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Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site

haraldurthorleifsson.com

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Re: Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site

#251

Post by lr1970 »

dbreunig wrote: post #40
pembrook wrote: post #29

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-handedly built one of the most well-respected branding agencies in the tech industry, and who also has debilitating muscular dystrophy. The optics could not be worse. I mean this guy is literally in a wheel chair. If you were a well-funded tech co…

Elon did what he's done for the past decade. Can't help but play to a crowd and let the lawyers figure it out later. This is a cocktail of calling a rescue diver a pedophile, mocking all skills that aren't coders, and unnecessary cruelty when laying off workers. If Haraldur intended to bait him, it was a near-flawless execution. I'm sure there are countless labor, disability, and health info privacy lawyers lining up…

> If Haraldur intended to bait him

Reading Icelandic names like Haraldur evokes strong subconscious aura of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Curious if someone would write a novel (or a parody or a game) about Middle Earth's modern high tech corporate culture.

Re: Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site

#252

Post by mustacheemperor »

93po wrote: post #189
mustacheemperor wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 2…

>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

Ah, I can reply now. You added this to your reply after I made my edit to my own comment responding to your earlier remarks, so I'll make my additional reply directly here.

This view of war reads like naivete to me - the naivete that can develop if you've only learned about war on TV and on Wikipedia, from far away where everything is abstract. I would invite you to talk to some veterans of war, victims of invasion, refugees from combat zones, and consider revising your perspective.

My in-laws who fled century-old farms in face of an invading army would strongly disagree with your view on what would or would not help end this war. Abstract moral relativism over individual soldiers hasn't saved any children from being kidnapped to Russia.

Assuming you enjoy a comfortable existence in a first world country, you unfortunately play an indirect part in killing humans every day. Our first world system drives less fortunate humans towards death every day to operate, and the people who really, deeply do not want any part in that are spending their lives working for the less fortunate in places outside the first world. But by advocating against the measures Ukraine could use to defend itself, you are playing your own part in allowing Russia to continue mounting a bloodthirsty war of conquest.

Re: Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site

#253

Post by mustacheemperor »

93po wrote: post #194

I wish Elon related stories would get banned on HN. The comment sections are always complete wastelands and I hate feeling compelled to constantly correct space-man-bad takes that have no basis in reality. I'm done.

>no basis in reality

You seem very upset about this issue, so maybe you should read Elon's apology.[0]

>"I would like to apologise to Halli for my misunderstanding of his situation. It was based on things I was told that were untrue or, in some cases, true, but not meaningful."

You worked yourself up "compelled to correct" the people with criticisms you felt "have no basis in reality", and then space man himself admitted he was in the wrong.

I'm not trying to be rude or to attack you to say, I think you need to recalibrate your sense of what has a basis in reality. Because your behavior in this thread, as explained here, is a strong indicator you did not have an accurate view of whether the criticisms in this thread were based in reality.

[0]https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64884287

Re: Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site

#254

Post by Thlom »

walrus01 wrote: post #200
93po wrote: post #177

Earlier 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…

> Elon doesn't want Starlink to be directly used on weapons to kill people The starlink "star shield" program with the US DoD says otherwise. Every satellite company wants a piece of the DOD's many billions a year spent on geostationary and other services, launches.

Military has been and always will be the milking cow for satcom operators. Every single satcom operator in the world is squeezing as much money from military contracts as possible. But usually they buy satellite capacity wholesale and lands the traffic on their own line cards in the teleport and is not using what can only be described as a consumer service. Maybe the allied countries should help Ukraine get proper satcom so they are not at the mercy of Musk whims.

Re: Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site

#255

Post by msikora »

jack_riminton wrote: post #243
jack_riminton wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect this too, Haraldur seems like a smart dude who's been stewing about Elon's mismanagement and assholerly for a while

Here's the kicker; Twitter would be liable for paying him $100m if he got fired https://www.bosshunting.com.au/hustle/elon-musk-firing-halli... (allegedly)

And the reason is that he took the $100m in salary so he can pay as high tax as possible: "In early 2021, Haraldur sold Ueno to Twitter. In an agreement between him and Twitter, most of the purchase price was paid as salary to maximize the tax he would pay for the sale in Iceland. He chose to pay for tax out of respect to Iceland for the disability benefits he received. Per the agreement, he paid the second highest tax of an individual in Iceland in 2021."

