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Tesla’s cease and desist letter has Dan O’Dowd calling Elon Musk names
Tesla’s cease and desist letter to The Dawn Project, has Dan O’Dowd resorting to childish antics and targeting a Tesla customer. Tesla’s cease and desist letter demanded that the defamatory ad be removed. Tesla also demanded that the anti-Full Self-Driving campaign be immediately halted. O’Dowd isn’t taking the letter too well as he’s sharing his thoughts about the situation on Twitter.
O’Dowd’s response included several childish antics such as name calling, an unhealthy focus on one of Tesla’s customers, Elon Musk, and Elon’s following.
Please improve your own product instead of falsely caiming that other‘s are dangerous!
— Magnus Maximus (@marky110) August 25, 2022
In the tweet promoting The Dawn Project, O’Dowd included a meme depicting Elon Musk tweeting “It never happened,” while what looked to be a young adult is tied up, gagged, and being held down by two villainous goons.
The link that O’Dowd tweeted is The Dawn Project’s response to Tesla’s cease and desist letter. The letter is full of immature name calling such as alluding to Elon Musk as “another crybaby hiding behind his lawyer’s skirt,” and being obsessed with O’Dowd who paints himself as a hero for campaigning against FSD. O’Dowd claimed that it appeared to him that Elon Musk wrote the letter mocking him for running for the U.S. Senate with the goal of stopping FSD.
The letter goes on to target a Tesla customer and FSD Beta Tester, Omar Qazi, who has also been the target of many “$TSLAQ” supporters. Omar is a Tesla FSD Beta tester and an avid supporter of Tesla. He’s also a friend of mine in the Tesla community.
O’Dowd previously mentioned Omar saying that he endorses the deployment of “AI killing machines, even if they are trying to kill our kids.” Although Omar does support Tesla and Tesla’s FSD Beta, the claim that Tesla’s FSD Beta is an AI-killing machine that is trying to kill children is entirely false.
In the response to Tesla’s cease and desist letter, O’Dowd wrote:
“It appears you are talking about unsolicited scrutiny by your infamously virulent band of fanboy Tesla stockholders, led by you and your apparent agent, @WholeMarsBlog, and motivated by greed. They immediately and widely promulgate baseless accusations against those who say anything negative about Tesla or Elon Musk.”
He also called Omar Elon Musk’s top attack dog on Twitter Although Tesla sent a cease and desist letter, O’Dowd said that Elon Musk’s plan is to use his supporters to attack O’Dowd online and hinted that perhaps Elon Musk couldn’t afford an attorney.
🦇 💩 crazy
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 25, 2022
“Master Scammer Musk’s game plan: if the fanboys’ vile attacks don’t scare off a critic he threatens them with endless baseless litigation which will cost them their house even if they win. Fortunately, I can afford not to be intimidated by these threats.”
“Tesla Full Self-Driving software has no future. It is the most incompetently designed, implemented, and tested commercial software I have ever seen. All it does is take a perfectly good Tesla car and make it occasionally try to kill the driver, the passengers, and innocent bystanders.”
“I dare you to come out and defend this technology.”
The irony of all of this is that O’Dowd is also the CEO of Green Hills Software which is developing self-driving software. O’Dowd apologized for misleading people earlier this month about FSD. In his tweet, he said that he relied on reports from others that he did not verify. I responded to this tweet with a question that O’Dowd still hasn’t answered.
https://twitter.com/JohnnaCrider1/status/1558454356013469698
My question was rhetorical, but the point remains. He invested millions of dollars in an anti-FSD campaign before even trying it. Instead, he was relying on misinformation.
And according to his tweet, he only experienced it for 20 hours. It should be noted that FSD is still in beta and with O’Dowd trying to be a direct competitor of Tesla’s FSD software, it’s only natural for him to be intimidated by it.
Personally, I think O’Dowd should retire his anti-Tesla campaign and apologize to Elon Musk, Omar Qazi, and Tesla’s shareholders, customers, and employees who work hard to make a product dedicated to saving lives.
