Bookmarks (386)

Barrons news cites a Tesla Robotaxi essay by xTesla Engineer Frank Yashar. Frank Yashar, a former Tesla engineer, starts his essay by comparing SpaceX to the traditional satellite industry. SpaceX now has more than 7,000 low-cost satellites orbiting the Earth, providing high-speed Wi-Fi speed service to over 5 million customers. The traditional satellite industry didn’t ... Read more

Tesla and Elon continue to develop 4680 batteries, AI4 and AI5 inference chips and Tesla Dojo chips. I have projected that Tesla could get trillions in value from cracking making Dojo chips being broadly useful for xAI for large language model training. 4680 development work continues despite issues scaling towards the original 100 GWh per ... Read more

Nvidia researcher James Fan proposes physical Turing test for robots. The robots do not have to be humanoid robots but he wants the bots to go into a very, very messy room and clean it up and prepare a meal for two and set the table. There would be a prepared clean room, the meal ... Read more

Tesla just added full Robotaxi functionality in the latest app update—quietly prepping for launch next month. There is the need for Tesla to launch Supervised and unsupervised ridesharing in June in Austin. The launch of supervised and unsupervised is not really a choice. Tesla plans to start day one with 10-20 unsupervised vehicles. The issue ... Read more

The tariff barriers make it uneconomic to import batteries from China. China has been the main supplier of Tesla Megapack, stationary energy storage batteries. Tesla has enough US and non-China battery supply for cars. Tesla needs to get more batteries for megapacks in the USA. Tesla will be able to use China batteries for the ... Read more

Google has been releasing many Gemini 2.0 and Gemini 2.5 model variants. There is the new Gemini Flash image model. The flurry of releases is before Google IO later this month. Usually Google saves up its biggest releases for its Google IO event. This leads to speculation that Google will release a Google Ultra or ... Read more

AWS and Microsoft are pausing or slowing down the development of data centers, according to a Wells Fargo research note. Several industry sources told Wells Fargo’s analysts team that AWS has “paused a portion of its leading discussions” on colocated data centers. Microsoft capex for the quarter came in at $21.4bn this was $1.2 billion ... Read more

President Donald Trump says the Houthis have announced to the USA last night that they no longer want to fight. There is a ceasefire for now between the US and Yemen. The US will stop or pause bombing in Yemen as this plays out. The US stepped up air strikes on the Houthis in March ... Read more

In December, 2024, the US lost an F-18 jet (but the pilots ditched and were recovered) to a friendly fire incident. The Navy F-18 were launched from a US aircraft carrier and were fighting Houthi drones from Yemen. In April 2025, a U.S. Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet fighter fell off the side of the aircraft ... Read more

Cerebras Systems is adding six new AI data centers in North America and Europe. This will increase inference capacity to over 40 million tokens per second. The new facilities will be established in Dallas, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, Montreal, New York, and France, with 85% of the total capacity based in the United States. According to ... Read more

China’s Manus AI is showing an excellent demo of agent capabilities. You can toggle between four applications (Search, browser, coterminal and document editor). David Sacks says AI agents will be connect to all of hour SAAS (Software As A Service) applications. Agents will interact with dozens of apps. There is a new Agent standard called ... Read more

There is a bit more description about the SpaceX Starship 35 Static fire anomaly. There was second planned 60 second static fire but it was aborted after a flash. The static fire was stopped after 25 seconds. The problem might be related to the problems of the seventh and eighth Starship launches.

What is the history of NASA and some Federal Budget overruns? The Space Shuttle, ISS, SLS, and Constellation programs all experienced significant delays (2–7+ years) and budget overruns (billions). NASA has tried to pivot to fixed-price contracts since 2006 contrasts with the DoD’s continued reliance on cost-plus for complex procurements, though fixed-price use occurs in ... Read more

A Ukrainian unmanned surface vessel armed with an R-73 air-to-air missile shot down a Russian Su-30 naval fighter roughly 50 km west of Novorossiysk. This is the first time in history that a military aircraft has been downed by an unmanned Navy drone ship.

