Free Republic

Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick says he has traded California for Texas, joining a growing list of billionaires abandoning the state as lefty lawmakers push for a one-off tax their wealth. Appearing on TPBN to discuss his robotics startup Atoms, Kalanick told hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays he relocated to Austin on December 18. California lawmakers and activists are currently pushing a proposed 2026 Billionaire Tax Act, which could appear on the state’s November 2026 ballot. The measure would impose a one-time 5% tax on fortunes exceeding $1 billion and would apply to people who were California residents as of...

……. The outreach appears to include venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, and former Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick. Antonio Gracias, a former Tesla director, and Steve Davis, president of the Boring Company, were named too. The latter two are affiliated with Musk’s many companies. And it seems that cohort is involved in the planning but, more specifically, is expected to work on technical challenges to collecting data on federal employees and programs. Andreessen is recruiting talent, according to the Washington Post. The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is supposedly charged with...

A shortlist of candidates chosen by TIME magazine*s editors for the 2015 Person of the Year was revealed on NBC*s TODAY show Monday morning. The eight contenders are, in alphabetical order:

The names of the tech workers in this story have been changed.Ten thousand miles from Silicon Valley, in a room near the Black Sea, Yegor Karpenchekov dreams of money. At night, while the rest of Odessa sleeps and cocaine smugglers drift in and out of the port under cover of darkness, Yegor logs onto FaceTime and talks to a 70-year-old woman in San Francisco. Her name is Sally Faubion, and five months ago she recruited Yegor from the freelancer marketplace UpWork to code her apps. She believes "divine intervention" brought them together; for Yegor, it was likely $20 per hour...