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SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

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Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#711

Post by [deleted] »

fipple wrote: post #704
TangoTrotFox wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just taking a shot in the dark here. Perhaps, just perhaps, he had more information to base his decisions on than is available to you from a 'Tweet' and a couple of lines in a media article.

This kind of thinking makes sense (Musk is smart, he must make decisions rationally) but it is sort of empirically denied. If Musk was so smart he wouldn't have called a random guy a pedo or violated securities law in public. After all, he has more information/advice available to him on securities law than you or I do.

[deleted]

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#712

Post by mscasts »

djsumdog wrote: post #68
chollida1 wrote: post #6

This comment I made a few weeks ago is coming alot closer to the truth than I would have expected. I hope for Space X and Tesla's sake that the reports of a directory and Executive ban don't come true. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18016250#18016292 SpaceX is doing well, Tesla has pulled itself back from the brink and may actually become a profitable car company. All Elon had to do was keep his head down and n…

I'd hope the company itself would be fine. I really hate this idea of the grand visionary. A good friend of mine who is a mechanical engineer despises Musk. I listened to a bit of his Joe Regan interview and when Regan asked him how he has the time to do all of the things he does, there are smoke jokes about him being an alien, but not once did he say, "Well I have an amazing team of engineers" and credit all the tho…

Totally agree with the sentiment. I don't despise Musk, I rather like him a lot for all of his work.

BUT I also thought it was weird that, in the podcast, he didn't mention and never has mentioned (of all the appearances I've seen) the entire team of people helping him to the success. Specially in the podcast, because one question that was repeated several times by Joe was like "how do you manage to do all the stuff you do?". I do not like this way of portraying one guy as some sort of alien that does all this when in reality he does very little if you compare it to the work that is done by his employees.

Leadership that goes in the direction that Musk does is really good and very valuable but it's not what creates actual worth.

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#714

Post by King-Aaron »

dingaling wrote: post #659
api wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Musk never happened rockets would still be expendable, the US would still lack a Shuttle replacement, and EVs would be rare or nonexistent. We would still be talking about how personal mobility is doomed when oil is depleted, if not all of modern civilization. Prove me wrong. Who else was doing this stuff before SpaceX and Tesla? On space launch you had nothing serious except the SLS which is 70s tech. On EVs you…

> but nothing pushing to break into any mass market. Nissan Leaf 2010 Tesla Model S 2012 Renault Zoe 2013

> Tesla Roadster 2008

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#715

Post by erikb »

siberianbear wrote: post #660
erikb wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So when Elon tweeted, a whole whack of shorts got stopped out What means stopped out? The bank forcing the lender to give the stock back right at this point?

"Shorting" a stock means selling it without owning it, essentially owning negative stock. You're betting that it will go down, and then when it does go down, you close your position by buying the stock (to get back to zero shares). The risk in doing this is unlimited. If you short a stock at $100, and then it goes to $500, you've lost $400. Your broker doesn't want to take liability for your loss if you're not able t…

My understanding is different:

Shorting a stock means borrowing it and paying a fee for borrowing it. Then selling the borrowed stock and hoping when you buy it back it's worth less. If the borrower doesn't want his stock back and the price is too high for you, then you simply don't buy and continue to pay the fee.

So if you borrow stock for $100, maybe each year you pay a $5 fee, and sell it for $100. Considering there wouldn't be any transaction fees you would now have $95. If the price now rises to $500, you don't buy but continue to pay the $5. So it means you are only $90 ahead instead of $95. But you are not in the minus.

This is actually a really good deal for both the borrower and the short seller, which is why I bet there are lots of rules forbidding that and banks not actually doing it if you don't borrow a certain minimum size of a few million $. I don't know that, though. In theory you and I could do that game as well, if it's not illegal.

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#716

Post by mortdeus »

stcredzero wrote: post #127
djsumdog wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd hope the company itself would be fine. I really hate this idea of the grand visionary. A good friend of mine who is a mechanical engineer despises Musk. I listened to a bit of his Joe Regan interview and when Regan asked him how he has the time to do all of the things he does, there are smoke jokes about him being an alien, but not once did he say, "Well I have an amazing team of engineers" and credit all the tho…

Are Apple products different now that Jobs are gone? Yes. Jobs as local despot acted as a curb to bad decisions. Jobs had a vision which acted as a countervailing force to keep Apple from being completely sucked into being a money grubbing luxury goods company. the core people that make and design all their overpriced, planned obsolescence devices are still there, often uncredited, while everyone else likes to focus…

I knew everything was going down hill the second I seen that they weren't going to call it the Apple iWatch.