Note: Johnna is a Tesla shareholder and supports its mission.
Your feedback is important. If you have any comments, or concerns, or see a typo, you can email me at johnna@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @JohnnaCrider1
Elon Musk
Elon Musk spotlights the Starlink rescue that got through where no cell tower could
Elon Musk spotlighted how Starlink helped rescuers reach five people stranded in Kazakhstan’s snowy mountains.
Elon Musk put a spotlight on a mountain rescue in eastern Kazakhstan on Sunday, writing “Starlink saves lives” in response to a post describing how SpaceX’s satellite internet helped five stranded people reach emergency crews.
The post from DogeDesigner, which had been viewed more than 500,000 times by Sunday afternoon, said the group’s SUV broke down about 15 kilometers from the village of Kystau Kurchum in an area with no usable mobile network. Starlink carried their call for help and kept them in contact with rescuers, who used the connection to locate them.
The rescue itself took place in October. Local outlet YK.kz reported on October 22 that Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Emergency Situations responded to the breakdown in the Kurchum district of East Kazakhstan region and noted that the group stayed in touch through Starlink. Rescuers covered roughly 100 kilometers in a Trekol, a low pressure tire vehicle built for snow and marshland, then escorted the disabled SUV back to Kystau Kurchum. Nobody needed medical attention.
Starlink saves lives
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 8, 2026
Conditions in the region were rough at the time. Kazakh broadcaster Channel 7 identified the five as hunters caught in a snow trap and said satellite communication allowed rescuers to pinpoint where they were. A spokesperson for the East Kazakhstan emergency department said a storm warning was in effect and urged residents not to leave populated areas unless necessary. The same weather stranded seven utility workers repairing power lines in the nearby Kuygan rural district, according to Tengrinews.
Kazakhstan has been one of Starlink’s more notable markets in Central Asia. Teslarati reported in 2024 that Starlink was serving 1,731 of the country’s 1,879 schools, with the country’s Education Minister saying it had set a new standard for internet service in schools.
Rescue stories like this one have followed Starlink for years, usually in places where ground networks fail or never existed in the first place. Then Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis called Starlink a “game changer” for search and rescue crews during Hurricane Milton, and SpaceX and T-Mobile switched on Starlink Direct to Cell in North Carolina to push emergency alerts to phones after Hurricane Helene.
The next target is dead zones for people who do not carry a dish at all. SpaceX is building out Starlink Mobile and earlier this week selected Qualcomm to supply core infrastructure for a planned terrestrial 5G network in the United States, which it intends to pair with its next generation satellite constellation.
Sunday’s post is at least the third time Musk has written “Starlink saves lives” on X this week, following identical posts on November 5 and November 7.
SpaceX plans to attempt what will be a defining moment in rocket reusability on Starship Flight 15.
As Elon Musk announced in a recent X post, SpaceX will attempt to catch both the Super Heavy Booster and the Starship upper stage during the upcoming orbital flight. If successful, it will mark the first time that all parts of an orbital rocket return to Earth intact, a breakthrough Musk has called essential to making life multiplanetary.
SpaceX will attempt to catch both the Super Heavy booster and Starship on the upcoming flight.
If both are successful, it will mark the first time that all parts of an orbital rocket return to Earth intact.
This is the critical breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2026
Previous flights have demonstrated the tower-catch technique with Super Heavy. SpaceX has successfully caught V1 boosters three times (on Flights 5, 7, and 8), with some even reflown. The Ship upper stage has never been caught.
Returning from orbital velocity after deploying payload makes it a significantly harder challenge due to higher energy, heat loads, and the need for precise belly-flop reentry, a flip maneuver, and a final landing burn to settle between the Mechazilla tower’s chopstick arms.
Flight 15, using Booster 22 and Ship 42 (both Block 3 vehicles), is targeted for no earlier than Friday, November 13, 2026, from Orbital Launch Pad 2 at Starbase, Texas. The 75-minute window opens at 4:45 p.m. CT, pending regulatory approval. After hot staging and separation, the booster is planned to return for a catch roughly 6 minutes and 35 seconds after liftoff.
