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Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

nytimes.com

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Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#221

Post by MrEfficiency »

mmsimanga wrote: post #141
tomhoward wrote: post #37

But, he added, “if you have anyone who can do a better job, please let me know. They can have the job. Is there someone who can do the job better? They can have the reins right now.” I think this hits at the crux of the issue around the performance/behaviour of Musk and other leaders of hugely ambitious companies. And I think it highlights the importance of thinking about what kinds of people it will take to lead the…

The problem with the current social media age is that it is difficult to tell how serious a problem really is. Part of the outrage is attention seeking media entities. So if you asked me what was the greater problem, Musk or the gangsters terrorizing families and murdering anyone who stands up to them (this is the reality in parts of Cape Town). I would say Musk really isn't a problem. The media and politicians don't…

>The problem with the current social media age is that it is difficult to tell how serious a problem really is.

And ofc, Tesla gives stories to people who write favorably about it. Elon has his one sided twitter propaganda outlet.

One of the greatest issues is that despite lots of people online, only a few people have voices that are noticed.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#222

Post by taneq »

mattmaroon wrote: post #195
tomhoward wrote: post #37

But, he added, “if you have anyone who can do a better job, please let me know. They can have the job. Is there someone who can do the job better? They can have the reins right now.” I think this hits at the crux of the issue around the performance/behaviour of Musk and other leaders of hugely ambitious companies. And I think it highlights the importance of thinking about what kinds of people it will take to lead the…

As someone who has come really close on several occasions to buying TSLA puts (the options version of shorting) I think I can answer: the shorts aren't haters. The shorts don't want Tesla to fail. The shorts don't even think Tesla will fail. The shorts just think the market cap of Tesla is insane. It's higher than much larger, profitable automakers who can provably make and sell cars at scale. For Tesla to be worth i…

> What if energy density of batteries doesn't substantially improve and all electric vehicles continue to be unappealing to large chunks of the population due to range anxiety?

Why are people still saying this? Is 300 miles then 200+ mph recharge rates not enough for 90%+ of people 100% of the time, and the other 10% of people most of the time?

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#223

Post by chatmasta »

grosjona wrote: post #220
tomhoward wrote: post #37

But, he added, “if you have anyone who can do a better job, please let me know. They can have the job. Is there someone who can do the job better? They can have the reins right now.” I think this hits at the crux of the issue around the performance/behaviour of Musk and other leaders of hugely ambitious companies. And I think it highlights the importance of thinking about what kinds of people it will take to lead the…

I think that there are lots of people who could do a better job than Elon Musk but they will never have the opportunity to prove it. The vast majority of people would know that calling the Thai cave diver/rescuer a 'pedo-guy' was a bad decision. Also, announcing that some funding was secured when it actually wasn't - That was a bad decision as well. To suggest that Elon Musk is irreplaceable is ridiculous. People use…

Tesla/SpaceX now are more like Apple before the first time it fired Jobs. In that case, he was most definitely not replaceable (he had to come back). So that’s maybe not the best analogy at this time.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#224

Post by smcl »

talltimtom wrote: post #171
tomhoward wrote: post #37

But, he added, “if you have anyone who can do a better job, please let me know. They can have the job. Is there someone who can do the job better? They can have the reins right now.” I think this hits at the crux of the issue around the performance/behaviour of Musk and other leaders of hugely ambitious companies. And I think it highlights the importance of thinking about what kinds of people it will take to lead the…

> Would we rather that Musk had just never founded Tesla and Space That really misses where a lot of the hate for Musk is coming from. If he had never started it in the first place, the shorters would not stand to win anything. They both want him to fail, but are also heavily invested in him having tried first. Also side note. Musk didn’t found Tesla, he bought in and kicked out the real founders. The company would l…

> he bought in and kicked out the real founders

I was curious about this so I went to the Wikipedia article...

> The company was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, although the company also considers Elon Musk, JB Straubel and Ian Wright as co-founders.[1]

The [1] linked article (https://www.cnet.com/news/tesla-motors-founders-now-there-ar...) details a bizarre and complicated situation. It seems that Musk was declared to be a founder of the company retroactively as a result of a lawsuit related to the thing you described.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#225

Post by [deleted] »

dingaling wrote: post #193
lazysheepherd wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. People apparently have a little self reflection, if at all. Let's get something straight: every person is a piece of shit, in some ways, granted some a bit more and some a bit less. Your project manager is a piece of shit in some ways, the new intern is, in her ways, your parents are, like it or not, in their own little ways. And finally you are a piece of shit, in your own distinct ways. But of all the pieces…

Landing boosters from orbit wasn't an original objective of Space-X. It arose as an off the cuff suggestion from an engineer after they failed to obtain Russian engines. Mr Musk deserves credit for running with the idea despite incredulity, but it wasn't due to his vision.

