#hire Big Data engineers

[i4technolab]

According to a report by Domo, we will be producing 165 zettabytes of data per year by 2025. As a result, more and more companies are investing in big data and AI technologies to manage unstructured data. It helps companies to make well-informed decisions and improve metrics such as customer satisfaction, customer retention, organizational efficiency, revenue, etc.

[maria-murphy]

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[sugar-phoenix]

𖥔 . overheating . 𖥔

synopsis: you're out on an operation with Boothill, and after a long battle and a quick getaway, you turn to realize that the cyborg cowboy is...overheating. With all the implications that come with that. tags: f!reader (Boothill refers to reader as "Lady" and "Missy" once), no smut, fluff, light romance a/n: 1.3k words, wrote this in a craze based off of a headcanon that @k9wa and @nvuy posted about! tickled my brain too much!

ao3 link here!

The sound of gunshots rang out in the night. You ducked in your getaway vehicle, a hover car illegally outfitted with nitrogen turbo boosters. Sticking our head out of the car every now and then, you aimed your pistol at the heads of IPC guards, knocking them dead left and right.

Boothill had been inside the IPC base for a while now. It was supposed to be a quick job. He only needed to run in, download the secret data straight to one of the USB ports on his hip, and then run out. Probably nailing an IPC soldier or ten in the head while he was there.

“Boothill,” you muttered, “where are you?”

You met the cowboy only once before this operation — he had sought you out as a fellow Ranger against the IPC for your getaway vehicle.

“’M gonna be lootin’ a pretty big IPC base, ‘n I need some kinda escape route,” he drawled. “You git me?”

You happily agreed. Why not? Anything that would be a loss for the IPC was a win for you.

Not to mention the cyborg cowboy was one of the finer men you’d come across in your travels.

Presently, you shook that thought out of your mind and fired a shot at another guard. It’s better to stay clear-headed when you’re in a shootout. Any unholy thoughts were perfectly fine to sift through in safer, calmer settings.

“Where is that dang cowboy?” you muttered again for the fifth time.

A hoot and a holler rang through the air, and you glanced towards the entrance. As though in answer to your question, Boothill emerged from within the base, running full gallop towards the vehicle.

“Start drivin,’” he ordered as he slid into the passenger seat.

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” you replied as more IPC soldiers spilled out of the entrance. The engine roared as you slammed the gas pedal to the floor.

“Ugh, turn up the A/C,” Boothill groaned.

“Turn ‘em up yourself, cowboy,” you responded. “I’m too busy making sure we’re getting away.”

The cyborg reached towards the dashboard and rotated the knob to the coolest possible setting. He leaned back into his seat, huffing and panting.

“All good?”

“Yeah. ‘S just a lot of fighting. Got me worked up.” He sniffed. “This dang A/C ain’t cool enough for me.”

You shrugged, checking the rearview mirror. The IPC vehicles were hot on your heels.  Thankfully, that wasn’t a problem for you. As an expert driver, you were fully trained in the art of evasive maneuvers. It’s what the cowboy hired you to do, after all.

You sped into the nearby city, a metropolis that conveniently had many twisty alleys and tight turns.

“This’ll be a piece of cake. Don’t you worry, cowboy,” you chuckled. The cowboy didn’t answer, and you were too busy focused on the road to check on him.

Drifting through intersections and jumping across lanes, you managed to throw off the majority of the IPC squadron pursuing you. There were only three small hover vehicles left, chasing you through a single-lane alleyway. You revved your engine to taunt them and cackled as the reverberations echoed off the buildings on either side.

The hovercar drifted, fishtailing as you made a sharp turn to the right. You swore as the sound of screaming metal rang out in the air, signaling that your spoilers had scraped against the walls.

“That’s gonna cost ya, cowboy,” you quipped, smiling as you saw two of the three vehicles crash into the wall behind you.

“Lady, I ain’t at fault for your drivin’ skills.”

You snapped your head towards Boothill, giving him a full-on death glare.

“Not that you drive bad, missy! I was just sayin,” he said, raising his hands up in surrender. It was then that you realized he’d unzipped his jacket, letting it fall lazily off his shoulders.

Heat rising to your cheeks, you snapped your attention back to the road, trying to evade the last IPC hover vehicle. A few quick turns and an IPC crash later, you pulled into a dark alleyway and braked, turning off the car.

“Why are we stoppin’?” Boothill asked.

“They’re probably swarming the city. Best to lie low for now until it all subsides.”

There was shuffling in the passenger seat, and you turned to look.

Boothill laid back against the seat, his limbs sprawled out. His bangs were arranged in wet clumps, and sweat gleamed off his face in the glow from distant neon signs. The rest of his long hair was put up along the headrest behind him, leaving his neck bare. His jacket, bandana, and hat were thrown in the back, leaving his upper torso bare for all the world to see. His pants were shrugged low on his hip, almost revealing his unmentionables (did cyborgs even have unmentionables?). Panting and huffing, he closed his eyes, frowning. You could hear a loud hum emanate from within his robot body.

“Boothill?” you croaked, fighting to speak through the feeling of your brain frying in your skull. It wasn’t just his appearance that was, well, hot, but a boiling heat was radiating off of him. You had hardly noticed in all the earlier action.

“Yes, darlin’?” He groaned. Your heart fluttered at the way he said darlin.’

“What. Are you doing?” You hardly thought the cowboy was one to give in to his darker desires at the drop of a hat, although there was something off about the scene that told you it wasn’t motivated by lust.

He chuckled before answering.

“Told ya I got worked up during that fight. I’m overheatin.’ One of the problems with having a robot body, ya get me?” Boothill breathed out heavily, his breath steaming in the air. “Fudge,” he muttered, closing his eyes and frowning again.

“Are you in pain?” you asked. His stance was akin to a man tortured, impaled from the back with hot iron spears.

“Nah, darlin,’ nothin’ like that. Just… hot, is all. Really fudgin’ hot.” Boothill let out a breath of steam again. “It’ll go away, like it always does. I jus’ need ta’ keep still for a lil’ bit. Let it cool down.”

You leaned over him, trying to ignore how close you were to his hot (both physically and metaphorically) abs, and pushed the passenger door open. It only went so far as the narrow alleyway let it, but you could feel the cold air of the night wash over you both.

“Thank ya’ kindly, darlin,’” he murmured.

“Don’t mention it,” you said, leaning back. You jumped when your arm brushed over his body.

“Did I burn ya?” Boothill didn’t move but his eyes fixed you with a worried look.

“No, you didn’t, it’s just…” You trailed off, not knowing how to end that sentence without embarrassing yourself. A heat creeped over your cheeks again.

“Oh, I see,” he smiled. “You can touch me if ya want darlin.’ I don’t bite.” He punctuated that sentence with a wide grin, showing off his shark-like teeth.

“But not right now,” he said as you tentatively reached an arm towards him. “Not while I’m hot like this. And it ain’t cause I might burn ya sweetie, but with all due respect, I ain’t wanna touch anything right this moment.”

