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X jacks up Premium+ prices by 37.5%, hits some markets harder

X is raising prices for its top-tier subscription service, Premium+, by 37.5% to $22 a month, marking the largest price increase since Elon Musk bought the platform in 2022. The price hike will first affect U.S. users, going up from $16, effective December 21, according to a statement. Annual subscriptions have also climbed to $229 […]

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Tesla is courting Texas cities to test its promised robotaxi service

Tesla is evaluating multiple Texas cities where it wants to test a long-promised robotaxi service, including Austin, according to emails obtained by Bloomberg News. An employee has apparently been in touch with Austin officials since May, and recently held an event in December to “train first responders on how to best work with Tesla’s autonomous […]

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Report: Elon Musk failed to report movement required by security clearance

A new investigation from The New York Times suggests that SpaceX founder Elon Musk has not been reporting his travel activities and other information to the Department of Defense as required by his top-secret clearance.

According to the newspaper, concerns about Musk's reporting practices have led to reviews by three different bodies within the military; the Air Force, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, and the Defense Department Office of Inspector General.

However, none of the federal agencies cited in the Times article has accused Musk of disclosing classified material.

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Trump’s Silicon Valley advisers have AI ‘censorship’ in their crosshairs

President-elect Donald Trump has surrounded himself with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs — including Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, and David Sacks — who are now advising him on technology and other issues. When it comes to AI, this crew of technologists is fairly aligned on the need for rapid development and adoption of AI throughout the U.S. […]

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Meta asks California AG to block OpenAI’s conversion to for-profit

Facebook’s parent company Meta is supporting Elon Musk’s effort to block OpenAI’s conversion from a non-profit company into a for-profit one. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Meta sent a letter to California Attorney General Rob Bonta arguing that allowing the shift would have “seismic implications for Silicon Valley.” And while the company asked […]

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OpenAI fires back against Musk, claims he wanted an OpenAI for-profit

OpenAI fired back at billionaire Elon Musk on Friday, publishing a series of emails and texts that the company claims show Musk’s lawsuit against it is misleading. Musk’s legal battle with OpenAI, which has been going on for months now, at its core accuses the company of abandoning its original nonprofit mission to make the […]

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Tesla’s loss is Zoox’s gain

Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson told the crowd at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 that he didn’t think Tesla would launch a robotaxi ride-hailing service in California (or anywhere else) next year, despite what Elon Musk had claimed. The “fundamental issue is they don’t have technology that works,” he said at the time. But it seems that […]

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X says its new image generator, Aurora, will launch for all users within the week

X, the Elon Musk-owned social network previously known as Twitter, quietly added a new image generator to its Grok assistant this past Saturday. Then, it removed it. Now, it’s bringing it back — and officially announcing it. The image generator, called Aurora, was developed by Musk’s AI company, xAI, and trained on billions of examples from the […]

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Elon Musk’s X gains a new image generator, Aurora

X, the Elon Musk-owned social network previously known as Twitter, has added a new image generator to its Grok assistant. However, after going live for a few hours on Saturday, the product seemed to disappear for some users. Just like the first image generator X added to Grok in October, this one, called Aurora, appears […]

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Silicon Valley hitters take over Trump transition team: “a dozen Musk allies”

About a “dozen Musk allies” have put a pin in their daily routines to serve as unofficial advisers to the Trump transition effort, says the New York Times.  Among them, reports the outlet: Jared Birchall, the head of Elon Musk’s family office, has interviewed a few candidates for jobs at the State Department; Marc Andreessen […]

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