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Tesla’s Elon Musk to hold AMA session to address Twitter employees’ concerns

(Credit: Tesla)

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Tesla CEO and new Twitter board member Elon Musk will be holding an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session with the social media company’s employees. The AMA session was reportedly conceived following a week of internal complaints and concerns from some Twitter employees about what the CEO may do to the social media platform. 

The announcement of the AMA with Musk reportedly came from CEO Parag Agrawal. In a company-wide email, the CEO reportedly stated that an AMA would be a good way for Twitter employees to ask their questions and air their concerns about Elon Musk to Elon Musk directly. This could be a good idea considering that some Twitter employees have expressed concerns that the CEO could damage the company’s culture and make it more difficult for workers to do their jobs. 

“We say that Twitter is what’s happening and what people are talking about right now. Often, we at Twitter are what’s happening and what people are talking about. That has certainly been the case this week. Following our board announcement, many of you have had different types of questions about Elon Musk, and I want to welcome you to ask those questions to him,” Agrawal said. 

Elon Musk’s upcoming AMA with Twitter employees was confirmed by Twitter spokesperson Brenden Lee, though he did not provide any additional details about the session. The Washington Post, which initially posted the story of the upcoming AMA, shared a number of messages from Twitter employees who had concerns about Elon Musk. 

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One particular employee asked if a Twitter worker tweeted some of the things that Musk had posted, they would likely be the subject of an HR investigation. The employee in question reportedly asked in a company Slack channel if “board members (are) held to the same standard.” Another post from an employee noted that it is difficult to welcome Musk since his values seemed to contradict Twitter’s own values. 

“We know that he has caused harm to workers, the trans community, women, and others with less power in the world. How are we going to reconcile this decision with our values? Does innovation trump humanity?” The employee asked. 

Another Twitter employee who claimed to have worked at Tesla also stated that he “witnessed the awful changes in company culture that followed” Musk’s appointment as CEO of the EV maker. “I’m extremely unnerved right now, because I’ve seen what he can do firsthand,” the Twitter employee noted. Interestingly enough, the former Tesla employee referenced Musk’s management style during the hardest days of the original Roadster’s ramp, which resulted in Tesla almost being bankrupt. Such a time has been described by Musk as one of the most challenging in his career. 

Twitter executives have reportedly been reminding the company’s workers that the social media platform’s culture is still the same, even with Elon Musk as a board member and single largest shareholder. The executives further noted that Musk would not be put in charge of major decisions and that CEO Agrawal will still be “the tiebreaker.”

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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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Tesla and driver sued by family of woman killed in Texas crash: what we know

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Credit: CNBC

Tesla is being sued by the family of the woman who was killed in a Texas crash involving a Model 3. The driver, who is also being sued, claimed the vehicle was operating on Autopilot mode, but Tesla executives have come out challenging that claim, stating that the driver of the vehicle overrode the system.

The lawsuit was filed by 76-year-old Martha Avila’s daughter and her husband, who allege a “design defect” involving a Tesla and a failure to warn. The suit alleges negligence against Tesla and the driver, Michael Butler.

Butler “stated he was operating with an automated driving assistance system engaged at the time of the crash,” the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. He showed no signs of intoxication and was cooperative, the Sheriff’s Office said, according to NBC News.

Just after reports of the crash and numerous headlines that immediately blamed Tesla’s Autopilot suite, both Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Head of AI Ashok Elluswamy challenged that. Musk said the crash made “no sense” given that Tesla Autopilot and Full Self-Driving do not travel at the speeds the door cameras captured the car traveling at, which Tesla says was 73 MPH.

Tesla finally clarifies fatal Texas crash, confirms driver manually overrode acceleration

Elluswamy also revealed that Tesla data showed Butler overrode the system by pressing the accelerator to 100%, and that the pedal was compressed fully even after the car had crashed. Tesla has not released this data to the public, likely because it is communicating with agencies like the NHTSA on an investigation.

The suit uses a Washington Post analysis of government data that “identified at least 17 fatal incidents linked to Tesla Autopilot.”

This is far from the first time an accident has been blamed on Autopilot. A fatal crash in Texas was blamed on Autopilot several years ago, but when Tesla released data to the NTSB, which was investigating the crash, Autopilot was not available where the crash occurred, and Autosteer was never enabled, meaning the car was manually controlled at the time of the accident.

More information on the accident will be released as Tesla works with agencies to find the cause of the crash. From personal experience, it is hard to imagine Tesla Autopilot or FSD operating in this manner. It drives sometimes too cautiously in residential areas in parking lots, at least in my experience. Speeding happens, but at this rate in this type of area, it is hard to believe.

We look forward to more details being released with time.

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Cybertruck

Tesla Cybertruck is officially the safest pickup, IIHS says

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Credit: Tesla

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has awarded the 2025-2026 Tesla Cybertruck crew cab pickup its highest honor: Top Safety Pick+. This marks the Cybertruck as the only full-size pickup to achieve this distinction in recent evaluations.

