Elon Musk - Page 9 of 14

SpaceX: Two oil platforms are being converted into space ports

SpaceX bought two oil rigs last year and is currently converting them into rocket launch sites. This reports, among other things, CNBC and explains that the two platforms should allow the planned giant rocket Starship to take off and land away from inhabited areas.

Elon Musks The company bought the platforms for a total of seven million US dollars from a US company that filed for bankruptcy last year. In the meantime the platforms have been baptized “Deimos” and “Phobos”, the names of the sons of the Greek god of war Ares and of course the two moons of Mars.

A rocket for the colonization of Mars With this purchase, the US company is once again proving how seriously the ambitious plans for the Starship are being taken. Musk had just presented the first prototype 2019 and announced a spaceship that should be reusable very quickly and that could be used up to three times a day or 1000 Can fly times a year. One of these spaceships is supposed to fly 150 tons of cargo into space and 50 tons of cargo to earth can. He described the Starship as “the fastest way to a self-sustaining city on Mars” and also believes travel to other planets is possible. The first manned flights did not take place as planned 2020, but at the beginning of December the prototype SN8 reached more than 10 Kilometers altitude and only exploded when attempting to land.

Last year Elon Musk announced on Twitter that SpaceX “floating, spaceports for super-heavy Wants to build rockets “that will fly to Mars, the moon and around the earth. SpaceX had then also started hiring staff for the construction work, writes CNBC. It is still unclear when the conversion will be completed and when the two platforms will experience their first take-offs and landings. At SpaceX, the next test flight of a Starship prototype is currently pending. SN9 should also reach 10 kilometers altitude, but then, unlike its predecessor, land safely again.

(mho)

Volkswagen boss joins Twitter with a jab at Elon Musk

Volkswagen Group boss Herbert Diess joined twitter Wednesday, and his first tweet was a light trolling of Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

“Hello @Twitter! I’m here to make an impact with @VWGroup, especially on political issues,” Diess wrote. “And, of course, to get some of your market shares, @elonmusk – after all, our ID.3 and e-tron have won the first markets in Europe. Looking forward to productive discussions!”

Diess — who last year settled criminal charges related to his role in the Dieselgate emissions scandal — was referencing how the first mass-market electric vehicles of its VW and Audi brands performed well in Europe (and especially in Germany) in their debut year, causing Tesla to lose market share on the continent. (To wit, while writing this, Tesla dropped prices on the Model 3 in Europe.)

Hello @Twitter! I’m here to make an impact with @VWGroup, especially on political issues. And, of course, to get some of your market shares, @elonmusk – after all, our ID.3 and e-tron have won the first markets in Europe. Looking forward to productive discussions!

— Herbert Diess (@Herbert_Diess) January 20, 2021

Most automotive and other big-brand CEOs use Twitter in an obligatory manner. They issue stately comments on new products or initiatives but are otherwise absent from the daily churn.

It’s hard to imagine Diess — who has praised Musk in the past — doing much else beyond tweeting playful jabs like the one on Wednesday, let alone actually engaging Musk on his terms with memes and snark and stock price-moving jokes. For one thing, Diess just barely survived a major power struggle that played out inside the Volkswagen Group. While he remains the top boss, he was stripped of his title of CEO of the VW brand in large part because of the major software problems the ID 3 has had during its rollout.

Stranger things have happened, but the idea that Diess — who apparently once made his executives attend a “syntegration workshop” — would break edgelord seems unlikely. Musk, meanwhile, has spent nearly two years possibly violating a court order that says he’s supposed to have tweets about Tesla pre-screened by a lawyer.

To Musk’s credit, he also spends a lot of his time on Twitter responding to customers who have suggestions or complaints about Tesla’s products. In fact, this has become such a critical pipeline that Tesla’s energy division has spent the last few months hiring customer service specialists who now help field those requests. If Diess learns any lessons about how to use Twitter from Musk, that may be a good place to start given the state of the ID 3.

Elon Musk’s flamethrower was not a flamethrower, but that isn’t stopping police

Mark Harris has put together an amazing report for TechCrunch on the legal troubles that have befallen buyers of the Boring Company’s flame-throwing device. Part of what makes it worth a read is that it digs up stories you may have not heard about yet: a police raid in London, an American doing time in an Italian prison, and how they’ve turned up in narcotics hauls alongside real guns and bags of cocaine.

While the Not a Flamethrower name may actually be accurate, the story shows that when police the world over see you with a gun-shaped device, especially one that shoots flames, they may not join you in laughing about Elon’s zany project ideas. They may just end up arresting you.

