated on the European Union not regulating Elon Musk and his X social media platform, formerly known as Twitter.
The Republican vice presidential nominee and Ohio senator claimed in an interview with YouTuber Shawn Ryan that a top EU official had threatened to arrest the billionaire if he allowed former President Donald Trumpback on X.
Recent video purportedly showing a man destroying ballots marked for Trump is a disinformation campaign, say officials
Recent video purportedly showing a man destroying ballots marked for Trump is a disinformation campaign, say officials
Russian actors were behind a viral video falsely showing mail-in ballots for Donald Trump being destroyed in the swing state of Pennsylvania, US officials said on Friday, amid heightened alert over foreign influence operations targeting the upcoming election.
The video, which garnered millions of views on platforms such as the Elon Musk-owned X, purports to show a man sorting through mail-in ballots from the state’s Bucks county and ripping up those cast for the former president.
Musk's super PAC doesn't name daily $1 million winner after DOJ warning
Elon Musk's super PAC did not announce a lottery winner Wednesday in its daily $1 million giveaway that sparked concern from legal experts and prompted a warning from the Justice Department.
**Why it matters: **The DOJ sent a letter notifying America PAC, Musk's pro-Trumpgroup, that its lottery could violate federal law against paying people to register to vote, per multiple outlets
Donald Trump’s pledge to give Elon Musk a top job could make the billionaire CEO eligible for a special tax benefit worth tens of billions of dollars.
Thanks to a provision buried in the tax code, Elon Musk could reap one of the largest personalized tax breaks in American history if former President Donald Trump wins the 2024 election and fulfills his pledge to appoint Musk to a top government post, according to tax and ethics experts’ review of long-standing statutes.
This special tax benefit — which is only available to federal officials — would be in addition to massive tax breaks Musk could reap if a new Trump administration furthercuts income and other taxes for billionaires.
It's a bad week for the creator of @ElonJet.
The creator of @ElonJet says he received no explanation as to why accounts tracking celebrities like Mark Zuckerberg and Kim Kardashian have been suspended.
Meta has suspended several Threads and Instagram accounts that track the private jets of celebrities such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Kim Kardashian, and former US president Donald Trump.
Jack Sweeney, who gained notoriety for his @ElonJet account on X and maintained many of the suspended accounts, said on Threads that the development is “reminiscent of all my accounts getting suspended on Twitter.” The shuttered accounts, which used publicly available d
Brazil: Supreme Court orders further documents from X
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has agreed to appoint a legal representative in Brazil following a Supreme Court order in August. However, Judge Alexandre de Moraes has requested more proof of the lawyer's power of attorney.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has agreed to appoint a legal representative in Brazil following a Supreme Court order in August. However, Judge Alexandre de Moraes has requested more proof of the lawyer's power of attorney.
The Supreme Court of Brazil on Saturday made further requests of documentation from X owner Elon Musk.
The social media platform was shut down in the South American country in August for failing to comply with an order to name a new legal representative for the company in Brazil by a certain date.
Despite initially speaking out against the ruling, tech billionaire Musk seemingly relented to the order, saying the company had appointed a lawyer.
The tech billionaire deleted the X post and then lamented over why no one seemed to find it funny.
The Secret Service has launched a probe into an X post by Elon Musk in which he tweeted that “no one is even trying” to kill Kamala Harris or Joe Biden.
The tech billionaire deleted the post on his X platform and passed it off as a “joke.” However, the White House did not find it funny and instead called it “irresponsible.”
“Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about,” the White House said in a statement. Now the Secret Service is involved.
Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover Is Now the Worst Buyout for Banks Since the Financial Crisis
Nearly two years after Elon Musk’s acquisition, X’s business is still struggling to climb out of the deep hole it fell into under his ownership.
The $13 billion that Elon Musk borrowed to buy Twitter has turned into the worst merger-finance deal for banks since the 2008-09 financial crisis.
The seven banks involved in the deal, including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, lent the money to the billionaire’s holding company to take the social-media platform, now named X, private in October 2022. Banks that provide loans for takeovers generally sell the debt quickly to other investors to get it off their balance sheets, making money on fees.