“Got it,” you said sitting straight back in your seat.

A silence filled the car, gently broken by the whir of Boothill’s internal fans and the ambient hum of the city outside.

It was a comfortable, soft kind of silence. You let it soak into your flesh, down to your bones, etching this moment inside of yourself. It was nice.

“’Course, when I’m not overheatin,” Boothill murmured, “you’re free to touch whatever.” He grinned mischievously.

“Stop it,” you said. “You’re gonna make me overheat.”

dividers by cafekitsune

[olderthannetfic]

I know you love scivener, but do you know anything about ellipsus? It's meant to be an aternative to google docs for collaborative writing.

I heard about them when they dropped nanowrimo as a sponsor over their inclusion of AI bullshit, which seemed promising. And digging around on their homepage I saw mentions of beta reading and ao3, and apparently they're trying to promote themselves on Tumblr now.

So it really sounds like we're the target audience, which could be great, but I don't know enough to be able to tell if there's an obvious catch somewhere?

--

This is the first I've heard of them. A quick scroll through their website seems promising.

As usual, the basic questions are:

How much does this product cost to develop?

Do they have a business plan that makes sense with that cost?

This kind of software can, theoretically, be made by a few friends dicking around, not a huge programmer team all of whom have it as their primary job, so it isn't the pile of massive red flags that all attempts at social media are.

From the site:

"Today we are a small, close-knit team of seven, located across the post-capitalist landscapes of Berlin, Bologna, Buenos Aires, and Szczecin. (So much for our alliteration-based hiring strategy.) True to our mission, we're a progressive, remote-friendly company that prioritizes creativity, community, and creative exchange."

Jobs are listed as: Co-founder and CEO, Co-founder and community, Product and marketing, Design, and Engineering x3.

That seems like a reasonable breakdown and a size of team that could possibly be paid for with some non-insane business model.

The types of red flags we're looking for are

"We want to be the next instagram!"

Many idea people with nebulous skills, few programmers

Thinking you can run tumblr with three programmers

Thinking you can pay for 100 programmers with a cheapass subscription model

Programmers are random, cheap contract workers the founders don't know

Venture capital from sources that will want a big payout rather than support from people who share the goals/values of the team

Extremely overcrowded field with tons of products that do exactly this already

Unclear nature of product or a product that doesn't seem to actually have a market

etc.

What they say about money is in the FAQ:

Will Ellipsus have a paid plan? In order to grow the team and fund ongoing feature development, we will need to charge for a version of Ellipsus at some point. A paid version would be targeting users with specific needs related to advanced security, data syncing, and collaboration. But there will always be a free version of Ellipsus, and we want to be as generous as possible in what's included on that free plan (e.g., unlimited docs and drafts, for starters). It takes time to build a great freemium experience (not to mention a premium product people will happily pay for), which is why we won't roll that out in 2024. While the features that will be included in our paid plan aren't final-final, we can share that everything in the product today will be included in our free plan.

This sounds reasonable. It just remains to be seen whether they keep at it or go belly up (taking your data with them). I guess you'd have to know more about the specific people building this to decide whether they'll be reliable.

The biggest potential issues I see are it being difficult to get people to ditch google docs despite its issues, this taking off big time and the owners deciding to sell it for $$$$$$ to someone who will then ruin it, or the team just not being competent.

But since I don't know any of them, I have no idea how good they are at business.

[mariacallous]

A young technologist known online as “Big Balls,” who works for Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has access to sensitive US government systems. But his professional and online history call into question whether he would pass the background check typically required to obtain security clearances, security experts tell WIRED.

Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old high school graduate, established at least five different companies in the last four years, with entities registered in Connecticut, Delaware, and the United Kingdom, most of which were not listed on his now-deleted LinkedIn profile. Coristine also briefly worked in 2022 at Path Network, a network monitoring firm known for hiring reformed black-hat hackers. Someone using a Telegram handle tied to Coristine also solicited a cyberattack-for-hire service later that year.

Coristine did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

One of the companies Coristine founded, Tesla.Sexy LLC, was set up in 2021, when he would have been around 16 years old. Coristine is listed as the founder and CEO of the company, according to business records reviewed by WIRED.

Tesla.Sexy LLC controls dozens of web domains, including at least two Russian-registered domains. One of those domains, which is still active, offers a service called Helfie, which is an AI bot for Discord servers targeting the Russian market.While the operation of a Russian website would not violate US sanctions preventing Americans doing business with Russian companies, it could potentially be a factor in a security clearance review.

"Foreign connections, whether it's foreign contacts with friends or domain names registered in foreign countries, would be flagged by any agency during the security investigation process," Joseph Shelzi, a former US Army intelligence officer who held security clearance for a decade and managed the security clearance of other units under his command, tells WIRED.

A longtime former US intelligence analyst, who requested anonymity to speak on sensitive topics, agrees. “There's little chance that he could have passed a background check for privileged access to government systems,” they allege.

Another domain under Coristine’s control is faster.pw. The website is currently inactive, but an archived version from October 25, 2022 shows content in Chinese that stated the service helped provide “multiple encrypted cross-border networks.”

Prior to joining DOGE, Coristine worked for several months of 2024 at Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain implant startup, and, as WIRED previously reported, is now listed in Office of Personnel Management records as an “expert” at that agency, which oversees personnel matters for the federal government. Employees of the General Services Administration say he also joined calls where they were made to justify their jobs and to review code they’ve written.

Other elements of Coristine’s personal record reviewed by WIRED, government security experts say, would also raise questions about obtaining security clearances necessary to access privileged government data. These same experts further wonder about the vetting process for DOGE staff—and, given Coristine’s history, whether he underwent any such background check.

The White House did not immediately respond to questions about what level of clearance, if any, Corisitine has, and if so, how it was granted.

At Path Network, Coristine worked as a systems engineer from April to June of 2022, according to his now-deleted LinkedIn resume. Path has at times listed as employees Eric Taylor, also known as Cosmo the God, a well-known former cybercriminal and member of the hacker group UGNazis, as well as Matthew Flannery, an Australian convicted hacker whom police allege was a member of the hacker group LulzSec. It’s unclear whether Coristine worked at Path concurrently with those hackers, and WIRED found no evidence that either Coristine or other Path employees engaged in illegal activity while at the company.

“If I was doing the background investigation on him, I would probably have recommended against hiring him for the work he’s doing,” says EJ Hilbert, a former FBI agent who also briefly served as the CEO of Path Network prior to Coristine’s employment there. “I’m not opposed to the idea of cleaning up the government. But I am questioning the people that are doing it.”

