I'm a political moderate, but that might not mean to me what it means to you.
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The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk's Government Takeover | WIRED

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Both Bobba and Coristine are listed in internal OPM records reviewed by WIRED as “experts” at OPM, reporting directly to Amanda Scales, its new chief of staff. Scales previously worked on talent for xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, and as part of Uber’s talent acquisition team, per LinkedIn. Employees at GSA tell WIRED that Coristine has appeared on calls where workers were made to go over code they had written and justify their jobs. WIRED previously reported that Coristine was added to call with GSA staff members using a non-government Gmail address. Employees were not given an explanation as to who he was or why he was on the calls.

Farritor, who per sources has a working GSA email address, is a former intern at SpaceX, Musk’s space company, and currently a Thiel Fellow after, according to his LinkedIn, dropping out of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. While in school, he was part of an award-winning team that deciphered portions of an ancient Greek scroll.

Kliger, whose LinkedIn lists him as a special advisor to the director of OPM and who is listed in internal records reviewed by WIRED as a special advisor to the director for information technology, attended UC Berkeley until 2020; most recently, according to his LinkedIn, he worked for the AI company Databricks. His Substack includes a post titled “The Curious Case of Matt Gaetz: How the Deep State Destroys Its Enemies,” as well as another titled “Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense: The Warrior Washington Fears.”

Killian, also known as Cole Killian, has a working email associated with DOGE, where he is currently listed as a volunteer, according to internal records reviewed by WIRED. According to a copy of his now-deleted resume obtained by WIRED, he attended McGill University through at least 2021 and graduated high school in 2019. An archived copy of his now-deleted personal website indicates that he worked as an engineer at Jump Trading, which specializes in algorithmic and high-frequency financial trades.

Shaotran told Business Insider in September that he was a senior at Harvard studying computer science, and also the founder of an OpenAI-backed startup, Energize AI. Shaotran was the runner-up in a hackathon held by xAI, Musk’s AI company. In the Business Insider article, Shaotran says he received a $100,000 grant from OpenAI to build his scheduling assistant, Spark.

Got a Tip?

Are you a current or former employee with the Office of Personnel Management or another government agency impacted by Elon Musk? We’d like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact Vittoria Elliott at vittoria_elliott@wired.com or securely at velliott88.18 on Signal.

“To the extent these individuals are exercising what would otherwise be relatively significant managerial control over two very large agencies that deal with very complex topics,” says Nick Bednar, a professor at University of Minnesota’s school of law, “it is very unlikely they have the expertise to understand either the law or the administrative needs that surround these agencies.”

Sources tell WIRED that Bobba, Coristine, Farritor, and Shaotran all currently have working GSA emails and A-suite level clearance at the GSA, which means that they work out of the agency’s top floor and have access to all physical spaces and IT systems, according a source with knowledge of the GSA’s clearance protocols. The source, who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation, says they worry that the new teams could bypass the regular security clearance protocols to access the agency’s sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF), as the Trump administration has already granted temporary security clearances to unvetted people.

This is in addition to Coristine and Bobba being listed as “experts” working at OPM. Bednar says that while staff can be loaned out between agencies for special projects or to work on issues that might cross agency lines, it’s not exactly common practice.

“This is consistent with the pattern of a lot of tech executives who have taken certain roles of the administration,” says Bednar. “This raises concerns about regulatory capture and whether these individuals may have preferences that don't serve the American public or the federal government.”

Additional reporting by Zoë Schiffer and Tim Marchman.

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smadin
9 days ago
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in the second week of his successful coup, dictator Roderick Zinco has installed a cadre of the dumbest Hitler Youth imaginable to run the government while the senile carnival barker he installed as figurehead "president" goes on television to incoherently threaten Canada
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Getting Started with Pedal Effect Circuit Design | #MusicMonday

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Cool article from EDN on pedal effects – be sure to check out the references on page 3 for additional reading as well.


A common source drain amplifier, based on the LSK489 JFET, is one basis for a distortion pedal circuit.

If you want to replicate the music of your favorite musicians, you will need to know the pedal effect devices they use and the circuitry within them. Furthermore, if you want to design new pedal effects that please your audience, you will need the right tools, the right design flows, the right components, some circuit know-how, and a little creativity.

The design of pedal effect circuits, i.e. circuits that modify the waveforms of musical instruments, is an art and science that has been practiced since the 1920s. Fundamental to the reproduction of era-specific and musician-specific music is the technology contained in these pedal effect gadgets. Different artists prefer different component technology: tubes, germanium transistors, silicon bipolar transistors, MOSFETs, diodes, JFETS, op amps or any mix thereof.