Re: Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site

#256

Post by msikora »

stonogo wrote: post #233
darth_avocado wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure there were many people at Twitter doing mostly nothing So just because he is well known, you suddenly believe a Twitter employee. But others who Elon claims to not be working, they’re probably not working?

He doesn't have to work. Twitter acquired his company and the payout was structured as salary for tax reasons. Musk firing him suddenly turned that opex into capex, for no other reason than Musk has no idea what is going on in a company he runs.

But in this case the "tax reasons" was to maximize the tax: "In an agreement between him and Twitter, most of the purchase price was paid as salary to maximize the tax he would pay for the sale in Iceland. He chose to pay for tax out of respect to Iceland for the disability benefits he received."

Re: Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site

#257

Post by thefringthing »

lr1970 wrote: post #251
dbreunig wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon did what he's done for the past decade. Can't help but play to a crowd and let the lawyers figure it out later. This is a cocktail of calling a rescue diver a pedophile, mocking all skills that aren't coders, and unnecessary cruelty when laying off workers. If Haraldur intended to bait him, it was a near-flawless execution. I'm sure there are countless labor, disability, and health info privacy lawyers lining up…

> If Haraldur intended to bait him Reading Icelandic names like Haraldur evokes strong subconscious aura of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Curious if someone would write a novel (or a parody or a game) about Middle Earth's modern high tech corporate culture.

Tolkien lifted a bunch of names straight out of the Icelandic sagas and Edda.

Re: Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site

#258

Post by jack_riminton »

msikora wrote: post #255
jack_riminton wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the kicker; Twitter would be liable for paying him $100m if he got fired https://www.bosshunting.com.au/hustle/elon-musk-firing-halli... (allegedly)

And the reason is that he took the $100m in salary so he can pay as high tax as possible: "In early 2021, Haraldur sold Ueno to Twitter. In an agreement between him and Twitter, most of the purchase price was paid as salary to maximize the tax he would pay for the sale in Iceland. He chose to pay for tax out of respect to Iceland for the disability benefits he received. Per the agreement, he paid the second highest t…

And Haraldur knew that if Elon refused to pay him then Icelandic laws would mean they could freeze operations and seize assets of Twitter there. It's a shame Elon isn't able to utilise such intelligent and talented people!

Re: Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site

#259

Post by Nokinside »

darth_avocado wrote: post #202
93po wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean by providing several months of severance? And not doing it wave after wave like other big tech companies are doing?

What severance? There is only 1 month of severance. People are on payroll for 2 months because of the WARN act and not because he’s generous. Every single tech company has months of severance on top of the WARN act. But that’s what he’s said he’ll pay, but in reality he’s not even paying people what they’re owed. There’s already quite a few lawsuits on how he’s not paying things. He’s not paying anyone last year’s bo…

Haraldur Thorleifsson is the creator of the design studio Ueno, which Twitter purchased in 2021. The deal was structured so that he gets paid the entire deal upon his termination.

This tweet rant can cost up to $100 million for Musk.

>He’s not paying anyone

It's mostly dirty tactics. Musk estimates that significant amount of employees are not smart enough to get what they are owned. He tries to get away without paying. Only those people who sue for wrongful termination, or unpaid bonuses get paid.

Re: Haraldur Thorleifsson's Personal Site

#260

Post by cyrialize »

93po wrote: post #167
Orangeair wrote: post #140

Surreal to me to see how many people in this thread and trying to steer the conversation towards whether or not the firing was justified based on his job performance. What the actual fuck does it matter? In what world is it okay to fire someone without communication and then publically mock them like Elon did here? I'm truly unable understand the willingness some people have to jump to the defense of billionaires.

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…

You should look at the initial tweets. Haraldur tweeted at Elon because he hasn't been getting any response from Elon or HR for 9 days.

Here's the tweet [0]:

"Dear @elonmusk

9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees.

However your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You've not answered my emails.

Maybe if enough people retweet you'll answer me here?"

[0]: https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1632843191773716481?c...

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