Category Archives: Elon Musk

Elon Musk is famous for electric vehicles, reusable rockets, and satellites that can beam down high-speed internet to the most remote regions of the planet. But in 2016, he set his sights lower. The idea was to create a company that would solve traffic by building a system of underground tunnels.

Musk founded The Boring Company in 2017. In a video released that same year, the Boring Company teased a system in which cars and public transportation pods are lowered underground by metal platforms and proceed to zoom through tunnels at 124 mph, unimpeded by pesky traffic.The problem with tunnels, Musk said during an event unveiling the company's first demo tunnel in 2018, was that they take a long time to build and are very expensive.

"The LA subway extension that [was] just completed cost $2 billion for two and a half miles. There was a subway extension in New York that I think cost $2 billion for a mile," Musk said during the event. "So clearly, something needs to be done to revolutionize tunneling technology. We need to be able to build tunnels way faster and for a lot less money."

At the event, reporters were taken on test rides through the tunnel at speeds of up to 50 mph, much slower than the 150 mph that Musk envisioned. The ride was also pretty bumpy, as the alignment wheels attached to the Teslas bounced off the side track walls.

Though still rudimentary, the demo tunnel inspired confidence in investors and customers alike. Early on, the Boring Company was largely floated by Musk, but $1 million also came from the sale of 50,000 hats and another $10 million from the sale of 20,000 company-branded flamethrowers. Musk even tried to sell dirt excavated from the tunnel as Lego-like bricks.

In 2019, the Boring Company brought in its first outside investment. The $120 million funding round came shortly after the company landed its first paying customer: the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

The Las Vegas Convention Center Loop opened to the public in June. The 1.7-mile stretch of underground road cost the convention authority $52 million and took the Boring Company about 18 months to complete. It marked the company's first completed public project, but many of its other proposed projects have hit dead ends.

"Many construction professionals will tell you that, you know, it's not the speed of the tunnel boring that you need to worry about. It's the environmental review. It's the bureaucratic procedure. It's the permits," says NBC News' Cyrus Farivar, who reported on some of the Boring Company's stalled projects.

Despite the challenges, cities such as Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, seem eager to partner with the Boring Company.

"We have now spoken with the Boring Company about building a 2.2-mile tunnel from our railroad station, called the Bright Line Station, which is in the middle of the city, all the way to the beach," Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis told CNBC. "And it would be two tunnels, one going east, one going west. And the business model is that you have Tesla vehicles with drivers that ferry you under the streets, through to the beach, completely eliminating all the traffic."

Trantalis said that rough estimates from the Boring Company put construction costs between $10 million and $15 million per mile, not including the cost of the stations. Details are still being worked out, but users of the tunnel would likely pay a fee for the service. The city is taking other bids for the project, but Trantalis said Fort Lauderdale already worked out a lot of the bureaucratic hang-ups that caused the proposed Boring Company projects to falter in other cities.

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Why Elon Musk's Boring Company is finding that traffic is tough to fix - CNBC

The top cryptocurrencies by market value, including bitcoin and ether, remain in the red on Monday, extending losses from the past week. Dogecoin is also down over 18% in the last seven days.

But a lot is still happening in the crypto world. From Jack Dorsey announcing that Square is building a bitcoin focused decentralized finance business to Elon Musk continuing to tweet about dogecoin, here are six things worth knowing in crypto from the past week.

In his testimony to the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell called for stricter regulations surrounding stablecoins, which are cryptocurrencies that are supposed to be pegged to reserve assets like gold or fiat currency.

"If they are going to be a significant part of the payments universe, which we don't think crypto assets will be, but stablecoins might be, then we need an appropriate regulatory framework, which frankly we don't have," Powell said.

Powell also shared his case for the creation of a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, in the U.S. If the U.S. had a digital currency, "you wouldn't need stablecoins. You wouldn't need cryptocurrencies," he said. "I think that's one of the stronger arguments in its favor."

On Friday, U.S. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said she'd meet with the President's Working Group on Financial Markets on Monday to discuss the role stablecoins could play in the financial system.

Jackson Palmer, the co-creator of the meme-inspired cryptocurrency dogecoin, made a rare return to Twitter on Wednesday with some harsh words about crypto in general.

In 2013, Palmer and Billy Markus created dogecoinas a jokebased on the "Doge" meme, which portrays a shiba inu dog. Theydidn't intendfor dogecoin to be taken seriously. Despite its recent surge in popularity, Markus and Palmer haven't profited, as theyboth sold outbefore dogecoin's meteoric rise.

