Efficiency Team Misfiles Trillion-Dollar Receipt
Also executive bonuses and mandatory smartphone access

The Accounting Department Confused Millions with the Entire Budget

The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the government cleanup crew led by a very wealthy and very busy person, released its public "wall of receipts" this week and the audit results are perhaps less than stellar. The group, whose entire purpose is to be ruthlessly efficient, apparently committed a number of errors that are less "ruthless" and more "who let the intern file this". These were not minor rounding mistakes; DOGE wildly overstated its savings, initially miscalculating one contract as being worth $8 billion when the true value was just $8 million.

This is the corporate equivalent of finding a zero missing from a critical invoice and then realizing the corrected number is the entire agency's annual budget. An investigative report found other sloppy mistakes, including double or triple counting the same cuts and taking credit for contracts that had expired decades ago, as far back as the George W. Bush administration. DOGE's response to the discovery of these simple math errors was to quietly delete billions of dollars in claimed savings from their public ledger not once, but twice, which is a textbook example of closing the ticket without ever fixing the root cause.

Layoffs Lead to Record Executive Performance

In a move that will surprise only the people who have never worked in a modern office, Meta has decided to reward its named executive officers with a substantial bonus increase shortly after eliminating five percent of its global workforce. According to an SEC filing, the maximum annual bonus target for these executives jumped from 75 percent to a staggering 200 percent of their base salary. Mark Zuckerberg, the Chief Executive Officer, is thankfully excluded from this increase; he simply does not need the motivation.

The Meta Board of Directors defended this decision, saying the target cash compensation for their executives was falling at or below the 15th percentile compared to their peers at rival organizations. In layperson terms, they were worried their managers were feeling underappreciated and under-compensated; the obvious solution to morale is to pay the few people who remain in the C suite significantly more. This whole incident is a perfect demonstration of the management theory that success is not just about company performance, but also about the median salary of other successful people.

The New Office Policy: No App, No Parking Validation

Campaigners are calling the requirement to own a smartphone to access basic services the "tyranny of apps," highlighting how those without the latest hardware are unfairly penalized. This digital divide is no longer just about access to Facebook; it is about paying for essentials like parking, securing a better interest rate on savings, or getting the best discounts at the grocery store.

Ron Delnevo, a chair at the Payment Choice Alliance, correctly points out that a smartphone has become "an expensive passport to participate" in daily life. The underlying business logic is sound, of course; a company pushing an app gets push notifications, constant attention, and biometric ID verification, all of which are much easier than simply taking a cash payment. It is the ultimate expression of corporate efficiency: if a subset of the population cannot comply with the system, they are not part of the profitable demographic, thus simplifying the process for everyone else.

Briefs

• Digital Shelf Space: Amazon now has a disclaimer on its US store informing customers that they are only purchasing a license to view a Kindle eBook, not actually buying the content itself. This clarification was likely prompted by a new California law; Big Tech only gets honest about the definition of "ownership" when a state legislature holds a gun to its head.
• Legacy Compliance: A popular UK tech forum with 2.6 million posts is being deleted due to the UK Online Safety Act. It appears the easiest way to comply with complicated new content laws is to simply take your ball and go home, destroying two decades of collective internet memory in the process.
• Old School is New School: FFmpeg, the multimedia backbone of the modern internet, is now running a "School of Assembly Language" lessons. The tech cycle is complete; we have spent two decades building layers of abstraction only to realize the real optimization was in the machine code all along.