Elon Musk

people on twitter so mad. trying to understand why. i guess it boils down to:

1) shouldn't we fix BART / buses / systems that working class people use before building toys for rich people

2) LA-to-SF only is ridiculous, there's like a whole state in there

3) nobody wants to hear half-baked plans from an arrogant rich dude

still, i mean, it's pretty cool, right?

1) shouldn't we fix BART / buses / systems that working class people use before building toys for rich people

There are lots of problems everywhere all the time. Can't let it stop technology from moving forward.

2) LA-to-SF only is ridiculous, there's like a whole state in there

There's a whole country, even! LA-to-SF sounds like a perfectly fine beta test.

3) nobody wants to hear half-baked plans from an arrogant rich dude

Not all rich dudes are arrogant. Elon Musk has never struck me as anything close to that.

people on twitter so mad.

who do you follow?

i'm not getting that impression from all the tech ppl i follow

unveiling this while CA is deep in the hole with it's bullet-train project (something I support wholeheartedly btw) is pretty arrogant

You might be right, Johnny, dunno. I was just trying to figure out why there was this explosion of contempt all over my twitter feed after the announcement.

markers, here are some of the people that were entertainingly scathing: kalebhorton, quartzcity, tcarmody, mikesonn

i do follow tim but i guess whatever he said didn't stick

cool monorail bro

lol

i have a plan for a train that goes from boston to atlanta in 10mins, its called lasertrain and ill give you some cool drawings of it in a couple weeks, its ridiculous no one is building it btw it only costs $10

im not gonna build it tho cause im kinda busy

even i can afford that

unveiling this while CA is deep in the hole with it's bullet-train project (something I support wholeheartedly btw) is pretty arrogant

isn't his point that hyperloop would be fraction of the cost and twice as fast?

the douchey thing is that he made a big ol deal abt something thats not at all real

Which is how 70% of architecture and urban planning works.

sure 70% that sounds totally realistic too

I meant 94% sorry.

To me, it really sounds like a kickstarter project... but from a billionaire.

i mean who knows maybe its revolutionary technology but its so preliminary its p comical to call a press conference abt it

maybe this is the best way to convince someone else to give it a shot idk

LOL "elon musk"

This should keep us occupied for a while: http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop

markers, here are some of the people that were entertainingly scathing: kalebhorton, quartzcity, tcarmody, mikesonn

I wasn't scathing about Musk (I am about futurism in general) - if anything, he has a good track record on quixotic tech quests. I hope he's successful with this. I also hope there's a state left that can use it.

unveiling this while CA is deep in the hole with it's bullet-train project (something I support wholeheartedly btw) is pretty arrogant

Knowing how CA politics works (and the CA rail projects are amazingly political), how would you expect a non-arrogant to even get traction with this?

I have no doubt that Musk will solve the Hyperloop technical issues. I very much have doubts about him navigating Sacramento.

I was describing this to my wife today and kept calling it Supertube.

Bad connotations...

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/supertrain-1_7696.jpg

lol @ the "open source" pdf proposal. build a section of the thing and then get back to us when you have it working.

Musk says the Hyperloop is best for distances of 900 miles. Beyond 900 miles, he thinks you're better off in a supersonic jet.

Lol

I never use my supersonic jet anymore as parking is always a total bitch

I have to say I rather like Elon Musk. He's made a massive pile of money and rather than sitting on it or managing it in mundane ways; he's making risky bets on thinks he's passionate about: Cars, Rockets, vacuum tubes.

Hyperloop seems a bit ridiculous to me, vacuum tube powered trains and trains in evacuated tubes are an old chestnut, almost as old as railways themselves. However, he's built a commercially viable private space programme and a car company* in the last ten years so anything is possible.

*Tesla isn't really a car company it's a power train company and if it is still making cars in 5 years I'll be surprised.

ya i'm kinda ll for crackpot genius billionaires actually doing interesting stuff, up until they become str8 up supervillains obv

lol @ the "open source" pdf proposal. build a section of the thing and then get back to us when you have it working.

― wk, Tuesday, August 13, 2013 2:23 AM

he might do this

is this dude one of the crazy silicon valley libertarian types or is he just beloved by them?

iirc he has liberal tendencies mixed in w the libertarianism

xp I heard him speak and he seemed not crazy and to have some kind of social or at least environmental conscience, unlike the usual libertarian types, but maybe he's just better at hiding it

(I like him too fwiw and right now he seems one of the most likely "crackpot genius billionaires" to solve some hard problems which are overdue for solving, so I hope he carries on with that. Also hoping that one day I'll get to see/read his computer game that appeared in some 8-bit micro type-in listings mag in the 80s)

he's not as bad as some of the other silicon valley libtards, I'll give him that.

nonetheless, this is a stupid proposal

do tell

curious to read a critique that amounts to more than 'hyperlol'

I think it's dumb that he's throwing around numbers when he doesn't even have a working prototype. It just seems like he's hoping to derail the other project. I also think the "open source" thing is pretty silly since it's not like code where an individual can make some kind of improvement and test it out to see if it works. I guess an open source design is an interesting idea after the fact if he actually gets it working and other people want to build his design, but it still seems basically irrelevant.