"I am often asked if I will 'return to cryptocurrency' or begin regularly sharing my thoughts on the topic again. My answer is a wholehearted 'no,'" Palmertweeted on Wednesday.

In his Twitter thread, Palmer criticized those in power in the cryptocurrency space, saying that it is "controlled by a powerful cartel of wealthy figures" who "have evolved to incorporate many of the same institutions tied to the existing centralized financial systemthey supposedly set out to replace."

On Thursday, Jack Dorsey announced that his financial services company Square is creating a new business focused on "decentralized financial services" using bitcoin.

Decentralized finance, or DeFi, applications aim torecreate traditional financial systems, such as banks and exchanges,with cryptocurrency. Most run on the ethereum blockchain.

"Square is creating a new business (joining Seller, Cash App, & Tidal) focused on building an open developer platform with the sole goal of making it easy to create non-custodial, permissionless, and decentralized financial services," Dorsey tweeted. "Our primary focus is #bitcoin. Its name is TBD."

After this announcement, Cathie Wood's investment firm ARK Investbought another 225,937 shares of Square worth around $53.6 million, The Street reported.

On Friday, local Sarawak news outlet Dayak Daily posted a video of Malaysian police destroying 1,069 bitcoin mining rigs, and the video went viral.

In the video, Malaysian authorities used a steamroller to crush all the rigs, which were laid out in a parking lot at police headquarters. Assistant Commissioner of Police Hakemal Hawari told CNBC this came after miners allegedly stole $2 million worth of electricity siphoned from Sarawak Energy power lines.

Anthony Di Iorio, a co-founder of ethereum, told Bloomberg that he's leaving crypto. He plans to sell his softwarecompany Decentral Inc., which isfocused on blockchain technologies.

"It's got a risk profile that I am not too enthused about," Di Iorio said. "I don'tfeelnecessarily safe in this space. If I was focused on larger problems, I think I'd be safer."

Before starting Decentral in 2014, Di Iorio co-founded ethereum in 2013 with eight others, including Vitalik Buterin.

"I want to diversify to not being a crypto guy, but being a guy tackling complex problems," Di Iorio said."I will incorporate crypto when needed, but a lot of times, it's not. It's really a small percentage of what the world needs."

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From Square building a bitcoin DeFi business to Elon Musk's dogecoin tweets: 6 things that happened in crypto this past week - CNBC

A SpaceX autonomous booster recovery barge returns from a mission.

As Jeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson prepared to blast into space this month, Elon Musk looked to the sea, tweeting about a largely autonomous booster-recovering ship called A Shortfall of Gravitas. As this latest addition to a rapidly growingSpaceX navy makes waves online, it is time to look beyond the high-tech gloss of robot recovery vessels and consider the challenges and opportunities as private space companies build navies and head out to sea.

SpaceX is already a big maritime player, fielding a diverse, high-tech set of eight contracted vessels and two oil-rig platforms. A simple tug handles day-to-day barge-hauling duties, three ships handle payload fairing and Dragon capsule recovery work, while another helps with booster landings. Three autonomous barge-like craft, or self-propelled drone vessels, serve as booster landing platforms, while two oil rigs, or Starship floating spaceports, are under construction. In essence, this fleet is a foundation for moving SpaceX offshore, helping to push as much rocketry as possible out to sea.

Elon Musks modern take on Robert Truaxs massive Sea Dragon, a 60s-era concept for a giant re-usable sea-launched booster, is coming together. If the concept actually takes off, the opportunities for Americas shipbuilding community are fascinating. As SpaceX and other emerging space companies head out to sea, launching bigger and bigger rockets, they will need everything from barges to tugs to tankers. The demand signal may do a lot to enliven Americas gritty industrial waterfront, a politically powerful but moribund manufacturing sector that collapsed with global oil prices. But as space goes offshore, offering economic benefits at home, maritime space launching ventures will also be tempted to fully exploit the legal grey zones in international waters, adding complexity to increasingly busy and increasingly coveted swathes of waterwhere norms, operational practices and laws havent kept up with technological advances.

Space Navies will need security, logistical support and a host of other assistance at sea.