The biggest “what the heck” moment of the story for me was when a lawyer says of the Not a Flamethrower: “It’s a toy they sell to children.” Please, if you were one of the people who got this device — do not give it to a child.

While the product may be Boring, the article certainly is not, and you should definitely go give it a read. I promise you won’t get burned.

SpaceX buys oil rigs to launch Starship from the sea?

Elon Musk, through SpaceX, would purchased two oil rigs to turn them into launch pads for its Starship rockets as announced some time ago. What awaits us for the future?

by Mattia Speroni published 19 January 2021 , at 14: 21 in the Science and Technology channel

SpaceX

Interesting developments continue in the Boca Chica area (Texas). SpaceX in fact it may have purchased over the past two months oil platforms from a bankrupt company for the construction of launch platforms for the launch of Starship (in Super Heavy and Starship configuration).

Isn’t it so strange that SpaceX made this move (not yet officially confirmed). In June 2020 the same Elon Musk had written on Twitter about the idea of building platforms for launching his rockets, moreover, in the old renders dating back to about two years ago, spaceports located on floating platforms.

From oil to space thanks to SpaceX

As written above, the official status is still missing but there are several clues collected by the people who are telling the company of Elon Musk in Texas. For example, the two platforms have codenames of Deimos and Phobos who are “strangely” also the two natural satellites of Mars.

One of the two oil platforms called Deimos (photo by Jack Beyer)

Sure, finding oil rigs in the Texas areas isn’t actually that strange, but that the acquisition is made by Lone Star Mineral Development, owned by Bret Johnsen who in turn is CFO and Chairman of the strategic acquisitions group in SpaceX is definitely interesting.

Currently I work on Super Heavy are still in an early stage although we should see the first test pitch (jump) by the end of 2021. In the pad area, the launching support base similar, but not the same as that which can be seen at the foot of Starship, is rising.

One of the two platforms taken from the sea in the Boca Chica area (photo by SPadre)

The oil platforms currently still seem almost intact even if the works could proceed at a rapid pace, based on what the plans for Elon Musk . It will probably take months before we see a substantial transformation and in the meantime there will be room for testing of Starship with various jumps to ever greater heights.

SpaceX buys oil rigs to build Starship launch rigs?

Elon Musk, through SpaceX, would purchased two oil rigs to turn them into launch pads for its Starship rockets as announced some time ago. What awaits us for the future?

by Mattia Speroni published 19 January 2021 , at 14: 21 in the Science and Technology channel

SpaceX

From oil to space thanks to SpaceX

One of the two oil platforms called Deimos (photo by Jack Beyer)

One of the two platforms taken from the sea in the Boca Chica area (photo by SPadre)

Signal is back after an outage that lasted more than 24 hours

After experiencing technical difficulties Friday, the Signal messaging app appears to be back up and running. The company tweeted Saturday night that it was “back,” although added that some users may still see error messages in their chats. The company didn’t explain what caused the outage.

Signal is back! Like an underdog going through a training montage, we’ve learned a lot since yesterday — and we did it together. Thanks to the millions of new Signal users around the world for your patience. Your capacity for understanding inspired us while we expanded capacity. pic.twitter.com/cRNV8kVtdF

— Signal (@signalapp) January 17, 2021

For users still be seeing error messages in their chats — which the company said was a “side effect” of the outage that began around 11:30AM ET Friday— Signal tweeted that those messages do not affect security, rather that you may have missed a message from another user. This will be fixed in the next app updates, the company said.

It offered two fixes if users want to clear the error messages manually: On Android, tap the menu in the top-right corner and choose “reset secure session.” For iOS users of Signal tap the “reset session” button located below “received message was out of sync.”

On Android if you see “Bad encrypted message,” tap the menu in the top-right & tap “Reset secure session.” On iOS tap the “Reset Session” button below “Received message was out of sync.” The errors do not affect chat security & will be automatically fixed in the next app update. pic.twitter.com/dgLGLZS3zB

— Signal (@signalapp) January 17, 2021

Signal allows secure and encrypted video, voice, and text communication, and in the past weeks has seen a surge of new users to its app, after CEO Elon Musk tweeted his recommendation, and as rival service WhatsApp unveiled a confusing new privacy policy, which it’s now pushed back several months.

During the outage, the Signal tweeted that it was “working as quickly as possible to bring additional capacity online to handle peak traffic levels.”

The company did not immediately reply to an request from The Verge for further comment on Sunday.

