Nikolay Bakaltchev

BASIC launched on this day in 1964.

In 2007, Elon Musk predicted: SpaceX will replace the space shuttle by 2011. Tesla will make a $30,000 car. Solar power will be “a really big deal.” SpaceX had never reached orbit. Tesla had never delivered a car. He spent 20 minutes explaining everything he saw coming: The interviewer pushed back. What about Richard Branson? "What Branson is doing is a much smaller technological challenge. His craft is suborbital. It goes to Mach 3. Our craft is orbital. Mach 25." "But that doesn't describe the whole scale of difficulty. The energy required scales to the square of velocity." "To do what Branson is doing, you need 9 units of energy. To do what we're doing, you need 625." "What Branson is building can cross the English Channel. What we're building can circumnavigate the globe." "I still think what he's doing is great. I bought a ticket on his effort. But it's not in the same league technologically." So what does worry him? "The things that can really hurt SpaceX are our own foolishness. Our own errors. But none of the competition that I'm aware of." This was 2007. SpaceX had never reached orbit. He had already mapped the future. "When the shuttle retires in 2010, starting in 2011, SpaceX's rocket will replace the space shuttle in servicing the space station." It happened. "The Model 2 of Tesla is a $49,000 four-door five-passenger sedan. The Model 3 is intended to be around a $30,000 price point. That's affordable by almost everyone who can buy a new car." It happened. The interviewer asked about his trajectory. From physics at Stanford to Zip2 to PayPal to rockets. "When I graduated from college, there were three areas I thought would be most impactful to the future of humanity." "The internet. Space exploration. And changing the economy from a hydrocarbon-based economy to one which is solar electric." He built companies in all three. The interviewer asked about NASA. "There's a confusion in the public mind that SpaceX is competing with NASA. NASA is a customer of ours." He asked about the space program. "In 1969 we were able to go to the moon. Here we are over three decades later and we can barely get to low Earth orbit. By any measure, that is a step backwards." "If you look at news articles in the late 60s, the expectation was that by the 21st century we would have a moon base and probably a Mars base." "If you'd asked anyone at that point whether we would be unable to go to the moon and not have been to Mars, they would think you're crazy." The interviewer asked about the moon. "I don't think we should be going back to the moon. We should be focused on Mars." "The moon is kind of like the Arctic. Very barren. Very little resources. Not a place we could establish another human civilization." "We saw that movie in the 60s. The remake's never as good." Then came the lifestyle question. You've made a fortune. Ever thought about sitting on a beach drinking beer? "I find that really pretty boring. That would be torture if I had to do that every day." "I really need to be preoccupied with something. If I'm just sitting there relaxing, I can only do that for a very short period of time and then it becomes unbearable." A friend of his has a phrase for startups. "A startup is like eating glass and staring into the abyss." So why do it? "For me it's always about: does what I'm doing matter if we are successful? Does it matter to the world?" "There are easier ways to make money than starting a rocket company or a car company." "The interest in Tesla is not that the world needs another car company. It's that we have a very important environmental problem. Global climate change is going to be one of the most significant issues of the 21st century." "The only way to get around that is with an electric vehicle paired with zero-emission power generation. Solar power is going to be a really big deal." The interviewer asked about selling Tesla to a big car company. "Right now the big car companies believe that a viable electric vehicle is not possible, and even if it was, people wouldn't buy it." "We need to show that neither of those are true. That the technology works. That people want to buy it." "If we sold to one of the big car companies, it would really slow things down." On his daily routine: "I'm not an early morning person. I tend to get up around 7:30 or 8 and be in the office around 9:30. But I stay until about 8pm." On his office: "I just have a cubicle at SpaceX. Surrounded by my colleagues." On legacy: "What I'd like to do is help solve some important problems." "With respect to space, I hope to help make humanity a multiplanetary species." This 20 minute interview will teach you more about vision, ambition, and betting on yourself than every biography combined. Bookmark & give it 20 minutes today, no matter what.

On this day in 1995: first internet IPO.

A headline from 1994.

On this day in 1995: the first item was purchased on Amazon. It was a book on artificial intelligence.

Every new Claude launch since the beginning of 2026👇 - Jan 2026: Claude Cowork launched. - Feb 2026: Opus 4.6 released. - Feb 2026: Sonnet 4.6 released. - Feb 2026: PowerPoint integration - Feb 2026: Excel integrations added. - Feb 2026: Co-work plug-ins released. - Feb 2026: Claude Code security launched. - Feb 2026: Claude Code Remote Control - Feb 2026: Scheduled Task in Co- work - Feb 2026: Connector available in the free - Mar 2026: Claude memory is free - Mar 2026: Claude Marketplace launched - Mar 2026: Claude com ambassadors - Mar 2026: Code review for Claude code - Mar 2026: Claude skills for Excel & Slides - Mar 2026: charts & diagram in chat - Mar 2026: 1 million context window - Mar 2026: Dispatch for Claude Co-work - Mar 2026: Claude code Channels - Mar 2026: Co-work Projects - Mar 2026: Claude Computer use - Mar 2026: Tools cloud on mobile - April 2026: Microsoft 365 connectors Anthropic is cooking 💓

Agentic capability is improving fast. We believe Proof of Human is becoming critical for the internet and many of the platforms we use (like X). This paper explains why FaceID, face biometrics & government IDs won’t solve the problem, and what properties are most important.

We are about to witness history: the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona finally nears completion after 144 years. Rising to 172.5 meters, it is set to become the tallest church in the world as its central tower nears completion.

Macrohard or Digital Optimus is a joint xAI-Tesla project, coming as part of Tesla’s investment agreement with xAI. Grok is the master conductor/navigator with deep understanding of the world to direct digital Optimus, which is processing and actioning the past 5 secs of real-time computer screen video and keyboard/mouse actions. Grok is like a much more advanced and sophisticated version of turn-by-turn navigation software. You can think of it as Digital Optimus AI being System 1 (instinctive part of the mind) and Grok being System 2. (thinking part of the mind). This will run very competitively on the super low cost Tesla AI4 ($650) paired with relatively frugal use of the much more expensive xAI Nvidia hardware. And it will be the only real-time smart AI system. This is a big deal. In principle, it is capable of emulating the function of entire companies. That is why the program is called MACROHARD, a funny reference to Microsoft. No other company can yet do this.

Now, this is how you build a secret room! I would have hidden the hatch behind the bushes though.