Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#91

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 28, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

davebryand wrote: post #76

AlexB138 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I guess I shouldn't have said "in this context", I'm not familiar with the term at all. I was trying to differentiate from just the literal "awake" and "conscious", as in not asleep. I assumed it was some religious term. The search results seem to indicate it's some vague mysticism not specific to any particular belief structure? Not an area I'm familiar with. Thanks for the info!

All good! That's right, it's the field called "Spirituality" that many people confuse with Religion.

[deleted]

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#92

Post by martythemaniak » Fri, Dec 28, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

tsomctl wrote: post #11

gtirloni wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Oracle is bad. No, I don't love or even like them. But quoting Bryan's dramatic speeches every time Oracle or Ellison are mentioned is adding next to nothing to the discussion at this point. It's a great way to incite anger though.

My point is that this doesn't bode well for Tesla. My biggest complaint with Tesla is that they don't provide service manuals or have an open parts department for their vehicles. For comparison, pretty much every other major auto maker will sell you a book telling you how to fix anything on your vehicle, and will sell you the parts and special tools to do so. Not Tesla, and given what we know about Ellison, I very mu…

They do in fact have it:

https://epc.teslamotors.com/#/catalogs

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#93

Post by DonHopkins » Fri, Dec 28, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

azhenley wrote: post #16

A lot of people seem negative about this. Can someone explain why? Are there any implications I should expect (as a Tesla owner and stockholder)?

They're like the Scientology of databases.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#94

Post by krapp » Fri, Dec 28, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #63

krapp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Isn't the whole premise of capitalism that people motivated by money will build useful things for the world? No, the whole premise of capitalism is that people motivated by money will build things that make them money. It's right there in the name - "capital"-ism. Capital is the means, motive and end.

So then it is not a morally defensible system, unless you believe the accumulation of wealth is inherently moral? It seems surprising that capitalism is so easy to argue against on moral grounds. Surely it has some benefit for the society that lives under it?

I don't believe the accumulation of wealth is necessarily moral or immoral, rather amoral.

Capitalism can and does benefit society, but so can other economic systems. Nevertheless, the purpose of capitalism isn't to enrich society, it's to enrich the owners and shareholders by accumulating capital.

The correlation between the quality or morality of a good or service and its value in the market isn't a strong one, since there are forces other than supply and demand at work determining value, and markets don't often optimize for greater societal good. If they did, agriculture and electronics manufacturing wouldn't depend on immigrant and forced labor, blood mining, and other immoral practices. Consumers put up with those things because the end result is bananas year round and cheap consumer goods.

I think the mistake comes in demanding that societies prefer only one or another model, due to projecting moral dimensions onto them which may not apply, rather than accepting a balance between systems intended to benefit the few, and systems intended to benefit the many.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#95

Post by dpkonofa » Fri, Dec 28, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

tsomctl wrote: post #11

gtirloni wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Oracle is bad. No, I don't love or even like them. But quoting Bryan's dramatic speeches every time Oracle or Ellison are mentioned is adding next to nothing to the discussion at this point. It's a great way to incite anger though.

My point is that this doesn't bode well for Tesla. My biggest complaint with Tesla is that they don't provide service manuals or have an open parts department for their vehicles. For comparison, pretty much every other major auto maker will sell you a book telling you how to fix anything on your vehicle, and will sell you the parts and special tools to do so. Not Tesla, and given what we know about Ellison, I very mu…

While I think I would agree with you normally, I don't think it makes sense to offer service manuals for Teslas. There's no way that the goodwill they would gain from doing so would outweigh any of the negative consequences when someone fucks up a personal repair on their Tesla and the company gets a bad rap for it. The number of people that would even bother self-repair for a Tesla is likely so infinitesimally small that it makes it more costly for Tesla to offer and support those services.

