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Elon Musk offers Tesla Powerpacks, Boring Co. tech to help rescue stranded soccer team in Thailand
In a recent update on Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk offered to lend a hand to the ongoing rescue efforts for the stranded soccer team in Thailand. According to Musk, technology from the Boring Company and Tesla could help rescuers retrieve the 12 young players and their coach from the depths of the Tham Luang Nang Non cave complex.
Elon Musk’s offer to help in the rescue efforts for the young soccer team came as a response to one of his followers on Twitter. Musk initially stated that he would be happy to help if he is able, but earlier today, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO offered a concrete way to assist in the rescue operations.
Boring Co has advanced ground penetrating radar & is pretty good at digging holes. Don’t know if pump rate is limited by electric power or pumps are too smal. If so, could dropship fully charged Powerpacks and pumps.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 5, 2018
The members of the Wild Boar soccer team had been trapped inside the cave complex since June 23, after the group got stranded in an air pocket inside the caverns due to flooding in the area. The team’s plight has captured attention worldwide, and this Monday, the 12 boys, aged 11-15, as well as their 25-year-old coach, received their first dose of good news when two British divers found them in a cavern 2.5 miles away from the entrance of the caves. Thai Navy SEAL divers, including a doctor and a nurse, opted to stay with the soccer team on Tuesday, providing them with food and other supplies.
As noted in a recent report from The Guardian, there are currently three plans being considered for the group’s rescue. The first plan involves teaching the children and their coach how to dive, the second involves draining the tunnels to adequately lower the water levels, and the third involves drilling into the caves to create a way out for the stranded soccer team. If Musk’s tweet is any indication, the Boring Company and Tesla can provide support for the third and second plans.
The Boring Company, after all, specializes in tunneling and drilling underground. As noted by Musk, the tunneling startup’s digging equipment and ground-penetrating radar could be of use when drilling into the caves. Government officials have expressed reservations for this plan, however, considering that the boys are located 800m-1km below the surface. An attempt to drain the caves has already started as well, and as noted by Musk in his tweet, Tesla Powerpack batteries could be hooked up to stronger pumps in order to help lower the water levels in the caverns faster.
Considering the risks brought about by the monsoon season, however, the Thai government is preparing to send up to four months’ worth of supplies to the stranded soccer team, in the event that rescue efforts fail and they have to stay in the caves for the long run.
Tesla is no stranger to humanitarian efforts. Even until today, Tesla is still in the process of helping Puerto Rico get back on its feet after the island nation was ravaged by Hurricane Maria last year. In a recent update, Musk noted that there are currently 11,000 projects ongoing in Puerto Rico today. Over in Australia, Tesla is also laying the foundations of what could become a virtual power plant comprised of 50,000 low-income households fitted with solar panels and Tesla Powerwall 2 batteries.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s X will start using a Tesla-like software update strategy
The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.
Elon Musk’s social media platform X will adopt a Tesla-esque approach to software updates for its algorithm.
The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.
X’s updates to its updates
As per Musk in a post on X, the social media company will be making a new algorithm to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users. These updates would then be repeated every four weeks.
“We will make the new 𝕏 algorithm, including all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users, open source in 7 days. This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed,” Musk wrote in his post.
The initiative somewhat mirrors Tesla’s over-the-air update model, where vehicle software is regularly refined and pushed to users with detailed release notes. This should allow users to better understand the details of X’s every update and foster a healthy feedback loop for the social media platform.
xAI and X
X, formerly Twitter, has been acquired by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI last year. Since then, xAI has seen a rapid rise in valuation. Following the company’s the company’s upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, estimates now suggest that xAI is worth tens about $230 to $235 billion. That’s several times larger than Tesla when Elon Musk received his controversial 2018 CEO Performance Award.
As per xAI, the Series E funding round attracted a diverse group of investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group, among others. Strategic partners NVIDIA and Cisco Investments also continued support for building the world’s largest GPU clusters.
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Tesla FSD Supervised wins MotorTrend’s Best Driver Assistance Award
The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system.
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system has been named the best driver-assistance technology on the market, earning top honors at the 2026 MotorTrend Best Tech Awards.
The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system. And it wasn’t even close.
