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An advisor to al-Qaida. One of the founders of Hezbollah. The head of an Iraqi militia group known for attacks on U.S. troops. And a top official with the Houthi rebels who recently lashed out at the “criminal Trump.”

These are among the U.S.-sanctioned terrorists who appear to have paid, premium accounts on Elon Musk's X, a new Tech Transparency Project investigation has found, raising questions about the platform's dealings with individuals who have been deemed a threat to U.S. national security.

Regulations enforced by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) prohibit U.S. companies from engaging in transactions with sanctioned individuals or entities unless they are licensed or otherwise authorized by the government. X’s policies explicitly state that its premium services are off limits to users subject to OFAC sanctions.

But TTP found premium blue checkmark accounts for multiple terrorists and others under OFAC-enforced sanctions. Some of these accounts even had an “ID verified” badge, meaning that X confirmed their identity after they submitted a government-issued ID and a selfie to the company. Several made use of revenue-generating features offered by X, including a button for tips.

The findings add to questions, first raised by TTP in February 2024, about X’s adherence to sanctions designed to protect U.S. national interests, even as the company maintains it has a “robust and secure” approach to its monetization features. X, formerly known as Twitter, once handed out blue checkmarks to notable figures for free. But after taking over the company, Musk turned the blue checkmark into a paid product and required users to purchase a premium subscription to obtain them.

X’s ongoing dealings with U.S.-sanctioned terrorists on its platform are all the more striking given that Musk, who has been leading the Trump administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), chastised the Treasury Department in February for lacking “basic controls” to track payments and ensure they don’t end up going to terrorist organizations and other wrongful recipients. Speaking at a televised Oval Office appearance with Trump, Musk said such controls are “in place in any company.”

X did not provide a comment on the findings when contacted by TTP.

X says it uses three companies for ID verification. Two of the companies, Au10tix and Stripe, declined to comment. A third company, Persona, did not respond to a request for comment.

In an era defined by polarized views on everything from public health to politics, a new Tulane University study offers insight into why people may struggle to change their minds—especially when they turn to the internet for answers.

In an era defined by polarized views on everything from public health to politics, a new Tulane University study offers insight into why people may struggle to change their minds—especially when they turn to the internet for answers.

To start, the team built an alphabet of characters using four different monomers, or molecular building blocks with different electrochemical properties. Each character was composed of different combinations of the four monomers, which yielded a total of 256 possible characters. To test the method, they used the molecular alphabet to synthesize a chain-like polymer representing an 11-character password (‘Dh&@dR%P0W¢’), which they subsequently decoded using a method based on the molecules’ electrochemical properties.

The team’s decoding method takes advantage of the fact that certain chain-like polymers can be broken down by removing one building block at a time from the end of the chain. Since the monomers were designed to have unique electrochemical properties, this step-by-step degradation results in electrical signals that can be used to decipher the sequential identity of the monomers within the polymer.

“The voltage gives you one piece of information —the identity of the monomer currently being degraded—and so we scan through different voltages and watch this movie of the molecule being broken down, which tells us which monomer is being degraded at which point in time,” says Pasupathy. “Once we pinpoint which monomers are where, we can piece that together to get the identities of the characters in our encoded alphabet.”

One downside of the method is that each molecular message can only be read once, since decoding the polymers involves degrading them. The decoding process also takes time—around 2.5 hours for the 11-character password—but the team are working on methods to speed up the process.

Imagine if doctors could precisely print miniature capsules capable of delivering cells needed for tissue repair exactly where they are needed inside a beating heart. A team of scientists led by Caltech has taken a significant step toward that ultimate goal, having developed a method for 3D printing polymers at specific locations deep within living animals. The technique relies on sound for localization and has already been used to print polymer capsules for selective drug delivery as well as glue-like polymers to seal internal wounds.

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The latest addition to neal.fun is a road trip simulator using Google Street View and a custom overlay. Viewers vote every ten seconds to choose a direction. As expected with anything decided by an internet vote, it is total anarchy. The car drives in circles, heads down dead ends, and has at least once barreled down a bike path.

Members of the very chill Discord server dedicated to the road trip, embedded on the site, are in a constant battle to unify the collective, possibly drunk, drivers. The "pathists" are trying to go straight to Canada, while the "detourists" are just looking for cool stuff. Right now, the insane car is taking a detour en route to Bar Harbor, Maine, to make a quick stop at Hadley Beach and possibly drive into the ocean.

Viewers also vote on the embedded FM radio station. The current station is WBOR, the radio station of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, which is likely enjoying its highest listener numbers ever. Don't forget to honk the horn and play with the little tree air freshener. Onward to Canada!

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This is republished here under Boing Boing terms.