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Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

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Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#151

Post by mannyv »

Whatever you think of Musk personally, he's one of the few people trying to move the needle.

According to Wikipedia design started in 2015, which means it's taken them more than 8 years to get to cash-flow break even. This is why you need billions of dollars to get started. And that doesn't include the fact that they had to build a rocket company to launch their birds.

Looks like they picked the right 60 engineers.

They presumably also had to build all the ground stations and infrastructure to manage all those devices...unless they're using AWS Ground Control, which would be hilarious.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#152

Post by theultdev »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #150
theultdev wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean its jury - https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/sep/23

Timely! Now do the courts (or have those been perfect over the decades?)

Under that logic, maybe Musk is just another African American being persecuted by the US government.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#153

Post by rootusrootus »

good8675309 wrote: post #108
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…

So if we don't dog-pile on a specific tech CEO and give the rest a pass we are white knights? I like to push back against the crowd when I see irrational dog-piling. Why is it that when Facebook is mentioned, the comments aren't trashing Zuckerberg in every other comment like when Musk is mentioned? Like he gets a free pass. That actually seems more ideologically driven, especially when you compare what Musk has done…

> So if we don't dog-pile on a specific tech CEO and give the rest a pass we are white knights?

No, white knighting is accusing skeptics of being emotional haters who just don't appreciate all the good that Musk brings to the world. Accusing them of being short sellers, etc. Jumping to the defense of someone who is more than capable of defending himself.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#154

Post by good8675309 »

mannyv wrote: post #151

Whatever you think of Musk personally, he's one of the few people trying to move the needle. According to Wikipedia design started in 2015, which means it's taken them more than 8 years to get to cash-flow break even. This is why you need billions of dollars to get started. And that doesn't include the fact that they had to build a rocket company to launch their birds. Looks like they picked the right 60 engineers. T…

Sorry, you make good points but rocket man makes mean tweets so none of that matters. Jokes aside, I really wish we could just discuss the article instead of it turning into a flame war but this happens everytime someone posts anything that has anything to do with Musk.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#155

Post by s1gnp0st »

s1gnp0st wrote: post #106
andrewmutz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people have strong opinions about Musk because he is intentionally inflammatory. He works hard for those negative opinions. To choose just one example of him clearly trying to generate engagement/outrage: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1601894132573605888

[flagged]

While you folks are obediently trying to suppress this fact, take note of my actual position on COVID-19, vaccination, etc.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38018664

I liked the old left much better than the new left. You're neoconservatives in blue.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#156

Post by rootusrootus »

good8675309 wrote: post #124
badlucklottery wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if we don't dog-pile on a specific tech CEO and give the rest a pass we are white knights? The problem with bringing up those other tech CEOs vs. actually defending Musk is it starts looking like whataboutism. I personally think there's enough hate for tech CEOs to go around and we don't need to ration it out.

Sure, but it's just when I see Facebook, Google, etc mentioned in a headline, I see rational conversation about the topic, but when I see a Musk company mentioned in a headline, I already know what the comments are going to look like.

Do you assign any responsibility for that to Elon? Compared to the CEOs of Facebook, Google, etc, Elon engages in far more incendiary rhetoric every day. He's chosen to become an outspoken public figure, criticism comes with the territory. Especially when it is tribal politics.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#157

Post by capableweb »

Tepix wrote: post #39
capableweb wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The vast majority have never met him and, if they were honest, have probably been positively impacted by him (or not at all). Why would people most probably been positively impacted by him? He seems to constantly have knee-jerk reactions to things happening around him, and his companies seems to frequently have issues with overworking employees.

2 examples: He's accelerated the switch to electric cars. He's made transport to space a lot cheaper, saving a lot of taxpayer's money.

> He's accelerated the switch to electric cars.

Which, in today's industry and world might have been too early as we still haven't figured out if mining all that lithium is better for the world or not, right now.

> He's made transport to space a lot cheaper, saving a lot of taxpayer's money.

Yeah, for ~4% of the world's taxpayers. We'll still see if SpaceX is a net-win for humanity, too early to tell.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#158

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

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.

I'm mostly neutral in all things Musk. I can make arguments without appealing to his virtue or criticizing his flaws.

I've been reading about low-orbit satellite since at least the late 1990s when it must have been Slashdot articles then. There have been several plans, but the one whose name I remember was Iridium. I believe it became operational, but only ever managed to be used for voice telephony. It's been bankrupted and bought by other companies since then.

This is an absurdly difficult market to break into, and everyone has failed to one degree or another, with the degrees of failure all clustering around the really extreme end of that spectrum. This is ignoring any technological challenge (of which there are apparently more than a few).

He is claiming to have done a (business) thing that has been demonstrated to be nearly impossible. A thing which, if he hasn't done it and is merely lying about, we might not know for months or years.

It is perfectly reasonable to be skeptical of this, and no one owes him the benefit of doubt on this issue or any other. It is perfectly reasonable to remain skeptical even if you do not believe the man a liar. It is an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary evidence.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#159

Post by callalex »

good8675309 wrote: post #87
rayiner wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not a huge Musk fan, but his shortcoming seems to be more having unreasonable projections about the future. I’m not aware of him lying about things in the present.

> "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?

https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#160

Post by TheLoafOfBread »

theultdev wrote: post #152
TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean its jury - https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/sep/23

Timely! Now do the courts (or have those been perfect over the decades?) Under that logic, maybe Musk is just another African American being persecuted by the US government.

Jury is mob-based justice. If mobs likes you, then you are basically immune to consequences as illustrated by the link above.
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