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Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

cnbc.com

11–20 of 627 posts

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#11
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that anyone cares or asked what I think but I wouldn't be surprised if Elon ends up surpassing Crazie Eddie Antar [0] as far as fraud goes. (I have no idea whether he is a fraud. He just strikes me as likely a fraud.) [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Eddie

I see a lot of resentment and "hate" on HN about Elon and quite honestly I don't understand where it is coming from. Where are the facts that Elon/Tesla is one gigantic fraud? Where is the scientific proof?

I hope Elon is real. I want Elon to be real. I just fear that he isn't. I don't have "scientific proof" for you.

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#12

> This included making direct code changes to the Tesla Manufacturing Operating System under false usernames and exporting large amounts of highly sensitive Tesla data to unknown third parties. How do "false usernames" work in a modern development environment where all commits are tied to a single real-world user?

I don't know about at the infrastructure level, but seems possible to use false name and email on git. I mention infrastructure because I presume that commits should be reviewed, and that it shouldn't be possible to update software outside of an automated/controlled structure that relies on only pulling code from authorised branches.

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#13

At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, perhaps a short-seller paid an employee to sabotage. It is not out of the realm of possibility, especially since $TSLA is at a whopping 33% float short.

This was my thought exactly. Sounds like they hired an ex-CIA field operative who was expert at what he was doing.

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#14

At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, perhaps a short-seller paid an employee to sabotage. It is not out of the realm of possibility, especially since $TSLA is at a whopping 33% float short.

This was my thought exactly. Sounds like they hired an ex-CIA field operative who was expert at what he was doing.

Further thought: if they know who they guy is and press criminal charges, they could pressure him to reveal who was behind it.

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#15
post #2

This is not stable behavior of a CEO of a billion dollar company. Edit: This is not the first time that he's been calling "sabotage": https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/implication-... (Open in incognito mode for the paywall.)

How is not keeping your employees in the loop in a critical week and reminding them sabotage won't be tolerated not stable?

Ask yourself, though, how often you’ve seen emails like this from other companies in the news. Probably about never? Whatever you think about his reasons, Musk is going way against standard procedure here- and this in the field of company management, not the kind of engineering problems where his weird approach has paid off.

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#16

> This included making direct code changes to the Tesla Manufacturing Operating System under false usernames and exporting large amounts of highly sensitive Tesla data to unknown third parties. How do "false usernames" work in a modern development environment where all commits are tied to a single real-world user?

With a vanilla git configuration, it's as easy as:

  $ vi centrifuge_rpm_controller.cc
  $ git commit --author "Bob Goodguy " -a -m "Totally harmless changes"
  $ git push
In a high-stakes environment, it's probably worth signing commits. https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Signing-Your-Work

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#17
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that anyone cares or asked what I think but I wouldn't be surprised if Elon ends up surpassing Crazie Eddie Antar [0] as far as fraud goes. (I have no idea whether he is a fraud. He just strikes me as likely a fraud.) [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Eddie

I see a lot of resentment and "hate" on HN about Elon and quite honestly I don't understand where it is coming from. Where are the facts that Elon/Tesla is one gigantic fraud? Where is the scientific proof?

The media's opinion of Elon has turned sour lately due to his criticism of bloggers and tabloid articles (ie Daily Beast). That is starting to shape the minds of those who follow the media very closely.

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#18

At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, perhaps a short-seller paid an employee to sabotage. It is not out of the realm of possibility, especially since $TSLA is at a whopping 33% float short.

This was my thought exactly. Sounds like they hired an ex-CIA field operative who was expert at what he was doing.

>"This included making direct code changes to the Tesla Manufacturing Operating System under false usernames and exporting large amounts of highly sensitive Tesla data to unknown third parties."

What in here indicates ex-CIA operative to you? Theres no need to add any conspiracy around it. Adding a commit with a different username is incredibly trivial to anyone who can run commit with the command line, i.e. 99% of software engineers. As for exporting data to unknown third parties, I have seen interns do this by accident. Its not complicated or needs rare skills to do a lot of damage internally.

If Tesla runs fast and loose with ideas like their PR pieces suggest, I doubt their security is incredibly top notch in terms of locking down internal threats either

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a lot of resentment and "hate" on HN about Elon and quite honestly I don't understand where it is coming from. Where are the facts that Elon/Tesla is one gigantic fraud? Where is the scientific proof?

The media's opinion of Elon has turned sour lately due to his criticism of bloggers and tabloid articles (ie Daily Beast). That is starting to shape the minds of those who follow the media very closely.

Just because the media has turned doesn't mean his criticism of them is invalid or incorrect. Negatively in news is at absurd levels... Peddling outrage sells.
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