J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk Named in Imane Khelif's Cyberbullying Lawsuit
French authorities have launched an investigation into boxer Imane Khelif's cyberbullying complaint that names J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk.
J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk have both been named in a criminal complaint filed to French authorities over alleged “acts of aggravated cyber harassment” against Algerian boxer and newl crowned Olympic champion Imane Khelif.
Nabil Boudi, the Paris-based attorney of Khelif, confirmed to Variety that both figures were mentioned in the body of the complaint, posted to the anti-online hatred center of the Paris public prosecutor’s office on Friday.
The lawsuit was filed against X, which under French law means that it was filed against unknown persons. That “ensures] that the ‘prosecution has all the latitude to be able to investigate against all people,” including those who may have written hateful messages under pseudonyms, said Boudi. The complaint nevertheless mentions famously controversial f
America PAC, which Elon Musk says he has created and is backing Donald Trump, treated users of its website differently in battleground states.
The North Carolina Attorney General’s Office said Monday that it is eyeing a political action committee created by billionaire Elon Muskfollowing a complaint to the state election board over the PAC’s collection of personal data while failing to help users register to vote as promised.
The North Carolina Board of Elections later Monday told CNBC that it has opened an investigation of Musk’s America PAC.
“North Carolina law makes it a crime for someone to fail to submit a voter’s registration form if that person has told a voter that they would be submitting the voter’s registration form,” the board’s spokesman, Patrick Gannon, told CNBC.
The new inquiries and a similar one announced Sunday by Michigan’s secretary of state’s office follow a report by CNBC that Musk’s America PAC was asking website
A political action committee backed by Elon Musk is being investigated by the Michigan secretary of state's office amid efforts to collect voter data.
A political action committee backed by billionaire Elon Musk is being investigated by the Michigan secretary of state’s office amid efforts to collect voter data.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has said he created and helped fund the America PAC, which is supporting former President Donald Trump. Musk has a net worth of over $225 billion, according to Forbes.
The committee has been acquiring detailed voter information from those living in Michigan and other battleground states after people submit their personal data through a section on the PAC’s websi
Anyone else worried that basically all future life will be simulated yet we don't talk about it. I mean I guess its just not a concern for most people since they believe they are simulated already...
The original was posted on /r/singularity by /u/Karma_Hound on 2024-07-17 21:31:48+00:00.
Original Title: Anyone else worried that basically all future life will be simulated yet we don't talk about it. I mean I guess its just not a concern for most people since they believe they are simulated already even though that is an assumption based on nothing but also how concerning that is if everyone does?
I mean if everyone assumes they are in a simulation after a certain point of thinking like say Elon Musk then wouldn't he assume he has some sort of goal he needs to complete and end up making the very thing we wanted to avoid? I mean he definitely has said he assumes he is simulated and then tw
Musk told Tesla staff in a memo that the company's "rapid growth" had resulted in "duplication of roles and job functions in certain areas."
Tesla CEO Elon Musk at one point wanted the EV giant to trim its workforce by 20%, Bloomberg reported on Sunday, citing a person familiar with the matter.
The reduction, Musk reasoned, should match the reduction in vehicle deliveries between the fourth quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024, per Bloomberg.
New defamation suit against Elon Musk over tweets reveals how the billionaire spreads misinformation and lurks on secret Twitter accounts.
Elon Musk‘s erratic posting on X, formerly Twitter, has come back to haunt him once again as a 22-year-old Jewish man pursues a defamation case over tweets in which the tech mogul baselessly suggested the recent college graduate was an undercover federal agent posing as a neo-Nazi during a street fight between far-right groups. Musk’s excruciating March 27 deposition in the matter, which a judge ordered released to the public over the objections of the CEO’s lawyer, reveals the extent to which he has continually sabotaged both himself and the social media platform he owns.
The judge dismissed the case, ruling that Musk and company were trying to punish the group for their speech.
Elon Musk and his social media platform X just suffered an embarrassing defeat in court, where a judge pilloried the "free speech" company for attempting to silence a critic's speech.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer dismissed X's lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit group that tracks hate speech on social media.