[deleted]

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#226

Post by compton_effect »

dingaling wrote: post #193
lazysheepherd wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. People apparently have a little self reflection, if at all. Let's get something straight: every person is a piece of shit, in some ways, granted some a bit more and some a bit less. Your project manager is a piece of shit in some ways, the new intern is, in her ways, your parents are, like it or not, in their own little ways. And finally you are a piece of shit, in your own distinct ways. But of all the pieces…

Landing boosters from orbit wasn't an original objective of Space-X. It arose as an off the cuff suggestion from an engineer after they failed to obtain Russian engines. Mr Musk deserves credit for running with the idea despite incredulity, but it wasn't due to his vision.

Well that is just a vast misrepresentation and distortion of the facts. The idea of landing boosters came about from spacex wanting to pursue reusable orbital vehicles from the beginning. Now spacex never wanted to acquire Russian engines. Where this russian connection comes from is before Elon started spacex, he wished to buy a few Russian ICBMS to launch a small greenhouse project to mars. The idea was to spur interest and investment into a mars program. This was back in the early 2000s and the russians basically laughed him out the door.

From this, Elon founded spacex thinking he will build the rockets himself. A founding tenet of spacex was to decrease the cost of access to space. To achieve this, they set about trying to reuse rockets in the very the beginning. Their first rocket, the falcon 1, had parachutes on board to test first stage reusability. Later, on the first 2 launches of their falcon 9 rocket they again tried using parachutes. It became apparent that using parachutes wasn’t working and so, in 2011, they began the grasshopper program to practice their rockets propulsively. Within 4 years from the start of the program, spacex was successful and had landed a first stage from a rocket launching a payload

To suggest it wasn’t part of the original inception of spacex or it was just an off the cuff response is blatant exaggeration. Listen, Elon has quite a few problems and in my opinion he should not be in charge of the day to day management of his companies. He should be the ideas man, pushing the companies vision and letting others get bogged down in implementing his ideas.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#227

Post by taneq »

ceejayoz wrote: post #184
kaolti wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird how you can judge someone's character based on a few tweets.

Calling someone a pedo because you don't like something they said is, at the very least, an asshole ish thing to do.

The article did suggest that some of his weird behaviour might have been a side effect of using Ambien to sleep.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#228

Post by masklinn »

gliboc wrote: post #218
masklinn wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The VC chose the best CEO (which happened to be himself) for the company, in the best interest of the company, its employees and its shareholders. In the same way Dick Cheney chose the best VP (which happened to be himself). > History absolves him. History absolves nothing. We've got no idea whatsoever how Tesla would have fared without a self-aggrandising marketer at the helm. Chances are it might have killed fewe…

What the fuck ? You might as well call Musk a murderer. What a crippling bias you have there.

Tesla released a half-baked lane detection system and essentially marketed it as autonomous self-driving, completely in line with Musk's usual MO. Saying so is not bias, let alone crippling.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#229

Post by hmmm5 »

Animats wrote: post #11

"Then he got in a Tesla Model S and drove himself to the airport. En route, Mr. Musk typed his fateful message." Don't text while driving. This going private thing is a strange idea. Sell Tesla to the Saudi sovereign wealth fund? The one dedicated to keeping oil a viable industry? Does he want Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud as a boss? That makes no sense. Softbank might make sense. Part of Musk's problem seems to be "O…

> The one dedicated to keeping oil a viable industry? Does he want Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud as a boss? That makes no sense.

It does make sense. They know renewable is the future so they're investing in it. They'll try to make as much money as possible on oil right now, but they're not foolish enough to desperately cling to it and deny potential changes in the future.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#230

Post by mattmaroon »

taneq wrote: post #222
mattmaroon wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has come really close on several occasions to buying TSLA puts (the options version of shorting) I think I can answer: the shorts aren't haters. The shorts don't want Tesla to fail. The shorts don't even think Tesla will fail. The shorts just think the market cap of Tesla is insane. It's higher than much larger, profitable automakers who can provably make and sell cars at scale. For Tesla to be worth i…

> What if energy density of batteries doesn't substantially improve and all electric vehicles continue to be unappealing to large chunks of the population due to range anxiety? Why are people still saying this? Is 300 miles then 200+ mph recharge rates not enough for 90%+ of people 100% of the time, and the other 10% of people most of the time?

The problem is most people have one car. 90% of the time isn't enough.

And for someone who doesn't live in one of the densest cities, it's nowhere near 90% of the time.

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