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14th of August, 2024

"R R R R Sus..." - Elon (@elonmusk), 13th of August, 2024

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■ TESLA $TSLA ($201.38, -%):

- Cybertruck in Dubai by Tesla's Anthony Martin. "The Future should look like the future."

- New York State is set to reduce penalties on Tesla in future years at the South Buffalo Gigafactory and across the state. Under the current deal, Tesla is required to hire 1460 workers in Buffalo and 2,000 statewide by the end of this year, or face a $41 million fine. A new draft agreement, extending to 2034, requires Tesla to increase to 1,800 in Buffalo and 3,000 statewide, with the fine remaining at $41 million until 2029, then dropping to $10 million. Before Elon announced layoffs, officials were considering even steeper reductions in fines. The new deal also includes Tesla locating its "Dojo Supercomputer" in Buffalo, paying rent, and potentially opening direct-to-consumer car dealerships if state laws change.

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- 2 months ago Solar Ing of Costa Rica started the countries largest commercial micro network, beginning with the Ava Resort Cancun. This resort was the first in a series of 8 luxury hotels that will operate 100% with renewable energy. 3 of these first 8 hotels will operate with more than 13,000 solar panels and 12 Megapack 2XLs.

- CEO Chris Chatterton and Harald Murphy of the Tesla Owners Club Western Australia are driving across Australia's remote landscapes in a Tesla Model 3 and Y to raise awareness and support for children though Variety Australia's (@VarietyAU) Big Electric Adventure. They started in Perth then to Carnarvon.

- Tesla Energy UK will be hosting a Powerwall 3 Installer Roadshow from September through November. There will be 18 training events at four Tesla UK Locations; Manchester, Exeter, Birmingham, and Dartford. It is designed for Certified Installers to learn solutions, sales and technical knowledge, installation, and maintenance of the Powerwall 3.

- South Australia’s Virtual Power Plant (VPP) was recognised as the Social & Community Infrastructure project of the year by the Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA) (@UDIASouthAust). South Australia's VPP supports tenants with the lowest electricity price along with access to clean renewable energy.

- Electrify Expo announced that the Cybertruck will be available to demo drive at the San Francisco Bay Area event on the 24th and 25th of August.

FLYOVERS:

• Giga Texas: Joe Tegtmeyer (@JoeTegtmeyer), 14th of August, '24. Early morning flight so we get some great views around and inside the factory. The southend emergency exit tunnels continue with concrete pours. Bad house progress and more. Subscribe to Joe if you have not already.

• Tesla Diner: 247Tesla, 13th of August, '24. The steel for the second screen has been erected. The frames for both screens appear to be the same size. We also get great view of the steel cladding around the diner.

• Giga Texas: Brad Sloan, 13th of August, '24.

■ SPACEX:

- Last night, Starship was officially branded as S30! Fabian Ramirez (@texas_lizard) got a fantastic shot of her this morning in the Rocket Garden.

- The Silver Bullet, Starship 26, was moved into Mega Bay 2 and the engines have started to be removed. I feel we all know what is coming... Screenshots from @LabPadre and @NASASpaceflight live feeds.

- SpaceX will be sending a Jetson Orin NX, one of Nvidia's popular AI and edge computing GPUs, to space aboard the Falcon 9 Transporter 11 mission this month. The Georgia-based Cosmic Shielding Corporation (CSC) thinks it has a solution to the ionized particles and cosmic rays problem that threatens electronics in satellites. They have developed a nanocomposite shielding metamaterial that stops the charged particles. Per Yanni Barghouty, CSC's co-founder and CEO, "This is going to be the fastest AI computer ever launched to space. The goal of this mission is simply to demonstrate the successful operation of an AI-capable Nvidia GPU on orbit with minimal to no errors while operating."

- Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) of Ars Technica interviewed NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and inquired about Artemis III. "I know the public date is September 2026, but we know how these things go, and there's a lot of work to be done. How should we be thinking about the projected launch date for Artemis III?" Per Bill Nelson, "...thus far, SpaceX has hit all of its milestones. You know the details of this stuff better than I do, but I'm the one that's responsible. And so, I constantly go around and check through all these people. And that last (Starship) test, which was the fourth try, was a phenomenal success."

Eric also asked, "How about alternative architectures for Artemis III? You talked about how, as conceived right now, Artemis III combines Apollo 9, 10, and 11 into a single mission. Do you think it is possible that Artemis III gets redesigned to buy down some of the risk for an eventual lunar landing? Or do you think that the current plan NASA has is the right one?

Per Bill, "If SpaceX is successful on the lander, and at this point, as I just said, we have every reason to believe that it is on track, then I don't see a changing of the mission of Artemis III."

Countdown to 144 (79 - Falcon 9, 1 - Falcon Heavy, and 2 - Starship):

• Launch 83! Thursday, 15th of August, at 9:00 a.m. ET, Falcon 9 WorldView Legion 3 & 4 will launch from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral, Florida. WorldView Legion is a constellation of Earth observation satellites built and operated by Maxar. Constellation is planned to consist of 6 satellites in both polar and mid-inclination orbits, providing 30 cm-class resolution. The booster will land at Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

• Launch 84! Friday, 16th of August, at 11:19 a.m. PT, Falcon 9 Transporter 11 will launch from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. This is a dedicated rideshare flight to a sun-synchronous orbit with dozens of small microsatellites and nanosatellites for commercial and government customers. The booster landing zone is currently unknown.

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■ THE BORING COMPANY:

- Boring crews at Giga Texas have excavated around the westside Cyber-Tunnel entrance. Road sections are still missing at the entrance. See more in Joe Tegtmeyer's flyover today.

■ NEURALINK: N/A...

