Boring Company says they have a MOU for a 17 km tunnel in Dubai.
https://www.boringcompany.com/dubai
*From:*AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> *On Behalf Of *Robert
*Sent:* Sunday, February 16, 2025 7:11 PM
*To:* af@af.afmug.com
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] DOGE website (www.doge.gov)
I should reply with a picture of Lucy with the football and Charlie
Brown...
On 2/16/25 3:26 PM, Chuck wrote:
Read an article today about him admitting AD has been a failure
but vowing to get it right on the next iteration.
Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 16, 2025, at 4:57 PM, Robert <i...@avantwireless.com>
<mailto:i...@avantwireless.com> wrote:
I think at this point, Tesla is a few brain cells for
him. He'll show up for publicity or to smother revolt, but
it's on autopilot otherwise for him. He rips off any
talent that shows up, the only way he delivers self drive is
through removing regulation, and legal responsibility. We
had a cybertruck go into a power pole with no real cause, as
far as the driver could tell. The driver took responsibility
for not watching over the truck but that's not really AD.
That bar has moved as much as the stock price.
On 2/16/25 2:29 PM, Bill Prince wrote:
and if Tesla was selling as many cars as BYD is right
now, the Tesla numbers would double. BYD is running
circles around Tesla right now, and is killing pretty
much every other car maker on the planet.
If he put as much energy into making Tesla as he did in
tearing down all those whining lefties, Tesla would be a
barn burner.
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On 2/16/2025 1:50 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
OK, maybe you’re right.
Hard to tell where his head’s at. What he did at
X/Twitter seemed more like running it into the
ground out of spite than trying to make money. And
he’s trying to say Tesla is an AI company not a car
company.
His net worth is cited as around $400 billion, but
that’s stock valuation, right? Not liquid. Not
like Scrooge McDuck swimming in gold coins. I seem
to remember he had to borrow money to buy Twitter.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/how-will-elon-musk-pay-twitter-2022-10-07/
*From:*AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com>
<mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com> *On Behalf Of *Bill
Prince
*Sent:* Sunday, February 16, 2025 3:29 PM
*To:* af@af.afmug.com
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] DOGE website (www.doge.gov
<http://www.doge.gov>)
Think he doesn't care? Right now Tesla annual
revenue is $97 billion/year, of which about $17
billion of that is considered profit. SpaceX might
be doing great, but Tesla dwarfs SpaceX by almost an
order of magnitude.
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On 2/16/2025 1:05 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
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>
<mailto: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 <http://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.
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