In the summer of 1994, a 23-year-old Elon Musk spent his days in Los Gatos at Pinnacle Research Institute, dreaming up how ultracapacitors could power electric cars and even Star Wars–style laser guns. Then, around 5 p.m. every evening, he drove to Palo Alto for his second job at Rocket Science Games, a startup full of future legends, from Tony Fadell, who would later build the iPod, to the people behind Apple's QuickTime and engineers from Industrial Light & Magic. They hired him to write the most boring code imaginable, drivers so joysticks and mice would work with games, but Elon quietly gave himself a much harder problem 😂: figuring out how a computer could run a game and stream video from a CD at the same time, something the machines of that era simply couldn't do. Peter Barrett, one of the company's founders, remembered him as "completely unflappable," and said that after a while nobody was giving him directions at all, because he was just building what he wanted to build. Bruce Leak, who hired him, said: "He had boundless energy." So yeah, nobody handed Elon the big problem, he just went looking for it, at night, after a full day at another job. This is who Elon Musk is 💙

Tesla and Starlink just turned the lights back on for earthquake survivors in Panama 🇵🇦 Tesla donated five Powerwall 3 home batteries, solar panels and Starlink Mini kits to communities hit by the October 9 earthquake. The US Embassy in Panama announced it today, and the delivery was coordinated with Panama City Mayor Mayer Mizrachi.

Brazil just got Starlink straight to the phone 🇧🇷🛰️ Vivo, Brazil's biggest mobile carrier, is launching Vivo Satélite with Starlink, the first service of its kind in the country, and started telling customers today. When there's no cell signal, your regular phone connects directly to Starlink satellites. WhatsApp messages, voice notes and calls, iMessage, Google Maps and Apple Maps all work. It's free during the launch period, and prepaid customers are included. You just need to be outdoors with a view of the sky and roaming turned on. Brazil is huge, and millions of people live, farm and drive through places with zero coverage. Being able to send a WhatsApp from the middle of nowhere can make all the difference in an emergency. And it starts with real apps on day one, not just texting.

Not many people know that Elon Musk’s roots go back to the American Midwest. His grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was born in Minnesota, and his mother, Maye, was born in Canada before the family packed up and moved to South Africa when she was still a little girl. Even Elon’s name, which so many people assume is exotic, is a family name. He was named after his great-grandfather, John Elon Haldeman, who around 1900 was a school superintendent and a part-time sheriff in Minnesota. So, yeah, the most futuristic name in the world actually came from a small-town lawman more than a century ago 🤷🏼‍♀️😄

Latvia just said yes to Tesla's supervised self-driving 🇱🇻 Latvia's Road Traffic Safety Directorate (CSDD) has officially recognized the Netherlands' provisional European approval for Tesla Assisted Driving, the European name for Full Self-Driving (Supervised). Owners of compatible Teslas in Latvia can now use a system that follows the navigation route, steers, brakes, changes lanes and handles intersections. The driver still has to stay attentive and ready to take over, and a cabin camera checks that their eyes stay on the road. Europe was supposed to be the hardest market for FSD, and now approvals are spreading country by country after the Dutch vehicle authority (RDW) did the heavy lifting. Every new country makes it harder for the rest of the EU to keep saying no. Latvia also asked for tighter speed limits and stronger driver monitoring, and Tesla delivered, which shows the system can adapt to regulators instead of waiting years for one big EU vote.

Europe's biggest budget airline, easyJet, is putting Starlink on every single plane ✈️🛰️ easyJet, one of Europe's biggest budget airlines, has signed a deal with SpaceX to put Starlink Wi-Fi on its entire Airbus fleet. A company spokesperson confirmed the agreement. Terms and rollout timing haven't been made public yet. This is a real turnaround. Back in January, easyJet's CEO Kenton Jarvis said they'd talked with Starlink but the numbers didn't work for them yet.

Volunteer firefighters in a small Polish village just built their own Starlink command center on wheels 🚒🛰️ The volunteer fire brigade in Przysietnica, in southeastern Poland, took a retired road-inspection van and rebuilt it themselves into a light command and communications vehicle. Brzozów county bought the Starlink kit and handed it over to the unit. According to the crew, it is the only vehicle like this in the country. With Starlink on board, the crew gets satellite maps, weather data and forecasts, phone links to dispatch, and live drone and camera feeds from almost anywhere. They have already tested it in drills with mountain rescuers and medical teams.

Jordan's central bank just built a Starlink backup for the entire banking system 🇯🇴🛰️ The Central Bank of Jordan says it has finished building and switching on a satellite internet gateway supplied by Starlink. It sits at the Aqaba Digital Hub and is run through the financial sector's cyber incident response team. The bank says it will keep the banking system online if the cables that connect Jordan to the internet fail because of natural disasters, major outages, cyberattacks, war or sabotage. Banks have been told to finish setting up so they can switch over when needed.

