Flagged again.
Can't help but notice what kind of political bend we see in the things that get flagged here.
Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site
181–190 of 264 posts
Re: Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Elon isn't mocking him - the employee made this public and Elon is defending his choice to fire him. It's interesting how Halli doesn't actually defend that he did any work, because it's clear he didn't. Instead he's tweeting "Let me know if you are going to pay what you owe me?" at Elon, which is only furthering Elon's stance that this dude is looking for a payday and went to publicly smear Elon to bully him into pa…
> Elon isn't mocking him he posted an office space meme in response to him sarcastically. > It's interesting how Halli doesn't actually defend that he did any work, because it's clear he didn't. and that is a spurious reach.
It's a meme asking what exactly he did, which is a completely valid question for someone who clearly wasn't working and then launched a public smear campaign to get paid.
> and that is a spurious reach.
Halli himself tweeted that he "did what his manager told him to" but didn't actually say that he did any material work, instead citing that he had been waiting forever from HR without any response. I cannot believe people are trying to defend that this dude was actually working when it's very clear he wasn't.
Re: Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are sick and tired about constant news about Musk's latest crap antics, just like with Trump - basically, at least here in Europe, you can't go to bed and wake up without yet another newsflash of either a large Twitter outage or Elon Musk shitposting again. I get why people are exhausted, but the desensitization is dangerous on its own - when there are no consequences, people escalate their behavior... and Mus…
> Musk already has intervened to make Starlink less usable for Ukraine. and here you are perpetuating the fake shit about Elon that gets everyone engaged. Elon doesn't want Starlink to be directly used on weapons to kill people. Would you also fault the World Nuclear Association for being willing to provide uranium to power Ukraine, but refusing to provide the same material for nuclear bombs? He has a right to determ…
Ukraine wants to use Starlink to make war, so when Elon intervenes to prevent the use of Starlink for certain applications in making war, he is making Starlink less usable for Ukraine.
You're raising an argument for why it is in your view justifiable for Elon to do this, but that doesn't make the basic elements of what the commenter above said false.
Nuclear weapons are far more destructive, and indiscriminately destructive, than the use of satcomms with conventional weapons, so I think that choice of comparison is hyperbolic and unreasonable. This seems more like Garmin sending GPS units to Ukraine but refusing them to be issued to tanks, and as much as Elon has the right to determine the use of the technology his firm is donating to Ukraine, people have the right to criticize his choice to do that. Ukrainians will die because of this decision, and it is fair for people to criticize the choices that lead to that result.
Edit: I can't reply any further so I will just reiterate in reply here. Ukraine is using starlink for war, so making starlink unusable for weapons is making it less usable for Ukraine's use case, defending their country from invasion. How you choose to morally equivocate the invaders to the defenders is your decision, but it doesn't make what the commenter above said "fake" and it doesn't insulate Elon from criticism over his own decision.
Re: Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup, when just a simple trivial response would do. Either no reply & cc:HR, or "Yup, HR should get on this". With that kind of money and power, the #1 or #2 richest person in the world, you can afford to be extremely gracious and self-effacing. And it is good for your wealth. Instead, Elon chooses to make a public show of being a smug, petty, abusive, asshat. What an impoverished emotional weakling is on display here…
Elon didn't make this public, the (independently very wealthy) employee did that.
Yes, Elon did exactly that.
Thorleifsson repeatedly inquired of HR, then made a single tweet to Musk.
As I pointed out, Musk could have 1) simply ignored it, 2) ignored it and cc'd HR to reply, or 3) publicly replied something brief and to the point, such as "Yes, terminated, cc:HR to close out paperwork".
Yet, musk chose to do none of the above, instead choosing to escalate the situation, evidently while underestimating his opponent.
This is absolutely 100% on Musk, it's his company, his response, and he's the wealthiest and one of the most powerful men in the world. He chose it, and the fact that he got publicly pwnd is entirely his own doing.
But, as usual, there's that meme about some weird nerd who always throws himself in front of a valid point to try to protect Elon. (If it matters, I also posted on HN several things defending Musk, but this is indefensible)
Re: Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a "right" way and a "wrong" way to go about reducing headcount. I'm not exactly sure what the "right" way is, but I'm pretty sure that Elon's way ain't it.
You mean by providing several months of severance? And not doing it wave after wave like other big tech companies are doing?
Are you serious? People have had to threaten to sue to get the severance that was agreed on, and there are regular waves of twitter layoffs on practically a weekly basis.
Re: Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
The employee made this public, not Elon.
The employee made the question "am I fired or not, I tried to ask through the proper channels and got nothing" public, which is imho reasonable especially after 9 days. Musk, being the head of numerous companies, should know better than to respond with anything other than "I'll follow up with HR". When alt-right weirdos ask him crap, his response is just "looking into it". That's all he needed to do here.
If you want to garner goodwill with your former employer after years of not doing work and still getting paid a massive salary, then taking it public after a measly 9 days is pretty ridiculous. This guy knows he was in the wrong and is milking his notability to get paid anyway.
