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Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

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Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#421

Post by onethought »

xkjkls wrote: post #363
TheParkShark wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure he was lying?

I mean, similarly to my certainty Donald Trump was lying that his taxes are under audit, and thats why he can't release them. Do I have exact knowledge of Elon's head state, no, but I can make inferences from all his actions since. If a buyer truly existed to facilitate that transaction, that would be public knowledge at this point.

If you muck in the private equity world at all you'd know that this isn't true at all. Lots of deals and nearly deals happen everyday and they only reach the public sphere if the parties want it too.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#422

Post by javierluraschi »

javierluraschi wrote: post #416
cat199 wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so, you're saying it doesn't work then?

Correct! I'm saying FSD only works on 90%-99% of cases, which is currently insufficient to be actually considered FSD. Keyword, currently. However, I'm NOT stating that this won't ever work. I do believe that FSD will work in the future. Are there risks? For sure. But I'm very optimistic. I'm trying to communicate that, even with current in-car hardware, this should be sufficient. Why? Cause driving the car with a ne…

I'd add, we can be more specific about what a "case" is. I'd say, a trip might describe this better. As in, 90-99% of trips FSD Beta 9 will take you there without interventions. That's still lame, but still quite impressive. Achieving 90-99% accuracy on trips still seemed impossible one year ago, I don't think that's the case anymore. The remaining risk is, how fast can this improve between 99% to 99.9% and then to 99.99%, etc.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#423

Post by wpietri »

_game_of_life wrote: post #48

This should not be surprising to anyone. Arstechnica has followed Nikola's terrible and obvious fraud(s) for years now: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/02/nikola-admits-to-making... https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/12/nikola-stock-craters-af... https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/09/nikola-patented-a-stole... And many more... The speculation around this stock has been insane for many years now: https://arstechnica.c…

I'm glad to see a little accountability happening, but we've been building up to this for a long time as standards have loosened and money flooded in.

One startup I happened to follow was uBeam; their former VP of engineering had a great blog called Lies, Damn Lies, and Startup PR that tracked what was going on there. Whether or not it was legally fraud is a matter of debate, but it was certainly dodgy: https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/search/label/ubeam

I'd be curious to hear about other startups folks here think were somewhere near the borderline of fraud. There must be a lot of stories out there!

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#424

Post by javierluraschi »

jacquesm wrote: post #418
javierluraschi wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacing hardware does not make old hardware incapable of FSD. To give you an example, ImageNet for image classification required for many years a descent computer and GPU to run inference. Today, an improved version called MobileNet, runs in phones with no GPU from advancements in AI training with half-precision and why not. So, how can we be so sure that FSD can't EVER be ported back to HW1?

That's some pretty impressive goal post moving there. It doesn't matter whether it can't ever be ported back. It doesn't work today, and that's all there is to it. Musk lied. And it isn't the first time he does so either.

That's a bit harsh. Many technology products have delays, it sucks, makes customers unhappy, but is not uncommon and is not considered lying, not in my book at least. Windows Vista was delayed for many many years [1]. They actually promised a full database replacement to their file system that it never really shipped, etc. This is not to criticize them, but just to say that when ambitious goals are set, it's often the case that delays happen. You can definitely make the case that maybe it's better to release products Apple-style and just unveil them when they are ready, that would be a fair point.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#425

Post by perl4ever »

javierluraschi wrote: post #412
dangrossman wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the fall of 2016, Tesla's website has said: > "All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver." Yet the original "HW1" computer was replaced by "HW2", which was replaced by "FSD Computer 2.5", which was replaced by "FSD Computer 3". If you want to activate the Full Self-D…

Replacing hardware does not make old hardware incapable of FSD. To give you an example, ImageNet for image classification required for many years a descent computer and GPU to run inference. Today, an improved version called MobileNet, runs in phones with no GPU from advancements in AI training with half-precision and why not. So, how can we be so sure that FSD can't EVER be ported back to HW1?

>So, how can we be so sure that FSD can't EVER be ported back to HW1?

Are you saying that the possibility is enough to prove they didn't cheat people?

If, some day, Tesla hypothetically says "we have determined it is technically possible to backport FSD, but we aren't gonna, because we like making money, not spending it" is that enough in your mind to demonstrate they didn't defraud anyone way back when?

