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Elon Musk’s Twitter case may be bolstered by potential 2nd whistleblower: report

U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. -- Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk speaks with Lt. Gen. Richard Clark, Superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Academy, during the Ira C. Eaker Distinguished Speaker Presentation in the Academy's Arnold Hall on April 7, 2022 in Colorado Springs, Colo. (U.S. Air Force photo by Trevor cokley)

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Recent reports have indicated that another Twitter whistleblower may consider giving a testimony when Elon Musk faces the social media company in court over his $44 billion acquisition bid later this month. The 2nd whistleblower may have some notable things to disclose about Twitter’s bots and spam accounts as well. 

The potential 2nd whistleblower would reportedly focus on an alleged internal Twitter study which concluded that the site’s bot problem was much larger than what has been acknowledged. This is in contrast to former Twitter security chief Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, who generally stayed away from the words “bots” or “spam” during his testimony to Congress last month.

According to a report from the New York Post, the 2nd whistleblower is a former Twitter employee. The potential leaker claims to have been involved in an internal study from several years ago which supposedly concluded that at least 30% of Twitter’s daily active users were automated spam accounts.

“Twitter execs laughed when they were told about the report and said, ‘We have always had a bot problem,’” the possible 2nd whistleblower reportedly told the publication. 

The potential 2nd whistleblower noted that Twitter’s metric for measuring bots, Monetizable Daily Active Users (mDAUs), is overly narrow and falls short of accurately capturing the scope of the site’s spam issues. The former Twitter employee added that the social media company has not been honest with investors. 

Inasmuch as the ex-Twitter employee could provide a boost to Elon Musk’s arguments against the social media company, however, there is still one notable issue. The potential 2nd whistleblower is not exactly sure he is comfortable speaking up during the trial, especially considering the attention the case would bring. “I haven’t fully decided yet,” the former employee said. 

Both Elon Musk and Twitter’s representatives have opted not to issue a comment on the matter as of writing. 

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Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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Elon Musk has a crazy prediction about AI in two years

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Daniel Oberhaus, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk is, in many respects, one of the biggest and most influential figures in modern-day artificial intelligence.

Given that Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI are all looked at in their respective fields as leaders to an extent, each of them has a heavy influence on the future of AI, even though two of them are not thought of, at face value, as AI companies.

Musk has grand expectations for what is to come with AI, not only as a form of assistance to make human lives easier, but to make humans multiplanetary and solve some of the biggest issues that face us today. But even he is astounded by AI’s pace of progress.

He believes that in two years, AI will be so mind-blowing it might be unrecognizable.

This progress can be seen in a variety of ways, but perhaps the most popular way people have shown AI’s progress, especially on social media, is through an incredibly arbitrary way of watching Will Smith eat spaghetti:

This is a great way to show people how AI is improving, especially from a perspective that examines how it can manufacture images and video from prompts. AI is an incredibly complex concept, however, and it goes much deeper than Will Smith eating Italian food.

Musk’s most widely adopted method of AI is likely Tesla Full Self-Driving, which impacts millions of people as they utilize it to increase safety with their travel. Musk has routinely pushed incredibly aggressive timelines for self-driving, especially unsupervised.

Perhaps this perspective is why he feels that things will be solved in a timeframe that is much more aggressive than most of us would think. Regardless, the progress of AI is moving fast, and it seems that Musk’s expectations for it could be high.

But if it can actually achieve full-length motion pictures and even more realistic production value, it will be hard to distinguish between reality and AI very soon.

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Tesla just built it 10 millionth car

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla just officially confirmed it has built its 10 millionth car, a major milestone for the company that started producing sustainable electric powertrains less than two decades ago.

In that time, Tesla has truly revolutionized the automotive industry, disrupting the idea of what a car should be, how it should be fueled, and how it truly impacts day-to-day life.

Tesla achieved this feat across four production facilities: the Fremont Factory in Fremont, California, Gigafactory Shanghai in China, Gigafactory Berlin in Germany, and Gigafactory Texas in Austin, Texas.

The 10 millionth vehicle was a Diamond Black Model Y.

Over the course of the past roughly 18 years, Tesla has evolved its lineup from a sporty sedan built on a Lotus body to a lineup of various body styles, performance metrics, and other characteristics that make each one unique.

This is an incredible achievement for a company that is young compared to what it goes up against. When Tesla entered the automotive market, Ford, GM, and Stellantis widely dominated the playing field. Since then, Tesla has caused such a disruption that these three massive brands had to scramble to create EV projects of their own.

Despite their best efforts, they have not been able to match the prowess or the effectiveness of Tesla. They are all reliant on Tesla’s charging infrastructure, their software is inferior, and their self-driving projects are elementary in comparison.

Tesla felt its fair share of growing pains over the years as well. As recent at 2019, there were complaints about build quality, paint quality, and overall luxuriousness. These things have all been improved upon through the company’s maturity, and these strides in quality have led to this 10 million vehicle production achievement, something that other small-and-scrappy EV makers will hope to accomplish one day.

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SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites

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SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.

The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.

SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters

Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.

SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.

With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.

Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.

Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.

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