Potential concerns about Coristine extend beyond his work history. Archived Telegram messages shared with WIRED show that, in November 2022, a person using the handle “JoeyCrafter” posted to a Telegram channel focused on so-called distributed denial of service, or DDOS, cyberattacks that bombard victim sites with junk traffic to knock them offline. In his messages, JoeyCrafter—which records from Discord, Telegram, and the networking protocol BGP indicate was a handle used by Coristine—writes that he’s “looking for a capable, powerful and reliable L7” that accepts Bitcoin payments. That line, in the context of a DDOS-for-hire Telegram channel, suggests he was looking for someone who could carry out a layer 7 attack, a certain form of DDOS. A DDOS-for-hire service with the name Dstat.cc was seized in a multi-national law enforcement operation last year.

The JoeyCrafter Telegram account had previously used the name “Rivage,” a name linked to Coristine on Discord and at Path, according to Path internal communications shared with WIRED. Both the Rivage Discord and Telegram accounts at times promoted Coristine’s DiamondCDN startup. It’s not clear whether the JoeyCrafter message was followed by an actual DDOS attack. (In the internal messages among Path staff, a question is asked about Rivage, at which point an individual clarifies they are speaking about "Edward".)

"It does depend on which government agency is sponsoring your security clearance request, but everything that you've just mentioned would absolutely raise red flags during the investigative process," Shelzi, the former US Army intelligence officer says. He adds that a secret security clearance could be completed in as little as 50 days while a top secret security clearance could take anywhere from 90 days to a year to complete.

Coristine’s online history, including a LinkedIn account where he calls himself Big Balls, has disappeared recently. He also previously used an account on X with the username @edwardbigballer. The account had a bio that read: “Technology. Arsenal. Golden State Warriors. Space Travel.”

Prior to using the @edwardbigballer username, Coristine was linked to an account featuring the screenname “Steven French” featuring a picture of what appears to be Humpty Dumpty smoking a cigar. In multiple posts from 2020 and 2021, the account can be seen responding to posts from Musk. Coristine’s X account is currently set to private.

Davi Ottenheimer, a longtime security operations and compliance manager, says many factors about Coristine’s employment history and online footprint could raise questions about his ability to obtain security clearance.

“Limited real work experience is a risk,” says Ottenheimer, as an example. “Plus his handle is literally Big Balls.”

[evenmyhivemindisempty]

if the boys were to propose to someone,how would they go about it?

Steve Murphy: Aw, Steve’s an old fashioned sort. He does the proposal the classic way - he calls the dad for permission, then takes his SO out on a nice picnic and gets on one knee. He does get a little teary eyed during his (brief) speech. I feel like overall Steve is not a romantic, but marriage is important to him, at least for what it represents!

Donald Pierce: Oh Pierce would go insane trying to make it perfect. He secretly measures their ring size in the dead of night. He snoops on their phone to gather data about what kind of rings they’ve been looking at. He spends weeks cataloguing their interests and preferences in order to engineer the Perfect Date. He looks kind of manic by the time he drops to his knee. THE THING IS, he didn’t even have to stress half as much, because I bet he wouldn’t propose unless his partner has already mentioned they’d like to get married/they’ve had a positive conversation about next steps!! This proposal is not a surprise and yet he is sweating bullets.

Cap Hatfield: Cap’s so sweet about it! He hands his partner a basket of flowers he’s gathered and maybe a piece of heirloom jewelry from his family, and kind of shyly asks if they’d like to marry him. He’ll make a capable and dutiful husband, he knows it!

Clement Mansell: Oh it’s big fucking production. It’s in public, for starters, and good money says he’s also hired a whole band and a fancy photographer. The bling is INSANE. It’s a huge rock, probably surrounded by other smaller stones (his birthstone and his partner’s birthstone because he thinks he’s being ROMANTIC). He’s *so* effusive about how in love he is, and how his partner will make an honest(ish) man out of him (he totally says this with a cheeky little smile).

The Corinthian: The Corinthian would do it on a whim. He’s in Vegas, and he tugs on his date’s/prey’s arm when they pass a glitzy casino chapel and suggests they tie the knot. Why not! If he didn’t have glasses on, he’d be winking.

Eli Klaber: Oh, no. No, no. Klaber does not propose. Klaber gets proposed to.

Ty Shaw: Ty brings his SO somewhere secluded for a quiet, intimate conversation. He tells them he’s been thinking about marriage in a very no-pressure sort of way, and if they agree he goes to a knee and and procures the ring he bought a month ago.

Quinn McKenna: Ideally, Quinn waits until they’ve both already clearly established they wanna get married, and then they go to some jewelry stores together to see what his partner likes (I don’t think this happened with Emily though). Quinn does get on his knee because that’s the Thing to Do; he’s not very emotional at all when he asks, but he does bust out a big grin when they say yes.

[puckpocketed]

Hello. You might have seen this floating around on twt:

link 1 // link 2, archive link

If by any chance you or someone you know are thinking about joining in on the challenge… no one can stop you but I implore you as someone who makes art, as someone with friends in an often-exploited creative industry, as someone who lives in late stage capitalism alongside you and has seen this play out before: proceed with caution.

Read the fine print on that form. There is NO guarantee of an internship, much less a job at the end of it. I haven't gone further than this form, but if anyone reading this does, and if there's no written agreement that your work won't be used without credit to you + payment for services rendered - RUN.

This is a common corporate tactic to get free labor out of people. I'm not saying this is necessarily what’s happening; for all we know this was done as a completely innocent move to drum up some fan engagement and as a genuine search for talent for their analytics team. WHO KNOWS. But I can't ignore that I’ve seen this situation play out again and again, at every scale.

Job interviews, when they ask you how YOU think they should improve their systems, how YOU would solve their problems? When they require that you do some problem-solving for them, and it goes beyond a simple task? That’s a free consultation you’re giving them, that's free work you or someone else should be getting paid for.

When big streamers/influencers ask their fans to join in on a fan art contest to choose their new pfp/banner? That’s hundreds, possibly thousands of pieces of free art they never would’ve gotten otherwise. They could've gone to the trouble of paying someone in-house to do it, hiring someone for that position, commissioning a professional for a piece. It's free work from their dedicated fans.

In this case, Utah HC is asking fans to not only choose/provide their own dataset, but to do a complex analysis on it AND do the work of visual and verbal communication to senior management, who likely do not have a deeper grasp of the concepts and will need it simplified. The stipulation that you will present your work could be ANYTHING!! The "five page deliverable" is already bananas to me, having dipped my toe into what analytics is and how complex the fun ones are. Condensing it all is WORK. The presentation portion may include speaking time and answering questions; the groundwork for doing this effectively may include producing data visualisations, making spreadsheets, time consuming write-ups. Maths and science communication is hard. It is WORK. They are asking for free labor.