Pay Attention To The Space Navies

Oceangoing ships have always been an importantif underestimatedpart of Americas space program. In the early stages of space exploration, ships were used in virtually every stage of NASAs launch and recovery process. In 1965 alone, America deployed58 separate naval vesselsfor astronaut recovery missions (and some of those were dispatched multiple times), while operating a separate government-owned space fleet of 21 range ships, two experimental at-sea rocket-launchers and a specialized satellite communications ship. In addition, an armada of forgotten barges and other vessels did the logistical busy-work of securing launch areas or schlepping rocket boosters along Americas inland waterways, moving boosters and rockets down the Mississippi basin and over to testing and launching facilities on the Gulf Coast.

As Americas manned space mission contracted, Americas specialized space fleet dwindled down to a few recovery tugs and transport ships like the United Launch Alliances recently-renamed R/SRocket Shipand NASAs lowlyPegasusBarge.

With SpaceXs additions, along with Blue Origins future landing/recovery shipJacklyn, Americas revitalized space navy merits more attention than it gets. It is a fascinating blend of two powerful industries, workforces and political influencing networks that, normally, fight each other for resources.

American shipbuilders, beaten down by cuts in the offshore oil and gas industry, have been slow to realize that the space industry may offer an entirely new marketand potentially a quite profitable one. Associating shipbuilding with the space industry is a great thing for shipbuilders. Right now, far too many folks entering the manufacturing workforce consider shipbuilding to be a dirty, dangerous, low-tech and low-margin pursuit. Adding glamor and a high-tech SpaceX buzz brings motivated workers with it. And in Washington, shipbuildings powerful political machinery now has a way to coordinate with aerospace initiatives for resources rather than engage in a vicious fight for funding.

The new missions force technical innovation into the maritime as well. As rocket launches and recoveries are not exactly the best places for humans to be, automation is a critical requirement, pointing the way ahead for steady, stepwise improvement in maritime autonomy. SpaceXs autonomous barges have been quietly demonstrating the viability of autonomous maritime platforms for years, and A Shortfall of Gravitasmay well be the largest fully unmanned commercial vessel in operation today.

As SpaceX prepares for the deployment of marine spaceports, moving as much of the final rocket assembly and booster refurbishment offshore as possible, SpaceXs sea-borne space platforms will need additional supportcrew rotation vessels, security support, autonomous tankers and a host of other auxiliaries. As SpaceXs rockets get bigger and are launched farther away from shore, the recovery and support vessels will get bigger as well.

Naval stakeholders should take note of SpaceXs progress. Working in relatively simple, out-and-back relaysand developing according to a defined and measurable strategyAmericas space navy could well be the real proving-grounds for future unmanned naval systems, giving hard-chargers like SpaceX an avenue to feed the U.S. Navys strident but halting quest for viableand testedautonomous operational concepts, forward basing and resupply platforms.Unlike the U.S. Navy, SpaceX knows exactly what it wants out of its maritime armada and is marching through a strategic playbook far more efficiently than the government.

Curious recreational boaters arrive near the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft in the Gulf of ... [+] Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Fla. For the Wednesday, April 28, 2021.

International Waters Are Gonna Get Interesting

This is no grand PowerPoint vision of the future. Maritime spaceports are already here. Later this year, once SpaceX begins to commission the first of its two floating spaceports. Not that it all hasnt been done beforetwenty years ago, in an innovative multinational effort, a company called Sea Launch used Russian rockets and Liberian-flagged support vessels to send thirty-two commercial payloads into orbit from favorable sites near the equator. Though Sea Launch struggled to overcome the innate inefficiencies inherent in any Russian business collaboration, the basic business model was relatively solid, and the company only collapsed after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014.

China is also in the space navy race, having started launching rockets at sea in 2019.

Nobody really knows exactly what Elon Musk has in mind for his two floating spaceports. But we can guess. With fewer people at sea, fewer regulatory hassles and the ability to launch from anywhere, a sea-launch solution offers companies a big competitive edge. And once SpaceX has figured out how to launch and operate from the sea, the company can scale up and start trying to launch payloads from the equator, where the greater rotational speed of the Earth makes it easier for rockets to get into orbit, or, instead, marine launchers can tailor launch locations to meet the technical needs of various customers or those more challenging energydense payloads needed for planetary work.

