Jennice Fuentes

Frequent political analyst on national news networks. Democratic strategist.

[Astrolab @Astrolab_Space]

FLIP and FLEX are ready for the big screen! Astrolab is happy to be working with K2 Studios on their upcoming IMAX film "Life in Space," which aims to inspire the next generation of space explorers. These are just a few clips of what they have captured of our rovers’ journeys so far.

[Maria Cardona @MariaTCardona]

Wow. @joerogan has completely turned on @realDonaldTrump! “… your alpha male is really just an 80-year-old dude spray tanning his face and rage tweeting at 3 AM!” Millions of Americans knew this already, but we welcome anyone who wakes to this reality!

[Dan O'Dowd @RealDanODowd]

Naibel Benavides should still be alive. Tesla Autopilot killed her because it was engaged on a road that Tesla knew it wasn't safe on.

The NTSB ordered Tesla to restrict Autopilot use to the freeways it was designed for in 2016 and again in 2019 after two fatal crashes with cross traffic. Tesla ignored them and more people were killed.

In 2023 NHTSA recalled Autopilot for this same problem. Tesla claimed to have fixed the issue.

Tesla lied.

Even today, Autopilot can be engaged on any road with lane markings. More people will be killed because of this.

Elon Musk's callous indifference to human life is sickening. He should not be allowed anywhere near safety critical software.

[Dan O'Dowd @RealDanODowd]

"We will never surrender/settle an unjust case against us, even if we will probably lose."

- Elon Musk, May 2022

[Ross Gerber @GerberKawasaki]

Waymo has solved autonomous driving. Meanwhile Elon is starting a new political party.

[Dan O'Dowd @RealDanODowd]

Texas lawmakers don't want their voters to be @Tesla's crash test dummies.

What a relief for @ElonMusk, he finally has his excuse to delay the rollout of his "robotaxis"!

[Dan O'Dowd @RealDanODowd]

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me six years running and you know you can take advantage of me any time you like.

@ElonMusk promised in 2019: "next year for sure, we will have over 1 million robotaxis on the road." He said that @Tesla owners would earn $30,000 a year from their cars.

6 years later, Tesla doesn't have a single robotaxi. No Tesla owner has ever earned a single cent from their car operating as a robotaxi.

[Rep. Nydia Velazquez @NydiaVelazquez]

ICE just arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka for trying to do his job and standing up for immigrant rights.

He must be released immediately.

This agency is out of control.

[Dan O'Dowd @RealDanODowd]

5 things @ElonMusk did this week

Wiped $130bn off $TSLA, now dead money since 2020
Called a US senator and combat vet a traitor
Insulted foreign minster of Poland
Twitter got taken down by a cyberattack
Blamed Ukraine for the attack

It’s only Monday, maybe he’ll redeem himself?

[Dan O'Dowd @RealDanODowd]

.@ElonMusk lied on this week's $TSLA earnings call when he claimed that using Autopilot was 10x safer than driving manually.

@Tesla only counts Autopilot crashes where airbags deploy, but counts all police reported accidents for the US average.

@NHTSAgov data shows that Tesla reports less than 18% of the police reported crashes of Tesla vehicles. NHTSA also states: "Tesla is not aware of every crash involving Autopilot even for severe crashes because of gaps in telematic reporting."

For instance, the fatal collision with a pedestrian that caused NHTSA to open an investigation into FSD last week was not counted by Tesla because the airbags didn't deploy. NHTSA only became aware of death six months after crash when a third party reported it.

Elon is also comparing freeway driving for Autopilot with all driving for humans. It's less likely to have a crash on the freeway than on city streets. Using these entirely different data sets to draw a conclusion on the safety of Tesla's software is despicable.

If Autopilot really was safer than driving manually, Tesla wouldn't need to cherry pick data and deceive safety-conscious consumers. They would release the raw data, just like @Waymo does.

https://t.co/DIoAGoMZt9

[Dan O'Dowd @RealDanODowd]

Tesla's We, Robot event was even more childish than we thought. @technology confirmed today that all the Optimus robots were remotely operated.

What has not been mentioned is that @Tesla's "robotaxis" were not running Full Self-Driving.

It has been widely claimed that FSD v13 was operating on the Cybercabs and Model Ys at the event. This is unlikely.

As the first image shows, the visualization shown on the internal screen was not an FSD visualization. It was a custom graphic designed specifically for the event.

The second image shows what happened when guests attempted to disengage a "robotaxi" Model Y by turning the steering wheel. A warning message appeared on the screen, warning "Do Not Touch Controls".

Every version of Full Self-Driving can be disengaged by turning the wheel. Tesla's Owner's manual even states that the driver can: "Take over and steer manually" to disengage FSD. Tesla is only allowed to deploy FSD on public roads because the driver is supposedly able to intervene to prevent FSD from causing a crash.