In 2017, Texas passed a bill that gives the state of Texas control of who and how is companies can operate robotaxi. On June 1, 2025, Tesla will start operating 10-20 Model Y as paid unsupervised robotaxi. This means that Tesla is also already permitted to operate robotaxi anywhere in Texas. Tesla could expand to ... Read more

NASA is asked to take a 25 percent cut in its budget, from about $25 billion to $18.8 billion. The budget would cancel the Lunar Gateway that NASA has started developing and end the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft after two more flights, Artemis II and Artemis III. The Space Launch System and ... Read more

In 2025, some banned running shoes, particularly those with multiple carbon plates or excessive midsole height, could potentially provide a 2-4% performance enhancement compared to standard running shoes. These shoes, often exceeding the 40mm midsole height limit set by World Athletics, have been shown to improve running economy and speed. Studies show potential improvements of ... Read more

There is a $999 hip motion assistance exoskeleton. It does not majorly help increase speed and performance. It does reduce fatigue and effort so that it can make staying active easier for many people. Combining state-of-the-art robotics, ergonomics, and AI into a compact form, Hypershell X enables you to go further and explore more.

SpaceX completed its new flame trench last week ahead of recent new static fire tests. They installed a massive set of flame diverter pipes. SpaceX is using more powerful Raptor engines which will increase the thrust to about 9400 tons of thrust. This will be nearly three times as powerful as the Saturn V rocket.

SpaceX Starship had a significant flash and a change of color of the fire coming out of the trench. The Starship appears undamaged.

Researchers for objects that moved slowly between IRAS and AKARI detections. IRAS and AKARI are far-infrared, all-sky surveys completed 23 years apart. They looked in the Kuiper belt. They produced all possible candidate pairs including one IRAS source and one AKARI source whose angular separations were limited between 42′ and 69.6′, corresponding to the heliocentric ... Read more

Nvidia will make 5 million B200/B300 which are the leading edge AI GPU chips. They could make about 10 million advanced next generation chips each year in about 2028. Tesla Dojo 1 chips have small installed volume but Doge 2 and Doge 3 could surge in usage and production. Dojo chips are and will be ... Read more

The Alberta Premier has made it easier for citizens to collect enough signatures to put the question of Alberta Independence to a vote. Polling has indicated about 30% support for Alberta independence but polling may not be accurate. Collecting the signatures to have a vote should be relatively easy. The hard part will be actually ... Read more

Tesla AI has chosen to playfully announce that June 1st, 2025 is the start date for the Austin Robotaxi service. https://t.co/CZRxR67l18 — Tesla AI (@Tesla_AI) May 1, 2025 At the earnings call they said they would start the first day with 10-20 Model Ys with FSD operating as unsupervised robotaxi that offer paid rides. Operating ... Read more

Alphabet (google) reported revenue of $90.23 billion and earnings per share of $2.81. Shares rose as much as 4% on stronger-than-expected revenue growth. Revenue: $90.23 billion vs. $89.12 billion expected Earnings per share: $2.81 vs. $2.01 expected YouTube advertising revenue: $8.93 billion vs. $8.97 billion. Google Cloud revenue: $12.26 billion vs. $12.27 billion. Traffic acquisition ... Read more

Tesla DOJO 2, DOJO 3 and AI5 chips are critical for Tesla to become an AI hardware company. XAI and Tesla will buy create and build millions of these chips into their data centers and the Tesla products. XAI and Tesla are buying 1 million Nvidia B200/B300 chips over the 14 months from February, 2025 ... Read more

Next week, Grok 3.5 early beta release to SuperGrok subscribers only. It is the first AI that can, for example, accurately answer technical questions about rocket engines or electrochemistry. The Premium+ and SuperGrok plans offered by xAI provide different levels of access to the Grok AI chatbot, particularly with the recent launch of Grok 3 ... Read more

There are two propulsion experiments on the Rogue Systems OTP2 satellite. The nanosats database has descriptions of the systems. The current satellite movement is the other propulsion system. I only care about the IVO quantum drive. It has not been turned in yet. If they are testing the other system as they appear to be ... Read more

Satellite 63235 is Rogue Space Systems’ OTP-2 satellite and the propellanless drive onboard OTP-2 is IVO’s Quantum Drive. The satellite tracking is continuing to show a shallowing of the orbital decline. Rogue’s new spacecraft, named OTP-2, will test the company’s on-board computing software and its ability to aggregate data from multiple sensors and process that ... Read more

