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SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk has shared more details about when in 2020 we can expect the company’s Starlink low-latency, high-bandwidth satellite internet service to actually be available to customers. He said on Twitter that a private beta for Starlink would begin in around three months, with a public beta to kick off roughly three months after that.

The initial beta test will apply to those located in “high latitudes,” Musk added. To date, SpaceX has said that Starlink service will initially be made available to customers in Canada and in the northern United States in 2020, with additional service expansion to follow to other parts of the world throughout 2021. On Twitter in response to a question about whether Germany counts as “high latitude,” Musk said that it does, indicating beta service at least may be available in more markets than the U.S. and Canada ahead of next year.

Late last year, Musk tweeted saying he was using a Starlink satellite connection to do so, and since then the company has launched six batches of 60 satellites each to build out its network. The small satellites work by flying around the Earth in low orbit, passing off connection between one another to ensure consistent service is provided to ground stations. They orbit lower than geostationary communications satellites, which provides latency and speed benefits, but don’t remain in a fixed position so a large number of them are required to provide consistent connectivity.

Elon Musk seems to be really interested in Tesla expanding into the home HVAC industry — going as far as saying that he is “dying to do it.”

He first brought up the idea in an interview on the Joe Rogan Experience almost two years ago.

The CEO discussed the fact that Tesla addresses both energy generation and consumption when it comes to transport, but only energy generation, with solar power products, when it comes to the home.

Elon Musk has unveiled plans to implant computer chips in people’s brains that the US billionaire says will treat brain diseases and enable superhuman intelligence.

Neuralink, a secretive company set up by Mr Musk two years ago, has said it plans to begin tests of its “brain-computer interface” technology on humans in the next year.

Mr Musk, 48, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, said the technology will help “solve brain disorders of all kinds” and allow humans to merge with artificial intelligence.

Tesla’s mobile app is one of the key parts of the Tesla ownership experience, and yet its security is lacking an important feature — two-factor authentication.

According to CEO Elon Musk, this will change in the near future.

When asked on Twitter whether there are any updates regarding two-factor authentication for the app, Musk said it’s “coming soon” (via Teslarati).

Tesla Cybertruck is going to be “able to float for a while,” says CEO Elon Musk, who apparently can’t wait to bring the electric pickup truck to production.

For a while now, Elon Musk has cautiously boasted about the ability of Tesla vehicles to float, or even “act as a boat” for short periods of time.

A few years ago, we posted about a Tesla Model S driving (or swimming) through a flooded tunnel. Musk commented:

NASA and SpaceX are targeting May 27 for the launch of Demo-2, the first launch of NASA astronauts from the U.S. since 2011 and the first crewed launch for Elon Musk’s space company.

As its name implies, Demo-2 will be the second time the company launches its Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station. But, unlike Demo-1 last year, this time two astronauts will be on board – a pair that will be the first NASA astronauts to launch from the U.S. since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.

If anyone wants to learn about the future of artificial intelligence and the rise of super-intelligent machines here is Billionaire rocket scientist businessman Elon Musk’s favorite book of the year written by MIT math Professor Max Tegmark at the Future of Life Institute. The book Life 3.0 is presented in this free audio-book format on YouTube and is a 7 hour video talking about how we will become a Libertarian Utopia soon thanks to advances in technology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-vbh3t7WVI

Your Neuralink device would be implanted using traditional neurosurgery methods safely and seamlessly with a robot surgeon. As mentioned in the Neuralink published paper, “We have also built a neurosurgical robot capable of inserting six threads (192 electrodes) per minute. Each thread can be individually inserted into the brain with micron precision for the avoidance of surface vasculature and targeting specific brain regions.”

The Neuralink team has already started experimenting with various versions of the devices on both rats and monkeys. The results have been impressive. During the presentation in San Francisco, Musk and his team described one instance of a monkey being able to control a computer with simply its brain. Unfortunately, (or fortunately) there have not been any tests on humans. Yet, the team hopes to obtain FDA approval and begin human trials as early as this year.

During his presentation Elon Musk reiterated the idea that Neuralink will be an important part of our future, eventually allowing us to reach symbiosis with artificial intelligence. “With a high bandwidth brain-machine interface, we can go along for the ride and effectively have the option of merging with AI”, said Musk. And as for the risks to reach this end goal? Musk reassured his audience that the device will be safe.

Most of the pieces of Elon Musk’s Master Plan, Part Deux are already in place. Tesla’s mass-market cars, the Model 3 and Model Y, have already been released. The Solar Roof is finally seeing a ramp. And the release of a feature-complete version of the company’s Full Self-Driving suite seems to be drawing closer.

For Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite to be feature-complete, the electric car maker would need to master inner-city driving. FSD already works for highway driving with Navigate on Autopilot with automatic lane changes. But when it comes to inner-city streets, Full Self-Driving still has some ways to go. Fortunately, if Tesla’s v10.2 2020.12.5 release is any indication, it appears that more and more aspects of city driving are becoming recognized by the company’s neural networks.