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Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

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Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#241

Post by heavenlyblue »

raspberry1337 wrote: post #182
mdoms wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of you guys who have responded to my comment have been rampaging through this thread with aggressive defenses of Musk. This is not normal behaviour. If you don't want to consider a man who was instrumental in saving the lives of 12 boys a hero that's fine, there are lots of other adjectives that I'm sure you can find and they're all far more flattering than the one Musk made of himself in that saga. Take a step…

>If you don't want to consider a man who was instrumental in saving the lives of 12 boys a hero that's fine, It's his job as a diver, is it not?

> It's his job as a diver, is it not?

Divers dive, saving people is something a (probably very small) subset of divers do.

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#242

Post by chii »

7speter wrote: post #222
tauntz wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which now, with Morgan Stanley actually standing behind the offer, looks more or less certain Morgan Stanley only covers part of the total deal and Musk still needs to find a solid 21 billion from somewhere. That's probably doable for him but definitely not easy. I don't see it as "more or less certain" at least..

> Morgan Stanley only covers part of the total deal and Musk still needs to find a solid 21 billion from somewhere Is Musk’s reputation so bad that he, the owner of a car company that turned the car industry on its head (by proving that electric cars were possible) and pushed a massive paradigm shift in the lithium ion battery industry/market (maybe helped with the meteoric rise in demand mobile devices in the last d…

> convince a consortium of investors to put money towards the buy out?

what would those investors get as collateral for this loan?

Musk has apparently already pledged some percentage of his Tesla holdings as collateral (i dont know how much, but i heard it's close to 50%).

If those investors take the other 50%, then i would imagine the holdings are over-pledged with no margin for safety. May be those investors would accept the terms, but i dunno.

The leading problem is that twitter is not profitable, so any loan for buying twitter requires an alternative source of income to service the interest.

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#243

Post by hef19898 »

paganel wrote: post #217
lm28469 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla is a strategic asset for the US and for the West more generally speaking How so ? It's a car company, there are dozen of them making equally good, if not better, cars. Autopilot is useless and electric cars are already there. You can credit them for the democratisation of EV but that's about it

It’s not a car company, it’s a battery+software company with some wheels (literally) attached, hence part of the high valuation. It took me a while to realize this, had I put my money on this back then I would have had more money right now (10x times, I’d say). The likes of Mercedes and VW are orders of magnitude behind, both when it comes to batteries and especially when it comes to software

Batteries are coming from Panasonic. Other OEMs have working EVs as well. And Tesla is way to small in terms of economic foot print that its disappearance would make a dent. Economics, not on the stock market.

Nothing about Tesla is strategic. SpaceX is different, sure. But with the exception of a yet-to-come lunar mission and astronaut trabsportation to the ISS the "West" got needed stuff into orbit just fine.

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#244

Post by hef19898 »

hnbad wrote: post #233
andruby wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did code on Zip2 and sold that startup successfully. Also, his official title at SpaceX is "Chief Engineer" [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk

> He did code on Zip2 and sold that startup successfully. Selling a startup is not an engineering achievment but a business achievment. > Also, his official title at SpaceX is "Chief Engineer" Owning a company means you can give yourself whatever titles you want. So your entire argument seems to boil down to "he wrote code for Zip2", which happened a quarter of a century ago.

Oh, I know some of those self-appoined chief engineers (cool title, I get it, one should earn it so). They almost drove the comoany into the ground. And they never shipped anything in their whole lives neither.

EDIT: And they think they are Musk as well. Without the same ability to raise money that's incredible dangerous so.

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#245

Post by xorcist »

skulk wrote: post #87
mlindner wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CNN 2 minute video chopping up what he says to make it sound more grand is not him being a "showman". It's called video editing. You can tell the video has been HIGHLY edited because it's not how he talks. > it's really hard to believe when he's put out stuff like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw?t=122 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA8ZBJWo73E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zlnbs-NBUI This is h…

The point is, building tunnels underground for personal transport vehicles as a "solution" to traffic is a terrible idea, and something only a showman can sell. Even if he has an awkward 2 hour speech about it, he succeeded as a showman because Vegas funded this terrible idea (just look how it ended up).

It's not intended as a solution to traffic congestion. It is intended to give local politicians new talking points to delay any large scale investments in public transportation.

Who knows how we'll solve transport in the future? Maybe we'll all be in personal cars underground and any massive investments in rail will be for nothing?

It's a variant of the general idea of pushing things like elevated monorails that you know are so expensive they won't be built in the near future. Or, indeed, very low pressure tube transportation systems.

Car companies have done this type of lobbying work since forever. Just as the oil companies when they push for more production, but since all oil will be biofuel in the future, in the end it will be a net positive for the environment.