The award applies specifically to vehicles built after April 2025, following structural upgrades including front underbody reinforcements and footwell modifications.

These changes enabled strong performance in updated crash tests. The Cybertruck earned “Good” ratings in the small overlap front (driver and passenger sides), updated moderate overlap front, and updated side tests—core requirements for the Top Safety Pick+ designation.

It also secured acceptable or good headlights across trims and a “Good” rating for its standard front crash prevention system in pedestrian scenarios, along with acceptable or good performance in vehicle-to-vehicle testing.

The Cybertruck avoided every single pedestrian collision, including:

  • Daytime child crossing
  • Nightitime adult crossing
  • Night parallel adult

In the large pickup category, competitors such as the Toyota Tundra received only a standard Top Safety Pick, while the Ford F-150 and Ram 1500 did not qualify for either award. This positions the Cybertruck as a standout in occupant protection and crash avoidance among its peers.

Credit: IIHS

Ironically, the same vehicle celebrated for superior U.S. safety performance remains banned from public roads in the United Kingdom and much of Europe. Regulators there cite the Cybertruck’s sharp external edges and highly rigid stainless-steel construction as failing pedestrian-protection standards. European and UK rules require rounded surfaces on protruding parts to minimize injury risk in collisions with vulnerable road users.

Critics also point to the truck’s substantial weight and unyielding body structure, which some argue could transfer more force to other vehicles or pedestrians rather than absorbing it.

Tesla’s engineering philosophy underpins the Cybertruck’s strong IIHS results. The vehicle features a distinctive stainless-steel exoskeleton made from ultra-hard 30X cold-rolled stainless steel. This provides exceptional structural rigidity and a robust safety cage that resists deformation in side impacts and rollovers.

Engineers designed integrated load paths to channel crash forces away from the occupant compartment while allowing controlled energy absorption in key zones. Post-April 2025 refinements to the front underbody further optimized performance in overlap crashes.

Complementing the passive structure is Tesla’s advanced active safety suite, including the standard Collision Avoidance Assist system with automatic emergency braking. This contributed directly to the vehicle’s strong front crash prevention scores. The skateboard platform and low center of gravity also enhance stability and handling, reducing the likelihood of certain crashes.

The IIHS recognition highlights how Tesla’s combination of high-strength materials, structural innovation, and software-driven safety systems can deliver top-tier protection in rigorous testing. While global regulatory differences on design and pedestrian interaction continue to limit the Cybertruck’s availability outside North America, its U.S. safety credentials set a new benchmark for full-size pickups.

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Elon Musk

SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete

Elon Musk confirmed Starmind as SpaceX’s AI satellite constellation name, targeting one million orbital compute nodes.

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Elon Musk confirmed that Starmind will be the official name of SpaceX’s planned AI satellite constellation, following a trademark filing by xAI that surfaced earlier this week. Starmind is what’s being described to the FCC as a constellation of up to one million AI satellites

It’s worth noting that SpaceX’s Starlink communication satellite and Starmind are built on the same orbital infrastructure concept but serve entirely different purposes. Starlink is a connectivity network, with satellites receiving and relaying data between points on Earth, and functioning as a high-speed internet backbone in space. The satellites themselves do not process or think, and move information from one place to another, the same function a fiber cable performs underground.

SpaceX just forced Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to team up for the first time in history

Starmind, on the other hand, is something completely different, and tather than moving data, its satellites would compute data through artificial intelligence and directly in orbit using onboard processors powered by large solar arrays. Where a Starlink satellite is essentially a very fast pipe, a Starmind satellite is a server. The practical implication is that Starmind would allow AI models to run inference, process queries, and generate outputs from space, then beam results down to users anywhere on Earth within milliseconds, and without the data ever needing to travel to a terrestrial data center.

Starship will be able to carry 30 to 50 AI1 satellites per launch, delivering the equivalent of dozens of server racks per flight, with no land acquisition, no power grid approval, and no cooling infrastructure required on the ground.

SpaceX is pursuing this new technology as terrestrial data centers are running into hard limits such as lack of physical space, community opposition, and power and water consumption at a scale that is increasingly difficult to permit. Space has unlimited solar power, natural vacuum cooling, and no zoning boards. Musk said in a June 8 video presentation that he expects space to become the lowest-cost location to deploy AI compute within two to three years. Two AI1 prototypes are scheduled to launch in early 2027, with volume production targeted for the end of that year at a new facility called Gigasat.

The real world applications Starmind enables extend well beyond powering Grok. A constellation of orbiting AI processors could run inference workloads for any paying customer, anywhere on Earth, with latency measured in milliseconds rather than the seconds associated with ground-based cloud routing across continents. Starmind, if it scales as described, would make SpaceX the landlord of AI compute the same way Starlink made it the landlord of satellite internet.

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