Tesla, the inverter for photovoltaic systems arrives

Tesla is preparing to market a new produced as part of its strategy of supplying electricity to the homes

of Rosario Grasso published 17 January 2021 , at 11: 01 in the Technology channel

Tesla

Tesla’s solar inverter will complete Elon Musk company’s strategy on the supply of household electricity after the introduction of Powerwall , the technology for the storage of self-produced energy in the home. The new announcement by Tesla also corresponds to the new expansion plan based on electricity, which provides for an important focus of the company in this nerve-center sector already starting from the year just entered.

Solar inverter for Tesla

L ‘solar inverter forms the heart of the solar system . In fact, it transforms the direct current of the photovoltaic modules into alternating current that can be fed into the public grid. Not only that, it is also used for monitoring the entire system, ensuring that the photovoltaic panels operate at their maximum performance based, among other things, on the temperature and the amount of sunlight reaching the surface.

All within the Solar Roof project, Tesla is hiring a significant number of solar roof installers. According to some, Tesla can install hundreds of solar roofs per week in the United States and this starting in the second half of 2021. It is therefore surprising that he did not immediately think of a solar inverter product, given the centrality it has in such a project.

Tesla’s solar inverter adheres to the Powerwall 2 standard, offers Ethernet and cellular Wi-Fi connection, and is capable of interacting with Tesla’s app . It will be available in versions of 3.8 kW and 7.6 kW and will have dimensions equal to 660 mm x 411 mm x 158 mm.

Signal outage is keeping messages from sending

If you’re having trouble sending messages in the secure messaging app Signal, it may be due to technical difficulties the company says are affecting the app on Friday.

Signal allows for secure and encrypted video, voice, and text communication, but users were greeted this morning with messages that failed to send. Signal confirmed the issue on its official Twitter account with the promise that it would “restore service as quickly as possible.”

Signal is experiencing technical difficulties. We are working hard to restore service as quickly as possible.

— Signal (@signalapp) January 15, 2021

In the last week, Signal reported a surge of new users to its app following a recommendation from Tesla CEO Elon Musk and a new WhatsApp privacy policy that may have driven users away from the Facebook-owned messaging service and into the arms of more secure options like Signal and competitor Telegram.

There may not be a direct connection between the mass influx of new users and the outage, but it does guarantee that more people are going to be affected. We’ll keep an eye on the problem and update when Signal has more to share.

Blue Origin is a solid competition from SpaceX. The New Shepard upgraded capsule made its first suborbital flight

Yesterday at 18: 18 Polish time Blue Origin sent on its first suborbital flight an improved New Shepard capsule. This is another test of the spacecraft for astronauts, the development of which is the responsibility of the company of the founder of Amazon.com – Jeff Besos. The company clearly aims to create a solution that allows tourist flights to orbit. This is nothing but the growing competition for the SpaceX project. Elon Musk should not underestimate the serious player who, as can be seen from the title information, takes the matter seriously and achieves success in this field. What exactly was yesterday’s Blue Origin New Shepard test flight to check and can we talk about the full success of the process stage?

The creator of Amazon’s power, Jeff Besos, specifically his company Blue Origin, took another step towards popularizing tourist flights. The New Shepard capsule made another test flight focused on crew amenities.

SpaceX: We will fly to Mars and the Moon straight from the sea platform

We live in amazing times, in which all the technology that surrounds us significantly and really increases the comfort of life human. Convenience, security and entertainment are not all that today’s world offers us. Giants-innovators work on a variety of solutions dedicated to various aspects of life. This also applies to traveling. Tourism may see enormous changes in the coming years. Soon, instead of intercontinental travel, we will fund “space trips”, which SpaceX and Blue Origin are working on.

SpaceX, Blue Origin and OneWeb: the future of the cosmic Internet

The latter company sent yesterday modernized manned tourist flights and the safety of passengers, the New Shepard capsule in flight along a sub-orbital trajectory. At its peak, an altitude of approximately 105 km was reached. The reusable rocket returned to the ground and landed smoothly. It was similar with the New Shepard capsule itself (RSS First Step), but here parachutes were used. This is another success of Blue Origin, a company that simply strives to make tourist space flights available to everyone.

Source: Blue Origin

Blue Origin New Shepard takes a new 'leap' successfully

Blue Origin New Shepard is the system launch which includes first stage and manned capsule of Jeff Bezos’ company. Yesterday afternoon, Italian time, a new test was conducted which ended with complete success.

by Mattia Speroni published 15 January 2021 , at 09: in the Science and Technology channel

Blue Origin

Jeff Bezos’ company, Blue Origin , successfully completed the NS mission – 14 of its launcher New Shepard bringing a mannequin called Mannequin Skywalker to suborbital altitude ), which simulated the presence on board of a crew. A relatively “simple” mission profile but which, as always, has many unknowns, from departure to landing. Everything went smoothly thus taking the company one step further in the project.

