Langdon

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

The IIHS has updated its Cybertruck crash test ratings, adding that the truck avoided every single pedestrian collision, including:
• Crossing child: day
• Crossing adult: night
• Parallel adult: night

Cybertruck earned the best safety rating of Top Safety Pick+, the only pickup truck to earn that award.

[Yatharth Mann @yatharthmann]

Back in 2009 when SpaceX had not built a hangar yet, the engineers and technicians would work on the rocket in open, exposed, on the hangar's foundation.

A bunch of ULA employees would drive across the road, stop at the fence and laugh and shout mocking comments at them.

Today, ULA's launch pad was demolished to make way for SpaceX's new launch pad.

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

https://t.co/puLXpatHvd

[Sam @DigitalSamIAm]

Can we debunk this nonsense?

Elon Musk was awarded (note: not given) cost-per-result contracts to perform a service for the US government. The total of those for SpaceX specifically is ~$22B, which includes repaid loans, state tax incentives, etc.

The deal was simple: put stuff into LEO at or below a set cost. If SpaceX does it below the set cost, SpaceX keeps the difference. If it doesn’t, the company is responsible for the overrun.

End result? SpaceX & Elon lowered the cost of getting 1 kg into LEO by 95-97% vs what NASA was paying previously.

And for the record, every other company around at the time was offered the same opportunity to bid on the contract - Musk/SpaceX just took it.

The handout narrative implies the taxpayer is the patron and SpaceX the dependent. The cost data shows the opposite: before SpaceX, NASA paid Russia’s Soyuz $80-86M per seat; SpaceX delivered at ~$55 million. SpaceX saved the US taxpayer $300M-$465M each year on that alone (the US sends 12-15 astronauts to space each year)

On the lunar lander, NASA estimated SpaceX’s fixed-price bid saved $20B-$30B vs the Boeing-preferred cost-plus approach.

So: SpaceX saved the US taxpayer more than the total value of contracts it earned on a single project, PLUS provided the US government with the requested services (put stuff in LEO) at the best possible price.

[Chris Bakke @ChrisJBakke]

Pretty incredible that Elon now has enough money to personally fund almost 3.5 miles of the California high speed rail project

[Langdon @LangdonAlgerII]

@AukeHoekstra Counterpoint.

https://t.co/76kbPfKUx8

[David Sacks @DavidSacks]

I’ve had a number of conversations with folks inside and outside government about the current situation with Anthropic, and here is what I believe to be true:

— As we know, Anthropic publicly released its Mythos class models earlier this week under the commercial name Fable.

— Fable is Mythos with guardrails. But if those guardrails fail, then you’ve exposed Mythos and its advanced cyber capabilities to people who shouldn’t have them. (Keep in mind that Anthropic itself widely promoted the idea that Mythos was a cyberweapon and needed to be regulated as such. They asked for government regulation of Mythos and championed the guardrails on Fable. If there is a vulnerability — big or small — it is Anthropic’s responsibility to patch.)

— A highly credible trusted partner of both Anthropic and the USG who was testing Fable came forward with a jailbreak of those guardrails. The Admin asked Dario to fix the jailbreak or de-deploy the model. Dario refused.

— In their blog post, Anthropic defended its decision by saying the jailbreak isn’t serious. That is not what the trusted partner and the USG believe; nor is that kind of minimizing language consistent with Anthropic’s brand as the AI safety company. It’s difficult to fathom how they could claim a jailbreak allowing operability of a cyber weapon could be defined as not “serious.”

— In the past, Anthropic has always said that safety must be top priority and taken super seriously. In this case, Anthropic prioritized the continued offering of the consumer model over safety.

— In reaction, the Admin issued the export control. The Admin did this reluctantly. It’s been very surprised that Anthropic hasn’t wanted to cooperate with a reasonable safety request (ie fixing the jailbreak issue). Anthropic’s reaction is very much at odds with their branding and ethos as a safe AI research community.

— The Admin’s hope now is that Anthropic remediates the safety issue, the export control is lifted, and Fable goes back into general release. The Admin wants all of this to happen as soon as possible. It is frankly bewildered that Anthropic hasn’t wanted to comply with safety requests that it previously said were its highest priority.