The passive components used in pedal effect circuits, like inductors, capacitors and resistors, complicate the process of analog sound reproduction. Of specific mystical interest to many professional musicians is the “magical inductor.” Thought to be enchanted music’s key, the magical inductor, once placed inside a circuit generates harmonics that separate it apart from all other inductors. The idea of a magical inductor keeps musicians wondering. Is music’s holy grail locked inside the pedal device of a long-ago musician? Is the magical inductor made of a special material? Is the magical inductor lost in time and do the music giants of our times have access to it? One thing most of them agree on is that the magical inductor is one of the analog Muses and not one of the digital Sirens.

Read more.

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smadin
2746 days ago
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now I want to dip my toe back into fiddling with electronics…
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theactioneer:Ethan Lurie, Hologram Man (1995) I think that we...

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theactioneer:

Ethan Lurie, Hologram Man (1995)

I think that we can all agree whether we’ve seen it or not – I haven’t – that Hologram Man is the greatest film of all time

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smadin
2773 days ago
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I _have_ seen it (thanks, @trashnightvideo!) and I concur with @mountain_goats on this.
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Here Is a List of 10 Extremely Good Goat Beards

jwz
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Also: Goat Husbandry 101:

Personality: Friendly and gentle, but can be spirited
Personality: Calm and affectionate
Personality: Curious, friendly, and independent
Personality: Easygoing and quiet
Personality: Generally gentle but can be pushy with each other
Personality: Social but somewhat stubborn

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smadin
2800 days ago
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Today in Goats
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hey john not to be that guy but im wondering when you guys are gonna cover all star by smash mouth. im not even joking this is a serious concern. you may think im pulling your leg. memeing you for shits and giggles. sir i am not. i just think when i finally hear it i can be at peace i think. please respond

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We are never going to do this. I learned my lesson with “funny” covers in the 90s. Bands generally speaking have to be really careful about doing anything funny, because people then want you to make the same joke for the rest of your life. There are approximately 10,000,000,000,000,000 worse problems to have, so I am not complaining, but I am explaining why, while it would be funny to do this, I would regret it: the next night. And the night after. And forever. People would absolutely see to it that I regretted it but good. One of the discreet joys of growing older is learning to stop yourself from doing stuff you might later regret. Other people take this weird “I regret nothing!” attitude toward everything they’ve done but I have never really understood that whole stance, if a person regrets nothing then I wonder what their whole deal is honestly. Anyway. Covers that would be totally hilarious are generally, with very occasional exceptions, off the menu, because they become millstones almost immediately. Neolithic and Upper Paleolithic citizens used millstones for grinding nuts, rhizomes, grains, and probably a lot of other stuff we don’t even know about. Did they sometimes get curious, what if I ground my finger in this millstone, fuckin’ ouch, that was stupid? I bet they did, and that’s how I’d feel if I covered “All-Star.” I have, after a long apprenticeship, finally left the Neolithic Era behind and entered, with much ceremony, my own personal Bronze Age. 

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smadin
2805 days ago
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this response is beautiful
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Romney Voters

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Pursuing Romney voters (who?) isn't a winning electoral strategy, it's a decision about who you want your coalition to be.
Thus, former Hillary Clinton adviser Jesse Ferguson writes at Politico, Democrats should pursue Romney voters — that is, comfortable suburban professionals, mostly white, who are supposedly appalled by President Trump's antics — to win elections in the future.

The dirty little secret about "nice, polite republicans" is that they are neither nice, nor polite. Discuss. White suburbanites went for Trump. Bigly. You can argue that Hillary Clinton was, in their eyes, so horrible that they couldn't vote for her, or you have to accept that they just weren't appalled by Trump. Maybe some mix of the two. I'm not making that case, I'm just saying that Democrats have been chasing affluent suburban voters for a long time, basically because of class affinity. They're educated! They're professional! They're people like "us!" (affluent DC election professionals). They can't possibly vote for those evil racist assholes!

Yes. Yes they can. And they do. Why the fuck do you think they live in the suburbs? (#notallpeoplewholiveinthesuburbs)


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smadin
2808 days ago
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What Atrios Said. "Nice, polite Republicans" are neither nice nor polite, and Dems are wasting their time if they pursue those votes.
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duerig
2808 days ago
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Pursuing 'gettable' voters from the other side likely doesn't help much with electability. You will likely win eventually regardless. It is at that moment when you turn around and ask yourself what you really want to do with that new power that it matters.

In that moment, having more moderate people will make your policy more incremental (and thus less likely to do large-scale harm), and more achievable. If you want to see what purity-focused electoral success looks like, just look at the Republican party today. And ask yourself if you want the Democrats to emulate it.
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