Blue Origin New Shepard NS – 09: everything went as planned

The company broadcast its attempt live allowing so users from all over the world to see what was happening on the launch pad and in the finish areas. As specified by Ariane Cornell (by Blue Origin), this is a step towards flying with real astronauts and the 2021 promises to be a decisive year in this sense.

We remind you that New Shepard has a structure that provides a first stage with a capsule in the upper area . The latter can be separated and landed autonomously as well as the first stage which can return to the ground and be reused. This should help reduce costs, as we have already learned with SpaceX.

The capsule, called RSS First Step (Reusable Space Ship), landed approximately 10 minutes after take-off (braked by three parachutes). The maximum altitude reached by the Blue Origin capsule was approximately 106 km crossing the Karman line and therefore officially arriving in Space, even if we are at much lower altitudes than those of the ISS, which orbits at about 400 km.

Both first stage and capsule were new and had never flown in precedence. This is partly because the capsule had a new internal structure to be more comfortable where six seats fit. For example there are new seats with integrated sound system and new screens to show astronauts what is going on.

There have also been improvements regarding the regulation of the ambient temperature and a better soundproofing. This should allow, once there are human beings on board, to have a pleasant experience.

Among the curiosities it is worth mentioning that Mannequin Skywalker had part of the in the pockets of the suit thousand postcards sent by students from all over the world. Now all that remains is to wait for the next tests and the possibility of sending a human being into space. Of course, we are still a long way from what SpaceX of is now able to do Elon Musk , but the goals of Jeff Bezos are however very important and also include the Moon. According to rumors, the next unmanned mission will be within six weeks while the first manned mission could be scheduled six weeks later.

WhatsApp has published a new FAQ page to its website outlining its stances on user privacy in response to widespread backlash over an upcoming privacy policy update. The core issue relates to WhatsApp’s data-sharing procedures with Facebook, with many users concerned an updated privacy policy going into effect on February 8th will mandate sharing of sensitive profile information with WhatsApp’s parent company.

That isn’t true — the update has nothing to do with consumer chats or profile data, and instead the change is designed to outline how businesses who use WhatsApp for customer service may store logs of its chats on Facebook servers. That’s something the company feels it is required to disclose in its privacy policy, which it’s now doing after previewing the upcoming changes to business chats back in October.

But a wave of misinformation on social media, not helped by Facebook’s abysmal track record on privacy and its reputation for obfuscating changes to its various terms of service agreements, has resulted in a full-blown WhatsApp backlash that has users fleeing to competitors like Signal and Telegram.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has even jumped into the fray, tweeting last week “Use Signal” to his more than 42 million followers. As the controversy has grown, Signal has become one of the most downloaded apps on Android and iOS and its verification system for signing up new users has repeatedly buckled under the pressure. Telegram, which is currently No. 2 behind Signal on the App Store, saw more than 25 million new users sign up in just the last 72 hours.

Telegram surpassed 500 million active users. 25 million new users joined in the last 72 hours: 38% came from Asia, 27% from Europe, 21% from Latin America and 8% from MENA. https://t.co/1LptHZb9PQ

— Telegram Messenger (@telegram) January 12, 2021

WhatsApp executives, as well as Instagram chief Adam Mosseri and Facebook AR / VR head Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, are now trying to set the record straight, perhaps to little avail at this point.

There is a lot of misinformation about the WhatsApp ToS right now. The policy update does *not* affect the privacy of your messages with friends or family in any way. The changes are related to messaging a business on WhatsApp, which is optional. https://t.co/b7szUeinKX

— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) January 12, 2021

“We want to be clear that the policy update does not affect the privacy of your messages with friends or family in any way. Instead, this update includes changes related to messaging a business on WhatsApp, which is optional, and provides further transparency about how we collect and use data,” the company writes on the new FAQ page.

It also stresses in the FAQ that neither Facebook nor WhatsApp read users’ message logs or listen to their calls, and that WhatsApp doesn’t store user location data or share contact information with Facebook. (It’s also worth noting that data sharing with Facebook is extremely limited for European users due to stronger user privacy protections in the EU.)

WhatsApp chief Will Cathcart also took to Twitter a few days ago to post a thread (later shared by Bosworth in the tweet above) trying to cut through the confusion and explain what’s actually going on.