Many have already called it out, but it's still gaining traction via retweets from big accounts uncritically sharing it. I found out through the official Puckpedia account. Jack Han called it out pretty eloquently on twitter and on his substack:

Many people aspire to work as an analyst in the NHL. Earlier today the Utah Hockey Club gave those people a glimmer of hope. Utah’s Summer Analytics Challenge is unusual in that it doesn’t provide a dataset or detailed instructions. The open-ended contests contrasts with other public (ex: Big Data Cup) or private (ex: NHL team interview) events. In those scenarios, participants are given proprietary data to clean, model and analyze, which influence direction and methodology. Meanwhile, Utah is seemingly happy with anything as long as the writeup is under five pages long. Utah’s contest also stands out in its near-total absence of legal fine print. There are no mention of intellectual property implications, which is perhaps fitting when the team is asking participants to bring their own data and analysis. [...] Open casting calls such as Utah’s analytics challenge start out as a lose-lose-lose proposition: > The employer loses because it will have to invest massive human resources to trawl/filter/evaluate/reverse-engineer the hundreds of write-ups it is sure to receive, with no guarantee that any of them will be of use > Applicants lose because the vast, vast majority of them will have nothing to show for their efforts, while a tiny minority risks having its IP stolen > Good ideas lose because they’ll be born into an environment where their parents (the applicant & the employer) have no defined relationship and won’t be in a position to grow together

link, archive link

I do try to keep things light on this blog, but this is super personal for me <3 thank u for listening

[queenlua]

A student of mine did a rather good thesis on de-clouding. In the process she discovered the term "cloud repatriation" a fair bit of literature on the movement to bring control of data and hardware back 'on-prem'.

She also noted that when you search on these terms the main engines (all run by cloud service providers) return poor results not congruent with the scale of the phenomenon. They are dominated by the opposite message obviously heavily SEO'd up to the top, plus shill pieces pushing cloud services but presented as "critical". Dig deep if you want to find the real scale of the "anti-cloud" issues.

Her main conclusion was very interesting though. That the big issue is not finance, reliability or control - but de-skilling.

As companies move their operations out to the cloud it's not the disappearance of hardware from the premises but the loss of skill-sets. Later they don't even know who to hire or how to write the JD to bring people back in.

A good example was the broadcast industry. Entire branches of that industry doing post-production, colour, transcoding, and whatnot moved it all out to AWS. After price hikes, they wanted to go back to running their own services. But they can't. Because nobody knows about how to set-up and run that any longer - especially specialist things like buffers and transcoders. I mean, try finding a sys-admin who can just do simple tasks like set up and properly configure a mail server these days.

sometimes hacker news comments are interesting

[can-i-phone-a-friend]

I’m thinking about. Ratchrod mommy kink

Typically, I’m not a big fan of this or the other variation but these two just. It doesn’t make me immediately shrivel up at the idea.

Rodimus is slowly rocking back and forth of Ratchets spike one night. Hes been here for a while, borderline warming Ratchets spike. The medics got one hand on his hip to keep him in place and the other is busy writing on a few data pads. The prime should have known there was gonna be a catch go Ratchet letting him ride him in his office.

After a bit, He starts to speed up his rocking, trying to get just the right angle to catch his node on something when ratchets hand on his hip tightens and he mutters “stop that”

Rodimus whines in response, burying his face in Ratchets neck but continues to rock his hips faster. Ratchets grip tightens in another warning but Rodimus doesn’t seem to care, continuing to whine into the medics ear as he rolls his hips harder.

Ratchet finally frees his second hand so he can use them both to grab hold of Rodis hips in a firm grip, and he turns his head enough so his lips are against Rodis ears (audials?) “Be good for mommy why don’t you mmhm?” He mumbles into Rodimus ear and the prime moans loudly, as his hips stutter weakly. Ratchet grind at that and strokes the side of Rodis thigh in comfort. The medic hums, “be good for me I’ll make it worth your while ok?” And Rodimus is to our of it to fully grasp it, his processor swimming with arousal and need. But he nods his head lightly as he stills his hips, nodes aching and calipers fluttering randomly.

What feels like hours later, Ratchet pats Rodimus aft. “See, that wasn’t so bad now was it?” The prime only responds with a soft whine. At some point he’d wrapped his arms around Ratchets neck to keep himself upright. He’s fully wrapped around his medic. His charge is uncomfortably hire. The medic chuckles softly and says “you were so good for me weren’t you? I did promise you a reward didn’t I?” And he sneaks his servo between the racers legs and begins to very slowly role his node between his fingers. Rodimus moans loudly- a filthy, punched out noise. His hips jerk into Ratchets hand as he continues to spill moans and whines.

Rodimus is so so close to overloading but it’s just not enough. There’s visible charge jumping off his plating and he’s whining, pleading into his medics ear to ‘just let him go. Let him overload. Hell be good he swears just please’

When Ratchet gives his nod one good pinch and whispers “overload for mommy”, Rodimus all but wails in overload. He’s got tears in his optics as his systems are sent into a soft reboot from how much charge just washed over his systems.

He boots back up to Ratchet very lightly running his hands up and down Rodis spinal strut, his engine purring. And the racer just wraps himself around his medic as best he can for as long as he can before Ratchet needs to get back to work or get them washed off. Which he decide.

[kiyzeiin]

little update in the story !

There’s gonna have to be some rewriting to the story. It’s the pacing and flow of this story that I realize needs to make better sense. The change that i’m working with is:

Uluwehi is the founder of a growing gaming and technology studio for some time until years later she becomes a big time CEO of a conglomerate company she initiated. To clarify, Wehi’s investors/higher ups did not hand pick people to work at her studio/company. Uluwehi recruites those who were interested in working with her in large consideration of budgeting (as in how many people she can financially afford to hire and split the revenue. which wasn’t a lot of people in the very beginning. maybe about 10-14.), as well as friends and others who she’d already trusted their skills in to adapt her vision. Uluwehi does the overwhelming majority of the engineering by herself, all of the prototype models/versions as well as their updates. But of course there’s the serialization of the product and its programming, operation, configuration, data, memory, etc… to be discussed with their team of engineers and artists. As well as the teaching of her process. When finalized and troubleshooted, Uluwehi’s products are serialized and mass produced/manufactured to be given to the public.

There is no huge factory for that until later on.

Before putting herself out there, gathering a team and being offered more through networking, there is just scientist engineer Uluwehi building robots and creating worlds in video games all by herself. She believes she can make the world a better place and help people with her intelligence.

That’s to explain Uluwehi’s thing she has going on in the beginning of the story right now before the huge problems/conflict arise or make themselves apparent to the main characters’ viewpoints.

*** Also I’m close to finally finding a name for the story!! I hope to announce it soon when I’m more secure enough about it. I’m so excited!

[victoria-ward420]

Night City, 2077 – The Concrete Jungle

The rain falls in a steady, cold drizzle, catching the neon light of advertisements that flash relentlessly above. The city is alive, but indifferent—cars buzz by on cracked roads, drones fly overhead, and pedestrians walk with eyes down, lost in their own battles. But here, in the heart of the city, is Valentina Rose, a figure who commands attention whether she desires it or not. Her past is as convoluted as the steel and concrete that make up this cybernetic jungle.