There are a lot of potential benefits from going to sea. But the most immediate benefit for Elon Musk is that launching from international waters puts SpaceX beyond the reach of pesky U.S. regulators. Elon has made no secret that he has little time to waste on government compliance. By fielding floating spaceports, and then sending those spaceports out to international waters, a lot of potentially irksome and time-wasting regulatory problems disappear. And if parts of SpaceXs navy starts operating under flags of convenience, everything from U.S. taxes, basic American labor standards, worker safety and environmental compliance requirements can, by and large, just go away.

Take, for example, the Federal Aviation Administration. A longstanding feud between SpaceX and the FAA has been widely reported, and it is showing no signs of cooling off. In Texas, SpaceX and the FAA have jostled over everything from Starship testing to road closures, and the two parties are currently in a standoff over a launch tower that the FAA says is unapproved. It has to be irritating, knowing that, just twelve miles out to sea from the SpaceX company town of Boca Chica, Texas, the FAA suddenly has very little sway over what SpaceX does.

The emergence of space navies will also add to the burden of Americas already overtasked Coast Guard. Keeping the public from interfering with space-related activities is hard enough, and balancing SpaceXs desire for a public spectacle with public safety is a challenge. The friction between media hype and safety went on full display last August, when public boaters swarmed a returning Crew Dragon capsule even before the astronauts could be recovered.

Moving the whole show into more distant international waters presents even more complexity as a host of Russian trawlers, Chinese fishing boats and other interested observers will be even more eager to watch, interfere or just help out with critical autonomous operations.

With new fuels, new handling procedures and new operational expectations, a host of platform, ship and crew safety standards may need to be considered. As autonomous platforms take on increasingly complex and dangerous duties, the rules of the road as well as security concerns merit substantial Coast Guard input. And with accidents expected as part of the process, worker, crew and gear rescue and recovery contingencies need to be scrubbed, rescrubbed and scrubbed again.

Get Ready For Space Navies

Good engineering that skates the boundaries of physics, regulation and law is always a flirtation with failure. With the future of space heading to sea, it is time for all the various maritime stakeholders out there to anticipate all the operational, legal and regulatory challenges and get about fixing them. If this fundamental support work doesnt happen now, it wont happen later. Space navies will simply take on a life of their own. And, as space navies grow and head to sea, the race to build recovery vessels, salvage ships, security platforms, oilers and other craft will charge ahead, only to be abruptly stopped by some sort of ugly sector-defining disaster or Titanic-like catastrophe that can, with a little bit of forethought now, be avoided in the exciting years to come.

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Elon Musk And Other Space Players Are Building Up Navies As They Take Rocketry To Sea - Forbes

In arecenttweet, Tech mogul Elon Musk supportedcolonisationof Mars, saying population collapse is a big problem on Earth and as thepopulation of Mars is zero, it needs people.

Elon Musk tweeted, Im trying to set a good example!Population collapse is a much bigger problem than people realize and thats just for Earth.Mars has a great need for people, seeing as population is currently zero.Humans are the custodians of other life on Earth. Let us bring life to Mars!

Musk has been advocating Marscolonisationfor a long time, even with a set deadline and plan of action.The Tesla CEOs tweetwas in response to a post shared by a Twitter handle titled Tesla Owners of the East Bay.

Bringing the problem ofpopulation collapseon the fore,the fan clubhandle hadtweeted how it is upon earthto solve itwithreducing the birth ratein the world.

On the microblogging site,the club wrote,Population collapse could be upon us, but we appreciate that you good sir are still making tangible efforts to stave it off."Musk,who isfather of sevenchildren, said that he is trying to set a good example.

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Warning of 'population collapse' on Earth, Elon Musk calls for colonisation of Mars - WION

GRNHEIDE, Germany The vast pale gray factory with its own exit on the autobahn, surrounded by a pine forest east of Berlin, was supposed to be producing shiny new Teslas by now. Instead it has become a manifestation of what happens when Silicon Valley ambition collides with German procedure.

The $7 billion factory, which will supply the fast-growing European market for electric cars, is at least six months behind schedule, according to local officials. And Tesla may be even further away from producing cars in Germany because construction has only just begun on an adjacent factory that will supply batteries. Tesla declined to comment.

Teslas first major assembly plant in Europe has strong support from regional political leaders, but it has been held up by legal challenges from environmental groups, delays in the approval process by regional and national agencies, and the carmakers own revisions to the plan. Tesla must also find new homes for the sites current residents: a species of lizard, and the kind of snake that likes to eat it.