Re: Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's insane how bad Elon stepped in it with this guy. While I'm sure there were many people at Twitter doing mostly nothing, he happens to publicly pick on a guy who single-handed built one of the most well-respected branding agencies in the tech industry, and who also has debilitating muscular dystrophy. Haraldur seems like a pretty accomplished guy and I don't like what Musk did either. But none of the things you…
> but it is possible for a accomplished individual to join a company and then lose motivation and not do much Nobody deserves to be fired without communication , without HR being able to confirm if they work at the company, and then proceed to be publicly mocked on Twitter for their physical disability. Speculating about the person's work at Twitter is beside the point. Thousands of Twitter employees have been let go…
Nope, I'm not trying to justify anything and trying to reduce the speculation rather than add to it. I said that we don't know anything about the situation besides what happened publicly, which I also said I didn't like. You're putting a lot of words towards me that are not justifiable as I'm agreeing with most of what you're saying.
The only thing I was saying is that we don't know if he was a productive employee of Twitter or not. Besides that, absolutely horrible how he was treated, productive employee or not. But that doesn't remove the fact that we don't know what happen behind the scenes.
Re: Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Elon isn't mocking him he posted an office space meme in response to him sarcastically. > It's interesting how Halli doesn't actually defend that he did any work, because it's clear he didn't. and that is a spurious reach.
It's a meme asking what exactly he did, which is a completely valid question for someone who clearly wasn't working and then launched a public smear campaign to get paid. > and that is a spurious reach. Halli himself tweeted that he "did what his manager told him to" but didn't actually say that he did any material work, instead citing that he had been waiting forever from HR without any response. I cannot believe pe…
> It's a meme asking what exactly he did
The meme listed is specifically referencing a car-crash of a downsizing interview a manager of software engineer has in the film Office Space which he ends by screaming that he has "people skills". Its not a valid question, its an immature means of discrediting whatever someone else says next via an inside joke that it seems neither Haraldur or yourself know.
> when it's very clear he wasn't.
Its not at all clear if he was or wasn't. There is extremely limited information in any of these sources that give us a reliable read on this. None of us know how hard Haraldur works or what metric people are using to judge that. That Haraldur is both a director-level acqui-hire as well as very open about his disability, suggests a very broad grey area that I feel you might not be respecting.
Re: Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Musk already has intervened to make Starlink less usable for Ukraine. and here you are perpetuating the fake shit about Elon that gets everyone engaged. Elon doesn't want Starlink to be directly used on weapons to kill people. Would you also fault the World Nuclear Association for being willing to provide uranium to power Ukraine, but refusing to provide the same material for nuclear bombs? He has a right to determ…
Ukraine wants to use Starlink to make war, so when Elon intervenes to prevent the use of Starlink for certain applications in making war, he is making Starlink less usable for Ukraine. You're raising an argument for why it is in your view justifiable for Elon to do this, but that doesn't make the basic elements of what the commenter above said false. Nuclear weapons are far more destructive, and indiscriminately dest…
It's not "less usable for Ukraine". It's working perfectly fine for Ukraine and Elon is going through massive efforts to ensure this. It's less usable for weapons. What the parent comment said was outright misleading to the point of basically being a lie.
> Ukrainians will die because of this decision
And Russians would die if he made the other decision. Even if Russia is on the wrong side here, killing a bunch of 20 year old soldiers while they sit around in mud doesn't help much. They're still humans and I also wouldn't want any part in killing humans.
Re: Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site
#190Yeah it’s sucks how he was let go. But he will get paid. But for the first time I’m using Twitter more than HN , which has jumped the shark. Elon’s accomplishments? - helped start openai - runs the biggest rocket company that makes a new raptor engine every day. - runs one of the biggest car companies. - just eliminated rare earth metals for new generation of motors. - runs Twitter which is undeniably more active and…
runs the biggest rocket company That would be Boeing Defense, Space & Security (50,000 employees and $23.3 billion in revenue vs 12,000 employees and $2 billion revenue) runs one of the biggest car companies. Tesla, with it's $81 billion in revenue, doesn't even crack the the top ten. just eliminated rare earth metals for new generation of motor Just announced it would eliminate rare earth metals. This will be a grea…
SpaceX is a private company so they don't publish revenue numbers. Also your revenue estimate is from 2018. Current estimations put their 2022 revenue at $3.2B. And BDS does much more than orbital rocket launches. They are the third largest defense contractor in the world. Most of their revenue comes from manufacturing aircraft. Except for ICBMs, BDS's orbital launches are conducted by ULA, which has less revenue and fewer employees than SpaceX.
But employee count and revenue aren't the most accurate way to compare the two companies. The best metric is, "How much payload did you launch to orbit?" Last year SpaceX sent twice as much mass to orbit as the rest of the world combined. They have landed more rockets than ULA has launched. SpaceX also holds the record for most consecutive orbital launches without a partial or complete mission failure. This year they have averaged one orbital launch every 4.5 days. ULA has not launched a single time this year.
There are many good criticisms of Elon's companies, but it's silly to claim that SpaceX isn't the biggest rocket company.