This Week in Musk World

The chart to the left is of Q1 vehicle production and deliveries year-over-year for Tesla. Quite impressive!  Over the long term such growth will be difficult to maintain but in the short-term as Tesla enters a market like Germany, for example, they quickly become one of the main players.

Or like in China.

Domestically some upgrades to Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self-Driving are now available. Upgrades Elon Musk has classified as "epic". The International upgrades will be available soon. As autopilot continues to be more studied I would expect fairly frequent fine-tuning updates to make the experience smoother and smoother. 

All the recent updates weren't safety or performance related though. TeslAtari was also in the latest release. Playing Asteroids while waiting in the parking lot while the girlfriend shops - cool!

Interesting profile on what gives Elon Musk his Silicon Valley "super powers".

In space news - Israel became just the seventh nation to put a spacecraft into the Moon's orbit. On Thursday they will attempt to be just the fourth nation to land a craft of the surface of the moon. All this was made possible because the Beresheet craft was launched on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. 

Meanwhile a federal judge wants Musk and the SEC to put their "reasonableness pants on" when it comes to resolving issues over some of Musk's Tweets. The judge is giving the parties two weeks to adhere to his admonishments.

I guess nothing says 2019 like a federal case over the accuracy of someone's Tweets.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Nike's favorability drops across all demographics after Kaepernick ad campaign

- Sleepy McTinyBrain would also be a good fantasy football team name

- This is bullshit and just another reason why the NCAA should be disbanded

- Cool - software engineer hacks knitting machine to create massive stellar map

- Theater of the absurd definitely took over the Kavanaugh Senate hearings. Corey Booker is a clown.

- 10 things you may not know about Tesla Motors (and no I haven't watched or listened to Elon Musk on Joe Rogan's podcast yet)

- For sure I thought this was from The Onion but no - "Beto" O'Rourke's campaign really did ask a VFW to take down their American flags before a rally. In Texas! He's toast. I guess his 15 minutes are all but over.

Tesla Model 3

Tesla Unveils Model 3 from Tesla Motors on Vimeo.

Very cool! (But still over a year away.)

Never saw so many middle-age white guys in a crowd outside of a Rush concert.