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#246

Post by next_xibalba »

chrisan wrote: post #227

I have a question for those who say things along the lines of twitter becoming "more open platform, with reduced censorship of unpopular people and ideas" Wasn't the only "censorship" twitter has done simply against harmful misinformation and hate speech? What exactly is twitter censoring that's outside of those two? I haven't used HN long enough to know why I can reply to some posts but not others, so sorry for this…

Here is a just one major example of censorship that was neither misinformation nor hate speech:

The Hunter Biden laptop story.

This story was broken by the right-leaning New York Post. Twitter banned its sharing in the weeks before the election, claiming it to be misinformation (with the implication that the leaking of its contents was part of a Russian plot).

~2 years later (when its relevance is greatly diminished) both the Washington Post [1] and the New York Times [2] have confirmed the major aspects of this story.

This was a coordinated censorship campaign, and a free speech platform would have allowed it to get the the sunlight it deserved.

Now, does it appear the NY Post's coverage was slanted and, in some areas, inaccurate? Yes. But that is where the rest of the media (including and especially Twitter) should have stepped in to perform its function in an open society: producing more and better speech.

[1] https://archive.ph/znP14

[2] https://archive.ph/i3Ip8

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#247

Post by jvmiert »

brtkdotse wrote: post #237
fredgrott wrote: post #71

The Elephant in the room is what is being provided. Elon is already at the limits of his hours on a daily basis to devote to things with SpaceX, Boring Company, Tesla, etc. Picture it this way, Twitter is your startup and Elon proposes to buy you out. Would you not question how much time we would devote as part of the buyout talks?

> Boring Company Aside from a supposed pedestrian tunnel in Texas and that Tesla demonstration tunnel in Las Vegas, Boring Company has delivered 0 tunnels. Pretty sure it was started for meme potential only. Oh, and the “flamethrower”

Not agreeing or disagreeing but I think it's important to note that it just raised $675 million valued at $5.675 billion: https://www.boringcompany.com/seriescround

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#248

Post by nxm »

jaspax wrote: post #231
chrisan wrote: post #227

I have a question for those who say things along the lines of twitter becoming "more open platform, with reduced censorship of unpopular people and ideas" Wasn't the only "censorship" twitter has done simply against harmful misinformation and hate speech? What exactly is twitter censoring that's outside of those two? I haven't used HN long enough to know why I can reply to some posts but not others, so sorry for this…

Twitter said that their censorship was against misinformation and hate speech. A great many people noticed that their actual implementation was erratic, inconsistent, and partisan, and would like for them to stop.

They tended to censor what went against left wing narrative

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#249

Post by hef19898 »

raspberry1337 wrote: post #182
mdoms wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of you guys who have responded to my comment have been rampaging through this thread with aggressive defenses of Musk. This is not normal behaviour. If you don't want to consider a man who was instrumental in saving the lives of 12 boys a hero that's fine, there are lots of other adjectives that I'm sure you can find and they're all far more flattering than the one Musk made of himself in that saga. Take a step…

>If you don't want to consider a man who was instrumental in saving the lives of 12 boys a hero that's fine, It's his job as a diver, is it not?

I coyld provide a long list of blockbuster movies about live saving heros. All of which just did their jobs, under dangerous conditions. Yes, you can be a hero if just do your job. And yes, we all accept that.

That being said, it was never Elons job to help, nor was it his job to develop a non-working submarine for the task. Or to be insulted when someone stated so. He did it for the PR and the fame, when he got neither was pissed and started insulting and harassing people.

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#250

Post by _fizz_buzz_ »

cloutchaser wrote: post #238
_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds super dubious, the SEC forced him to publicly lie in a settlement? Sorry, I am not buying it. You would have to put at least a dozen SEC lawyers on suicide watch after such a deal. And not only did they force him to lie in a settlement, now he suddenly breaks what he agreed to in that settlement without any consequences, so what was that settlement worth to begin with.

Yes, it sounds plausible, because if Tesla is threatened by certain SEC sanctions or legal troubles, banks could withdraw funding or raise interest rates on Tesla's debt, which would bankrupt the company. Or insurance companies could raise premiums or refuse to insure the company which again - could lead to catastrophe. This is what Elon is saying and it sounds like a perfectly plausible scenario, under which you'd r…

It sounds plausible to you that SEC lawyers drew up a settlement that forced Musk to lie publicly about the funding situation of taking TSLA private? This would open up that lawyer for all sorts of criminal and private lawsuits and that poor guy doesn't even have anything personally to gain from forcing Musk to lie. Sorry, those are ludicrous allegations.
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