Born into the chaotic world of the Valentinos, the city’s largest street gang with a cult-like dedication to their code, Valentina was raised to embrace the culture of family, loyalty, and honor. Her father, a high-ranking member, had big dreams for her, but Valentina had other plans. Her brilliance couldn’t be confined to the streets—no, she was destined for something greater, something sharper.

Arasaka, the corporation that ruled over Night City with an iron grip, had been her ticket out. She climbed through the ranks quickly, using her unmatched intellect and ruthless ambition to become one of their most valuable netrunners. She wore the sleek, high-end suits and dealt in cold, calculated data warfare. For years, she was a queen among sharks, holding her own, mastering the cyberverse with skills few could even fathom. Multiple degrees in finance, engineering, biology—she was the definition of a corporate asset.

But corporations never see people—they only see assets. And when assets become liabilities, they’re discarded like old tech.

One botched job. That’s all it took for Arasaka to throw her to the wolves. A mission went sideways, sabotaged from within, and the failure was pinned squarely on her. Fired. Exiled. Just another disposable asset, discarded by a company that never really valued her.

To make it worse, her boss—no, her lover—the one person she thought she had some semblance of a future with, cut ties with her just as fast. One moment they were sharing drinks in the Afterlife, talking about the next big score; the next, she was blacklisted, shut out of the corporate world she had worked so hard to infiltrate.

Now, she’s a mercenary for hire, navigating the harsh underbelly of Night City, where the lines between man and machine blur, where loyalty is bought with eddies and lost just as fast. But Valentina is no ordinary merc. No, her seductive charm and deadly skills have made her infamous. She doesn’t take just any job—she’s selective, only going after high-profile targets that promise to push her to the limits. Her success rate? 99%. The whispers of the streets speak of her in awe and fear—few have seen her fail, and none have lived to tell the tale.

Her skills are unparalleled. A master netrunner who can breach systems faster than most can blink, wielding viruses like weapons of war. But her proficiency doesn’t stop there. MMA? She can break bones like they’re nothing. Sharp-shooting? Her aim is as precise as any Corpo assassin. Weapon mastery? Few can wield a katana or fire a smart rifle with her finesse. And perhaps most dangerous of all, she’s an expert in human behavior and seduction. She reads people like she reads the net—breaking down their defenses with a smile or a well-placed word.

Tonight – Another Job, Another Dance with Danger

The rainwater splashes up as Valentina walks through the grimy backstreets of Watson, her cybernetic eyes scanning the buildings, the people, always alert. Her deck, a sleek chrome beauty strapped to her back, pulses softly, feeding her constant updates from the net. Messages. Alerts. Data flowing through her like blood.

A new contract had come in hours ago. A high-profile Arasaka executive. The kind of target that could make a merc rich, or get them killed. But this wasn’t just another contract. This was personal.

Arasaka. The same corpo that had discarded her like trash now had a price on the head of one of its own. There’s a certain satisfaction in that. An irony she can’t help but savor.

Her HUD flares to life as her neural link catches an incoming message. A faint shimmer of static runs through her vision before the words appear in glowing text.

“Meet me at Afterlife. We need to talk.”

No name. Just a cryptic handle she recognizes—NightOwl, someone she hasn’t heard from in years. Someone from her past life.

Valentina pauses for a moment under the flashing neon lights of a convenience store. The rain patters against her leather jacket, and the cool mist clings to her skin, but her mind is already calculating. She knows this could be a trap. The streets are full of hunters who’d love to cash in on her head. But it could also be something more—a chance for information, for revenge. The Afterlife isn’t far. A place where the ghosts of Night City’s legends walk, a sanctuary for mercs who survive long enough to make a name.

She taps a quick command into her deck, checking the feeds for any signs of surveillance. No immediate red flags—yet.

Valentina’s dark eyes flicker with cold determination as she makes her decision. She adjusts her katana at her side, tightens the straps on her deck, and begins her walk toward the Afterlife.

The Afterlife – A Den of Shadows

The Afterlife looms before her—an old morgue turned merc bar, now a haven for the best of the best, or the ones who think they are. It’s a place where stories are made, where deals are brokered, and where the wrong move can get you a bullet to the head.

Valentina steps through the heavy doors, her presence causing a ripple through the patrons. She knows what she looks like. Confident. Lethal. Her dark hair falls over her shoulders, a stark contrast to her sleek white jacket and the tattoos that snake down her arms. Eyes follow her, but none dare approach. Not yet.

She makes her way to the bar, every step calculated, purposeful. The bartender, a familiar face, nods in recognition but doesn’t engage in small talk. He knows better. Mercs don’t come here to chat. They come to work.

As she waits for her contact to show, Valentina scans the room with subtle glances. The atmosphere is thick with tension, the air humming with the sounds of hushed conversations and the clinking of glasses. Somewhere in this room, someone knows more about her current contract than they’re letting on.

Moments later, a figure slides into the seat beside her. NightOwl—his once-sharp features now weathered by time and danger. He doesn’t speak at first, just orders a drink, taking his time to settle into the moment. Valentina watches him from the corner of her eye, her mind already dissecting his body language. He’s nervous, but not afrai yet. Finally, he speaks, voice low and guarded. “Valentina, I knew you’d take the job. But there’s more to it than you think. They’re watching you. Arasaka never really lets go.”

She arches an eyebrow, leaning slightly closer, her voice a seductive purr hiding the razor-sharp edge beneath. “Let me guess, you’re here to warn me out of the goodness of your heart?” He smirks, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Hardly. I have my reasons. And if you want to survive this, you’ll need to listen. This isn’t just about taking down some corpo suit. It’s bigger. A lot bigger.”Valentina leans back in her chair, crossing her legs slowly as she considers his words. She can feel the weight of the night pressing in around her, the undercurrents of danger that pulse just beneath the surface.

[sixstringphonic]

DOGE Teen Owns ‘Tesla.Sexy LLC’ and Worked at Startup That Has Hired Convicted Hackers

Experts question whether Edward Coristine, a DOGE staffer who has gone by “Big Balls” online, would pass the background check typically required for access to sensitive US government systems.

February 6th 2025 - via WIRED

A young technologist known online as “Big Balls,” who works for Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has access to sensitive US government systems. But his professional and online history call into question whether he would pass the background check typically required to obtain security clearances, security experts tell WIRED.

Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old high school graduate, established at least five different companies in the last four years, with entities registered in Connecticut, Delaware, and the United Kingdom, most of which were not listed on his now-deleted LinkedIn profile. Coristine also briefly worked in 2022 at Path Network, a network monitoring firm known for hiring reformed blackhat hackers. Someone using a Telegram handle tied to Coristine also solicited a cyberattack-for-hire service later that year.

Coristine did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

One of the companies Coristine founded, Tesla.Sexy LLC, was set up in 2021, when he would have been around 16 years old. Coristine is listed as the founder and CEO of the company, according to business records reviewed by WIRED.

