Live data from Hacker News

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

wsj.com

261–270 of 348 posts

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

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowhere in the emails do the Saudi investors pledge funding. At best, they say they might be interested in investing. Therefore, "funding secured " was absolutely an outright lie, unless words don't have meaning anymore.

It’s much worse than that. I had previously assumed Musk knew what he was doing and was fooling around on Twitter in an effort to (unethically) crush short sellers. Now it appears like he’s an utterly inept businessman who took the first verbal sign of interest, rushed it to Twitter as though the deal was complete, and then blew up the deal in a hissy fit. I still think what he’s done at SpaceX and Tesla is admirable…

I am genuinely interested to hear your reasoning for how someone can be an "utterly inept businessman" and also become the richest man in the world. How is that possible?

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

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

It could absolutely be another SpaceX.

But it could also be another Theranos.

I’ll leave the guessing to other people.

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

#264
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> but i heard it's close to 50%

Imagine staking 50% of Tesla against owning Twitter, which feels like it's on a slow but steady death spiral.

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

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech, A truer town square to debate important issues, Remove bots, add new features, a fresh take on how to raise profits, better management, and he even mentioned building a homeless shelter in their HQ.

What’s free speech? Twitter can be a pretty hostile place if you’re not a white straight man, can’t see Musk making it any betters for those people who are currently harrassed fir being women, queer or colored

> Twitter can be a pretty hostile place if you’re not a white straight man

On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.

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

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So he paid 40 million just for fun?

He paid 40 million because he would have lost a lot more by Tesla going bankrupt, and I'm not talking about money. He cares about the success of Tesla and SpaceX at a psychological and emotional level. This is what makes Musk appealing. He doesn't care about the money. He cares about the future. Money is a means to an ends. As he's stated, the company only needs to make enough money to continue to grow. It doesn't ne…

> He cares about the future

He has been talking about the future for 20 years right now with little to show for. Tesla accounts for 1.3% of all cars sold in 2021.

In the same timeframe Microsoft put the future™ on every Americans desk, Apple put it in every pocket, Google created it on the web and Amazon delivered it to your door.

But of course people take all of that for granted because those companies never tried to substitute themselves to religion, in the sense that hope for the future™ is seen as a product to be pushed in the market to gain synchopants.

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

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are differences. I don't know if the idea will actually work but here is what I understand of it. Use an analogy of cities as computer chips/networks. 1. He wants to move roads to 3d just like computer chips are 3d. This should increase bandwidth. 2. He wants to packet switch the system instead of batch. This should lower latency. 3. For the first two to work, you need to greatly reduce the cost/speed to constr…

You lost me with comparing transportation infrastructure to micro processors and apllyin Moore's law to infrastructure work.

And chips are not even 3d, are they?

At most there are memory chips with just a few layers

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

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not relevant. Is anyone expecting him to be the CEO? Far more likely he’s going to appoint competent operators to run Twitter. Whether this is a good outcome for the shareholders is the only germane point up for discussion IMO.

> It’s not relevant. Is anyone expecting him to be the CEO? The article quotes a shareholder rallying behind Musk's offer as justifying his support for Mr Musk's personal involvement. The article includes quotes from shareholders such as “He has an established track record at Tesla,” and “He is the catalyst to deliver strong operating performance at Twitter.” I'm not aware of a single instance where shareholders were…

I think Gwynne Shotwell at SpaceX would disagree with that statement. As to day to day running of SpaceX, Elon did exactly that and seems to have picked the perfect person.

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

#270

If Musk acquires Twitter, I will likely be deleting my account. Am I the only one? Would his acquisition spell the beginning of the end for Twitter?

If it turns into a 4chan-esque dumping ground (sorry, I mean "bastion of free speech") then yes I definitely would stop using Twitter.

It kind of already is?

I mean, jesus, just read the replies from any political post by damn near anyone who is slightly Twitter famous.

It's absolute trash heaped upon burning trash heaped upon dog shit.

Post reply on HN