Not sure he cares. Besides, SpaceX is supposedly his big moneymaker,
and its #1 customer thinks quite highly of him.
I’ve also read that Starlink has started to be a cash cow.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/02/starlink-profit-growing-rapidly-as-it-faces-a-moment-of-promise-and-peril/
Other Musk companies like Boring Company and Neuralink don’t seem like
genius business ideas. But something has to finance his missions to Mars.
https://people.com/human-interest/elon-musk-once-said-mars-needs-people-after-mark-cuban-asked-how-many-kids-he-wants/
It is being claimed he is up to 13 kids now, that would put him ahead
of Nick Cannon.
https://people.com/parents/all-about-nick-cannon-kids/
But I don’t think Elon is the white Nick Cannon, more like the white
Kanye West?
*From:*AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> *On Behalf Of *Bill Prince
*Sent:* Sunday, February 16, 2025 2:08 PM
*To:* af@af.afmug.com
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] DOGE website (www.doge.gov)
Seems Elon may be backing himself into a hole. People who have been
the biggest buyers of Tesla vehicles are now being repulsed by his
antics. People who have not, and probably will not buy electric
vehicles aren't going to start buying them because, well, they're
electric.
https://cleantechnica.com/2025/02/15/tesla-troubles-mount-as-musk-goes-full-rogue/
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On 2/15/2025 3:58 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
https://www.wired.com/story/doge-website-is-just-one-big-x-ad/
DOGE’s Website Is Just One Big X Ad
*The source code for the new Department of Government Efficiency’s
“official US government website” points to X as its primary source
of authority, while sharing links to the site sends users to x.com.*
At a press conference in the Oval Office
<https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/12/tech/elon-musk-x-oval-office/index.html>
this
week, Elon Musk promised the actions of his so-called Department
of Government Efficiency (DOGE)
<https://www.wired.com/tag/doge/> project would be “maximally
transparent,” thanks to information posted to its website.
At the time of his comment, the DOGE website was empty
<https://bsky.app/profile/joncooper-us.bsky.social/post/3lhwsmk4iac2u>.
However, when the site finally came online Thursday morning, it
turned out to be little more than a glorified feed of posts from
the official DOGE account on Musk’s own X platform, raising new
questions about Musk’s conflicts of interest in running DOGE
<https://www.npr.org/2025/02/12/nx-s1-5293382/x-elon-musk-doge-cfpb>.
DOGE.gov claims to be an “official website of the United States
government,” but rather than giving detailed breakdowns of the
cost savings and efficiencies Musk claims his project is making,
the homepage of the site just replicated posts from the DOGE
account on X.
A WIRED review of the page’s source code shows that the promotion
of Musk’s own platform went deeper than replicating the posts on
the homepage. The source code shows that the site’s canonical tags
<https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization> direct search engines
to x.com rather than DOGE.gov.
A canonical tag is a snippet of code that tells search engines
what the authoritative version of a website is. It is typically
used by sites with multiple pages as a search engine optimization
tactic, to avoid their search ranking being diluted.
In DOGE’s case, however, the code is informing search engines that
when people search for content found on DOGE.gov, they should not
show those pages in search results, but should instead display the
posts on X.
“It is promoting the X account as the main source, with the
website secondary,” Declan Chidlow, a web developer
<https://vale.rocks/>, tells WIRED. “This isn't usually how things
are handled, and it indicates that the X account is taking
priority over the actual website itself.”
Advertisement
All the other US government websites WIRED checked used their own
homepage in their canonical tags, including the official White
House website. Additionally, when sharing the DOGE website on
mobile devices, the source code creates a link to the DOGE X
account rather than the website itself.
“It seems that the DOGE website is secondary, and they are
prodding people in the direction of the X account everywhere they
can,” Chidlow adds.
Alongside the homepage feed of X posts, a section of Doge.gov
labeled “Savings” now appears. So far the page is empty except for
a single line that reads: “Receipts coming soon, no later than
Valentine's day,” followed by a heart emoji
<https://www.wired.com/story/heart-emoji-lost-all-meaning/>.
A section entitled “Workforce” features some bar charts showing
how many people work in each government agency, with the
information coming from data gathered by the Office of Personnel
Management in March 2024.
A disclaimer at the bottom of the page reads: “This is DOGE's
effort to create a comprehensive, government-wide org chart. This
is an enormous effort, and there are likely some errors or
omissions. We will continue to strive for maximum accuracy over time.”
Another section, entitled “Regulations,” features what DOGE calls
the “Unconstitutionality Index,” which it describes as “the number
of agency rules created by unelected bureaucrats for each law
passed by Congress in 2024.”
The charts in this section are also based on data previously
collected by US government agencies. Doge.gov also links to a
Forbes article from last month that was written by Clyde Wayne
Crews, a member of the Heartland Institute, a conservative think
tank that pushed climate change disinformation
<https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/heartland-institute-leak-exposes-strategies-of-climate-attack-machine/>
and
questioned the links between tobacco and lung cancer
<https://www.tobaccotactics.org/article/heartland-institute/>. It
is also a major advocate for privatizing government departments
<https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/in-shift-key-climate-denialist-group-heartland-institute-pivots-to-policy/>.
The site also features a “Join” page which allows prospective DOGE
employees to apply for roles including “software engineers,
InfoSec engineers, and other technology professionals.” As well as
requesting a Github account and résumé, the form asks visitors to
“provide 2-3 bullet points showcasing exceptional ability.”
The website does not list a developer, but on Wednesday, web
application security expert Sam Curry outlined in a thread on X
<https://x.com/samwcyo/status/1889527715029557607> how he was able
to identify the developer of the site as DOGE employee Kyle Shutt.
Curry claims he was able to link a Cloudflare account ID found in
the site’s source code to Shutt, who used the same account when
developing Musk’s America PAC
<https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-america-pac-election-denial-community-x/>
website.
On Thursday, Drop Site News
<https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/doge-fema-funding-access-social-security-numbers>
reported,
citing sources within FEMA, that Shutt had gained access to the
agency’s proprietary software controlling payments. Earlier this
week, Business Insider reported
<https://www.businessinsider.com/doge-staff-list-white-house-2025-2> that
Shutt, who recently worked at an AI interviewing software company,
was listed as one of 30 people working for DOGE.
Neither Shutt, DOGE, nor the White House responded to requests for
comment.