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Every Aer Lingus long-haul jet now has free Starlink Wi-Fi ✈️🛰️ The Irish airline just finished putting Starlink on its whole long-haul fleet: all 12 Airbus A330s and all 14 A321LR and A321XLR jets. The original target was the first quarter of 2027, and then the end of 2026. They wrapped it up before the end of October. It's free for every passenger, with no loyalty sign-up required, and it works from gate to gate. Short-haul European jets are next. Transatlantic flights between the US and Ireland just got fast, free internet the whole way across the ocean. Finishing months ahead of plan shows how quickly a Starlink install goes once a plane type is certified. Every airline that switches raises the bar for the ones still stuck on slow, paid Wi-Fi.

And this is the 36th flight of the booster! 36 flights on one first stage used to sound like science fiction but now it's a regular Friday for SpaceX 🚀😂 This kind of reuse is exactly why SpaceX can launch Starlink at a pace no one else comes close to, and why space keeps getting cheaper.

In early 2002, Elon was preparing to launch SpaceX and searching for the people who could help him build a rocket from scratch. One Sunday in January 2002, he walked into a friend's rented warehouse in Huntington Beach and found Tom Mueller holding an 80-pound rocket engine on his shoulder, trying to bolt it to a frame. It was the largest liquid-fuel engine any amateur had ever built, with 13,000 pounds of thrust, made in Tom's spare time. Elon asked the main question “Could you build something bigger?” The next Sunday Elon came to his house. It was Super Bowl Sunday; they watched maybe one play, because they were too busy sketching the first SpaceX rocket. Tom became SpaceX employee #1, and the man who built engines on weekends went on to build Merlin, Kestrel and Draco. Elon saw a person, not a résumé, someone who built rockets with his own hands simply because he loved them.

Grok Bot just got access to the apps on your phone 📱 SpaceX's AI assistant can now work with Calendar, Reminders, Contacts and more apps directly on your phone. The update is rolling out now on both iOS and Android. In practice that means you can ask it to add an event, set a reminder or find a contact, and it handles it for you, all with app-by-app permissions you approve. I use Grok Bot every day; I think I’ve become addicted to it😂

Starlink is now riding along with police and firefighters in Tecate, Mexico 🇲🇽 🛰️ The border city of Tecate in Baja California just handed out 9 Starlink kits to its emergency crews. Six went to the municipal public safety and traffic department, and three went to Civil Protection and the fire department. City councilman Isaac Contreras López arranged them with help from local private businesses. The kits let crews set up their own satellite Wi-Fi wherever regular cell coverage is weak. When police and firefighters can share information and coordinate from rough terrain or remote roads, response times get shorter and lives get saved. This is a small city buying a handful of dishes, which is exactly how Starlink is quietly becoming standard gear for first responders everywhere.

Tesla just opened its charger business to companies across Canada 🇨🇦 Canadian businesses can now buy Tesla Superchargers for their own sites, and fleets can buy chargers built for the Tesla Semi. For cars, the minimum is four posts. The stalls work with every EV, can show up on the in-car map, and come with a 97% uptime guarantee, with V4 posts rated up to 500 kW. For trucks, the minimum is two posts: the Megacharger (up to 1.2 MW, about 60% of a Semi's range back in roughly 30 minutes) or the slower 120 kW Basecharger for overnight depot charging, which starts delivering in early 2027. Tesla's charging team says the goal is to offer this in every market where Tesla runs charging, which is 55+ countries. Tesla is turning the best charging network in the world into a product other companies can own. That means more fast chargers in more places without Tesla paying for every site. And Semi charging showing up in Canada before the trucks arrive is how you get a freight network ready on day one. In British Columbia, R.R. Plett Trucking is already planning Canada's first Megachargers in Langley and Kamloops ahead of 12 Semis arriving in June 2027.

When Elon Musk was a 19-year-old student in Canada, he read a newspaper and found a bank executive's name. Elon got his phone number and dialed him to ask for a job. Peter Nicholson of Scotiabank later said Elon was "the only person who ever called me out of the blue and asked me for a job." He hired him as a summer intern. Digging into Latin American debt, young Elon found what he believed was a near-certain win in Brady Bonds and told his boss: "We could just instantly make $5 billion. Right now." But Scotiabank said no. Years later, still carrying that lesson about how banks think, Elon built X dot com — the company that became PayPal. Now, he's putting that view into practice with X Payment.

Tesla just filed for FSD approval in South Korea 🇰🇷 Tesla Korea sent its request for Full Self-Driving (Supervised) approval to South Korea's transport ministry this week, by email and registered mail. The filing came out today in a National Assembly audit, where Transport Minister Hong Ji-seon confirmed it had come in. Right now about 77.6% of the 238,968 Teslas registered in Korea can't use FSD at all. Most of those, 183,407 cars, are China-built Model 3 and Model Y. Only US-built cars get FSD there, thanks to the US-Korea free trade agreement. Korea is one of Tesla's hottest markets, and the owners who've been locked out are the vast majority. Lawmakers are now telling the ministry that since an application is on the table, it has to actually test the system instead of just saying no. If this goes through, it could switch on FSD for well over 180,000 cars in one go.