The slipping start date could prove costly to Tesla. It buys time for competing manufacturers like Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and Renault to try to establish their own expanding lineups of electric cars.

Teslas Model 3, which the company imports to Europe from China or the United States, is the top-selling electric vehicle on the continent. But Volkswagens electric models, like the ID.3 hatchback and ID.4 sport utility vehicle, introduced during the last year, have surpassed Tesla in combined sales, according to Matthias Schmidt, an independent analyst in Berlin who tracks electric car sales in Europe.

The European market is completely hot at the moment, Mr. Schmidt said. Definitely its an opportunity missed for Tesla and an opportunity gained for European manufacturers.

The history of American carmakers that have jumped the Atlantic and found a profitable home in Europe is a thin one. Dealing with troublesome labor unions and difficulties reading the preferences of local car buyers have made Europe a money pit for foreign carmakers.

General Motors in 2017 sold its European Opel and Vauxhall operations to the company now known as Stellantis after decades of losses. Ford of Europe has struggled to arrest a decline in market share, which was a meager 4 percent in May in the European Union. Even Toyota, with 6 percent of the European market, has been unable to match the popularity it enjoys in Asia and the United States.

Elon Musk, Teslas chief executive, appears to have chosen Germany for the companys third major assembly plant, which will be able to produce an estimated 500,000 vehicles a year, in part because he wanted to tap the expertise in engineering and manufacturing that has allowed Mercedes-Benz, Audi and BMW to dominate the global market for luxury passenger cars. Last year, he dressed up in a black vest, white shirt and wide-brimmed hat, the traditional dress of a German journeyman builder, for a celebration marking the completion of the factorys girder structure.

The get-up masked a more fundamental clash of cultures at work.

On the one hand you have the American enthusiasm for new ideas, for implementing them as quickly as possible, said Rolf Lindemann, county commissioner of Oder-Spree, the site of the factory. On the other side you have that German approach, to think things through all the way to their conclusion, see the consequences and to try to minimize risks to analyze the whole thing deeply.

The delay is nothing new for Tesla, which has a long history of overly optimistic timelines for autonomous driving, electric long-haul trucks and rocket launches.

But Mr. Musk may have gotten more German culture than he bargained for. Germany is a country of implacable environmental activists like Manuela Hoyer, a 61-year-old former union organizer who lives about six miles from the factory and is one of the few people who believe it can still be stopped before it produces its first car. That may be unrealistic, considering that the factory appears to be close to completion, with workers putting the finishing touches on the exterior and installing machinery inside.

When the second-richest man in the world shows up, they roll out the red carpet and give him everything he asks for, said Ms. Hoyer, who has been charged with trespassing on the site. (The charges were dropped.) That really is a crime, not just against the environment but also against the population here.

Ms. Hoyer, who is part of a small citizens group that keeps an eye on the Tesla project, speaks up at public hearings on the project, and is a fierce letter writer who sends missives to local officials or calls the police whenever she sees something at the site that she considers an infringement of local clean water laws or other ordinances.

Two other groups, the Nature Protection Federation of Brandenburg, known as NABU, and the Green League, have gone to court to force Tesla to relocate a population of sand lizards, roughly 10 inches in length and bright green and gray, that thrive in the sites sandy soil, as well as several 30-inch-long smooth adders. Both species are considered threatened under German and European law.

Complicating the operation, which is supposed to be completed by the end of the summer, the snakes prey on the lizards. The environmentalists say the lizards must be moved first so they can adjust to the new habitat and stand a fighting chance to survive once their predators arrive.

The environmental groups trying to sue Tesla say they do not expect to be able to stop the project. But they want to prevent Tesla from cutting corners, and they have so far succeeded in reducing the number of trees the company was allowed to cut down.

Not everything can be done at Tesla speed, said Christiane Schrder, the regional head of NABU.

Tesla has not yet had to deal in earnest with Germanys tough labor unions and laws that favor them. Birgit Dietze, the leader of the regional unit of the IG Metall union, which represents German autoworkers, said by email that it depends on the employees how much they ultimately wanted to organize. If they want to organize for good working conditions and push for a wage contract, we will support them.

Political leaders in the region are staunchly on Teslas side. They point to the more than 10,000 jobs that Tesla is expected to create, as well as thousands of additional jobs at suppliers, nearby retailers and other local businesses.