— Those trying to misdirect and tie this action to the prior DoW/Anthropic issues are wrong. The Admin values Anthropic’s technical capabilities and feels that this issue, while serious, should be easily resolved. The ball is in Anthropic’s court.

[Langdon @LangdonAlgerII]

@SawyerMerritt @SpaceX Less than 10% of ask, via Schwab.

[Langdon @LangdonAlgerII]

@ashleevance @SpaceX @elonmusk I invested in Tesla because of your book: Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
so, I will subscribe.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

@zerohedge False

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

@MarioNawfal Reuters article is false.

They made improper use of the Starlink civilian system for military purposes. Direct violation of terms of service.

[Alec Stapp @AlecStapp]

Chatted with a water resource economist at an event in California yesterday.

The state’s water “shortage” really is one of the most unforced errors in policymaking.

Key stats:

- farmers use 80% of the developed water supply

- residents use 20%

- cities pay ~20x higher prices (!) for water than farmers (~$722/acre-foot vs ~$36/acre-foot)

- some of the biggest agricultural districts in the state pay literally $0 for their water

- meanwhile agriculture accounts for just ~2% of California’s economy

It’s crazy that politicians tell residents to take shorter showers or get rid of their lawns instead of just charging farmers the market price for their water usage.

[Palmer Luckey @PalmerLuckey]

And this is the one we can actually show you.

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

SpaceX has just received FCC approval to acquire ~65 MHz of nationwide spectrum from EchoStar for the company's next-gen direct-to-device @Starlink Mobile service.

The FCC says the deal gives SpaceX “exclusive-use, contiguous spectrum nationwide” for direct-to-phone connectivity from orbit.

Next-gen Starlink Mobile is going to be incredible, enabling 5G speeds from space in the middle of nowhere.

[The Rational Animal 🤔 @theobjectivist]

Let me get this straight. Virginia voters created an independent redistricting commission in 2020 specifically to end partisan gerrymandering. Democrats then bypassed their own commission, rushed a constitutional amendment through while over a million people had already voted, and tried to turn a 6-5 seat advantage into 10-1. Obama backed it. Jeffries campaigned for it multiple times. House Majority PAC spent $38 million on it. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled the process violated the state constitution.

Now Jeffries calls it "unprecedented and undemocratic" when a court enforces the constitution against his party. He calls it "voter suppression" when Democrats are stopped from suppressing five Republican districts into one. And he invokes Jim Crow to describe a ruling that upheld the very redistricting reform Virginia voters chose in 2020.

You did not lose your voice. You lost your gerrymander. There is a difference. And the fact that you cannot tell the difference is exactly why you should not be drawing maps.

[Under Secretary of State Jacob S. Helberg @UnderSecE]

US to announce Norway’s inclusion in Pax Silica group 🇺🇸 🇳🇴
https://t.co/7Jrihw8JXV

[Brendan Carr @BrendanCarrFCC]

Under President Biden, the FCC revoked an $885 million award that Starlink won to provide high-speed Internet to millions of Americans.

Back then, the agency claimed that it was revoking the award because it was unlikely that Starlink could provide 100/20 Mbps service to 40% of locations by year end 2025.

I dissented at the time, explaining that the FCC's decision could not be squared with any objective application of law, facts, or policy. The data clearly showed that Starlink was on track.

Now, new Ookla data shows that well over that percentage of Speedtest user on Starlink did meet the 100/20 service level by year end 2025.

The Biden era decision to revoke the award only slowed down efforts to bridge the digital divide and raised costs for doing so.

https://t.co/JfMBMBtFoY

[Space Koala @SpaceKoala]

Man the Starlink doubters are hilarious in retrospect.

[Langdon @LangdonAlgerII]

@FredLambert lol. You literally hear the car honk at you twice and swerve out of the lane it turtle-crawls into and your response "Geez, really aggressive" instead of "holy crap, we almost got side swiped"

[Langdon @LangdonAlgerII]

@KobeissiLetter Can residents = robots?