Chucks

Thoughts on Owning a Self-Driving Tesla - marginalrevolution.com/margi…

Here’s what it looks like when someone redeems the free self-driving trial with your referral code

Robotaxi updates Service – Operating hours are now 6am - 2am Features – Rear view camera feed now available to view during your ride – Trip details can be shared with a friend – New Live Activity design & experience – Calm Mode dims the screen & sets cabin lighting to a relaxing state – Grok now available on our Model Y vehicles Accessibility – Improved vehicle locating arrow in the app – Added haptic feedback to assist users in finding their vehicle – Music Control via Screen Reader

Trick or treaters beware 👻

The Tesla App is rolling out now for iPad, iPhone Duo, and Android Tablets and Foldables. Finally on the big screens you bring around with you

The team cooked. @wangyenchi @jhelf @robitfriend @iotambat

Tesla, Everyone loves the Halloween update but we want to turn the sounds off! Especially the turn signals! Sincerely, Everyone

Found some cool Easter eggs in the new @Tesla Halloween Mode 🎃

job done ♦️

Intelligence and latency often come at a tradeoff for voice models - the graph below shows where the rest of the industry sits. Grok Voice 3.0 refuses to pick between the two. Say hello to the new Pareto frontier!

Here are a few of the “Easter Eggs” in the Tesla Halloween update

T-Mobile CTO in new post on @SpaceX acquiring nationwide low-band spectrum to help turn Starlink into a major U.S. mobile carrier: "Some are calling it the "last critical piece" needed to compete with the national wireless carriers. I can tell you there's a big difference between owning spectrum and delivering a great mobile experience to millions of customers. A few things worth keeping in perspective: 1) Spectrum is just the starting point. The Grain transaction involves approximately 14 MHz of spectrum that T-Mobile previously divested because it was no longer central to our network strategy. Even with this acquisition, @Starlink Mobile would have roughly 80 MHz of spectrum, some of it uplink-only. Compare that to T-Mobile's nearly 400 MHz of mid-band and low-band spectrum holdings. We used 800 MHz spectrum as a single 5 MHz uplink/5 MHz downlink channel for LTE years ago. Today, we're operating a nationwide 5G Standalone network, launched nationwide 5G-Advanced, and are already helping shape the path to 6G, all using channels that are much wider. The industry has moved forward and so have the expectations of customers. 2) Physics still applies. A satellite hundreds of kilometers above Earth faces approximately 50 dB more path loss than a terrestrial cell site just a kilometer away. Moving from 2 GHz to 800 MHz recovers only a few dB of that enormous disadvantage. Lower-frequency spectrum can help improve satellite connectivity, but it doesn't change the fundamental physics. A satellite signal traveling hundreds of kilometers simply faces challenges that a nearby cell tower doesn't. 3) Indoor coverage is where the real test begins. More than 70% of mobile traffic takes place indoors. Think about where you use your phone most: at home, in the office, inside a store, or at a crowded venue. That's where terrestrial networks have a fundamental advantage. Buildings, walls, and other obstacles make it much harder for signals traveling from space to reach customers reliably. Direct-to-Cell technology can extend connectivity to outdoor places traditional networks don't reach, but delivering a consistent indoor mobile experience is a very different challenge. 4) Capacity matters just as much as coverage. One satellite beam can cover an area served by hundreds of terrestrial cell sectors. Those terrestrial sectors provide the network density needed to support millions of customers streaming video, making calls, working, gaming, and using data simultaneously. Covering a geographic area is one thing. Delivering the speed, responsiveness, and capacity customers expect from a modern 5G-Advanced network is another. Direct-to-Cell has an important role to play in extending coverage. But it is a complement to terrestrial networks, not a replacement for the capacity of a dense 5G-Advanced network. 5) Building a great network takes more than capital. It takes time and experience. The U.S. wireless industry has invested more than $250B in network infrastructure since 2018. That’s on top of more than $200B in spectrum auctions over the past decade, plus the stores, care, and distribution that support customers every day.  And that investment represents only part of what it takes to deliver a great wireless experience. You can acquire spectrum in a single transaction. You cannot acquire a nationwide, high-performing wireless network overnight. If this is truly the beginning of a new wireless provider in America, we welcome competition. It's good for innovation, good for the industry, and most importantly, good for customers. But great wireless networks aren't built with headlines or spectrum licenses alone. They're built site by site, neighborhood by neighborhood, in subway tunnels, office buildings, stadiums, and communities across America. Spectrum is an essential ingredient. But it takes a network to deliver on its promise."

🇬🇧 Whoa, Grok Bot is now available in my UK Tesla. No update; it just started working! I asked it a question, and it told me it was checking with one of my bots!! I have 100s of things I can do while driving now. Imagine this when we get FSD in the UK too? - So much productivity!

My kids reeeeeally enjoyed being the beta testers for this one! 🎃

Halloween Mode now rolling out 🎃 This spooky update turns your Tesla into a haunted house on wheels – Ghost costume on your car's avatar – Enable Trick or Treat to play spooky sounds & flicker the lights when visitors approach – New haunting light show, wraps & lock sound – A rather chilling Photobooth – Frighten people remotely by speaking through the app...your car will say it in a voice of its own Side effects may include neighborhood notoriety

There's an entirely new auto market being opened up by FSD. My wife and I moved into a retirement community last year, and we were joined by my brother and his wife. Our homes are almost next door to each other. Being longtime Tesla owners, we joined the EV group that meets once a month and shares information. I offered to talk about my experience with FSD, and they were excited to hear about it. So I prepared some slides and videos, freely purloined from the great material on X. The results were pretty astounding. The average monthly meetup usually had, perhaps, a couple of dozen people. Instead, the meeting notice talking about FSD drew a packed house of perhaps a hundred people, and we had to turn people away as the room was full. Well, that was last quarter's meeting. This quarter's meeting was held last week, to a significantly expanded group. And what did we hear? We heard about a couple that had stopped driving, their car sitting parked because they felt too unsure of themselves to drive. After my presentation, they traded in their vehicle for a Tesla with FSD, and now they are at about 97.5% on FSD and feel that they have been liberated. When I asked "why only 97.5%," they explained that the car lost its way in their underground parking garage (they live in the apartment section of the community). I explained that they could drop a pin on their actual parking spot rather than the address, and that may solve their problem. What struck me even more than the people who bought new Teslas after the presentation was how many seniors talked about their own FSD experience, and how many of them were achieving mid- to high-90% FSD driving. There was uniform enthusiasm for the product and for what it meant for them in their senior years. That matters in what is rapidly becoming an aging population.

Emergency Drive Away lets you shift into Drive while still plugged into a Supercharger

Halloween is coming

High utilization = affordable Supercharging Rare waiters = dependable travel

The couple allegedly passed the murder weapon to one another and took turns shooting Jonathan McKinsey, then were arrested within minutes without making an effort to get away. mercurynews.com/2026/09/30/d…