Prakirti

Elon Musk in new interview on @SpaceXSI's data center site in Memphis: "I insist on doing some of the work myself manually. I've pulled power cables the size of an anaconda. I've done the fiber optic cabling; I try to do at least a little bit of everything so I'm not numb to the pain of the people who are actually doing it. It's not as though I'm sitting in an office and someone has to come to me. I'm walking the floor asking them questions actively." (via 33rd Annual Baron Investment Conference today in NYC)

Ron Baron asked Elon Musk how many CEOs live on site in an Airstream and work hands-on with everyone. MUSK: “Airstreams are actually pretty nice... It’s parked right next to the power plant.” “We built this power plant that’s producing over a gigawatt... in about a year, as opposed to normally about five years.” “There is no upstairs.” He walks the entire site up to five times a day. He’s pulled power cables “the size of an anaconda,” run fiber, wired switches, and worked on the power plant software. “I try to do at least a little bit of everything, so that I’m not numb to the pain of the people who are actually doing it.” “It’s not as though I’m sitting in an office and somebody has to come to me. I’m walking the floor, asking them questions actively.” There’s a reason SpaceX is winning the compute race.

SpaceX’s Arizona data center, per a county supervisor: “We could be reducing property taxes across the board in Cochise County, the entire county, by 20%” Frank Antenori, whose district includes the site, brought up the county’s tax math during a live Q&A: “Here’s just something to just chew on. Arizona has an expenditure limit requirement that is placed on counties. If we exceed that expenditure, we have to rebate back to the taxpayers a certain amount.” “So, if we’re receiving revenue in from SpaceX, by law, we have to offset that to the taxpayers. We have the potential to reduce, based on the projected revenue they’re creating, as much as 20%.” “Let me just say it again. We could be reducing property taxes across the board in Cochise County, the entire county, by 20% to offset for the revenue here, because we can’t spend all that money. So, we have to give that money back to the taxpayers. The law says we have to.” “So, you could see a potential significant impact to local property taxes. What that is, I don’t know. We’re going to have to do the math on it. But the law, if we have this large increase in property tax revenue, we have to balance those rates. So that will reduce dramatically the property tax burden of every resident in the county.” “The construction sales tax, which also is the TPT, the transaction privilege tax, the retail tax, and the jail excise tax. So that will be part of the construction tax. We could literally use that money to pay the jail off in 2 to 3 years, as opposed to the 13 to 20 years.” “So this could be a revenue to eliminate the half-cent sales tax in 2 to 3 years. We can get rid of that half-cent sales tax.”

Falcon 9’s first stage lands on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship

More than a dozen flight tests and years of development, with countless hours worked by SpaceX engineers and technicians, all come down to this: the first orbital Starship launch carrying advanced Starlink satellites bound for space. Watch “Go For Orbit” and experience the moments behind flying the most ambitious Starship mission yet

ELON MUSK: “The stock market is a very strange thing. It's kind of like Warren Buffett's sort of analogy, is the stock market's like having someone stand at the edge of your house and yell prices to buy or sell your house every day. And sometimes they take their meds and sometimes they don't. So sometimes the person yelling the price of your house is having a good day and sometimes it's having a bad day. But it's still the same house. You're like, it's literally still the same house. So Tesla stock goes up and it goes down, but actually it's still the same company. It's just people's perception of the future. I guess it's just very emotional.”

BREAKING: Tesla beats Mercedes-Benz and BMW to stay No. 1 in South Korea’s imported car market for the 9th straight month. 🇰🇷 October registrations surged 110.7% year over year to 9,165. Model Y Premium led all imports.🥇

The governor-elect of Texas, Gina Hinojosa, has explicitly said that all currently permitted datacenters in Texas will be allowed to finish construction. This essentially covers all of the 2027 and likely well into 2028. She is going to pass laws that ensure that all *newly* permitted datacenters going forward for delivery in 2028/2029 will pay taxes, commit to no increase in power prices for consumers, don’t impact water availability for people, be constructed with union labor and give “Texans a seat at the table.” Sounds reasonable. She doesn’t want to lose a lot of good blue collar jobs and property taxes for small towns in rural Texas. Datacenter commentary starts at 6:30 in this interview. Also attaching her official campaign position from her website in the next post. Sidenote: After watching a bunch of her speeches and interviews, I do think she is a political talent and probably has a future in national politics. youtu.be/D-T6H3b8ZeE?is=mEWu…

BREAKING: Starlink just brought high-speed internet to a clinic serving 10 remote islands in Indonesia. 🇮🇩 Pangkep’s local government equipped Sailus Health Center with Starlink, helping staff send patient referrals online and coordinate care across the islands.

Grok @bot is calling a dentist for me to see if they take my insurance. Incredible. This feels amazing.

Top of the Democratic agenda on day 1 needs to be a pause on advanced AI development, regulation of this out of control industry, and a ban on artificial superintelligence.