Tesla.Sexy LLC controls dozens of web domains, including at least two Russian-registered domains. One of those domains, which is still active, offers a service called Helfie, which is an AI bot for Discord servers targeting the Russian market. While the operation of a Russian website would not violate US sanctions preventing Americans doing business with Russian companies, it could potentially be a factor in a security clearance review.

"Foreign connections, whether it's foreign contacts with friends or domain names registered in foreign countries, would be flagged by any agency during the security investigation process," Joseph Shelzi, a former US Army intelligence officer who held security clearance for a decade and managed the security clearance of other units under his command, tells WIRED.

A longtime former US intelligence analyst, who requested anonymity to speak on sensitive topics, agrees. “There's little chance that he could have passed a background check for privileged access to government systems,” they allege.

Another domain under Coristine’s control is faster.pw. The website is currently inactive, but an archived version from October 25, 2022 shows content in Chinese that stated the service helped provide “multiple encrypted cross-border networks.”

Prior to joining DOGE, Coristine worked for several months of 2024 at Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain implant startup, and, as WIRED previously reported, is now listed in Office of Personnel Management records as an “expert” at that agency, which oversees personnel matters for the federal government. Employees of the General Services Administration say he also joined calls where they were made to justify their jobs and to review code they’ve written.

Other elements of Coristine’s personal record reviewed by WIRED, government security experts say, would also raise questions about obtaining security clearances necessary to access privileged government data. These same experts further wonder about the vetting process for DOGE staff—and, given Coristine’s history, whether he underwent any such background check.

The White House did not immediately respond to questions about what level of clearance, if any, Corisitine has and, if so, how it was granted.

At Path Network, Coristine worked as a systems engineer from April to June of 2022, according to his now-deleted LinkedIn résumé. Path has at times listed as employees Eric Taylor, also known as Cosmo the God, a well-known former cybercriminal and member of the hacker group UGNazis, as well as Matthew Flannery, an Australian convicted hacker whom police allege was a member of the hacker group LulzSec. It’s unclear whether Coristine worked at Path concurrently with those hackers, and WIRED found no evidence that either Coristine or other Path employees engaged in illegal activity while at the company.

“If I was doing the background investigation on him, I would probably have recommended against hiring him for the work he’s doing,” says EJ Hilbert, a former FBI agent who also briefly served as the CEO of Path Network prior to Coristine’s employment there. “I’m not opposed to the idea of cleaning up the government. But I am questioning the people that are doing it.”

Potential concerns about Coristine extend beyond his work history. Archived Telegram messages shared with WIRED show that, in November 2022, a person using the handle “JoeyCrafter” posted to a Telegram channel focused on so-called distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyberattacks that bombard victim sites with junk traffic to knock them offline. In his messages, JoeyCrafter—which records from Discord, Telegram, and the networking protocol BGP indicate was a handle used by Coristine—writes that he’s “looking for a capable, powerful and reliable L7” that accepts bitcoin payments. That line, in the context of a DDoS-for-hire Telegram channel, suggests he was looking for someone who could carry out a layer-7 attack, a certain form of DDoS. A DDoS-for-hire service with the name Dstat.cc was seized in a multinational law enforcement operation last year.

The JoeyCrafter Telegram account had previously used the name “Rivage,” a name linked to Coristine on Discord and at Path, according to Path internal communications shared with WIRED. Both the Rivage Discord and Telegram accounts at times promoted Coristine’s DiamondCDN startup. It’s not clear whether the JoeyCrafter message was followed by an actual DDoS attack. (In the internal messages among Path staff, a question is asked about Rivage, at which point an individual clarifies they are speaking about “Edward.”)

"It does depend on which government agency is sponsoring your security clearance request, but everything that you've just mentioned would absolutely raise red flags during the investigative process," says Shelzi, the former US Army intelligence officer. He adds that a secret security clearance could be completed in as little as 50 days, while a top-secret security clearance could take anywhere from 90 days to a year to complete.

Coristine’s online history, including a LinkedIn account where he calls himself Big Balls, has disappeared recently. He also previously used an account on X with the username @edwardbigballer. The account had a bio that read: “Technology. Arsenal. Golden State Warriors. Space Travel.”

Prior to using the @edwardbigballer username, Coristine was linked to an account featuring the screen name “Steven French” featuring a picture of what appears to be Humpty Dumpty smoking a cigar. In multiple posts from 2020 and 2021, the account can be seen responding to posts from Musk. Coristine’s X account is currently set to private.

Davi Ottenheimer, a longtime security operations and compliance manager, says many factors about Coristine’s employment history and online footprint could raise questions about his ability to obtain security clearance.

“Limited real work experience is a risk,” says Ottenheimer, as an example. “Plus his handle is literally Big Balls.”

[digitalekta]

Are Digital Marketing Jobs in Demand? Here’s Why 2025 is the Best Time to Jump In

In today’s fast-paced online economy, one question is buzzing everywhere: Are digital marketing jobs in demand? The short answer? Yes—more than ever! From small startups to global brands, businesses are investing big in digital strategies, and skilled marketers are at the center of it all.

If you're a student, a fresh graduate, or someone looking for a career pivot, now is the perfect time to enter the digital marketing industry. Here's what makes this field one of the hottest job markets today—and how you can take advantage of it.

📈 The Growth of Online Businesses is Fueling Digital Marketing Demand

As eCommerce and online services boom, companies are battling for visibility on platforms like Google, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn. They need experts who understand SEO, social media marketing, PPC, email marketing, and more.

According to recent industry data, digital marketing is expected to grow by over 10% annually, with roles like SEO specialists, content strategists, and performance marketers seeing the biggest jumps in demand.

💻 Top Digital Marketing Skills That Companies Are Hiring For

In 2025, these in-demand digital marketing skills are leading the hiring charts:

SEO & SEM (Search Engine Optimization & Marketing)

Social Media Advertising (especially Meta Ads & LinkedIn)

Content Marketing & Copywriting

Email Marketing & Automation Tools

Google Analytics & Data Interpretation

Video Marketing (especially short-form reels & TikTok content)

Upskilling in these areas can significantly boost your chances of landing a remote digital marketing job or even starting your own agency.

🌍 Freelancing & Remote Work: Digital Marketing is the Gateway

One of the biggest advantages of a digital marketing career? Location independence. Whether you’re sitting in Delhi, Dubai, or Dallas—you can work with clients globally.

Freelancing platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, and LinkedIn are full of high-paying gigs in content writing, Facebook ads, funnel building, and email automation. Remote jobs in digital marketing are not just real—they’re thriving.

🎓 Students & Freshers: Why Digital Marketing is the Smartest Career Move

If you’re still studying or just graduated, digital marketing gives you the edge to:

Earn while learning (internships & freelancing)

Build your personal brand on social media

Gain real-world experience before applying for jobs

Start a side hustle or grow your own brand

Digital marketing isn’t just a job skill—it’s a life skill in the digital age.