Like do they not know how important that lower case "i" is for their award winning and trend setting formula!

And I am being serious right now. My ocd is going nuts just thinking about the lost uniformity of the branding. Especially when they still insist on us calling their other products "my iphone, my ipod, my imac, and now we also have to say "my apple watch"?

How do you even tell somebody to pass you your phone, tablet, and watch all at the same time. "Hey man, can you pass me my iphone and ipad. Oh and my APPLE watch. Like do you not realize how much of my life you are wasting when you force me to say one more syllable.

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#717

Post by emptyfile »

resu_nimda wrote: post #706
ubernostrum wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hate this idea of the grand visionary. Which is amusing in the case of Musk. As I've said over and over, his approach is to find an industry where most or all of the hard, expensive fundamental R&D has already been done (and paid for) by someone else, and then start a company to incrementally improve it and promise vast cost reductions from economies of scale. That's what SpaceX is. That's what Tesla is. The…

What is baffling to me is the length that some HN commenters will go to to tear down people like Elon and Steve Jobs. Maybe you don't like him, maybe you don't like how much attention and praise he gets. But to be so dismissive of what those companies have accomplished with him at the helm, to me is just unwarranted bitter negativity. In your mind, what companies are doing staggering heart-breaking Copernican-revolut…

>Pretty bleak outlook if pushing the bleeding edge of rocket technology forward is humdrum small potatoes.

Yes, the world's outlook is pretty bleak.

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#718

Post by techstrategist »

megakwood wrote: post #680
anthonybsd wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tesla has pulled itself back from the brink and may actually become a profitable car company This is a very very generous assessment of the dire financial situation TSLA is in. At best they have hit their production at the expense of quality which will only temporarily offset their costs. Any sustainable mid-term profitability is a very big question mark at this point.

Don't think that's the case -- did you listen to the latest earnings call? They're forecasting a cashflow positive Q3 with 15% gross margin on the Model 3s, and have sustained 5,000 M3 and 2,000 S&X per week for several weeks now. They even closed the reservation system and are taking orders for 2 months out.

It’s widely reported (even among usually optimistic forecasters) that Model 3 production has stalled as low as 3k per week after the initial rush week. There are further questions regarding warranty provision that may be hiding significant costs which would impact that 15% GM.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/

* edit: typo

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#719

Post by carlob »

ac29 wrote: post #483
asn0 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've started to think Apple is more competitive on laptops than it looks from the price. Every time I've priced out a laptop with similar configuration to my MBP (including a good-quality display, NvME SSD, good battery life), it always ends up costing about the same as an MBP. And then Apple's customer service definitely tips in their favor (I've been spoiled by fast, convenient, competent repair service at the Appl…

Out of curiosity, I specc'd out a Thinkpad T480 as close as I could to the base model MBP, and they are reasonably similar in price (the Thinkpad is $2100 to the MBP's $2400). Thing is, if you drop a few upgrades, such as dropping the CPU speed by a few percent, dropping the dGPU, going to a 1080P screen, and using a SATA instead of NVME drive, you're down to $1400 for largely minor decreases in performance and capab…

FWIW I specced out a T480s and I got something that in terms of RAM wasn't even available on macs at the time (24 GB), weights under 1.5kg, has HDMI, ethernet USB and USB-C, a matte HIDPI display and a proper keyboard (and it came out costing like a top of the line MBP).

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#720

Post by eecc »

threeseed wrote: post #172
stcredzero wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are Apple products different now that Jobs are gone? Yes. Jobs as local despot acted as a curb to bad decisions. Jobs had a vision which acted as a countervailing force to keep Apple from being completely sucked into being a money grubbing luxury goods company. the core people that make and design all their overpriced, planned obsolescence devices are still there, often uncredited, while everyone else likes to focus…

This is just revisionist history and completely wrong. Steve Jobs pretty much set Apple on the premium goods track when he returned. The iMac, iPod, iPad, iPhone were all developed under his watch and all were premium priced. Apple has pushed the margins higher but that's only because the market can absorb it. Computing is more central to people's lives and they are willing to pay a premium for a good experience.

Premium, not luxury. There's a significant difference.
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