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1 Sep, 2023

X to train AI models with users’ posts

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X plans a change to its privacy policy that will allow information posted by users to be used to train its AI models. Musk says X will train AI models only with publicly available information. It will not use “DMs or anything private.” The updated policy states that the company:

may use the information we collect and publicly available information to help train our machine learning or artificial intelligence models for the purposes outlined in this policy.

18 Aug, 2023

Musk says he will ‘delete’ X’s block feature

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In response to a post asking if ‘there is ever a reason to block vs. mute someone,’ Musk says that he will delete the block feature from the app, except for DMs.

Block is going to be deleted as a “feature”, except for DMs. It makes no sense.

Later, a community note is added to Musk’s post, saying that the block feature cannot be removed as it is a required feature for social media apps sold on Apple’s App Store and Google Play.

11 Jul, 2023

Tesla to launch UK electricity supplier

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A job ad posted for UK head of operations for Tesla Electric, says Tesla is seeking to apply to Ofgem, the UK’s electricity regulator, for an electricity supply licence, which would allow the company to launch a “retail electricity product in the UK”. The ad says Tesla is seeking to “support the transition of the entire electricity grid to 100pc renewables” by making more use of home batteries.

The project is said to be similar to Tesla’s Texas energy utility, which sells electricity from Tesla Powerwall batteries to the grid during peak times and buys it back when it is cheaper. An industry source says between 10,000 and 20,000 Powerwall units, which cost £9500 in the UK, are believed to have been installed in UK households. Owners of Tesla cars could also eventually use the service, under Ofgem plans to allow electric vehicles to sell electricity back to the grid.

27 May, 2023

Musk: Next Starship launch in two months

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Musk says the next Starship launch will take place in two months, after tested upgrades are made to the launchpad that was destroyed during the first launch.

Major launchpad upgrades should be complete in about a month, then another month of rocket testing on pad, then flight 2 of Starship

25 May, 2023

Ford to use Tesla Superchargers

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Ford strikes deal with Tesla to allow its electric vehicle owners to gain access to more than 12,000 Tesla Superchargers in North America in early 2024. This makes Ford the first major automaker to embrace Tesla’s proprietary charging standard and gives the company access to the biggest network of high-speed Superchargers in the United States. Tesla will provide an adapter to Ford EVs fitted with the Combined Charging System (CCS), giving them port access to Tesla’s V3 Superchargers. Ford will equip future EVs with Tesla’s own charging standard, removing the need for an adapter for direct access to Tesla Superchargers, starting in 2025. Pricing will be “competitive”. On Twitter Spaces, Musk tells Ford CEO Jim Farley:

The idea is that we don’t want the Tesla supercharger network to be like a walled garden. We want it to be something that is supportive of electrification and sustainable transport in general.

Farley:

We love the locations, we love the reliability, your routing software, the ease of use of the connector, the reliability of it. Tesla storms through the [Japanese bullet] train station like 300 kilometers per hour Shinkansen. We’re learning a lot.

Farley said earlier at a Morgan Stanley forum that:

[O]n the infrastructure side, I think it’s room for some collaboration between the auto companies, which is totally unnatural for us….the first step is to work together in a way we haven’t, probably with the new EV brands and the traditional old companies…. It seems totally ridiculous that we have an infrastructure problem, and we can’t even agree on what plug to use. I think the first step is to work together in a way we haven’t, probably with the new EV brands and the traditional auto companies. I think you’ll see Ford do that just because that’s what kind of company we are.

23 May, 2023

Starlink announces in-motion use

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Starlink announces that its satellite broadband service can be used on vehicles and whilst in motion, with a tweet showing the antenna on an RV driving through the desert. The company is offering 220 Mbps download, starting at £247/month with a one-time hardware fee of £2,410. The company says School buses in Cocononino Country, Arizona are among the first to use the service, enabling students who ride the bus an hour to and from school each day to stay connected and complete their homework. Musk shares the announcement, adding:

And works almost everywhere on Earth with global roaming enabled!