The Ship will insert into a roughly 275 km orbit, deploy 26 advanced Starlink V3 satellites, complete about 14 orbits over more than 22 hours, and—if systems check out—perform a deorbit burn, reentry, flip, and landing burn for a tower catch at approximately T+22 hours 32 minutes.
SpaceX confirms Starship 15 launch window with massive ambitions
A simulation shown during SpaceX’s October earnings call depicted the Ship descending in a belly-flop attitude, flipping upright with a short engine burn, and being captured by the arms:
From simulation to reality
SpaceX is just ONE WEEK away from attempting its most ambitious Starship catch yet https://t.co/nHrxSX6DSz
— X Freeze (@XFreeze) November 6, 2026
Contingency splashdown zones exist in the Gulf of Mexico (booster) and Pacific (Ship) if a catch is not viable. SpaceX has stressed rigorous health checks before committing the Ship to a return-to-launch-site trajectory.
Musk has described the odds of success on this first dual-catch attempt as “more likely than not,” noting a steady stream of additional flights is already scheduled if needed. Full recovery would enable rapid inspection, refurbishment, and reflight—slashing costs and supporting the high launch cadence required for Starlink expansion, lunar missions, and eventual Mars settlement.
As Musk put it, this is “the critical breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary.”
Tesla Cybercab is going to get some pretty substantial updates, including improvements to efficiency and a new color.
CEO Elon Musk said in a post on X on Saturday that Tesla would be working to refine the Cybercab even more, following the announcement during the week that the company would eliminate the Cybertruck lines within Giga Texas for more Cybercab manufacturing capacity.
“There are efficiency improvements coming that will allow for a 40kWh Cybercab pack,” Musk posted on X. “We will make this in liquid silver, so the colors are not too monotonous.”
There are efficiency improvements coming that will allow for a 40kWh Cybercab pack. We will make this in liquid silver, so the colors are not too monotonous.
The biggest thing most people fail to understand is that there are a very limited number of smart, dedicated people! They can only do so many things.
If we have to maintain a complex production line, supply chain and allocate engineering for Cybertruck, we can’t use those people or factory space and machinery for scaling Cybercab, which is the vehicle that will PROFOUNDLY transform the world of terrestrial transport!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 7, 2026
A new, more efficient model of the Cybercab will be engineered, which will only help Tesla’s profitability and margins, and it also boosts the argument for why the Cybertruck should be discontinued, at least from a business perspective.
The current Cybercab that operates in the Robotaxi platform in Austin, Texas, has a 48 kWh pack, and it sounds like Musk believes Tesla is on its way to introducing a version that has fewer cells but can manage the same workload thanks to engineering efficiencies.
Credit: Tesla
Musk also doubled down on the decision to prioritize Cybercab production over Cybertruck, which is a decision that has been extremely polarizing within the community, and many fans have made it abundantly clear that they are not particularly pleased with the plans.
“If we have to maintain a complex production line, supply chain, and allocate engineering for Cybertruck, we can’t use those people or factory space and machinery for scaling Cybercab, which is the vehicle that will PROFOUNDLY transform the world of terrestrial transport,” Musk said.
A good look at Tesla’s new Liquid Silver Cybercab, planned with a 40 kWh battery pack following new improvements
😍 https://t.co/IUYsUcCBMs
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 8, 2026
Cybercab is obviously Tesla’s path forward in an automotive sense. It seems that Tesla is less concerned about catering to the passenger vehicle market and is more prone to focus on transforming passenger transportation in a way that prioritizes autonomy. However, this requires some sacrifice on Tesla’s end, and the Cybertruck is unfortunately a victim of this.
Cybercab holds an extremely crucial part of Tesla’s future. With the company already revolutionizing passenger transportation once, this is the next phase, and Cybercab is the path forward.
Elon Musk spotlights the Starlink rescue that got through where no cell tower could
SpaceX will perform Starship double catch attempt with Flight 15