If FSD v13 will not permit the driver to disengage it, then it can only be used by professional test drivers and can’t be made available to the general public. Tesla has not even applied for permits to conduct driverless testing, per @NHTSAgov.

Tesla's "robotaxi" was not FSD - it was a custom Disneyland ride from stem to stern. It would not deviate from its 5mph preprogrammed route around the 0.05 square miles of the Warner Lot. This technology existed 50 years ago at theme parks.

@elonmusk is no stranger to fake videos. FSD's original 2016 "Paint it Black" demo was staged, as @aelluswamy confirmed in a 2022 deposition. The 2016 Solar Roof unveil was faked, as confirmed by @WalterIsaacson's biography. Even the Cybertruck vs Porsche 911 quarter mile drag race was faked.

Soon we'll probably find out that Tesla's "robotaxis" were teleoperated.

Who does Elon Musk think he is fooling? Why does he put on these fake demonstrations? Is the sole purpose to deceive customers and investors about Tesla’s technology?

[Mathew Ingram @mathewi]

“As usual, Elon Musk is trying to compete in the Tour de France on a tricycle.” Dan O’Dowd, billionaire co-founder of Green Hills Software and founder of the software safety Dawn Project group, was left unimpressed by Tesla’s cybercab event https://t.co/UikXsXczOp

[Dan O'Dowd @RealDanODowd]

Robotaxi day was a total Snoozefest.

After over 10 years of Full Self-Driving development, @Tesla is limited to a 20-30 acre geofenced 5mph ride on a preprogrammed, premapped and heavily rehearsed route with no traffic and no pedestrians.

1950s Disneyland guests would be unimpressed.

Tesla is not a player in the robotaxi market because they are prohibited from running on public roads. Tesla is limited to yawn-inducing demonstrations in Hollywood studios while its competitors’ robotaxis transport 100,000 paying customers around major American cities every week.

For all the hype that @elonmusk puts behind Tesla Full Self-Driving, it does not work. The latest version of Full Self-Driving travels 71 miles between critical disengagements, in contrast to Waymo’s 17,311 miles. Elon Musk is trying to compete in the Tour de France on a tricycle.

Musk’s rhetoric at We Robot is merely a tired repetition of the same broken promises he made five years ago at Autonomy Day.

Tonight Elon Musk said that Tesla drivers would soon be able to sleep in an unsupervised Full Self-Driving Tesla. This is the exact same promise he made in 2019 when he said FSD owners would be able to fall asleep and wake up at their destination by the end of 2020.

The promised low cost vehicle that everybody was expecting to be announced turned out to be a two-seat cybercab which will no doubt be a big hit with families.

Elon Musk has claimed that Tesla will solve FSD “this year”, every year since 2014, most recently in July. Now he has announced that FSD has been delayed another year until the end of 2025. That date will be delayed again next year as it has for each of the past ten years.

Until Tesla robotaxis are transporting 100,000 paying customers a week around major American cities like Waymo does, Tesla robotaxi is nothing more than the latest work of fiction to come out of the Warner Bros. Studio.

Optimus was a similarly disappointing snoozefest, with Musk’s promises of it being “the biggest product ever, of any kind” at odds with the dull reality of animatronic robots surrounded by nervous-looking Tesla engineers.

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

A British writer penned the best description of Donald Trump I’ve ever read:

“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?”

A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.

• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.”

-Nate White

[Dan O'Dowd @RealDanODowd]

I am excited to announce that I will be testing @Tesla Full Self-Driving in real world situations with @GerberKawasaki on 22 June in Santa Barbara, as well as sitting down with Ross to discuss AI/Autonomous driving system safety. Stay tuned for further information.

[Dan O'Dowd @RealDanODowd]

@elonmusk Elon, thanks for retaining our QA services to test Tesla Full Self-Driving. It's a fantastic endorsement of The Dawn Project’s important work testing safety critical systems and reporting defects. The link below has some of the worst problems we found. 1/9
https://t.co/RAQBGFdx5h

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

@RealDanODowd Dan is basically an unpaid intern on our QA team lol

[Dan O'Dowd @RealDanODowd]

If Steve Jobs had unveiled @Apple’s iPhone in the same way @ElonMusk unveiled Optimus the @Tesla robot, it would have looked like this:

[The Washington Post @washingtonpost]

Tesla is demanding an advocacy group take down videos of its vehicles striking child-size mannequins, alleging the footage is defamatory and misrepresents its most advanced driver-assistance software. https://t.co/JUKTE0o8Ge

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

A stunning view: Sebastian Steudtner, a German surfer, rode a 115 feet tall wave at Nazare, Portugal 2018