MotorTrend reverses course
MotorTrend awarded Tesla FSD (Supervised) its 2026 Best Tech Driver Assistance title after extensive testing of the latest v14 software. The publication acknowledged that it had previously criticized earlier versions of FSD for erratic behavior and near-miss incidents, ultimately favoring rivals such as GM’s Super Cruise in earlier evaluations.
According to MotorTrend, the newest iteration of FSD resolved many of those shortcomings. Testers said v14 showed far smoother behavior in complex urban scenarios, including unprotected left turns, traffic circles, emergency vehicles, and dense city streets. While the system still requires constant driver supervision, judges concluded that no other advanced driver-assistance system currently matches its breadth of capability.
Unlike rival systems that rely on combinations of cameras, radar, lidar, and mapped highways, Tesla’s FSD operates using a camera-only approach and is capable of driving on city streets, rural roads, and freeways. MotorTrend stated that pure utility, the ability to handle nearly all road types, ultimately separated FSD from competitors like Ford BlueCruise, GM Super Cruise, and BMW’s Highway Assistant.
High cost and high capability
MotorTrend also addressed FSD’s pricing, which remains significantly higher than rival systems. Tesla currently charges $8,000 for a one-time purchase or $99 per month for a subscription, compared with far lower upfront and subscription costs from other automakers. The publication noted that the premium is justified given FSD’s unmatched scope and continuous software evolution.
Safety remained a central focus of the evaluation. While testers reported collision-free operation over thousands of miles, they noted ongoing concerns around FSD’s configurable driving modes, including options that allow aggressive driving and speeds beyond posted limits. MotorTrend emphasized that, like all Level 2 systems, FSD still depends on a fully attentive human driver at all times.
Despite those caveats, the publication concluded that Tesla’s rapid software progress fundamentally reshaped the competitive landscape. For drivers seeking the most capable hands-on driver-assistance system available today, MotorTrend concluded Tesla FSD (Supervised) now stands alone at the top.
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Elon Musk’s Grokipedia surges to 5.6M articles, almost 79% of English Wikipedia
The explosive growth marks a major milestone for the AI-powered online encyclopedia, which was launched by Elon Musk’s xAI just months ago.
Elon Musk’s Grokipedia has grown to an impressive 5,615,201 articles as of today, closing in on 79% of the English Wikipedia’s current total of 7,119,376 articles.
The explosive growth marks a major milestone for the AI-powered online encyclopedia, which was launched by Elon Musk’s xAI just months ago. Needless to say, it would only be a matter of time before Grokipedia exceeds English Wikipedia in sheer volume.
Grokipedia’s rapid growth
xAI’s vision for Grokipedia emphasizes neutrality, while Grok’s reasoning capabilities allow for fast drafting and fact-checking. When Elon Musk announced the initiative in late September 2025, he noted that Grokipedia would be an improvement to Wikipedia because it would be designed to avoid bias.
At the time, Musk noted that Grokipedia “is a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.”
Grokipedia was launched in late October, and while xAI was careful to list it only as Version 0.1 at the time, the online encyclopedia immediately earned praise. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger highlighted the project’s innovative approach, noting how it leverages AI to fill knowledge gaps and enable rapid updates. Netizens also observed how Grokipedia tends to present articles in a more objective manner compared to Wikipedia, which is edited by humans.
Elon Musk’s ambitious plans
With 5,615,201 total articles, Grokipedia has now grown to almost 79% of English Wikipedia’s article base. This is incredibly quick, though Grokipedia remains text-only for now. xAI, for its part, has now updated the online encyclopedia’s iteration to v0.2.
Elon Musk has shared bold ideas for Grokipedia, including sending a record of the entire knowledge base to space as part of xAI’s mission to preserve and expand human understanding. At some point, Musk stated that Grokipedia will be renamed to Encyclopedia Galactica, and it will be sent to the cosmos.
“When Grokipedia is good enough (long way to go), we will change the name to Encyclopedia Galactica. It will be an open source distillation of all knowledge, including audio, images and video. Join xAI to help build the sci-fi version of the Library of Alexandria!” Musk wrote, adding in a later post that “Copies will be etched in stone and sent to the Moon, Mars and beyond. This time, it will not be lost.”