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Submission + - Elon Musk Goes Nuclear (theatlantic.com) 4

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

The world's richest man and the president of the United States are now openly fighting.

Trump threatened to cancel Space X government contracts and Musk accused Trump to be a frequent flyer to the Pedophile Island. This would be highly entertaining if not for the potential to wreck companies, ruin the economy, and sabotage legislative agenda.

Submission + - DOGE Is Planning a Hackathon at the IRS. It Wants Easier Access to Taxpayer Data (wired.com)

Submitted by echo123
echo123 writes: DOGE operatives have repeatedly referred to the software company Palantir as a possible partner in creating a “mega API” at the IRS, sources tell WIRED. Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has plans to stage a “hackathon” next week in Washington, DC. The goal is to create a single “mega API”—a bridge that lets software systems talk to one another—for accessing IRS data, sources tell WIRED. The agency is expected to partner with a third-party vendor to manage certain aspects of the data project. Palantir, a software company cofounded by billionaire and Musk associate Peter Thiel, has been brought up consistently by DOGE representatives as a possible candidate, sources tell WIRED.

Two top DOGE operatives at the IRS, Sam Corcos and Gavin Kliger, are helping to orchestrate the hackathon, sources tell WIRED. Corcos is a health-tech CEO with ties to Musk’s SpaceX. Kliger attended UC Berkeley until 2020 and worked at the AI company Databricks before joining DOGE as a special adviser to the director at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Corcos is also a special adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Since joining Musk’s DOGE, Corcos has told IRS workers that he wants to pause all engineering work and cancel current attempts to modernize the agency’s systems, according to sources with direct knowledge who spoke with WIRED. He has also spoken about some aspects of these cuts publicly: "We've so far stopped work and cut about $1.5 billion from the modernization budget. Mostly projects that were going to continue to put us down the death spiral of complexity in our code base," Corcos told Laura Ingraham on Fox News in March.

Submission + - Email shows that Musk ally is moving to close office behind free tax filing prog (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Alain Williams
Alain Williams writes: An Elon Musk ally installed in the US government said in a late night email going into Saturday that the office behind a popular free online tax filing option would be shuttered – and its employees would be let go.

The 18F office within the General Services Administration (GSA) created the IRS Direct File program that allows for free online tax filings. It has been a frequent target of Musk, and one of the billionaire businessman’s close associates who holds a key position in the GSA informed staffers that the agency would close 18F in an email to staffers that arrived around 1am on Saturday morning.

Submission + - Musk to "fix" Community Notes for contradicting Trump (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by smooth wombat
smooth wombat writes: The man who espouses "free speech" has announced he will be "fixing" Community Notes on Twitter because they repeatedly contradict what Trump says. He claims a cabal of governments and media are using Notes to game the system.

Musk's attack on Community Notes is somewhat surprising. Although he has always maintained that Community Notes aren't "perfect," he has defended Community Notes through multiple European Union probes challenging their effectiveness and declared that the goal of the crowdsourcing effort was to make X "by far the best source of truth on Earth." At CES 2025, X CEO Linda Yaccarino bragged that Community Notes are "good for the world."

Yaccarino invited audience members to "think about it as this global collective consciousness keeping each other accountable at global scale in real time," but just one month later, Musk is suddenly casting doubts on that characterization while the European Union continues to probe X.

Perhaps most significantly, Musk previously insisted as recently as last year that Community Notes could not be manipulated, even by Musk. He strongly disputed a 2024 report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate that claimed that toxic X users were downranking accurate notes that they personally disagreed with, claiming any attempt at gaming Community Notes would stick out like a "neon sore thumb."

Submission + - Elon Musk's doge.gov website hacked (fortune.com) 1

Submitted by ArchieBunker
ArchieBunker writes: Hackers wasted no time in infiltrating the Department of Government Efficiency’s website.

After a hasty launch this week, at least two pages of the site have been defaced by critics who seemingly have accessed a database the page draws from. Two messages appeared on two separate pages of the site, reading “this is a joke of a .gov site” and “THESE ‘EXPERTS’ LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN -roro.”

The hacked pages, though still accessible as of 10:00 a.m. ET on Friday morning, no longer appear to people who navigate to the DOGE website in traditional methods.

404 Media, which first discovered the hacked pages, quoted anonymous experts who said the DOGE page does not appear to be hosted on government servers and was pulling data from a database that can be accessed by third parties. That opened the doors for the embarrassing criticism.

Submission + - Fifteen Years Later, Citizens United Defined the 2024 Election (brennancenter.org)

Submitted by NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: The influence of wealthy donors and dark money was unprecedented. Much of it would have been illegal before the Supreme Court swept away long-established campaign finance rules. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court’s controversial 2010 decision that swept away more than a century’s worth of campaign finance safeguards, turns 15 this month. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called it the worst ruling of her time on the Court. Overwhelming majorities of Americans have consistently expressed disapproval of the ruling, with at least 22 states and hundreds of cities voting to support a constitutional amendment to overturn it. Citizens United reshaped political campaigns in profound ways, giving corporations and billionaire-funded super PACs a central role in U.S. elections and making untraceable dark money a major force in politics. And yet it may only be now, in the aftermath of the 2024 election, that we can begin to understand the full impact of the decision.

Submission + - Anti-Trump Searches Appear Hidden on TikTok (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Searches for anti-Trump content are now appearing hidden on TikTok for many users after the app came back online in the U.S. TikTok users have taken to Twitter to share that when they search for topics negatively related to President Donald Trump, a message pops up saying "No results found" and that the phrases may violate the app's guidelines. One user said that when they tried to search "Donald Trump rigged election" on a U.S. account, they were met with blocked results. Meanwhile, the same phrase searched from a U.K. account prompted results. Another user shared video of them switching between a U.S. and U.K. VPN to back up the user's viral claims, which has since amassed more than 187,000 likes.
Crime

Silk Road Creator Ross Ulbricht Pardoned (bbc.com) 339

Posted by BeauHD from the wow dept.
Slashdot readers jkister and databasecowgirl share the news of President Donald Trump issuing a pardon to Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht. An anonymous reader shares a report from the BBC: US President Donald Trump says he has signed a full and unconditional pardon for Ross Ulbricht, who operated Silk Road, the dark web marketplace where illegal drugs were sold. Ulbricht was convicted in 2015 in New York in a narcotics and money laundering conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison. Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he had called Ulbricht's mother to inform her that he had granted a pardon to her son. Silk Road, which was shut down in 2013 after police arrested Ulbricht, sold illegal drugs using Bitcoin, as well as hacking equipment and stolen passports.

"The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me," Trump said in his post online on Tuesday evening. "He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!" Ulbricht was found guilty of charges including conspiracy to commit drug trafficking, money laundering and computer hacking. During his trial, prosecutors said Ulbricht's website, hosted on the hidden "dark web", sold more than $200 million worth of drugs anonymously.

Submission + - Trump Pardons Silk Road Founder (nypost.com)

Submitted by databasecowgirl
databasecowgirl writes: President Trump announced Tuesday night that he had granted a âoefull and unconditionalâ pardon to Ross Ulbricht, founder of the notorious dark web site Silk Road.

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