Didn't he make his fortune with Peter thiel?
I don't know if that is "guilt by association" or "looking better by comparison"

It just seems like he's hoping to derail the other project

^^^

A key part of his criticism of the other rail plan is that it's "more expensive to operate (if unsubsidized)." I'd like to see some more detailed numbers on that though. Why would we count the cost of unsubsidized rail against air travel which is heavily subsidized? All that really matters is cost to the traveller, and unlike airlines, I'm assuming the high speed rail system is not going to be run as a for-profit business. He also makes no comparison of the environmental costs of air flight vs. the planned high speed rail system.

markers, here are some of the people that were entertainingly scathing: kalebhorton, quartzcity, tcarmody, mikesonn

― eris bueller (lukas), Monday, August 12, 2013 11:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm generally contemptuous of futurists, primarily because they seem to think energy and climate change problems will just sort themselves out, but a mass transit system that relies on solar power and transports people across one of the busiest stretches of highway in America is a good thing. I looked at the first two feeds you suggested and they seemed to just be saying this is just a toy for rich people, which is afaict completely unsupported by his proposal. He's not suggesting a magic carpet for billionaires; it's mass transit that uses solar power. This is a good thing! Maybe it's completely impossible hogwash, but I'd like to see actual engineering criticism of it instead of casual dismissals based on suspicion of ideas from rich people.

the main challenges are not engineering-related, their political

anybody who is over the age of 25, has lived in a city for any length of time, and paid a modicum of attention to the world around them knows that these kinds of massive public works projects tend to be underbid by shady contractors and then they go wildly over the original schedule and budget. so the fact that he's coming in saying he can do it so much cheaper with a totally new and untested technology is a huge red flag. to me it immediately suggests that the whole thing is not serious.

if he honestly thinks this is a feasible plan he should raise some funding and build a private line from LA to Vegas.

It's transparently unserious in that he doesn't want to do it himself and "regrets even mentioning it"

right, that aspect has been p funny

haha, I missed that part

ya seems like he said something offhandedly then realized abt his celebrity

a mass transit system that relies on solar power and transports people across one of the busiest stretches of highway in America is a good thing.

people don't commute the LA to SF corridor though. i have a hard time believing a transit system would fill the role of the 5 freeway. it's mostly trucks anyway.

is tsla a meme stock yet

has been all along

Tesla has benefited enormously from Chinese EV subsidies. Its numbers will be a lot worse if those go away.

This is a social media post by Dustin Moskowitz, founder of Asana and Facebook billionaire:

I know I sound crazy to most people who don't follow $TSLA closely but at this point it really needs to be said. This is Enron now, folks.

It may keep going, but people are going to jail at the end. The data is presented in fraudulent ways, and it doesn't say what they claim it says even when they make it up.

Tesla has committed consumer fraud on a massive scale, from lying about FSD, ranges and (recently, unconfirmed!) even inflating odometers.

Many times now, also securities fraud.

ive been saying that for years and im still not a billionaire

Was your dad a billionaire? If not that could be a problem

shit i dont think he is but ill ask

If you've actually met him, he's probably not one

The Man Who Met His Dad

yeah I've been reading a lot of well-sourced substacks and blogposts arguing as much. like sure Elon is admittedly pretty skilled at pumping the stock price up but there's way more internal fraud going on than that, Tesla's internals have just never added up, the question is how long they can keep it going. I mean I thought this was all gonna come crumbling down years ago.

If Musk wasn't so tied into the Military Industrial Complex it would probably have come tumbling down a lot faster.

feel like you have to run out of money before a massive corporate fraud collapses, until then you might get some fines or whatever, i guess there could be some smoking gun document that says i elon am doing massive corporate fraud but outside that i think it keeps rolling until it cant anymore, like repeatedly promising full self driving and whatnot is so blatantly fraudulent and no one cares hes doing right in public

bare minimum their branding of "full self-driving" and "autopilot" should be a FTC case for deceptive marketing

President Keyes otm, as much as I'm loath to give him credit for anything at all, making sure his space company got into bed with the US military was the smartest thing he ever did, allowing him to get away with a lot of shit.

Musk vs United Launch Alliance (a.k.a. Boeing & Lockheed Martin) had been an ongoing fight for almost a decade and it was something SpaceX absolutely could not lose. I'll never credit Musk for anything, but I still believe that in the long run - his fights with ULA and the National Automobile Dealers Association are probably more significant than any of his companies.

I for sure thought the Tesla Solar Roof class-action was going to be the start of the domino fall.

