Toggle light / dark theme

Tesla’s mobile app is one of the key parts of the Tesla ownership experience, and yet its security is lacking an important feature — two-factor authentication.

According to CEO Elon Musk, this will change in the near future.

When asked on Twitter whether there are any updates regarding two-factor authentication for the app, Musk said it’s “coming soon” (via Teslarati).

Tesla Cybertruck is going to be “able to float for a while,” says CEO Elon Musk, who apparently can’t wait to bring the electric pickup truck to production.

For a while now, Elon Musk has cautiously boasted about the ability of Tesla vehicles to float, or even “act as a boat” for short periods of time.

A few years ago, we posted about a Tesla Model S driving (or swimming) through a flooded tunnel. Musk commented:

NASA and SpaceX are targeting May 27 for the launch of Demo-2, the first launch of NASA astronauts from the U.S. since 2011 and the first crewed launch for Elon Musk’s space company.

As its name implies, Demo-2 will be the second time the company launches its Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station. But, unlike Demo-1 last year, this time two astronauts will be on board – a pair that will be the first NASA astronauts to launch from the U.S. since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.

If anyone wants to learn about the future of artificial intelligence and the rise of super-intelligent machines here is Billionaire rocket scientist businessman Elon Musk’s favorite book of the year written by MIT math Professor Max Tegmark at the Future of Life Institute. The book Life 3.0 is presented in this free audio-book format on YouTube and is a 7 hour video talking about how we will become a Libertarian Utopia soon thanks to advances in technology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-vbh3t7WVI

Your Neuralink device would be implanted using traditional neurosurgery methods safely and seamlessly with a robot surgeon. As mentioned in the Neuralink published paper, “We have also built a neurosurgical robot capable of inserting six threads (192 electrodes) per minute. Each thread can be individually inserted into the brain with micron precision for the avoidance of surface vasculature and targeting specific brain regions.”

The Neuralink team has already started experimenting with various versions of the devices on both rats and monkeys. The results have been impressive. During the presentation in San Francisco, Musk and his team described one instance of a monkey being able to control a computer with simply its brain. Unfortunately, (or fortunately) there have not been any tests on humans. Yet, the team hopes to obtain FDA approval and begin human trials as early as this year.

During his presentation Elon Musk reiterated the idea that Neuralink will be an important part of our future, eventually allowing us to reach symbiosis with artificial intelligence. “With a high bandwidth brain-machine interface, we can go along for the ride and effectively have the option of merging with AI”, said Musk. And as for the risks to reach this end goal? Musk reassured his audience that the device will be safe.

Most of the pieces of Elon Musk’s Master Plan, Part Deux are already in place. Tesla’s mass-market cars, the Model 3 and Model Y, have already been released. The Solar Roof is finally seeing a ramp. And the release of a feature-complete version of the company’s Full Self-Driving suite seems to be drawing closer.

For Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite to be feature-complete, the electric car maker would need to master inner-city driving. FSD already works for highway driving with Navigate on Autopilot with automatic lane changes. But when it comes to inner-city streets, Full Self-Driving still has some ways to go. Fortunately, if Tesla’s v10.2 2020.12.5 release is any indication, it appears that more and more aspects of city driving are becoming recognized by the company’s neural networks.

Elon Musk has revealed the reason behind Tesla’s cabin-facing camera that has been in the Model 3 for years without being used.

When Tesla launched the Model 3, it equipped the vehicle with a standard cabin-facing camera located in the rearview mirror.

It has been almost 3 years since Tesla brought the vehicle to production and this camera, which is included in every Model 3, has remained dormant.

Featured Image Source: SpaceX

SpaceX is in the process of developing its next-generation spacecraft. It will be a two-stage launch vehicle, consisting of Starship (a spaceship), and a rocket booster called Super Heavy. Starship will be capable of conducting voyages to the moon and Mars. Super Heavy will only be needed to take Starship out of Earth’s atmosphere. It will be capable of returning from space in order to be reused. SpaceX has developed some of the world’s most technologically advanced rockets. The Falcon 9 rocket’s first-stage booster is capable of being launched, and return to land vertically on autonomous drone ships at sea in order to be reused again. No one in the rocket industry has achieved that level of reusability. Making Starship reusable is key towards decreasing the cost of spaceflight to make life multi-planetary.

Starship’s development is partially funded by Yusaku Maezawa, a fashion entrepreneur who dreams of going to the moon. Maezawa booked Starship’s first crewed flight, it will be a circumlunar voyage scheduled for the year 2023. SpaceX has an ambitious deadline to meet. The rocket company is manufacturing a production line of Starships at its South Texas assembly facility located in Boca Chica Beach, Brownsville, TX. Elon Musk, founder and chief engineer at SpaceX, says a high iteration rate is needed to make rapid progress in the development of Starship. To rapidly innovate, many vehicles must be manufactured and tested rapidly. Therefore, the company aims to ramp up its production to build one Starship per week. “Production is at least 1,000 percent harder than making one of something. At least 1,000 percent harder,” Musk said. This year, the company manufactured three stainless steel prototypes of the craft, two imploded during pressurization tests.

Russia seems to see the writing on the wall. No longer can disposable rockets win business for the Russian Space Industry. NASA put an end to the ongoing launches of astronauts into space with the development of domestic. The Russian space industry plans on maintaining or growing market share.

“In 2020, 33 launches are planned, of which 12 launches of satellites under the Federal Space Program, nine launches of commercial vehicles, three from the Guiana Space Center,”

Dmitry Rogozin the head of Roscosmos.

According to https://tass.ru/, Russia is planning on completing 30 commercial launches in 2020. To compete in the international market, Roscosmos announced the cost of launch services will be reduced by more than 30%. The allegation is that American companies are price dumping. With the emergence of SpaceX into the launch sector and other new space companies, the launch vehicle options increased greatly. SpaceX specifically has captured a lot of commercial launch contracts with the partially reusable Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX has proven the booster reuse capability up to five times and disclosed that the reusability is much greater.

An interview I did on my transhumanist focused channel with Robert Zubrin, head of the Mars society, about the case for human space colonisation, his work with Elon Musk and how becoming a multi-planet species will affect human civilisation. Very grateful for any subscriptions!


I interview Robert Zubrin, founder of The Mars Society and author of ‘The Case for Mars’ and ‘The Case for Space’ on human exploration and colonisation of Mars, the likely role played by private enterprise (SpaceX etr) vs national programmes and what a future Mars settlement could look like.