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Category: Technology

$1.5 billion stolen from Bybit exchange in biggest crypto heist ever. Meanwhile, Argentina’s Milei under investigation

$1.5 billion stolen from Bybit exchange in biggest crypto heist ever. Meanwhile, Argentina’s Milei under investigation

Mashable reports: $1.5 billion. That’s the amount of money that has just been stolen by hackers from one of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges. On Friday, Ben Zhou, cofounder and CEO of the crypto exchange Bybit, shared that hackers had gained control of Bybit’s ETH (Ethereum) wallet and transferred all of its holdings to an unknown crypto wallet address. Bybit ETH multisig cold wallet just made a transfer to our warm wallet about 1 hr ago. It appears that this…

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Tesla protests gain momentum

Tesla protests gain momentum

electrek reports: Protests at Tesla stores are gaining momentum across the US as people are fighting back against Elon Musk’s government takeover, and the hate is spreading to owners. Last week, we reported on a new effort to organize protests at Tesla stores worldwide, but primarily in North America. There were significant turnouts to disrupt Tesla operations by picketing in front of dozens of stores. But the movement is ongoing, and there were protests against this weekend and more planned…

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DOGE operative given access to Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

DOGE operative given access to Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

Nextgov/FCW reports: Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old staffer in billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency with a reported history of interacting with hacking groups, has been given physical access to building facilities at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Coristine is listed with a DHS email address and has been seen inside CISA, according to a person familiar with the matter and a directory image viewed by Nextgov/FCW. It is not clear what systems he had access to. CISA and…

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How Trump’s bid to control lithium mining in Ukraine would benefit Elon Musk

How Trump’s bid to control lithium mining in Ukraine would benefit Elon Musk

The Daily Beast reports: Elon Musk‘s future prosperity is inextricably linked to lithium, the vital mineral required for many of his businesses, from Tesla to X to SpaceX. Tech may be marching into the future. But it is still battery-powered. Dubbed ‘white gold’, lithium is notoriously difficult to mine in the United States. A $1 billion lithium refinery that Musk is building in Corpus Christi, Texas could use as many as eight million gallons of water a day in a…

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Department of Government Inefficiency: DOGE’s only public ledger is riddled with accounting errors

Department of Government Inefficiency: DOGE’s only public ledger is riddled with accounting errors

The New York Times reports: Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency say they have saved the federal government $55 billion through staff reductions, lease cancellations and a long list of terminated contracts published online this week as a “wall of receipts.” President Trump has been celebrating the published savings, even musing about a proposal to mail checks to all Americans to reimburse them with a “DOGE dividend.” But the math that could back up those checks is marred…

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New acting Social Security commissioner was under investigation when Musk team tapped him

New acting Social Security commissioner was under investigation when Musk team tapped him

Marisa Kabas reports: Acting Social Security Administration Commissioner Michelle King resigned over the holiday weekend after she reportedly refused to aid Elon Musk’s pseudo-agency, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with accessing sensitive beneficiary data. King left a vacancy that was immediately filled by Leland Dudek, a guy who most people at the agency had never heard of before. By Wednesday night, Musk was publicly praising him as a hero. What happened? In a now-deleted LinkedIn post on Friday from…

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The DOGE sysadmins alone know what they are doing

The DOGE sysadmins alone know what they are doing

Zeynep Tufekci writes: [Thomas Jefferson] feared that an elected authoritarian would not just pulverize the institutions meant to limit his power, but take them over to wield as weapons, thus further entrenching himself. Even Jefferson couldn’t have imagined a future in which the arsenal being deployed included centralized databases with comprehensive records on every citizen’s employment, finances, taxes and for some, even health status. After a judge blocked a Trump executive order, Elon Musk shared a post with his more…

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DOGE’s incompetence is a feature, not a bug

DOGE’s incompetence is a feature, not a bug

Brian Barrett writes: Within just the last week or so, Elon Musk’s DOGE hit team of mostly young, almost exclusively male engineers and executives have done the following: Pushed a website live to track “savings” that showed no savings for several days, and made it trivially easy for random people on the internet to make changes to it. Published classified information on that same website. Got called out for accidentally inflating that savings amount by $7,992,000,000, and doubled down on their inaccuracy before they fixed it. Fired hundreds of people…