“With end-to-end encryption, we cannot see your private chats or calls and neither can Facebook. We’re committed to this technology and committed to defending it globally,” Cathcart wrote. “It’s important for us to be clear this update describes business communication and does not change WhatsApp’s data sharing practices with Facebook. It does not impact how people communicate privately with friends or family wherever they are in the world.”

That’s why we are so committed to end-to-end encryption, and why we keep improving the privacy of WhatsApp, such as with our launch of disappearing messages in November. Our innovation on privacy will continue.

— Will Cathcart (@wcathcart) January 8, 2021

A bit of irony in all of this is the data sharing WhatsApp users are so keen to avoid has already likely been happening for a vast majority of those who use the messaging platform. The company let users opt out of data sharing with Facebook for only a brief amount of time back in 2016, two years after Facebook purchased the platform.

After that, new sign-ups and those who didn’t manually opt out of data sharing have had some WhatsApp information, principally their phone number and profile name, shared with the larger social network for ad targeting and other purposes. (If you did opt out, WhatsApp says it will honor that even after the February 8th update, according to PCMag.)

If you look at the privacy labels for WhatsApp on the App Store, labels Apple only last month began forcing developers to disclose, you’ll see scores of information that is marked as “data linked to you,” although only a unique device ID and app usage data is listed as used for “developer’s advertising and marketing.” (WhatsApp tried publicly calling Apple out for not making its own first-party apps adhere to the same standards, only for Apple to reply that it does in fact list privacy labels for the iOS apps it develops.)

In the upcoming privacy policy change, language regarding data sharing with Facebook was changed, leading many to believe the new mandated data sharing was a new change that could not be avoided — even though it’s been happening all along. “As part of the Facebook family of companies, WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information with, this family of companies,” reads WhatsApp’s new privacy policy. “We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them, to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services and their offerings.”

This whole controversy may be chalked up to users misreading confusing media reports, jumping to conclusions, and then participating in scaremongering on social media. But it’s also a reality Facebook must contend with that the lack of trust in WhatsApp is directly related to years of bad faith privacy pledges from Facebook and increasingly complex terms of service agreements no regular, non-lawyer user can reasonably comprehend.

It’s no wonder then that users are flocking to an app like Signal — managed by a nonprofit and subsisting on donations and wealthy benefactors like none other than WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton — when they feel they can no longer trust what’s really happening when they message their friends on their smartphone. Now, Facebook and WhatsApp face a long road of transparent communication and trust-building ahead if they want to get those people back.

keyword: Elon Musk

SpaceX: Two oil platforms are being converted into space ports

Volkswagen boss joins Twitter with a jab at Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s flamethrower was not a flamethrower, but that isn’t stopping police

SpaceX buys oil rigs to launch Starship from the sea?

From oil to space thanks to SpaceX

SpaceX buys oil rigs to build Starship launch rigs?

From oil to space thanks to SpaceX

Signal is back after an outage that lasted more than 24 hours

Tesla, the inverter for photovoltaic systems arrives

Solar inverter for Tesla

Signal outage is keeping messages from sending

Blue Origin is a solid competition from SpaceX. The New Shepard upgraded capsule made its first suborbital flight

The creator of Amazon’s power, Jeff Besos, specifically his company Blue Origin, took another step towards popularizing tourist flights. The New Shepard capsule made another test flight focused on crew amenities.

SpaceX: We will fly to Mars and the Moon straight from the sea platform

SpaceX, Blue Origin and OneWeb: the future of the cosmic Internet

Blue Origin New Shepard takes a new 'leap' successfully

Blue Origin New Shepard NS – 09: everything went as planned

Broadband for everyone: Breton is steaming up the planned EU satellite internet

WhatsApp clarifies it’s not giving all your data to Facebook after surge in Signal and Telegram users

Compact Tesla, that's when it might arrive

New compact Tesla of 25 thousand Euro already in 2022

Elon Musk wouldn't mind being paid in bitcoin

Bitcoin, high volatility and value fivefold by halving

Elon Musk became the richest man in the world thanks to Tesla. He overtook Jeff Bezos from Amazon in the Bloomberg ranking

Elon Musk, founder of the Tesla automotive company and SpaceX space company, has become the richest man in the world, ahead of Jeff Bezos from Amazon. The wealth of the eccentric entrepreneur is estimated according to Bloomberg at 195 billions of dollars (by 10 billion more than Bezosa).

Elon Musk to present working Neuralink interface on Friday

Tesla already in Poland: Warsaw salon and prices in PLN