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A nationwide FAA ground stoppage is rippling far beyond the tarmac, disrupting travel ahead of one of Hollywood's busiest weekends, including the Academy's Governors Awards. The timing raises hard questions about the fragility of systems millions of people depend on every single day.
That fragility is exactly what Elon Musk and DOGE say they want to fix. Musk is calling for rapid safety upgrades to the air traffic control system, positioning the effort as urgent modernization. Whether a team known for speed over process is the right fit for safety-critical infrastructure is a question worth sitting with.
Meanwhile, on a quieter corner of the tech beat, a tiny London quantitative trading fund has surfaced as one of the United Kingdom's largest corporate taxpayers. It's a reminder that the most consequential algorithms often operate in the shadows, generating enormous returns and, apparently, enormous tax bills, with almost no public profile at all.
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