Or do they actually have to make it run to fulfill the original promise?

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#426

Post by LordDragonfang »

californical wrote: post #407
makeitdouble wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my point of view as a peasant without any shares anywhere, multibillion dollar vaporware companies have very little impact. We could argue this investment could have gone into better companies who could have made the world a better place, but it's purely hypothetical (the money could have gone to a worse company, or political lobbying as well...). Basically, from afar, it's a "rich people lost some money" drama.

That’s about as valid as saying “robbing someone’s house is legal as long as the victim has a high net worth, after all, they can afford it”. That’s not how laws and society work — theft is theft, no matter who the victim is.

That may be how "laws" work, but it's not how society works. There's a reason why "Robin Hood" is a parable. Legally, not all theft is treated the same, either - wage theft is largely ignored compared to other kinds, despite accounting for an order of magnitude greater amount.

And for that matter, not everyone agrees what theft even is. Leftist will say that wage labor is theft, and the far right will tell you taxation is theft. It's all relative.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#427

Post by xapata »

makeitdouble wrote: post #400
jdminhbg wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure creating a multibillion dollar vaporware fraud shell company and being a dick on Twitter are comparable sins.

From my point of view as a peasant without any shares anywhere, multibillion dollar vaporware companies have very little impact. We could argue this investment could have gone into better companies who could have made the world a better place, but it's purely hypothetical (the money could have gone to a worse company, or political lobbying as well...). Basically, from afar, it's a "rich people lost some money" drama.

What do you think funds our union pension plans?

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#428

Post by javierluraschi »

perl4ever wrote: post #425
javierluraschi wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacing hardware does not make old hardware incapable of FSD. To give you an example, ImageNet for image classification required for many years a descent computer and GPU to run inference. Today, an improved version called MobileNet, runs in phones with no GPU from advancements in AI training with half-precision and why not. So, how can we be so sure that FSD can't EVER be ported back to HW1?

>So, how can we be so sure that FSD can't EVER be ported back to HW1? Are you saying that the possibility is enough to prove they didn't cheat people? If, some day, Tesla hypothetically says "we have determined it is technically possible to backport FSD, but we aren't gonna, because we like making money, not spending it" is that enough in your mind to demonstrate they didn't defraud anyone way back when? Or do they a…

The possibility is not enough. They have to make FSD work in older Teslas to fulfill the original promise, somehow.

That said, if it doesn't happened this year, it doesn't mean it will never happen.

The first problem they need to solve is FSD. If they can't solve FSD even with latest hardware, then well, that would be bad on its own.

The question is, what happens once they solve FSD, do they port? Maybe, I don't think it will be nearly as hard. Now realistically, it's probably cheaper to give free upgrades to everyone and not have to do the port. To me that feels fair, is like "hey, I promised you FSD on HW1, is gonna be a pain to port, but here, take this free HW upgrade", I'd be OK with that.

Now if they don't compensate HW1 users to some degree once FSD is solved, I do feel that would not be cool.

But my point here is that, we are jumping to conclusions, we don't know yet. We can't claim (yet) that FSD will or will not happen.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#429

Post by [deleted] »

javierluraschi wrote: post #416
cat199 wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so, you're saying it doesn't work then?

Correct! I'm saying FSD only works on 90%-99% of cases, which is currently insufficient to be actually considered FSD. Keyword, currently. However, I'm NOT stating that this won't ever work. I do believe that FSD will work in the future. Are there risks? For sure. But I'm very optimistic. I'm trying to communicate that, even with current in-car hardware, this should be sufficient. Why? Cause driving the car with a ne…

[deleted]

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#430

Post by makeitdouble »

xapata wrote: post #427
makeitdouble wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my point of view as a peasant without any shares anywhere, multibillion dollar vaporware companies have very little impact. We could argue this investment could have gone into better companies who could have made the world a better place, but it's purely hypothetical (the money could have gone to a worse company, or political lobbying as well...). Basically, from afar, it's a "rich people lost some money" drama.

What do you think funds our union pension plans?

I don't have a union pension plan, and I'd argue they should be backed by less volatile investments than "innovative" companies.
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