Additionally, I can't imagine that a service manual would be valid for that long considering that a lot of the service on a Tesla is mostly on the software side. They'd have to offer a hardware manual for the extremely limited amount of hardware and then a separate software website/app/portal to handle the software side. You'd likely be paying a subscription and they'd need to separate off whatever platform they're currently using at the service centers. Again, doesn't seem very cost-effective for the tiny base that would benefit from it.

As for the parts, there's a parts catalog online: https://epc.teslamotors.com/#/catalogs

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#96

Post by dirkgently » Fri, Dec 28, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

tsomctl wrote: post #5

"As you know people, as you learn about things, you realize that these generalizations we have are, virtually to a generalization, false. Well, except for this one, as it turns out. What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle. And I gotta say, as someone who has seen that complexity for my entire life, it's ve…

It's like all the @$$holes in the same (board) room.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#97

Post by greenshackle2 » Fri, Dec 28, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

davebryand wrote: post #62

AlexB138 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd love to hear from some Tesla employees with awakened consciousness how they feel about Ellison's involvement. What does "awakened consciousness" mean in this context?

Nothing different in this context, I mean it in the universal sense: https://www.google.com/search?q=awakened+consciousness&oq=aw... Could also look at it as Spiral Dynamics Turquoise: https://www.google.com/search?q=spiral+dynamics+turquoise&so...

At a glance, Spiral Dynamics looks like a mix of Donella Meadow style System Dynamics and a copious amount of LSD.

(Excuse my flippancy, I did my Master's on a subject related to System Dynamics and was turned off by the field's relativist philosophical outlook.)

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#98

Post by nathanvanfleet » Fri, Dec 28, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #68

rossdavidh wrote: post #48

After his failure, as virtually the only Theranos board member with a high-tech background, to provide any good advice on tech development to Elizabeth Holmes, this seemed incredible to me. Then, I read this in the statement: "Larry is also a big believer in Tesla’s mission, having purchased 3 million shares earlier this year." So, Musk was required to introduce more outside independence to his board, per agreement w…

Both Ellison and Musk are vying for the position of “real life Tony Stark”, I will wager in the next year they will have a major falling out.

They also both look like they're on HGH

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#99

Post by jpalomaki » Fri, Dec 28, 2018, 4:28 PM UTC

nerddoctor wrote: post #75

Avshalom wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully about $30-50 per share in "market confidence" in the midst of a bear market. Otherwise Tesla probably goes bankrupt in March.

Why would an increase in stock value stop a company from going bankrupt?

Maybe due to arrangements like this:

"On or after Dec. 1, 2018, to the debt’s maturity date, the holders can decide to convert the debt into Tesla shares. If Tesla’s stock is above the $359.87 stock price, the holders will likely convert the debt into equity, relieving the company from using $920 million in cash required when the debt comes due in March." https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/08/elon-musks-tesla-stock-boost...

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#100

Post by sanderjd » Fri, Dec 28, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

ryanmarsh wrote: post #80

porpoisely wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no fan of Ellison or Oracle. But a guy worth $60 billion with decades long ties and influence in media and government investing in TSLA and serving on its board is not something that should make shorts happy.

This. It’s not surprising at all how emotional and “short” sighted people are being about Ellison because “Oracle sucks”. I despise Oracle as much as the next guy but if I were in Elon’s shoes I’d want Ellison on my board. The car business is tough, really tough. At one point the database business was really tough. Ellison achieved a near monopoly. Despite our views on the quality his software. Tech people were not h…

It seems to me that you just made the argument for the opposition. We know that Ellison was successful in a business that involved selling big contracts to a small number of purchasers spending from a budget of company or taxpayer money. But that's not Tesla's business. Does Ellison know how to sell to individuals spending large amounts of their own money on a product with lots of similar competitors? Maybe? But he doesn't have a track record of doing that.

The retort here might be that people who have a track record of being "good at business" are good at all business. I personally don't buy that. I think too much executive decision-making is guesswork based on pattern-matching to prior experience for that to hold; if you have no prior experiences with a matching pattern, you're no more or less qualified than the next smart person making it up as they go.