Jrg Steinbach, the minister in charge of economic affairs for the State of Brandenburg, helped persuade Tesla to build the factory in Grnheide and has staked his political future on the projects success. Of the projects opponents, he said, The noise that they make is out of proportion to their numbers.

But Mr. Steinbach also expressed some frustration with Teslas apparent indifference to local public opinion, grumbling that he often has to act as Teslas mouthpiece because the company makes little effort to communicate with the local community.

Ive said it more than once: Im not the press spokesman for Tesla, Mr. Steinbach said.

Some of the delays have been caused by Tesla, which has revised its building permit application at least 15 times, officials said, prompting the need for new temporary approvals.

Whenever it opens, the assembly plant is already a massive structure. An aerial tour by local drone operators shows a finished roof with rows of skylights and mushroom-shaped ventilation pipes. At ground level, loading bays stand ready to receive components and raw materials.

Arne Christiani, the mayor of Grnheide, sees the factory as a chance to revive an area that was once part of East Germany and that has suffered since the reunification of Germany in 1990, when young people migrated west in search of more excitement and opportunity.

Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the biggest employers in the area was a facility where the Stasi secret police steamed open and read mail that East Germans received from friends and family in the West. The site where the Tesla factory stands was used by East German soldiers preparing to fight NATO; in fact, the property was cleared of unexploded munitions before construction could begin.

Mr. Christiani dismisses opponents of the site as a small but vocal minority dominated by affluent newcomers an accusation Ms. Hoyer rejects. The mayor expresses hope that the factory will get even bigger, and draw other businesses to the region.

There are opportunities we never would have talked about two years ago, Mr. Christiani said.

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Teslas Berlin Factory Runs Into Activists, Red Tape and Lizards - The New York Times

Apple had launched AirTag- a small tracking device to locate lost items, this year.

In an interesting turn of events, a YouTuber gifted one of Apples newly launched products, an AirTag, to Apples CEO Tim Cook. Not only him, but he also sent another to Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The YouTuber then made a video to narrate what happened when he sent AirTags to Cook, Musk and North Korea. Apple had launched AirTag- a small tracking device to locate lost items, this year. The device can be used tied to a purse, or you can even attach it to your dogs collar. However, some people like to use things in an unconventional way and send it to powerful people.

As per the 9to5Mac report, a YouTuber, who runs the channel Megalang, sent one AirTag to Tim Cook and another to Tesla CEO Elon Musk. He seemed to be on a gifting spree, so he sent one AirTag to North Korea as well. The AirTags were shipped from Frankfurt in Germany and the YouTuber was able to locate the devices using Fine My Network. He could track the devices when they reached the DHL facilities, airports and left for different countries

The YouTuber revealed in his video that the AirTag which was sent to Tim Cook stayed at Apple Park in Cupertino for six weeks before it was sent back to the location from where he was sent. Not just the device, Apple had also sent a letter addressed to the YouTuber along with the device.

The letter read:

Dear Jonathan,

Thank you for sharing about your project for Apple AirTags. Were delighted to hear about creative uses for AirTags and how they can improve our customers lives. As you can imagine, Mr Cook receives hundreds of letters each month from customers like yourself. Unfortunately, he is unable to respond to every request. But we hope you continue to enjoy your AirTag as it returns from its unique journey across the world!

It was also reported that the AirTag sent to Elon Musk had reached SpaceX headquarters and remained there for two weeks. However, Tesla wasnt as impressed with the YouTuber as Apple was, so there was no letter for Jonathan from Musk. The AirTag was later spotted at a recycling centre in Castaic, California. The AirTag sent to North Korea never made it to the Kim Jong-un-led country. It was mistakenly shipped to South Korea, but the Find My Network app couldnt detect the exact locations to local regulations.

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YouTuber sends AirTag to Tim Cook, Elon Musk and North Korea, here is what happened next - India Today

Joan Lappin| Sarasota Herald-Tribune

This week, Amazon founderJeff Bezos took a 9-minute joyride into space on a vertically launched Blue Origin rocket named New Shepard that took off from and landed in a field in Texas. This followed Sir Richard Bransons space trip last week on a Virgin Galactic flight that reached an altitude of 52 miles above the earth, just on the edge of space. Both flights carried just four passengers in a precursor to commercial suborbital flight. The Blue Origin flight reached a momentary altitude of 59 miles above the earth, just sufficient to qualify its crew as astronauts.

