Elon Musk certainly has a lot of ideas. Since making a fortune from PayPal in the original dotcom boom, he’s taken over Tesla, pushing forward production of electric cars, and founded SpaceX, the rocket company that now flies plenty of NASA payloads.
Two newer companies — the Boring Company, focused on digging holes for transit tunnels, and NeuraLink, which is developing brain-computer interfaces — also occupy his time. Then there’s the Hyperloop, the high-speed land travel design he’s encouraged others to develop. Somehow, this brash billionaire still has time to get himself into trouble on Twitter.
After a report by The Spectator that “Adrian Dittmann” is not an Elon Musk alt account, X has suspended the reporter’s account and two researchers who say they found the information and blocked linking to either article.
This, even after Musk replied to the original tweet, saying “I am Adrian Dittmann. It’s time the world knew.”
The Spectator argues that its analysis of Dittmann’s online presence shows that rather than being an invention of Elon Musk’s, Dittmann is part of a family that has been living and investing in Fiji since 2012.
You can see the Dittmann family in a YouTube video in which they’re greeted by Fiji’s President.
[The Spectator World]
Musk posted last night that the platform’s algorithm will soon “promote more informational/entertaining content” in order to “maximize unregretted user-seconds.”
He added in a separate post that X is working on ways to “adjust the content feed dynamically.”
A video captured Musk with his son at a party held by President-elect Donald Trump. Musk has been staying in a cottage on Trump’s property since around Election Day, according to The New York Times.
The New York Post reports that the President-elect told the outlet he’s “always been in favor of the visas,” which he had heavily restricted and criticized during his first term.
His comments come as Elon Musk has been arguing with — and removing the verification check of — far-right Trump supporters who have been criticizing his and Vivek Ramaswamy’s support of the visas.
Following a $6 billion investment round announced in June, Elon Musk’s AI company has announced a new round of funding.
Other than the usual investors, the note also mentions participation from “strategic investors” Nvidia and AMD, as it also says xAI will double the size of its AI computer, Colossus, to a total of 200k Nvidia Hopper GPUs to power Grok, Aurora, and other efforts.
[x.ai]
The New York Times says president Musk “was not initially expected to be part of the dinner but joined as it was underway.” Images originally shared on a now deleted Instagram story from a person who is reportedly “at Mar-a-lago a lot,” described the scene as follows:
“At 8:30 PM Musk appears out of nowhere and sits himself down and Bezos looks completely caught off guard and uncomfortable like he had been cock-blocked... The tension between Musk and Bezos known rivals is palpable as they do their best to engage politely but clearly have no love for each other...”
Per CNN. I wonder if Bezos knew Musk would be there?
Bezos is the latest in a parade of tech executives who want to be Donald Trump’s friend.
Can privately owned space stations replace the ISS? And what becomes of the research?
I’m at The New York Times DealBook Summit, where OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently got off stage with Andrew Ross Sorkin. Some highlights:
- He doesn’t think Elon Musk will wield his new political power against business rivals: “It would go so deeply against the values I believe he holds very dear to himself.”
- His disagreement with my view that OpenAI and Microsoft are in the process of breaking up: “I don’t think we’re disentangling.”
You can watch the full interview on YouTube.
A federal judge said Friday that sanctioning Musk was unnecessary “because he already agreed to reimburse the SEC $2,923 to cover airfare for the trio of agency lawyers he stood up in Los Angeles in September,” Bloomberg writes.
The agency sought to sanction him after he ditched a testimony over his Twitter acquisition to watch a SpaceX launch.
Emails in Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI expose the startup’s rocky origins.
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones claimed during a live X session that Elon Musk will be “very involved” in helping thwart The Onion’s purchase of Infowars, according to Mother Jones.
Whether or not that’s true, it’s an excuse to remember that Musk once wanted to buy The Onion, didn’t, then funded Thud, a satirical media company, with Onion alums. (He backed out, reportedly because he worried about being targeted by the satire.)
The Elon Musk-run social media company is trying to stop a California law that would require platforms to block “materially deceptive” election content during set periods before and after voting, Bloomberg reports. X is arguing the law violates the First Amendment, pointing to “a long history” of Constitutional protections for critiques of government “that includes tolerance for potentially false speech made in the context of such criticisms.”
According to The New York Times, the session between Musk and Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani was described by Iranian officials as “a discussion of how to defuse tensions between Iran and the United States.”
Musk will co-lead the “Department of Government Efficiency” under president-elect Donald Trump’s administration.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate, which X sued for allegedly driving away advertisers, says it’s leaving the platform ahead of its terms of service changes. While that lawsuit was dismissed, CCDH says X’s new terms will “ensure that future legal assaults are presided over by judges [Elon Musk] feels will be on his side,” by bringing disputes to his preferred court.
[Center for Countering Digital Hate | CCDH]
What Elon Musk really wants from a Trump presidency.
Elon Musk’s xAI has a rapidly growing supercomputer that other AI companies are worried about, The Information reports. Hopefully, they also find out how the facility affects the local environment.
[The Information]
Our colleagues at New York break down the gleefully corrupt dealmaking already taking place at Trump’s club, with this tremendous detail:
The billionaire X and Tesla owner is around so much he’s even got his own intro music. “I don’t know if you know this, but Trump DJs Mar-a-Lago from his iPad,” says Melissa Rein Lively, another frequent presence at the club these days. “So he has a walk-on song for Elon Musk, which is ‘Space Oddity.’”
David Bowie would hate this, but he’d hate the reality of what’s happening down there even more:
“It’s a dinner club, and you only go when Trump is there. You probably go once a week for four months in a season. You do that for four years, do the math — you’re spending $18,000 a meal to just get in there. It’s the most expensive meal you’re going to have, but is it worth it if your company gets a $2 billion deal from the federal government? It’s the best money you ever spent.”
It’s going to be a long four years.
[Intelligencer]
The news outlet says it will no longer post on any official Guardian accounts:
This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism. The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.
[The Guardian]
