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Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

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Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#131

Post by benzible »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #92
rootusrootus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equally, I'm fascinated by people who white knight for him. I assume to some extent it must just be ideology. Objectively, he has a history of making bold claims about his products that either never come to fruition, or are delayed for years. Being skeptical of what he says is the rational choice. > have probably been positively impacted by him Well, every time my Model 3's wipers go batshit insane, I get a little ir…

> he has a history of making bold claims about his products that either never come to fruition To my knowledge, he has never lied about the present financial state of his companies. That gives him credibility in a way e.g. Yaccarino bullshitting about what fraction of Twitter’s advertisers have returned does not.

See: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...

Capital Raise

4,281 days since Elon Musk said Tesla will never need to raise capital again. (2/12/2012)

"Tesla does not need to ever raise another funding round." Elon Musk, quoted by John Voelcker in Green Car Reports

4,052 days since Elon Musk raised $195.7M in common stock. (9/28/2012)

3,822 days since Elon Musk raised $313M in common stock. (5/16/2013) 3,822 days since Elon Musk raised $600M in convertible notes. (5/16/2013)

[...]

1,157 days since Elon Musk raised $5B in common stock. (9/1/2020)

1,059 days since Elon Musk raised $5B in common stock. (12/8/2020)

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#132

Post by bryanlarsen »

drannex wrote: post #6

I don't trust a single thing he says at this point without evidence, I just can't possibly see it as breakeven without it, which we likely won't receive as they are a private corp.

You don't receive it, but there a several large institutional investors who do, and who could sue for billions if he's lying. It's not something non-actionable like saying "FSD this year".

More significantly, both NASA and the Space Force receive SpaceX financial statements because they require reassurance that all their vendors are viable ongoing concerns.

IOW, if this is a lie, then he could lose his 2 biggest customers. And I wouldn't be surprised if lying to the Space Force is an actual crime.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#133

Post by nradov »

webkike wrote: post #32
next_xibalba wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it matter to you? I am fascinated by people who have such strong opinions about Musk, particularly on the negative side. The vast majority have never met him and, if they were honest, have probably been positively impacted by him (or not at all). Personally, I hope it’s true. Starlink is good for the world.

I haven’t met him, but he has bought out my favorite social media website solely so he can insert his insipid opinions and comments, so I think the negative reactions are warranted. Why do people always talk about needing to meet a guy to have an opinion on them? I haven’t met Dick Cheney either

I don't care about Musk one way or another, but let's not forget how the previous Twitter management frequently used their position of power to censor and suppress messages they didn't like.

https://nypost.com/2022/12/02/twitter-invented-a-reason-to-h...

https://reason.com/2023/01/02/under-government-pressure-twit...

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#134

Post by bryanlarsen »

sneak wrote: post #125
te_chris wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless the jamming is being performed by an anxious and needy tech mogul after a phone call with a dictator.

Starlink was already shut off in Crimea because of the war. He denied a request by the Ukrainians to turn it back on in that geofence that they made specifically so that they could use it to conduct an airstrike. I’d have denied that request too. Please make sure you communicate the facts correctly when spreading this meme. More generally though: why do people love spreading false narratives? It’s ok not to like tech…

> turn it back on

It was never turned on in the first place.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#135

Post by bryanlarsen »

Maxion wrote: post #8
rpmisms wrote: post #5

This is huge. Space-based individual consumer services being profitable was a pipe dream a decade ago.

Uhm, no? Do you think all communications satellites operate at a loss?

All current communications satellite constellations are operating profitably now, but they all went through bankruptcy proceedings before becoming profitable.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#136

Post by JonChesterfield »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #132
drannex wrote: post #6

I don't trust a single thing he says at this point without evidence, I just can't possibly see it as breakeven without it, which we likely won't receive as they are a private corp.