🚀 Final Thoughts: The Future of Digital Marketing is Bright & Global

So, are digital marketing jobs in demand?

Absolutely. With businesses shifting online, content becoming king, and algorithms constantly evolving—digital marketers are more important than ever. Whether you're a creative soul, a data geek, or a strategic thinker, there’s a place for you in this booming industry.

👉 Start learning, keep testing, and stay consistent—and this digital wave can take your career to the next level.

[jalicecookie]

Cat Food

When Data has to work longer on an important Project, he asks Reginald the shy Engineer to step in as babysitter. And Reginald quickly learns, that Cats and Toddlers are not that different - because both can cause a lot of Chaos - or try to eat the Cat food together.

Some things in life are simple. Like how to do good friends a favor - or write an entry in your personal log after a successful day at work.

Other things, however, are incredibly difficult and complicated. Like how to build emotional bonds when feeling emotions was limited or impossible. Or take on the upbringing and responsibility for a child and also have a job.

Not to let the gap between family life and work get too big seems impossible to many and even on the Enterprise there are moments when more exhausted family mothers and fathers visit Deanna Troi and ask for advice.

There are many crew members who get along well with the children who live on the ship and then there are some residents of the Enterprise who prefer to keep a large distance from the younger Members. One of those people is Captain Picard. It's no big secret that he doesn't get along well with children and that there is an unwritten rule that he will not tolerate children on the bridge. And yet the families who lived on the ship were one of the strengths - because there is nothing better than observing this bond. And the Captain couldn't find a bad word against this statement either.

But it wasn't always easy for Parents to go to work and have family Time. That hit Commander Data that early evening. The Android recently took in a little girl and a little boy as adoptive Children in order to be able to explore another facet of Humanity and to give the two orphans a new family.

It had been an battle, and Data was still getting very strong criticism for not being able to parent two young children with as an Android . But he showed everyone that it was chaotic, devastating and complicated every day - but the two children absolutely loved Data - even if Data himself would never be able to reciprocate this love. Because an Android like him was not able to feel emotions.

"I am very grateful Reginald . I would otherwise have left them two in Geordi's care. But my best friend is part of the project...so we both need to work this Evening" - Data was in an ssressed position and he had to take part in an important Project. He needed a babysitter for the Toddlers, and since the shy engineer gets on so well with Spot, Data has no concerns about hiring him as a babysitter for the evening. It had taken a bit of persuasion, but now Reginald was here in Data's quarters and looked around nervously.

"N... No problem. I just hope I'm not doing anything wrong ... I've never been a babysitter before ... well, except for Spot. Is there anything I have to consider with the two of them?", Barclay stuttered nervously and watched, how Spot came running up to Data and started running around the android's legs, rubbing her head against his pant leg, purring.

"The project lasts 2 hours and it would be appropriate,  if the children are ready for bed when I return. We had dinner together half an hour ago - Castor and Despina probably want to play with Spot later. Oh and you should make sure,  that they don't go to the bathroom alone - last time they managed to fill the bathroom with soap bubbles ", Data nodded briefly to Reginald and then left the quarters.

Reginald was nervous and he didn't know if he would be a good babysitter. Even if it should only be for a few hours - Data was the main reference person for the two toddlers and Barclay doubted being able to do justice to the pressure. But what didn't you do for friends?

***

"Desy give back. Mine!" - a small, dark-haired boy ran after his sister and tried to snatch the toy from her, which actually belonged to him. His sister took it very unfairly and now he wanted to play with it. She should look for something else.

"No Cas - Desy Toy", said the blond-haired little girl and she ran with the toy in her hands into the entrance area of the quarter, where she almost collided with Reginald's legs and was able to stop just in time.

"Desy my toy. Give back," Castor turned directly to Reginald. "Where Daddy? Gone?", Despina asked shyly and let the toy fall directly on the floor, to look from Reginald to the door. Castor took this chance and took the toy with a big grin.

"Daddy gone work - Regy babysitter";  Castor explained and his little sister looked up from her brother to Barclay questioningly. "That right kids - I'll babysit you as long as Data has to work. D ... Do you want to go to your Room? You have more toys there, yes?", Reginald spoke nervously and while Castor ran forward enthusiastically, his little sister looked away sadly the door to Reginald.

"Daddy coming back?", asked the toddler fearfully. "Of course - he'll be back ... y ... you don't have to worry, okay?", Reginald replied and for the moment the words seemed to calm the little blonde and she ran in the direction of the nursery as well.

***

Reginald watched Minutes later, how the two Toddlers were playing with their toys and were completely immersed in another world. It was amazing that in the three months that they lived with Data they had settled on the Enterprise.

The two are not biological siblings. Castor comes from an abandoned research station on the edge of the Alpha Quadrant and has survived an attack by a hostile species by hiding in an empty box and Despina ran into Data on an outside mission and never wanted to let go of his leg. The inhabitants of the planet on which the mission took place have told the Enterprise crew that the little blonde showed up with her parents a while ago, but that her parents had been killed by one of the dangerous predators in the wild.

Data had taken both children in and every single day was a challenge for the Android. It later emerged that both Castor and Despina still had relatives on earth - but it was clear that they wanted to stay with their new Guardian- they wanted to stay with Data. And Reginald finds the bond that the emotionless Android has built to the two toddlers in these three months impressive.

When it was time for the two children to get ready for bed, they had already passed their bedtime. Reginald hadn't kept an eye on the time and at some point he had sat down with the children and they had started building a small town out of Lego.

When the shy man looked at his watch, he was shocked to see that Data would be back in five minutes. So he went to the bathroom with the Toddlers and helped them brush their teeth - but the engineer was distracted when there was a loud clank from the kitchen and the meowing of Data's cat Spot.

The adult went to the kitchen, followed by Castor and Despina, and found the cat sitting on the counter. Spot had managed to toss a glass from the counter and now proudly meowed over it.

"Oh no - you two are staying here - I'll take the broken pieces away. Not that Spot or you are still stepping in, yes?" - said Reginald and got a broom to sweep up the broken glass from the floor. He was busy with this task for maybe two minutes and when he turned around again Reginald saw that neither Spot nor the two toddlers were standing behind him.

"Castor? Despina? Spot?"

Reginald put the broom aside and began searching Data's quarters for the two Children and the Cat. He found the trio a few moments later at Spots Food Bowl.

The two siblings sat next to the Cat and had some of the cat food in their little hands and before Reginald could have prevented anything, the two toddlers ate the cat food together with Spot.

And exactly at that moment Data came back and while Reginald nervously from the trio that enjoyed the ´dinner´, looked over at the android - the engineer tried to find a suitable answer to any questions.

".... the project was a complete success. Geordi and I achieved some interesting results. Is everything all right Reginald? You seem ... more nervous than usual?"

"I'm more nervous than usual ... it just comes across ... why should I be more nervous and ... okay I think the children started eating the cat food at a careless moment ..." Reginald stuttered nervous and Data looked from the babysitter over to the corner where Spot had her food bowl.