■ STARLINK:

- Nextant Aerospace, with Bombardier and SpaceX, has obtained FAA supplemental type certification and is now offering Starlink Aviation installation on Bombardier Global Express, XRS, 6000, 6500, and 7500. The kits can be installed at the Bombardier service centers worldwide and Nextant, the engineering arm of Flexjet, will provide dedicated 24/7 support.

- India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is set address security concerns related to granting Starlink a license in the country. Starlink’s application remains pending on security-related issues and has not withdrawn its bid for the Indian market.

- Marlink Maritime announced they have expanded their Starlink offerings with new flexible LEO internet plans. Maritime customers can now select connectivity options from 10GB to unlimited data, depending on their needs. Users can create and customise their own allowance packages to share data across vessels as demand changes.

- The Monroe County Commission of West Virginia has approved the Starlink initiative to outfit each Monroe County Sheriff deputy's cruiser with a Starlink Mini terminal. The initiative received unanimous approval for its potential to keep deputies connected with law enforcement and 911, especially in regions where traditional communication methods fail.

■ X:

- You can now view detailed metrics such as age, gender, country, and active times of your audience. Go to Premium Hub → Analytics → Audience. Video by @cb_doge.

- X posted an audience breakdown of the Elon and Trump conversation and it was not what I expected. 70% fell in the 25 - 34 year old category. I w would have thought the majority was 45 - 54. very interesting. Per Linda Yaccarino, "Young, curious, engaged and tuning into X for a new kind of political conversation."

- X Global Government Affairs posted censorship demand letters from the Brazilian Supreme Court ordering X to block several popular accounts, including those of a pastor, a current Parliamentarian, and the wife of a former Parliamentarian. Elon initially resisted this order, calling it unconstitutional, but X later complied due to threats of fines and potential platform bans. Per X, "We believe the Brazilian people should know what is being asked of us."

- X announced they are financially supporting lawsuits by Dr. Benjamin Neel and Mr. Miguel Sanchez, who were wrongfully terminated from NYU Langone Health and the Governor of Rhode Island's office, for exercising their rights to free speech on social media regarding the Israel-Gaza conflict.

■ xAI:

- Last night Grok2 (sus-column-r) and Grok2-mini was released in Beta on X. Along with improved language understanding, enhanced reasoning, multimodal processing, efficiency, scalability, ethics and bias Reduction, customizability, and security, Grok2 comes with image generation and so far it is very good. Grok2-mini is a more compact version, optimized for efficiency and lower resource usage, ideal for applications where size and speed are critical.

Here are some of the comments from the xAI team:

• Per Elon, "Congrats to the hardworking xAI team! Rate of progress is excellent. Order of magnitude more training than Grok 1 & many qualitative improvements. Still just beta, but the accuracy is decent. Rate of innovation is the fundamental metric for determining the probable success of a technology company."

• Lianmin Zheng (@lm_zheng), "Grok-2 is here, a new frontier-level model from xAI! I still remember the good old days when I was a GPU-poor grad student, playing with the Vicuna model and building the Chatbot Arena leaderboard with just a few GPUs. But now, my job at xAI is developing systems for the 100K GPU cluster. If you want to be among the first to see AGI, join xAI!"

• Ross (@rpoo), "We never stopped - Congrats to the team on epic release."

• Hieu Pham (@hyhieu226), "It's getting old to say my xAI teammates work hard. Whenever I come in early in the morning, I'd meet them at the end of their overnight stay. Wish I won't cease to be impressed by this attitude. Wish I won't cease to appreciate this situation."

• Ebby Amir (@ebbyamir), "Never underestimate a small group of dedicated people to achieve something great. Proud to be a part of the hardest working team in AI. This is a huge milestone, and we’re only just beginning."

- As reported yesterday, xAI is using Black Forest Labs' (@bfl_ml) FLUX.1 for image generation. Per BFL, "Welcome to the forest, xAI..."

- FYI, the "sus-column-r" refers to a type of column used in structural engineering, particularly in buildings, where the column is designed to be highly resistant to buckling under compressive loads. It's often characterized by its slender design and optimized material use to maximize strength while minimizing weight. Nice.

- According to xAI's Belce Doğru (@belce_dogru), Enterprise API is launching soon with the newest Grok 2 Models. This will give all developers access to xAI's newest models with deep traffic statistics, advanced billing analytics, teams for your organization, advanced security features, and more. "We built it to keep latency low globally with multi-region inference deployments. Get hyped!"

■ ELON NEWS:

- Per Elon, "Happy to host Kamala on an X Spaces too..." She should accept.

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SOURCES

FLYOVERS:

• Giga Texas: Joe Tegtmeyer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wa1sjpw0QQ

• Tesla Diner: 247Tesla https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlk_oBiztgM

• Giga Texas: Brad Sloan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7y5162AF58

Tesla:

• https://www.investigativepost.org/2024/08/14/new-tesla-deal-slashes-penalties-ups-rent/

• Powerwall 3 Roadshow https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=9MUmkNCGn0u9ObfU0PtGdOdKCMVkoodLtjlg-Hba2XRUMjJIVjRHRk43WFdVNjgxRkNDTjI4SEFZWC4u

SpaceX:

• https://www.space.com/ai-nvidia-gpu-spacex-launch-transporter-11

• https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/a-conversation-with-nasa-chief-bill-nelson-on-artemis-budget-holes-and-more/

Starlink:

• https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2024-08-14/nextant-develops-kits-starlink-installs-globals

• https://smartmaritimenetwork.com/2024/08/14/marlink-expands-starlink-package-options/

• https://www.newindianexpress.com/business/2024/Aug/14/dot-to-discuss-starlink-issue-in-ministerial-meet

X:

• https://x.com/XNews/status/1823734944717267316

xAI:

• https://x.ai/blog/grok-2