You don't receive it, but there a several large institutional investors who do, and who could sue for billions if he's lying. It's not something non-actionable like saying "FSD this year". More significantly, both NASA and the Space Force receive SpaceX financial statements because they require reassurance that all their vendors are viable ongoing concerns. IOW, if this is a lie, then he could lose his 2 biggest cust…

Huh. So Space Force, which I was really sure is a joke, appears to be an actual thing complete with employees and things with wings. At least Wikipedia thinks so. Strange world to live in.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#137

Post by theultdev »

Atreiden wrote: post #107
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he has a history of making bold claims about his products that either never come to fruition To my knowledge, he has never lied about the present financial state of his companies. That gives him credibility in a way e.g. Yaccarino bullshitting about what fraction of Twitter’s advertisers have returned does not.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/elon-musk-funding-secur...

Then a jury ruled in Musk's favor, right?

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/03/cars/musk-tesla-tweet-lawsuit...

The end result is left out every time the "court finds" articles are linked. The jury found the opposite, which is what actually matters.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#138

Post by the_other »

theultdev wrote: post #54
nimbius wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Digital colonialism... you can't be serious? You really think giving villages or tribes with limited or no internet service is a bad thing? There were quite a few tribes given Starlink to fix their school computers so their children could get a proper education. You shoved in a lot of other nonsense in there too, but I'd thought I'd call out the most ridiculous first. > Starlink was intentionally curtailed during the…

> Digital colonialism... you can't be serious? You really think giving villages or tribes with limited or no internet service is a bad thing?

Prior to the 20th century, my hazy memory says more like ~17th, the Emperor of China or his emissaries would give lavish gifts to other nations. It worked like a "soft colonialism". Later they would expect favourable deals, trades, taxes, military support and so on. [0]

Facebook gives you free tools to contact your friends and influences, but in return they build models of you so that commercial bodies and political parties can tailor their messaging to include just the right keywords to make you look twice at their ads.

Churches have always come with offerings of peace and generosity to the poor and otherwise disadvantaged, and yet somehow the Catholic Church now has an untouchable principality and 10s or 100s of millions of people follow what they say.

> There were quite a few tribes given Starlink to fix their school computers so their children could get a proper education.

> You shoved in a lot of other nonsense in there too, but I'd thought I'd call out the most ridiculous first.

The benefits are real. But history tells us repeatedly to be suspicious of rich powerful entities offering free or cheap QoL boosts to the needy. It's really the easiest play in empire building because it's almost irresistible. Real, honest solutions to the problems of the disadvantaged group would involve actual risk to the powerful and be based education, patent access, loans with flexible terms, culture exchanges. Gifting just sets up dependencies and obligations.

[0] source https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06r84qy but it might have been a different episode

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#139

Post by dragonwriter »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #136
bryanlarsen wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't receive it, but there a several large institutional investors who do, and who could sue for billions if he's lying. It's not something non-actionable like saying "FSD this year". More significantly, both NASA and the Space Force receive SpaceX financial statements because they require reassurance that all their vendors are viable ongoing concerns. IOW, if this is a lie, then he could lose his 2 biggest cust…

Huh. So Space Force, which I was really sure is a joke, appears to be an actual thing complete with employees and things with wings. At least Wikipedia thinks so. Strange world to live in.

Space Force was created by breaking out existing capacities from the Air Force into a new subordinate organization within the Department of the Air Force (similar to the way the US Army Air Forces were split off into a new service to create the Air Force, but with a relation to the parent like the Marines have to the Navy.)

It was a reorg with elaborate branding impacts, not a from-scratch creation.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#140

Post by good8675309 »

suoduandao3 wrote: post #104
good8675309 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "unreasonable projections about the future" I've heard a few of them, like concerns about AI which I don't think are unreasonable but I'm curious about what other projections he's had that are unreasonable?

The Cybertruck's supposed to be out by now. Also self-driving.

Ah, okay, yeah in those cases it seems he is overly optimistic, disingenuous, or just really bad at estimating projects. In the case of the Cybertruck there were major engineering issues that came up along with manufacturing issues, apparently it turned into a nightmare, I'm surprised that it actually looks like it may ship in the next few years.
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