29 Apr, 2023

Musk: Publishers can charge Twitter users for article views

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Musk announces that Twitter will allow media publishers to charge users for access to their content with just one click. The exact percentage of each transaction that will go to Twitter and the conditions for media publishers have not yet been disclosed. Musk claims that this will be beneficial for both media organisations and the public.

Rolling out next month, this platform will allow media publishers to charge users on a per article basis with one click. This enables users who would not sign up for a monthly subscription to pay a higher per article price for when they want to read an occasional article. Should be a major win-win for both media orgs & the public.

18 Apr, 2023

Musk announces Starship blowtorch

Product Release0 Comments

Following Musk’s tweet about a “Mini Starship with flame,” SpaceX announces the pre-sale of a collectable, Starship-themed blowtorch. The $175 burner has a safety lock as well as a windproof, adjustable flame and is being marketed for things like melting cheese and lighting candles. As one advert puts it:

It’s collectible. It’s functional. And it burns, burns, burns. The Starship Torch.

13 Apr, 2023

Musk: Subscriptions replacing Super Follows on Twitter

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Musk says content creators on Twitter will now make money through Subscriptions rather than Super Follows.

Apply to offer your followers subscriptions of any material, from longform text to hours long video! Just tap on “Monetization” in settings.

But, the subscription program appears mostly unchanged from Super Follows, which Twitter originally introduced as a way for creators to charge for exclusive tweets. Creators can charge $2.99, $4.99 or $9.99 a month, with exclusive content including subscriber-only chats in Twitter Spaces and special badges for subscribers.

Musk also says Twitter will help promote creators’ content (he does not elaborate on how) and will not take a cut of the revenue for “the next 12 months.” Instead, creators will get all that remains after app store and payment processing fees: about 70 percent of their earnings from mobile and 92 percent from web-based subscriptions.

28 Mar, 2023

Musk: Twitter For You tab, polls to be restricted to verified users

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Musk announces that from April 15th only Twitter verified accounts will be eligible to be in For You recommendations and polls. Musk says this change is to stop ‘advanced AI bot swarms taking over’.

Starting April 15th, only verified accounts will be eligible to be in For You recommendations. The is the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over. It is otherwise a hopeless losing battle. Voting in polls will require verification for same reason.

When some users question the decision, he says:

My prediction is that this will be the only platform you can trust

2 Feb, 2023

Twitter to end free API access

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In a series of tweets, the Twitter Developer account says the company will discontinue offering free access to the Twitter API (version 1.1 and v2) starting February 9 and will launch a paid version, as it looks for more avenues to monetize the platform. It did not immediately say how much it plans to charge for API usage.

Twitter data are among the world’s most powerful data sets. We’re committed to enabling fast & comprehensive access so you can continue to build with us,” Twitter Dev account said Thursday. “Over the years, hundreds of millions of people have sent over a trillion Tweets, with billions more every week.

1 Feb, 2023

Musk locks his Twitter account

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Musk makes his Twitter account private – only visible to his followers – after hearing reports from users that posts on private accounts were getting more reach than public accounts. Normally, an account would see less engagement when going private as doing this blocks users from being able to retweet posts. When a Twitter user showed that, of two similar tweets posted in the same five-minute period, the one posted when the account was locked received five times as many likes, Musk replies:

Wow, this is extremely concerning

Followed by:

Made my account private until tomorrow morning to test whether you see my private tweets more than my public ones

Some users questioned why Musk was doing this test, when he owns the platform.

31 Jan, 2023

Musk: Expendable Starship is ‘an option’

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Musk says SpaceX could eventually develop an expendable version of its next-generation Starship rocket.