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Trump expresses fawning admiration for ‘leader’ Musk

Trump expresses fawning admiration for ‘leader’ Musk

The Hill reports on Sean Hannity’s joint interview with Musk and Trump: Trump had high praise for Musk throughout the interview, highlighting his successful tech career and his intelligence. The president noted he was impressed with Musk when he saw Musk’s team had the ability to catch a rocket booster instead of having it crash into the ocean. “Something that had an effect on me was when I saw the rocket ship come back and get grabbed like you grab…

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DOGE has ‘God mode’ access to government data across many federal agencies

DOGE has ‘God mode’ access to government data across many federal agencies

Charlie Warzel, Ian Bogost, and Matteo Wong write: DOGE has achieved “God mode.” That’s according to an employee in senior leadership at USAID, who told us that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency now has full, unrestricted access to the agency’s digital infrastructure—including total control over systems that Americans working in conflict zones rely on, the ability to see and manipulate financial systems that have historically awarded tens of billions of dollars, and perhaps much more. The employee’s account, along…

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Not even its employees know who is legally running DOGE

Not even its employees know who is legally running DOGE

Wired reports: President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have repeatedly affirmed Musk’s leadership of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). But according to a new court filing from the White House, the administrator of DOGE isn’t Elon Musk after all. Who is? No one knows. The White House won’t tell the public, an administration lawyer has reportedly said he had no idea, and even people who work for the US DOGE Service can’t get a straight answer. On Monday…

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Musk and his DOGE jackasses are providing a real-time case study on mismanagement

Musk and his DOGE jackasses are providing a real-time case study on mismanagement

Don Moynihan writes: Sam Rayburn, the Texan who served as House Speaker for 17 years was fond of saying: Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one. Rayburn was talking about policymaking, but the point extends to more broadly to governing. Trashing government agencies is easy. Making them work is hard. DOGE, and the husk of the Office of Personnel Management that has become a DOGE zombie, are a good example. Elon…

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Trump admin tries to rehire nuclear weapons employees fired by Musk’s ignorant DOGE operatives

Trump admin tries to rehire nuclear weapons employees fired by Musk’s ignorant DOGE operatives

The Associated Press reports: The Trump administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that DOGE’s blind cost cutting will put communities at risk. Three U.S. officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration were abruptly laid off late Thursday, with some losing access to email…

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Elon Musk is an outlaw

Elon Musk is an outlaw

Mother Jones reports: According to Elon Musk’s posts on X, the social media platform he acquired through allegedly illegal tactics, Musk is discovering lawbreaking everywhere as he rampages through government. “Career Treasury officials are breaking the law every hour of every day,” he claimed. USAID, the agency that has saved millions of lives under its mandate from Congress? “A criminal organization.” The federal bureaucracy? “Unconstitutional.” But as elementary school kids have known for time immemorial, whoever smelt it, dealt it….

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Judge Tanya Chutkan needs more evidence to justify a temporary restraining order on Musk

Judge Tanya Chutkan needs more evidence to justify a temporary restraining order on Musk

Politico reports: U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Monday appeared poised to reject an effort to immediately bar Elon Musk and his allies from accessing data or causing firings across a broad swath of the federal government. The judge said an effort by Democrat-led states lacked enough concrete evidence to justify that extraordinary restriction. Chutkan, a Washington-based appointee of former President Barack Obama, agreed that Musk’s operations through the “Department of Government Efficiency” were taking place in troubling secrecy. And…

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Federal workers in the firing line as DOGE tries to create a ‘government without people’

Federal workers in the firing line as DOGE tries to create a ‘government without people’

Brian Merchant writes: Over the last few weeks, as Elon Musk and DOGE have infiltrated government agency after government agency, proclaiming their intent to slash budgets, cut jobs, and embrace AI, we’ve watched a brazen, extralegal effort to hollow out the state unfold in real time. Now up to 200,000 workers are being targeted in mass layoffs. Much of the collective horror has stemmed from the broader implications this campaign—orchestrated by an unelected tech billionaire who has enriched himself with…

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