The broadcast of the New Shepard launch was a bit anticlimactic. Driving to the launch pad took as long as the flight. Several minutes were spent climbing the gantry to reach the boarding level. Wally Funk, now 82, was the only female crew member. She is a former NASA astronaut who never got to fly in the Apollo program simply because she was a woman. She couldnt stop smiling over her luck that Bezos had chosen her to be there at all. Then there was a 15-minute countdown plus an unexplained hold for 7.5 minutes until the rocket finally ignited and away they went.

No sooner than the altimeter reported apogee, New Shepard began to display its descent. Before you could drink your coffee, the spaceship was on its way back down to earth and had landed. It was happily uneventful. What was unique was that it was a flight without a pilot on board, flown on a rocket that had been reused 15 times. Reusing rockets is a must for economical space travel.

As I wrote last week, Soviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin was the first human to actually reach space in the Soviet spacecraft Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. Gagarins low earth orbit (LEO) mission lasted 1 hour, 48 minutes and reached 91 nautical miles as he orbited the Earth. He repeatedly asked for landing instructions and got no reply because Soviet communications systems were too primitive to hear him. On reentry, as his module descended to 26,000 feet, Gagarin was ejected. He (not his capsule) parachuted into a field near a farmer and her granddaughter.

As he told it: The citizens were frightened to see me in my spacesuit and the parachute dragging alongside … I told them dont be afraid. I am a Soviet citizen like you, who has descended from space, and I must find a telephone to call Moscow. It was Yuri, not ET, who needed to phone home.

Alan Shepards 1961 space flight followed that of Gagarin by less than a month. Shepards upward trajectory in his Mercury capsule named Freedom 7 lasted 5 minutes: 11 seconds to a maximum height of 116 miles before his descent began. Just like the New Shepard, a drogue deployed at 22,000 feet followed by a main parachute at 10,000 feet for landing. Freedom 7 touched down in the Atlantic Ocean just 4 miles from the principal recovery ship, and in contact with the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Lake Champlain. Christopher C. Kraft, the well-known Flight Director at Cape Canaveral, had designed a control center to enable constant communication to monitor every aspect of those NASA flights. Thats why within 20 minutes of his landing, Shepard was retrieved from the Atlantic Ocean.

Thus far, neither Branson nor Bezos has truly shown they can transport people to the moon or beyond. Only Elon Musks Space X has already ferried men and supplies to the International Space Station and has received billions in contracts from NASA making it appear to be the real deal in this race to space.

Joan Lappin CFA has been called an investment guru by Business Week and a top manager by the Wall Street Journal. The Sarasota resident founded Gramercy Capital Management, a registered investment adviser, in 1986. Email her atJLappincfa@gmail.com. Follow her on twitter: @joanlappin. Her past columns appear atheraldtribune.com/business/columns.

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DEDUCED RECKONING: Elon Musk is the real deal in race to space - Sarasota Herald-Tribune

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A 22-year-old British man has been arrested in Spain at the request of the United States after the Justice Department filed multiple charges alleging he was involved in the hacking of several high-profile figures' social media accounts last year, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

The feds say Joseph O'Conner not only took part in the scheme that affected 130 Twitter users, he also took over victims' TikTok and Snapchat accounts, according to a press release announcing his arrest.

TWITTER BITCOIN HACK: LIST OF AFFECTED ACCOUNTS INCLUDES ELON MUSK, BILL GATES

O'Conner faces 10 federal charges, including two counts each of cyberstalking, intentionally accessing a computer without authorization and obtaining information from a protected computer, and making extortive communications.

The incident that occurred on July 15, 2020 involved a spear-phishing attack wherein hackers were able to break into Twitter's internal systems and gain access to user accounts. In addition to business titans such as Bezos and Musk, scammers also hit politicians including former President Barack Obama and then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, along with company accounts for Apple, Coinbase and other firms linked to cryptocurrencies.

The hackers sent out tweets from the compromised accounts, attempting to solicit the victims' followers into sending Bitcoin to a specific address (Fox News)

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Once access was gained, the hackers sent out tweets from the compromised accounts, attempting to solicit the victims' followers into sending Bitcoin to a specific address. All told, the perpetrators collected $110,000 in irreversible payments from people who were deceived by the fraud.

O'Conner is the fourth person who has been charged in connection with the case.