"The two show this behavior often. I have already tried to teach them to stop from doing it. But so far, my attempts at raising Children in this field have been unsuccessful. Castor? Despina? You shouldn't eat Spot her cat food away  - come to me please? ", Data explained and it took a moment until the two Toddlers listened to his calls and came running to Data with an innocent smile on their face.

"Were you good and behaved while Reginald took care of you?", Data asked the two siblings, while he gently removed the remains of the cat food they were holding in their hands.

"Yes Daddy - Regy come back again? Cas and Desy brushed teeth," said Castor and Despina nodded in agreement.

"Hm - I think we have to brush your teeth again - cat food is not something you should eat. Say goodbye to Reginald and then go to the bathroom. I'll be right there," said Data in a neutral tone and Reginald watchend how the children waved him goodbye,  before they ran to the bathroom.

Reginald then said goodbye to Data, who thanked the shy man again for helping out as a babysitter. When Reginald was on the way to his Quarters, he had to realize that cats and toddlers weren't that different after all and that he might be suitable as a babysitter.

Only next time Reginald should place Spot's food bowl outside of the toddlers reach. 

THE END

[mariacallous]

The thing about the takeover of key US government institutions by the world’s richest man and his strike force of former interns is that it’s happening so fast.

It’s been three weeks since Elon Musk’s agents took over the government’s IT and HR departments. Since then, the movements of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency have had the cartography of a horror movie, DOGE picking off agencies one by one based on slasher logic, feeding an unslakeable thirst for cost-cutting and data.

Every day brings fresh incursions. Three weeks ago the United States believed in humanitarian aid. It helped people who had been ripped off by big corporations. It funded the infrastructure necessary to make America a beacon of scientific innovation. Now the United States Agency for International Development is gutted, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is on ice, and National Institutes of Health grants are handcuffed. So much for all that.

These are spreadsheet cruelties, executed with a click. The loss of real peoples’ jobs and lives—yes, despite what X-famous conspiracy theorists will tell you, USAID saved lives—all immaterial compared to the pursuit of a tighter balance sheet.

Three weeks ago, a 19-year-old who calls himself “Big Balls” online didn’t have access to government personnel records and more. A 25-year-old with a closet full of racist tweets hadn’t gotten the keys to Treasury systems that pay out $5.45 trillion each year. Elon Musk hadn’t turned the Oval Office into a romper room for his 4-year-old son.

The speed is strategy, of course, flooding the zone so that neither the media nor the courts can keep pace. Lawsuits and court orders move on a different timescale than this slash-and-burn approach. (At this pace, DOGE will have tapped into every last government server long before the Supreme Court even has a chance to weigh in.) But it’s also reflexive. The first order of business in a corporate takeover is to slash costs as quickly as possible. If you can’t fire people, offer them buyouts. If they won’t take the buyouts, find a way to fire them anyway. Keep cutting until you hit bone.

This is how you get an executive order declaring that “each agency hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart,” an arbitrary ratio with no regard for actual staffing needs. It’s how you get hundreds of federal government buildings on the auction block no matter how fully occupied they are. It’s both extreme and ill-considered, a race to empty the town’s only well.

And then … what? This is the question that Elon Musk and DOGE have failed to answer, because there is no answer. Does the United States government need to become a profit engine? To return shareholder value? Does Medicaid need to demonstrate a product-market fit in time for the next funding round?

This is consultant logic. This is an engineering sprint whose inevitable finish line is the unwinding of the social contract. Democracy doesn’t die in darkness after all; it dies in JIRA tickets filed by Palantir alums.

It’s somehow even worse than that, though. Suppose you take this whole enterprise at face value, that the United States should go through the private equity ringer. It does not take a Stanford MBA to know that cutting expenses only helps half of your profit and loss statement. Any serious attempt to treat the US like a business would involve increasing revenues. So where are the taxes? And why demolish the CFPB, which has paid out over $20 billion to US citizens—shareholders, if you will—through its enforcement actions?

In the coming weeks and months, as this farce continues to unfurl, remember that the goal of most acquisitions is not to benefit the acquired. It is to either subsume or discard, whichever generates the highest return.

Elon Musk’s unprecedented influence over the executive branch will ultimately benefit Elon Musk. The employees in charge are his employees. The data DOGE collects, the procurement contracts they oversee, it all flows up to him.

And it’s flowing too quickly to keep up with, much less to stop.

[centrally-unplanned]

after your last post about STEM, what do you think about expanding the fields of 1) environmental science and other study of the environment and our interactions with it and 2) urban design and urban planning. Imo both of these should be as big as health sciences and engineering respectively, the only reason they’re not is that people don’t care about our interaction with the environment we need to care about and systemic place-drivers behind inequality, liveable lifestyles, and our ability to actually live sustainably as a species. mostly asking bc these are fields I’ve studied in and there’s very minimal, very introductory education imo compared to how much potential there is for 1) innovation and 2) applied study of ecosystems etc to actually care for said ecosystems

These are classic individual-cart-before-the-structural-horse issues. Does the current US economy (I'm talking about US, this will be unique by country, no commentary on Italy or w/e) lack for environmental scientists? When the EPA makes job postings for inspectors, when Williams & Connolly LLP puts out the call for environmental consultants for pending litigation, when Siemens is drowning in NEPA paperwork for a solar installation and needs to onboard staff, do they lack for candidates? Like fresh-out-of-school candidates, not "30 years of experience litigating environmental impact statements in United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit" candidates? I think the answer is "no" - its a popular major. It has tiers for levels of math skill, it has politics & business subfields, and so on. The system only needs so many of these people to do its job - I actually know about the environmental field from a professional capacity having built a degree in it, and right now we graduate too many in this field if you made me bet (but again not by like a ton, they do fine).

You can't make the system care more via the lever of supply of college majors. We currently empower environmental scientists by X% because that is how much we value the environment as a society. You wanna budge that you gotta convince people, win hearts and minds, initiate political reform, etc.

With urban studies I haven't done this professionally so I am a little less confident, but I think we oversupply that category even more. We have tons of urban planners in the US - we just don't let em do anything! We hire them by the dozens in every city and then suborn them root-and-stem to elected officials and an infinite array of veto points by local councils and lawsuits. Boosting the supply of graduates would do absolutely nothing - in fact its a "flakeout" career as we call it in the industry, the kind of job someone majors in, gets hired in the field, and then leaves after a few years because it turns out to suck for w/e reason. (though again, never dug into the data on this one, so grain of salt on this specific claim. Wider thrust is true).

I think this ties into a general principle I have - the US higher education system is not a lever for social change. In some small ways sure, and for academia oh yeah ofc and I have a ton of ideas on that one. But overall its downstream of wider social forces, and its decently-optimized to cater to the needs of those social forces. You can't squeeze new social goals out of society's certification system.