Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey • Hacker News Board

Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#391

Post by lostlogin » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 6:09 AM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #189

stcredzero wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An even bigger conflict of interest with auto dealers is that they make most of their profit from service I am old enough to remember what owning a car was like when things were changing away from mechanical devices one could understand and tinker with and becoming nondescript hunks of plastic you had to buy from a manufacturer. (I'm talking about the ignition system, as one specific example.) There was always a bit…

Yeah, I remember those times, too; perhaps less nostalgically than you do. Take your ignition system example. Sure, one could dig in there and replace and adjust the points. But you did it because you had to, you had to do it regularly, and it would be adjusted correctly exactly once: after you did the job. From there, the points immediately started wearing and it would not be exactly right until you did it again. So…

Somewhere inside you is something that misses the Webbers. Every night under the bonnet, day in the rain covered in oil and every bizarre breakdown (the rotor disintegrated again?!) was worth it for the induction notice, smell of warm oil and exhaust note... I think... Tuning Strombergs is another dark art.

Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#392

Post by lostlogin » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 6:12 AM UTC

aceperry wrote: post #220

toomuchtodo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GM's latest recall (faulty ignition switch) killed 303 people and covers 1.6 millions vehicles; I think they'd love to have an OTA update method right now, even with the possibility of "bricking" the vehicle. http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-autos-303-dea...

Don't know if an OTA update would fix what is essentially a mechanical problem.

If it cut the ignition and effectively bricked the car the 303 dead and their family and friends would be pretty stoked right now.

Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#393

Post by mschuster91 » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 7:50 AM UTC

jcampbell1 wrote: post #384

timthorn wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, last time I filled up in NJ one of the attendants was smoking at the pumps. Never been so nervous!

I have tried to light gasoline with a cigarette. After several hours of trying, I finally figured out how to do it. It requires smoking the cigarette with vacuum cleaner, while spraying compressed oxygen. You then get a small flame on the paper which will ignite the gas. My tests suggest pumping gas wearing a sweater is probably more dangerous than smoking. Igniting vapors with a static spark is actually much easier.…

The problem is not the cigarette itself but the flame used to ignite the cigarette in the first place.

Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#394

Post by chii » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 10:50 AM UTC

declan wrote: post #375

repsilat wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't about what people should accept, it's about what they will accept. Voters aren't rational, and they're more likely to kick up a fuss about fuel taxes than vehicle taxes because it affects more of them in the short term. Maybe taxes on vehicles are more likely to be passed, and not much worse than taxes on fuel. In that case they may be worthwhile as a compromise solution. They're certainly not a better solut…

> Voters aren't rational Huh? Voters are quite rational. If you mean they don't pay attention to everything that's happening in Washington, D.C. or state capitols, that's perfectly rational. (Remember you're more likely to win the lottery than to have your vote changing the outcome of an election.) Economics call this, correctly, "rational ignorance" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_ignorance Politicians and bur…

> > Voters aren't rational

i think that's generally taken to mean that the voters do the most optimal thing for themselves, but the whole system ends up being sub-optimal. Some call it the tragedy of the commons.

Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#395

Post by dclowd9901 » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 11:03 AM UTC

smacktoward wrote: post #53

> The evidence is clear: when has an American startup auto company ever succeeded by selling through auto dealers? The last successful American car company was Chrysler, which was founded almost a century ago, and even they went bankrupt a few years ago, along with General Motors. Since the founding of Chrysler, there have been dozens of failures, Tucker and DeLorean being simply the most well-known. In recent years,…

I just wouldn't think he'd want to compare his car to a shitty DeLorean.

Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#396

Post by repsilat » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 11:43 AM UTC

declan wrote: post #375

repsilat wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't about what people should accept, it's about what they will accept. Voters aren't rational, and they're more likely to kick up a fuss about fuel taxes than vehicle taxes because it affects more of them in the short term. Maybe taxes on vehicles are more likely to be passed, and not much worse than taxes on fuel. In that case they may be worthwhile as a compromise solution. They're certainly not a better solut…

> Voters aren't rational Huh? Voters are quite rational. If you mean they don't pay attention to everything that's happening in Washington, D.C. or state capitols, that's perfectly rational. (Remember you're more likely to win the lottery than to have your vote changing the outcome of an election.) Economics call this, correctly, "rational ignorance" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_ignorance Politicians and bur…

Ugh. It was clear when I said that "voters aren't rational" that I meant "Voters as a class do not vote in their own best interests." No reasonable person reading my post and trying to understand what I meant would have interpreted that statement to refer to the fashionable (and absurd) game-theoretic definition of "rationality".

(Not to mention that "rational ignorance" doesn't explain current voting patterns. Nobody informs themselves politically according to a mixed strategy, and deliberately uninformed people do not abstain from the voting process.)

Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#397

Post by lotsofmangos » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 11:49 AM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #353

mcv wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got a good point. If he wants to appease Christie, this is not the way to do it. But if he wants payback, well, keep twisting that knife.

Its really not much of a knife. A Silicon Valley billionaire comes with quite a bit of baggage these days. That happens when journalists need a new villain. Those bus articles aren't a cause they're a symptom.

A rockets, cars and solar billionaire has a very different public image than a big data billionaire though.

Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#398

Post by repsilat » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 11:54 AM UTC

takluyver wrote: post #377

repsilat wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People aren't smart. They like full-service, and they know it'd disappear if it wasn't the law. What they don't realise is that the reason it'd disappear is that they don't like it enough to pay extra for it. The stations themselves might not be against full-service, either (at least away from state borders.) It's an extra cost, true, but it's paid by all of their competitors, too, so it just drives prices up. Demand…

Alternatively, it could be that people do like full service enough to pay for this, but act irrationally at the pump, not the ballot box. I.e. people undervalue their own comfort and do things themselves because the idea of paying more seems so objectionable. This has occurred to me with airlines as well - we relentlessly optimise for cheap flights, and then complain that we're crammed in to tiny seats while flight a…

Cool idea. Reading your post I thought, "This is obviously wrong," but it's growing on me the more I think about it (making it the best kind of comment to read.)

Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#399

Post by bennyg » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 2:21 PM UTC

Camillo wrote: post #333

bennyg wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is he was talking about the retina MBPs that are impossible to change RAM on and damn near impossible to do anything else with.

You can do a lot with them. What you're talking about is doing things to them.

Meh, you knew exactly what I meant, as did most people that read that discussion I'm sure.

Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#400

Post by AgathaTheWitch » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 2:50 PM UTC

I will be glad to move out of Jersey (likely next year). I live in Fort Lee and was trapped in "Bridgegate" traffic last fall. My cautious optimism over Christie has faded over the years as he has so transparently started focusing on positioning for 2016. This cave-in to the dealership lobby is just another reason to take my talents and tax dollars elsewhere.