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Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#241

Post by fakedang »

guelo wrote: post #150
amazingamazing wrote: post #61

The biggest irony to me is that Musk wanted to reneg on the Twitter sale. It's interesting to consider the timeline where he was allowed to not buy it. Truly a "canon" event, that one. I'm also not convinced this is a "security breach." They're being allowed to do it. It's more like an unforced error, if anything. Not that it changes anything material about the situation. That said - a small majority of congress is c…

He was trying to renege on Twitter so he could renegotiate the $52 price after the stock market came off its highs. To me the suspicious thing about the Twitter sale is why banks lent him the $13 billion to pull it off. The banks were then unable to move those loans off the books as Elon trashed Twitter's value.

At the time, Tesla's shares were so resilient that banks must've equated it to gold. And you can borrow any amount of money if you can provide the equivalent amount of gold as collateral.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#242

Post by tonymet »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #206

Worth noting that some of the most well-known cybersecurity experts today are former cyber criminals. It may be worth investigating his past, but a person's past is often used to attack their character when there is no other argument to make. If we were all judged solely on our past, we'd all be perpetually guilty.

That’s true. And in most other posts, the HN community is predominantly supportive of cyber criminals redeeming themselves as security experts. It’s informative that this case receives the opposite reception.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#243

Post by nemo44x »

Trasmatta wrote: post #95
retskrad wrote: post #75

When Elon stripped the Twitter organisation down to its fundamental parts, saved tons of money and the service is still ran like usual, people said the he’s a moron and the service couldn’t possibly run without a bloated and inefficient workforce. They were wrong. Now that Elon is applying the same philosophy to all of his companies and now the federal government, people are once again saying he doesn’t know what he’…

Twitter as it stands post Musk is a disaster, though. Revenue has dropped off significantly. How is that a success? Not to mention the absurdity of comparing something like Twitter to the federal government. It shows the staggering arrogance and ignorance of people in tech who think that.

The companies EBITDA is nearly double from when he purchased it so although revenue is down the company is making more money than before due to efficiencies. It’s probably worth about what he paid for it today. If advertisers come back, which I can see occurring with the huge cultural shift, it will certainly be worth well more than what he paid.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#244

Post by tootie »

amazingamazing wrote: post #117
9283409232 wrote: post #106

The question no one asking is why Elon is sending a team of teenage programmers and not a team of financial auditors if he really wanted to cut government spending?

Reporting on this is terrible. There are also senior (in age and experience) people, but much of the focus is on the youngins for obvious reasons. Musk also believes (either arrogance, or true belief) that much of this stuff can be figured out from first principals without much need of traditional experts.

I think that's generous. He is chopping entire departments after scooping up all their data. He doesn't seem to be doing any analysis at all. And a lot of his public statements have been patently false.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#245

Post by stevenbedrick »

ein0p wrote: post #148

I'd much rather Krebs actually looked into the theft of taxpayer funds by USAID, with all its "shrimp treadmills", "Iraqi Sesame Street", "transgender mice" and regime changes. I want to get to the leaves of that tree and see who really got my money. Everything else is immaterial and should be ignored as targeted attacks on their mission.

For what it's worth, and in case anybody's interested, the "shrimp treadmill" was funded by NSF, not USAID, and was exactly the kind of basic science research that the NSF is supposed to fund. Here's an article from 2011 that gives a lot of useful backstory about that story: https://www.npr.org/2011/08/23/139852035/shrimp-on-a-treadmi...

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#246

Post by fragmede »

martinsnow wrote: post #189
cjbgkagh wrote: post #140

I don't like Musk and have not for many years, but the left has been venerating some very flawed people for a very long time. It’s hard to be outraged now when we’ve been selectively told to ignore the past of others. Let’s not forget that Trump is the pied piper candidate promoted by the left to make it easier to win elections. I remember when Ron Desantis was successfully undermined by the news media casting him as…

I don't understand what your comment means in context of doge? I'm not american so something may be lost on me.

It's American for "I voted for Trump but you can't blame me for whats happening because I didn't want to vote for the other team".

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#247

Post by yodsanklai »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #42
dang wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent all day responding to the replies here, and then detaching them in order to save space at the top of the thread. But I just had a better idea. This is a stub comment so we have a single root to collapse the replies. This way (1) replies can stay close to their parent (the top comment) without flooding the screen with offtopicness; and (2) we can all re-experience the timeless truth of https://en.wikipedia.org…

> All: please don't post the sort of low-information / high-indignation comment that could just as easily appear in any semi-related thread. Such generic comments make the discussion less interesting and more activating. That's not what we're trying for here. We'd love to have the sort of useful discussion you're aiming for, but all new discussions that reference Musk are being systematically flagged by apparent supp…

> all new discussions that reference Musk are being systematically flagged by apparent supporters of Musk.

I'm not a Musk supporter at all, but I flag these discussions for several reasons.

1. To keep my sanity. These stories are pretty much everywhere and will be all over for the next 4 years at least. I don't want to engage in them and lose even more time and get even more anxious.

2. The comments aren't useful and don't bring new information. It's pretty clear what Elon and the oligarchs are trying to do. Those who don't see it won't change their mind at that point.

HN is one of the rare forum to avoid flame war, let's keep it that way.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#248

Post by nemo44x »

ModernMech wrote: post #183
retskrad wrote: post #75

When Elon stripped the Twitter organisation down to its fundamental parts, saved tons of money and the service is still ran like usual, people said the he’s a moron and the service couldn’t possibly run without a bloated and inefficient workforce. They were wrong. Now that Elon is applying the same philosophy to all of his companies and now the federal government, people are once again saying he doesn’t know what he’…

For Elon and all the neo Nazis who were banned from Twitter, Elon's takeover of the platform worked out great. For others, like trans people who were just living their online lives in a community they formed over years, Elon unleashed a barrage of hate and toxicity that forced them off the platform entirely. The same will be true in our country. What Elon's doing now will work out great for him and neo Nazis, not so…

If I read this post 2 years ago it’d sound really relevant and current. But today it sounds fossilized. Like it came from a world that hasn’t existed for a long time. It’s amazing how much has changed in the last year. Like the Berlin Wall fell.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#249

Post by moshun »

jfengel wrote: post #155
the_snooze wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the very least, it’s a field day for foreign intelligence in DC. Offering these guys some money, women, status, or drink would pay massive dividends.

Have they even done the training that says "watch out for women trying to get into your pants"? Or did they just show up?

I think we both know the answer. Most of these DOGE people wouldn’t have been allowed in the building, much less the system root a couple of months ago because they’d never pass a clearance check.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#250

Post by dudinax »

threeseed wrote: post #93
9283409232 wrote: post #79

Why are high level figures in these departments just letting them walk in and have access? Tell them to kick rocks until they have proper clearances.

Because Elon has the authority of the President who can override clearances. US government was simply never designed for scenarios like this.

It was designed for this. The safeguard is supposed to be Congress protecting their own powers out of self interest. They aren't. That's the where the "framers" screwed up.
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