I was kinda thinking the only thing Tesla really made money on was the carbon offset trading and the bitcoin shenanigans. Those two things I know were pointed out in a couple of their good reports in why the books were doing good in the salad days.

does musk believe in anthropogenic climate change? today he posted a 2000s facebook meme about greta thunberg wanting communism today.

today i'm gonna rock you today

Robotaxis will be the equivalent of 40% of US GDP any day now

Robotaxis will generate 8-10 Trillion in revenues in 2030, half of which will go to platforms like Tesla $TSLA says Cathie Wood

pic.twitter.com/50XajhXVdb

— Barchart (@Barchart) April 28, 2024

oh god, it’s the ARK investments ceo
they’re a weird attempt at a “science is the future” ETF that seems more like a cargo cult

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ark_Invest

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathie_Wood

For the 10 years ending in December 31, 2023, Morningstar ranked ARK Invest Funds as the worst "wealth destroyer" family of funds, based on the "decline in assets in dollar terms, after excluding inflows or outflows."

one of those people where you can do the opposite of what they promote pretty regularly and prosper. maybe ignore financial news that takes them seriously

Ted Talks are the new pump-n-dump stock scams

one of those people where you can do the opposite of what they promote pretty regularly and prosper. maybe ignore financial news that takes them seriously

there is an inverse cathie wood etf.

Tesla conducting more layoffs, including entire Supercharger team

Just after laying off “more than 10%” of its global workforce, Tesla is laying off even more employees – including senior executives and long-time veterans of the company, most notably the entire Supercharging team and the executive responsible for negotiating NACS adoption across the industry.

...

Now, more layoffs have been finalized through an email from CEO Elon Musk to executives, first reported by The Information, stating that 6-year veteran Rebecca Tinucci, Tesla’s Senior Director of EV charging, would be leaving the company on Tuesday, along with nearly all of her 500-person charging team (“a few” employees will be reassigned to other teams, according to The Information).

Tinucci was responsible for Tesla’s EV charging business, including Supercharging, which means that the cutting of the Supercharger team may reflect a change in direction for Tesla. Tesla has been very successful at getting manufacturers to adopt its NACS plug – an effort led by Tinucci, which got her onto the TIME 100 Climate list – leading many to suggest that it will be able to run a profitable energy delivery business for a long time to come (here’s her presentation from Investor Day 2023).

The email states that Tesla will continue to build out some new Superchargers, and will finish those under construction. But relieving the team of its duty may signal a reduction in buildout of the system – at a time when, if anything, faster charging station deployment is needed.

Another executive layoff is 10-year veteran Daniel Ho, Director of Vehicle Programs and New Product Initiatives, who was program manager for the Model S, 3 and Y and had previously served 12 years at Ford in product roles.

In recent quarters, Tesla has guided for a “pause” inbetween growth phases, expecting that sales growth would be more modest until the release of next-gen vehicles like the cheaper “Model 2” and robotaxi products. There has been some back–and–forth over what form those products would take – but laying off the head of New Product Initiatives reflects potential problems within that team as well.

Further, most of former executive Rohan Patel’s public policy team will be eliminated – at a time when many public policy challenges around DC charging, home charging, emissions standards, climate change, and political hostility to superior EV technology are still looming.

arent superchargers supposed to be a big deal for them

yeah as a low info ev person i had sorta thought the supercharger and charge network generally was gonna be a bigger profit center than EVs for them, because they seem quite not good at what it takes to make an actually good EV. or any vehicle.

they went to Supercharger Heaven

rip

firing that supercharger team right after lots of manufacturers have committed to using that network is weird as fuck; he's also unfollowed a bunch of his biggest simps on Twitter, which is leading some to think the Tesla board is maybe about to oust him

scam #7 to heaven

seems like the supercharger team getting canned is a combo of "well, that's project finished and it's a success so bye!" which is terrible and Elon deciding someone looking more successful than him seeing an effort led by Tinucci, which got her onto the TIME 100 Climate list and not liking that someone else got head pats

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:m7w6mfn35d53chutrzjzgkng/bafkreifsbnfgt56caluisp4rg4irn24kuqwgbdn4d3yw4zmdug4hopuln4@jpeg

I suppose that after trolling fans with the cybertruck the next logical step is to troll the entire EV industry and TSLAstans at once by canning the only part of Tesla that works and makes money

Thought the Tesla subreddit would have been making excuses but it seems like even they don’t trust him.

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/1ch34s5/tesla_still_plans_to_grow_the_supercharger/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

is tsla a meme stock yet

― adam t. (abanana), Thursday, 25 April 2024 5:12 AM (six days ago)

has been all along

― lag∞n, Thursday, 25 April 2024 5:15 AM (six days ago)

My place is surrounded on two sides by houses with Tesla solar roofs. They're so screwed when they get trashed in the next windstorm