THREE CHARGED IN BIT-CON HACK OF FAMOUS TWITTER USERS INCLUDING OBAMA, GATES, MUSK

A few weeks following the attack last year, 17-year-old Graham Ivan Clark was hit with dozens of charges by Florida's 13th District state attorney, Andrew Warren, who said that the teen was the mastermind behind the scam. In March, Clark pleaded guilty to multiple charges and was sentenced to three years in prison.

The U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California charged 19-year-old Mason Sheppard of the United Kingdom with "conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and the intentional access of a protected computer" in connection to the scheme, and also charged 22-year-old Nima Fazeli with aiding and abetting the intentional access of a protected computer.

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Suspect in Twitter hack of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, other leaders and tech companies arrested - Fox Business

The pace of environmental pressure from voters, governments and shareholders has gatecrashed any boards ability to have unfettered decision making about profiting from fossil fuels.

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Who would have anticipated even two years ago that in the space of a month this year shareholders would mount something of a coup at three of the worlds biggest oil companies.

At Americas $350 billion giant ExxonMobil, activist investors ousted three directors deemed out of step with necessary climate action and installed green-leaning replacements. The same day Chevron shareholders defied the board and supported demands for the company to take account of its customers carbon emissions footprint.

In Europe, a Dutch court ruled in favour of environmental groups in forcing Shell to commit to a vastly stronger decarbonisation plan by 2030.

BHP has talked up the earnings potential of its shrinking oil and gas division, but may be looking to sell out.

BHP can retain these assets, some of which are in Australia but most of which are in the US, until they are naturally depleted or they can sell them (or demerge them) over the next couple of years.

There are some shareholders who are happy for the Big Australian to be in oil - but an increasing number are not.

If BHP waits ten years the value of the oil and gas assets will have diminished. Already there are question marks about how many buyers would be capable of raising say $15 billion to invest in the Gulf of Mexico oil fields.

Arguably this decision should have been made five years ago when BHP was facing the blowtorch from activist shareholder Elliott which was pushing the sale of oil and gas.

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BHP has the luxury of having a diversified mix of commodities and an earnings engine room in iron ore.

This will provide it some cover from environmental activism for a while at least. The gravity defying price of iron ore and the river of dividends that it produces will also keep shareholders rich and happy - and possibly distracted.

Unlike the large pure play oil and gas companies, BHP can sell these assets rather than being forced to grapple with an expensive and technologically difficult transition to reduce carbonisation.

But it is impossible to ignore the fact that there is a growing list of institutional shareholders that are unable or unwilling to invest in a company with fossil fuel assets.

For its part, BHP is plugging away in its efforts to reduce emissions and establish some green credentials. Its chairman Ken MacKenzie told retail investors a few months back that BHP is uniquely placed to support the decarbonisation challenge.

The oversized announcement on BHP supplying nickel to Tesla contained no detail - the size and value of the contract absent from the statement. But it said plenty about the resources heavyweights confidence in the deal generating long-term value.

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BHP looks to Elon Musk to enhance its environmental credentials - The Sydney Morning Herald

American electric vehicle maker Tesla may set up manufacturing unit in India if it first succeeds with imported vehicles in the country, according to company CEO Elon Musk. He, however, said at present import duties in India are "the highest in the world" and is hoping for "at least a temporary tariff relief for electric vehicles".

Interacting on twitter with followers who asked him to launch Tesla cars in India Musk said, "We want to do so, but import duties are the highest in the world by far of any large country!"

Currently, India imposes 100 per cent import duty on fully imported cars with CIF (Cost, Insurance and Freight) value more than USD 40,000 and 60 per cent on those costing less than the amount.

He, however, said, "We are hopeful that there will be at least a temporary tariff relief for electric vehicles. That would be much appreciated."

Asked by a follower if Tesla could start with local assembly in India, Musk said, "If Tesla is able to succeed with imported vehicles, then a factory in India is quite likely."

A senior government official on Friday had said Tesla had asked for reduction in import duty.

Recently, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari had said Tesla has a golden opportunity to set up its manufacturing facility in India given the country's thrust on e-vehicles.

Tesla is already sourcing various auto components from Indian automakers and setting up base here would be economically viable for it, the road transport and highways minister had said.

In February this year, Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa had claimed that Tesla would set up its manufacturing unit in the state.

The company has registered Tesla India Motors and Energy Pvt Ltd with Registrar of Companies, Bengaluru. RKL

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Elon Musk expects at least 'temporary relief' for EVs in India in terms of import duty relaxation - ETEnergyworld.com