Related: “Will Employees Who Resign Have a Remedy?” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42950301
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20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
501–510 of 579 posts
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given the levels of turmoil and also the levels of power grabbing, I think the president's approval ratings are very relevant. For one, if they dip as low as they might given the expected economic hardship and the other cultural issues, you might start seeing rioting. For another, I don't think it's a given this is Trump's final term. There already is a congressman trying to get in legislation to change the constitut…
FWIW the constitutional amendment to enable a third term for Trump is guaranteed to fail. No matter how it is drafted, even if they do a convention, the ratification still requires 3/4 of state legislatures to vote in favor. And Republicans don't have 38 states. They won't have them even if every single state with split legislature goes full red.
I won't speculate on whether they could pass it. Democrats have been too sure of themselves for the last 7 or 8 months, and where has that gotten them? But whether it passes or not, he won't survive long enough. He's an old geezer, fat, and in poor health. Strong change he doesn't even make it to the halfway mark in this one.
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
China very effective at copying all the stuff SpaceX is doing despite this being deliberately made difficult by ITAR, suggests there's a lot of room for the American (and ESA) competitors to be structurally inept without needing Musk's staff to be demonstrating an unusual (as opposed to industry standard) degree of genius.
Damn, all these fucking morons and idiots are not structurally inept and everyone else somehow is. It must be because we are very intelligent that these morons are successful.
I'm not entirely clear who you're mocking here; Boeing, trying to understand why SpaceX and China are doing well? If so, we're on the same page.
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#504Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can something be illegal before any judge ruled on it?
> How can something be illegal before any judge ruled on it? If someone steals from you and there's been no conviction, was a crime committed or not? You're still out whatever was taken, but by your logic no theft has occurred until after someone has been convicted of committing the crime.
Exactly, until the judiciary system decides on the illegality of the act, the rest of society is oblivious to the nature of what happened. I'm sure that if something like that happened to you personally you'd know many of the facts at play, but if you cannot prove thorough the courts that something illegal occurred, it didn't
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
oh brother, totally agree. but also, legality is a thing of the past in the new way of things it feels.
That's called giving up and it's exactly what they want you to do. Do not concede without a fight. Call your elected representatives and tell them you expect them to hold these people accountable and to be loud about it.
They're doing something you don't like so the assumption is that it's illegal, but people aren't even sure what law it's supposed to be. And they're probably right that it's illegal, because there are so many laws that any given thing is a violation of any number of them. But that's the problem. If you actually enforced all of the laws on the books, everyone would be in jail.
The only reason they aren't is not that most people are violating precisely zero of the many thousands of laws they've never even heard of, it's strictly a lack of enforcement.
Which is where that attitude comes from: If the only reason anybody isn't in jail is that they haven't become a target and so nobody has bothered to look up which laws they're breaking, whether you broke a law or not is no longer relevant because the answer is always yes, and the thing that determines whether you go to jail is who your friends (or enemies) are.
If you want to get back to the rule of law, you need to get back to having only laws that ordinary people can understand, remember and follow.
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#506Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it possible Mr. Musk's companies are actually in deep trouble financially, and this political stuff is actually a means to an end?
Both Tesla and SpaceX are insanely profitable.
Tesla was very profitable. Gross Margin is 14% now of revenue now. 1/4 of their their $8B profit is emissions credits. That's not shabby and they have lowish debt ($20B).
But it isn't what I'd call insane. Google's gross margin is 58%, profit is $349B.
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
Both Tesla and SpaceX are insanely profitable.
Tesla was very profitable. Gross Margin is 14% now of revenue now. 1/4 of their their $8B profit is emissions credits. That's not shabby and they have lowish debt ($20B). But it isn't what I'd call insane. Google's gross margin is 58%, profit is $349B.
I'm not sure why you're comparing the gross margin of a car company to an internet company. General Motors has a gross margin of 10%. Ford's is 7%. Historically Tesla's was ~25%, but yeah it's fallen a bit since I last looked.
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know what the person you are replying to is talking about. They clearly don't know anyone who works at SpaceX. The age there does trend young, but think 24-year-old flight controller for Apollo, not intern that doesn't know anything. I have friends who work at SpaceX and gripe about how difficult it is to hire people. But not for lack of applicants--their standards are just so high. Nearly everyone working at…
> 24-year-old flight controller for Apollo E.g. intern that knows nothing From the perspective of a crusty old man anyway.
The average age of everyone in the room at Mission Control during Apollo 11 was 28. The managers in the room were outliers (e.g. Gene Kranz was 36), which drew the average up. The median age was younger.
The Manhattan Project was made possible by similarly young grad students.
You can be as crusty as you like, but the reality is that young smart people can be extraordinarily effective under the right conditions.
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
China very effective at copying all the stuff SpaceX is doing despite this being deliberately made difficult by ITAR, suggests there's a lot of room for the American (and ESA) competitors to be structurally inept without needing Musk's staff to be demonstrating an unusual (as opposed to industry standard) degree of genius.
They have copied the external look of the rockets (which is, for obvious reasons, not protected by ITAR), but to my knowledge no one, China or otherwise, has managed to match the internal engineering prowess nearly a decade later. To say that China is "very effective at copying all the stuff SpaceX is doing" is quite the stretch.
Blue Origin has finally turned it around and is getting close to matching SpaceX.
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#510Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tesla is a fraud just short of Enron. (Enron was a complete fabrication. Tesla is a real company with fabricated valuation.) The valuation is based on hand wavey gibberish. The company has repeatedly sold consumers products that don’t exist. The concepts of duty of care, loyalty, and obedience are foreign concepts to the owner of the company. JP Morgan’s analyst position on the company really says it all: https://fin…
I don't know offhand what TSLA's stock price is, but I think it's fair to say that the speculative value is at least very high if you believe that Tesla Optimus is at all a viable competitor to Boston Dynamics Atlas. I see much more long-term potential value in that than the car business. Robotaxi is also a pretty interesting bet. I'm skeptical that it'll pan out, or at least that it will ever reach the same level of…
I'm also thinking that we'll have "cool" humanoid robots before we'll have fully autonomous cars.
It just seems that self driving is staying a "hard problem" (harder than expected!)
Both would be insanely economically valuable.
I do fear humanoid robots will face intense competition from Chinese mass manufacturing, undercutting them with cost while mostly matching features.