Claybrook is an experimental AI model developed by Google and the model’s focus is on web development with an emphasis frontend tasks such as UI/UX coding. Claybrook leverages advanced techniques, such as reinforcement learning (RL), tailored for frontend design. Frontend tasks—like designing user interfaces—lend themselves to well-defined reward functions, making them suitable for RL optimization. ... Read more

Reinforcement Learning does NOT make the base model more intelligent and limits the world of the base model in exchange for early pass performances. Graphs show that after pass 1000 the reasoning model is surpassed by the base. Above – Figure 1: (Left) The effect of RLVR on LLM’s reasoning ability. Search trees are generated ... Read more

The 35-engine SpaceX Starship booster using version 3 raptor engines is coming sooon. Booster 18 could be the first Version 3 booster. 35 Raptor 3 engines (280 tons of thrust each) will be 9800 tons of thrust. This is 29% more than 33 Raptor 2 engines with 230 tons of thrust each for 7590 tons. ... Read more

The IVO Propulsion drive that is in a satellite is now slowing the decline of its orbit. This slowing decline of the Semi Major Orbit is evidence that the propellentless drive is working. The drive was used to move a large beam in a rotating motion in a lab experiment. CORRECTION: It is IVO Propulsion ... Read more

Boeing has 130 orders for new planes, but China is rejecting the planes due to the trade war. At least one of the Boeing 737 Max planes has been flown back and two others are will be rejected. Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported Chinese government officials had instructed domestic airlines not to order any new ... Read more

If the President asks SpaceX to help make the Golden Dome then SpaceX will do it. But Elon Musk hope that other companies (not SpaceX) can do this. Elon Musk would prefer to focus on Mars colonization and development. The Golden Dome is a planned missile shield that will need thousands of satellites to constantly ... Read more

$25K Tesla and unsupervised robotaxis are starting this quarter—and BYD, Xiaomi, and legacy auto won’t keep up. With BYD’s 4% margins a sham (thanks to 3% dodged interest and other non-GAAP accounting), Tesla’s cheaper EV and 5,000+ robotaxi fleet by 2025 and one million Tesla robotaxi network in 2026 in will dominate. We break down ... Read more

U.S. Space Force chief Gen. Chance Saltzman clarified the Golden Dome is not a single mega-shield, but a network of systems built to counter advanced missile threats. The system will combine terrestrial, naval, airborne, and space-based sensors and interceptors, along with non-kinetic defenses like directed energy weapons and electronic warfare capabilities. Saltzman emphasized that decision-making ... Read more

Astronomers have detected the most promising signs yet of a possible biosignature outside the solar system. The most likely reason (when combined with other observation) for seeing 1000 times more of the chemical DMS would be that exoplanet K2-18B is an ocean planet teeming with life. This ocean filled with life is causing the chemical ... Read more

Universal’s Isle of Berk had it’s soft opening two weeks ago. The dragon robots and large animatronics are very impressive. Visitors are very impressed with the walking baby dart dragon robot.

Technology experts Brian Wang and Jon Twigge discuss the fast arriving future of AI. The acceleration of AI technology has already started happening. It is the shocking speed of development and the speed of change which will make adapting and surviving harder. Speed of change is everything. XAI and Tesla have more speed. Physical change ... Read more

A Huawei M7 with Huawei’s Advanced Driving System (ADS) 2.0 crashed into a person and some cars at an Auto Show. It should have been going at low speed in a parking lot situation. The Huawei M7 is a premium electric SUV that is equipped with Huawei’s Advanced Driving System (ADS) 2.0. The Huawei M7 ... Read more

Gemini 2.5 Pro is currently ranked as the top released model on the leaderboards. Google’s has more models lined up, and Nightwhisper (probably Gemini Coder) is reportedly amazing and so is Dragontail. There is a flood of new model releases from Google, OpenAI, XAI, Deepseek and others. Here we will review what has been released ... Read more

Bytedance has new Uno AI that lets you change a picture into any selected style and you can upload photos to combine them into one picture. You can upload a photo of a wrinkled t-shirt and an image of a logo or any other picture or words. The words, logo or picture would be placed ... Read more