Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 358 posts

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#81

Post by Retric »

mancerayder wrote: post #52
midnitewarrior wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple started the path to normalizing this, and I believe it's core to being responsible for the entire user experience. Personally, I'm not a fan of this, but I understand the motives aside from profit. If a Tesla gets poor maintenance by an unskilled shop, when the vehicle crashes and kills the driver, Tesla gets the black eye and has to defend itself in the media and in front of the NHTSA. Tesla's stock takes the…

All well and good -- solid arguments except when you consider things like: Apple's Mac Pro (the big tower) had upgradeable RAM and video, and the newer versions (the little black shiny pretty cylinder) were soldered on. That's less about lawsuits and support costs -- it's memory for God's sake and everyone else lets the consumer physically upgrade it, even many laptops. It's about going through the cartel to get the…

Playing devils advocate.

RAM is the #1 cause if computers crashes largely because people think cheap or overclocked RAM is fine. Windows would have a vastly better reputation if it was always paired up with good hardware.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#82

Post by sanderjd »

warent wrote: post #12
gtirloni wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Oracle is bad. No, I don't love or even like them. But quoting Bryan's dramatic speeches every time Oracle or Ellison are mentioned is adding next to nothing to the discussion at this point. It's a great way to incite anger though.

This is actually the first I've heard the speech, so to me personally it added value at least.

Yep, I've stopped being annoyed by seemingly repetitive comments. On any given topic there is always both a gtirloni who has heard it a million times and a warent who never has.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#83

Post by pilsetnieks »

mancerayder wrote: post #52
midnitewarrior wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple started the path to normalizing this, and I believe it's core to being responsible for the entire user experience. Personally, I'm not a fan of this, but I understand the motives aside from profit. If a Tesla gets poor maintenance by an unskilled shop, when the vehicle crashes and kills the driver, Tesla gets the black eye and has to defend itself in the media and in front of the NHTSA. Tesla's stock takes the…

All well and good -- solid arguments except when you consider things like: Apple's Mac Pro (the big tower) had upgradeable RAM and video, and the newer versions (the little black shiny pretty cylinder) were soldered on. That's less about lawsuits and support costs -- it's memory for God's sake and everyone else lets the consumer physically upgrade it, even many laptops. It's about going through the cartel to get the…

The trashbin Mac Pro can also be upgraded - RAM, SSD, GPU and even the CPU. The problem is that the SSD and GPU use weird form factors and thus are hard to find and expensive.

It's the laptops where everything is soldered on.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#84

Post by drcoopster »

dominotw wrote: post #56
tsomctl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that this doesn't bode well for Tesla. My biggest complaint with Tesla is that they don't provide service manuals or have an open parts department for their vehicles. For comparison, pretty much every other major auto maker will sell you a book telling you how to fix anything on your vehicle, and will sell you the parts and special tools to do so. Not Tesla, and given what we know about Ellison, I very mu…

> For comparison, pretty much every other major auto maker will sell you a book telling you how to fix anything on your vehicle Wow I didn't know this. I have hard time believing this. Where can I find this for my subaru 2019.

Your dealer.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#85

Post by kps »

gaius wrote: post #68
rossdavidh wrote: post #48

After his failure, as virtually the only Theranos board member with a high-tech background, to provide any good advice on tech development to Elizabeth Holmes, this seemed incredible to me. Then, I read this in the statement: "Larry is also a big believer in Tesla’s mission, having purchased 3 million shares earlier this year." So, Musk was required to introduce more outside independence to his board, per agreement w…

Both Ellison and Musk are vying for the position of “real life Tony Stark”, I will wager in the next year they will have a major falling out.

I will watch this movie just for the part where Elon's rocket fleet attacks Larry's island volcano lair.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#86

Post by thorin »

tsomctl wrote: post #11
gtirloni wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Oracle is bad. No, I don't love or even like them. But quoting Bryan's dramatic speeches every time Oracle or Ellison are mentioned is adding next to nothing to the discussion at this point. It's a great way to incite anger though.

My point is that this doesn't bode well for Tesla. My biggest complaint with Tesla is that they don't provide service manuals or have an open parts department for their vehicles. For comparison, pretty much every other major auto maker will sell you a book telling you how to fix anything on your vehicle, and will sell you the parts and special tools to do so. Not Tesla, and given what we know about Ellison, I very mu…

Not sure what you mean here, Oracle Database at least has great documentation although there is rather a lot of it:

https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/index.htm

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#87

Post by bdcravens »

genie514 wrote: post #34
dforrestwilson wrote: post #8

The same guy who encouraged Elizabeth Holmes to ignore her engineers in favor of over the top promotion. Also a board member who failed (or chose not) to detect the underlying fraud... Every time I consider closing out my Tesla short position something like this happens and I get more confident that something is awry.

This guy built a company that services most of the data infrastructure of the world and pumps 15 billion of cash every year- but you remember him by what advice he gave to one person ; that just seems unfair.

Given Tesla's recent issues, it seems unfair to judge someone on financial success alone while turning a blind eye to ethics implications.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#88

Post by golfer »

Bruce Scott, the co-founder of Oracle says, “I remember Larry very distinctly telling me one time: Bruce, we can’t be successful unless we lie to customers.” And adds: “All the things that you would read in books of somebody being a leader, he wasn’t. But he was tenacious; he would never give up on anything.” [0]

Elon stretches the truth constantly. Should be a good fit.

[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/01/larry-ellison-hearsay-we-c...

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#89

Post by tw04 »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #28

Yup, that Larry Ellison. I'm not sure whether this is good news or not.

I would label it as extremely bad. You're talking about a guy who has no shame in using a publicly traded company (Oracle) to bail himself out of personal investments gone wrong (See Pillar Data). He's literally everything that is wrong with capitalism embodied. He's made a living off holding customers hostage and milking them for every last penny. Tesla has made a living off customer service.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#90

Post by sokoloff »

geofft wrote: post #63
krapp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Isn't the whole premise of capitalism that people motivated by money will build useful things for the world? No, the whole premise of capitalism is that people motivated by money will build things that make them money. It's right there in the name - "capital"-ism. Capital is the means, motive and end.

So then it is not a morally defensible system, unless you believe the accumulation of wealth is inherently moral? It seems surprising that capitalism is so easy to argue against on moral grounds. Surely it has some benefit for the society that lives under it?

> Surely it has some benefit for the society that lives under it?

It does seem that societies with generally capitalist systems flourish to a much greater degree than societies that are organized under any other dominant economic system.

Post reply on HN