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Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

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Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#971

Post by TimTheTinker »

PM_me_your_math wrote: post #966
bamboozled wrote: post #890

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I think we’re all just scared he is going to help get the boy king elected and if that’s the case, if that happens there’s a good chance that will be the end of civilization as we know it. That is legit the only reason anyone I know of cares at all about this deal.

The drama is unbecoming. Contrary to claims, civilization didn't end when Trump took office. The economy didn't crash, it grew. Food prices didn't soar, they went down. Unemployment didn't go up, it went down, especially for minorities. Gas prices didn't hit $7 in California. Home energy bills went down. People had more disposable income and less tax burden. We didn't experience wild inflation. There was no prospect…

... and now the media is like "this is fine (but it won't be if any conservative goals are accomplished)" while the world burns; whereas it was saying "the world is ending" while Trump was in office.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#972

Post by AtlasBarfed »

nr2x wrote: post #858
edmundsauto wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of his challenges will be to pay $1.2B in interest payments every year while also making good on the principal. That's quite a bit of debt for a struggling financial situation. Cutting HC will help in the short term; it is unclear if those cuts will be well executed. HN opinion that twitter could run with 200 engineers is woefully naive for a massive company that is under FTC consent order - they probably have >2…

He’s owned by bankers now. Totally.

What I learned from Donald Trump's business dealings.

If you owe the bank 200,000$ and can't pay it, you are in trouble.

If you owe the bank 1.2 billion dollars and can't pay it, THE BANK is in trouble.

This very very very much applies here.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#973

Post by mikestaub »

I predict he will open-source the recommendation algorithms and allow users to choose their own experience in the UI. He will also allow users to pay to verify their real ID. In the next 5 years, he will work with the blueskyweb.org team to migrate the backend to use the open protocol which will enable his "wechat-style" x.com vision of an app ecosystem bootstrapped off the Twitter social graph. Then he will go after all the other social platforms simultaneously and try to build the most valuable company in the world.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#974

Post by techdragon »

cutenewt wrote: post #289
thinkingemote wrote: post #248

They need to re-free up the API. Early adopters and hackers really did some great work using the API until they walled-gardened it and rate limited it to make it unusable. They need to do this for goodwill at the very least, but I think it will spark the fire to make it popular with techies again. Based on the recently published discovery chats we will probably see: * High def video * Focus on music publication * The…

I think it's going to be more in the other direction. He really hates the bots, so he'll probably close up the API. Until bots gets solved, no developer should expect the API to open up.

If they think keeping the API closed down or closing it down even more, is an effective defence against the bots… They need a quick refresher course in why the Analog Hole makes perfect DRM impossible outside of completely controlled circumstances.

Even if you required a dedicated twitter device per account, and no api at all… no more twitter website even or read only website … then you would get people building robots to touch the screen as fast as possible to “physically automate “ the devices… if you limit that device to only having one account associated with it, you would need a way to deauthorise a device for when you sell it or upgrade to a new one, so they would just automate the deauthorise workflows and “load balance” across any necessary size pool of devices.

Any efforts like this will drastically increase user friction and drive away customers/users. Simultaneously as far as they go down this path there will be (as long as twitter is still considered relevant, at least) … be state funded propaganda organisations who’s interests align with funding such a device farm, and simultaneously they would want deniability so the operators of such twitter device farms would wind up in the sort of ethically dubious zone as companies like Pegasus group (examples because its after midnight and I don’t feel like looking up exact details, consider these hypothetical examples unless they are correct) selling their hardware to “legitimate governments” to perform a once off inspection of the phone data of someone crossing the border into the USA at JFK airport in New York, and also to counties like Saudi Arabia to hack and monitor dissidents round the clock by installing root kits/exploits.

Effectively there’s no point, they should open up the api and monitor it better.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#977

Post by Levitz »

freejazz wrote: post #574
concinds wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people are focused on censorship/content issues, but I really think the X.com "mega app" vision is the most significant part of this. It'll be hard to gain a foothold in those markets, and there'll be antitrust challenges, but it really fits perfectly with the rest of Musk's vision: X.com Maps could tie in with Teslas, X.com Carhailing could tie-in with (future) full self-driving; Twitter could be expanded to be…

Are you serious? Why would I ever use that app? I already don't use twitter and there are market leaders that would have much better service (given they aren't trying to do every single thing in the world) compared to X and also, most of those services pretty much stink, so I would never think that X, while trying to do everything in the world, would also be better.

>Are you serious? Why would I ever use that app?

Because it would be incredibly convenient. Link a restaurent to your friends in a chat, talk about going there, all of them have the location and you can split the bill, all in the same app.

It might not have the best business index, or the best chat, or the best map, or the best payment manager, but it would be far, far superior to trying to coordinate all of those services through different apps.

And it's not that you need to want all of this, it's that if people around you use it you have enormous pressure to use it as well, because in the previous scenario if you are the guy who doesn't use such app then you have to be catered to specifically through and through, which is annoying for everyone.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#978

Post by DesiLurker »

mikkergp wrote: post #2

Apparently He laid off the data engineering team. That term is pretty vague, anyone know what they do? https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/28/departing-twitter-employees-... Edit: this may have been a prank.

Maybe it was a prank but there is strong reason to believe that he'd want to use his Dojo AI engine to do heavy data engineering for twitter. that may mean some overlap & slightly different technical profile than existing team. Oh and um .. Loyalists!

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#979

Post by georgeg23 »

gamegoblin wrote: post #865
georgeg23 wrote: post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He had help from the government, specifically Mike Griffin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career The rocket landing stuff largely borrow from DC-X and the spinoff work at NASA (+Lars Blackmore), all originally Strategic Defense Initiative stuff. He used all that money from Mike as collateral for loans to Tesla. He deserves some credit for impressive financial engineering and attracting talent under…

If it were just a matter of money, any of the other billionaires who tried to build rocket companies would have succeeded. SpaceX got payload to orbit with ~$100M. The only other company that has come close to this is Rocket Lab with a bit over $200M invested. By comparison, Bezos has been sinking > $1B per year into Blue Origin for nearly a decade without making it to orbit, and probably won't until 2024 at the earl…

His "save humanity" messaging helped attract talent, something Bezos never learned how to do. But once people get to know Elon, it's clear his idealisms about Mars are manipulations and not sincerely held. He really means Strategic Defense Initiative. Elon is super pro-military technology (a hint is naming his kid after spy planes).

He basically believes his purpose is to build what the US DoD has been asking for for decades.. a space-based defense system, powered by AI to project force across the planet ("for our own good"). People who know him closely are aware. For example Grimes leaked a lot of this.

To be fair, Elon believe he's doing what he's supposed to / what is "right". It's just not the same as what he says to get people to work for him or be his fans. Talented people often won't work on military technology if they know that's what it's for, so he bends the truth.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#980

Post by dlivingston »

valeg wrote: post #838
thinkingemote wrote: post #248

They need to re-free up the API. Early adopters and hackers really did some great work using the API until they walled-gardened it and rate limited it to make it unusable. They need to do this for goodwill at the very least, but I think it will spark the fire to make it popular with techies again. Based on the recently published discovery chats we will probably see: * High def video * Focus on music publication * The…

His other venture, Tesla, is famously hostile to repairmen and closed up. I doubt it. Not his MO.

There's an officially-unofficial API for your Tesla: https://www.teslaapi.io/

It's been the de facto Tesla API for 3rd party devs for a number of years now, and Tesla seems to be perfectly fine with it existing.

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