Starship is designed to launch up to 150 tons (330,000 lbs) to low Earth orbit while still recovering the orbital ship and suborbital booster for reuse (by comaprison, the Saturn V rocket could lift 118 tons). Musk says the reusable ship may be turned aoround in hours, enabling multiple flights a day, lowering the price of each launch. However, in early 2023, SpaceX updated the Starship section of its website, revealing that an expendable version of the rocket will be able to launch up to 250 metric tons (~550,000 lbs) to low Earth orbit in a single launch.

StarshipSpaceX’s Starbase factory is already building multiple intentionally-expendable Starships. Ship 26 and Ship 27 feature no thermal protection, have no heat shield tiles, and will not be fitted with flaps, making them impossible to recover or reuse. They will be used to test other crucial Starship technologies like orbital refilling and cryogenic fluid management. The first few Starship Moon landers may also be functionally expendable.

21 Jan, 2023

Musk: Twitter to launch ad-free subscription tier

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Musk says Twitter is planning an advertising-free version of its subscription product. Increasing subscription revenue is a key part of the social media platform’s business plan under his ownership.

There will be a higher priced subscription that allows zero ads.

1 Dec, 2022

Musk: Neuralink human trials to begin in six months

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At an event at Neuralink HQ, Musk says he expects the wireless brain chip developed by Neuralink to begin human clinical trials in six months, after the company missed earlier timelines he had set. Musk says the first two human applications of the dvice will be in restoring vision and enabling movement of muscles in people who cannot do so

Even if someone has never had vision, ever, like they were born blind, we believe we can still restore vision

Musk says human trials will progress slowly, and that he plans to get one of the chips himself.

We want to be extremely careful and certain that it will work well before putting a device into a human. The progress at first, particularly as it applies to humans, will seem perhaps agonizingly slow, but we are doing all of the things to bring it to scale in parallel. So, in theory, progress should be exponential.

Neuralink Show and Tell, Fall 2022

25 Nov, 2022

Twitter to launch blue, gold and grey verification ticks

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Musk says Twitter verification will return on Friday next week with colour-coded categories for individuals, government accounts and companies.

Sorry for the delay, we’re tentatively launching Verified on Friday next week. Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates. Painful, but necessary.

All verified individual humans will have same blue check, as boundary of what constitutes “notable” is otherwise too subjective. Individuals can have secondary tiny logo showing they belong to an org if verified as such by that org. Longer explanation next week.

24 Nov, 2022

Musk offers ‘amnesty’ to suspended accounts

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After a poll that Musk ran, asking users if Twitter should offer a ‘general amnesty’ to suspended accounts, provided they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam, ends in yes, Musk says Twitter will restore accounts from the end of November.  Musk does not give details on how the amnesty process would be carried out.

The people have spoken. Amnesty begins next week. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.

More than 3.1m Twitter users responded to the poll, with 72.4% of them voting “Yes”. Mask has already reactivated some accounts, inculding Kanye West, Donald Trump and influencer Andrew Tate.

17 Nov, 2022

Musk: Twitter will drop 280-character limit ‘soon’

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After a user complains about a Twitter thread that is 82 posts long, Musk says:

Ability to do long tweets coming soon

Musk later says he is working on the project personally.

3 Nov, 2022

Twitter to charge for verification from next week. Edit function given to all for free.

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Twitter will start selling blue verification badges for user profiles as soon as next week, part of a plan by Musk to fight fake accounts and increase profits. Verification will cost $8 a month. Twitter also plans to make the edit function, which is currently available through a $5-a-month Twitter Blue subscription, available to all users for free, also starting next week.

1 Nov, 2022

Musk reveals $8 Twitter Blue details

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Musk announces that the revamped Twitter Blue will cost $8; will grant a verified user blue tick; priorities in replies, mentions and replies; ability to post long video and audio; and have half as many ads. The price will be adjusted by country.

Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month. Price adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity, You will also get:

  • Priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to defeat spam/scam
  • Ability to post long video & audio
  • Half as many ads

And paywall bypass for publishers willing to work with us. This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators. There will be a secondary tag below the name for someone who is a public figure, which is already the case for politicians.