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Elon Musk is just one of those new wave business men who have hit a certain area of the market with and won over the younger audience, that's what has allowed Musk to actually keep Tesla going, his showmanship has brought in more backers and money to allow it to be where it is today, as if it were any other business, it would have died years ago.
Tesla now produce decent EV cars, and are the market leader for this technology, they are perceived as being way ahead of the competition as well, which is always a good thing to have, yes they make their profits through carbon credits, other business interests and data, but they have pushed their technology and abilities upwards at the same time.
The future is also pretty good for Tesla, they have a good foundation, have built the support network required and yes, they will struggle with raw materials, but they've also quietly ditched that whole EV for under 30k or whatever it was, Musk was smart enough to see that was just one vanity project too much, and with a 33% increase in price for the base model over the last 4 years, it looks like they're going to have to play to the middle classes or above from now on.
The self driving thing is another bonus for them, we're all talking about it and discussing the viability, at the same time every Tesla out there on the road is providing data to the Tesla Corporation on road mapping, driver habits, etc, etc, etc, they are building up data packets that will be worth a fortune in the coming years!
The self driving thing is another bonus for them, we’re all talking about it and discussing the viability, at the same time every Tesla out there on the road is providing data to the Tesla Corporation on road mapping, driver habits, etc, etc, etc, they are building up data packets that will be worth a fortune in the coming years!
This is the core of Musk's problem - the idea that any publicity is good publicity. It's marketed as "full self driving" but that is a misrepresentation of what it can do.
Yes, the cars can record massive amounts of data, but using that data to train the self-driving algorithms requires a human to go through the video frame by frame and tag the key objects in it. That is extremely slow so the limit is the number of humans they can afford to employ, not the quantity of data. You would probably end up with better data by just employing ten professional drivers to drive selected routes that include the important things that the algorithm must identify rather than relying on videos of amateur drivers. The professional drivers will provide a better model for the algorithm than amateurs and it would probably take about 1000 humans to tag the data from 10 cars driven 8 hours per day.
However, the biggest problem with self-driving is simply that it requires massive computational power to identify and track all the objects in an urban environment. Tesla cannot afford to put that sort of computing power into a car so their current system will never be able to provide what Musk is promising without compromising safety. Still, if you think that any publicity is good publicity, killing pedestrians and cyclists probably won't be seen as a problem.
Musk is the GOAT and The GigaTrump. Now to:
1. Make Tesla cars affordable for the new Musktrutherz
2. OurDearLeaderDealer-ize Twotter
3. Deliver a mil-spec gigatruck so the Musktrutherz can #ownthelibz from behind bulletproof glass before buggering off to Mars. selling golden tickets for a post-WW3 off-Earth production of ‘Death on Mars‘ whereby we discover that Mars was once just like Earth until it was entirely consumed by greed, bots, infowarz, climate catastrophe and thermonuclear conflict.
killing pedestrians and cyclists probably won’t be seen as a problem.
The future = (still)cars, so zero cyclists and pedestrians will be available for comment/injuring. #notaproblem
#moarcarz
#cartrainz
#carwarz
#carwarez
#stillcarz
#ancapz
they are building up data packets that will be worth a fortune in the coming years!
as @thols2 points out, this sort of IA needs computing power that Tesla doesn't have, and even it's lead AI scientist in his own blog says pretty much the only -The Only - difference between what they're doing now, and what they did decades ago with what was hailed as the the first real AI system that could handle human interface information (crudely drawn numbers) is computing power and data size. In other words the technology hasn't advanced in 3 decades because they don't have the capacity to do so.
Nvidia are putting a lot (a real lot) of money and effort into solving this. If you’re expecting anyone to solve this in the near term, they’d be the smart bet.
It’s marketed as “full self driving” but that is a misrepresentation of what it can do.
No it's not. See the post at the top of the page.
Also...
He bought nothing to Tesla (an existing company when he joined) but money. He’s a computer nerd who bet some of his Dads wealth on what became PayPal, and then used the money he earned from selling shares to invest in Tesla. He has no engineering skill.
This pretty much nails it. He’s a nerdy guy with marketing skills but he leaves the engineering to others and throws tantrums when he doesn’t get what he wants.
...I thought he was an arrogant engineer? Is he or isn't he? Make your mind up.
One of the problems with engineers is they tend to be very arrogant about technological solutions and dismissive of people who disagree with them.
Your quote is still pish BTW, that's nothing to do with being an engineer and just basic arrogance/groupthink.
It’s marketed as “full self driving” but that is a misrepresentation of what it can do.
No it’s not. See the post at the top of the page.
You mean the post where Tesla call it
Full Self-Driving
?
using that data to train the self-driving algorithms requires a human to go through the video frame by frame and tag the key objects in it
You know those Captcha things on line to verify you're not a robot, and you have to look at a bunch of small pictures and identify the pedestrian crossing, traffic light, school bus, tree etc. It's no coincidence that all the things you have to identify are potential driving hazards...
It’s no coincidence that all the things you have to identify are potential driving hazards…
Chimneys are a driving hazard?
It’s marketed as “full self driving” but that is a misrepresentation of what it can do.
No it’s not. See the post at the top of the page.
As bails pointed out, it's marketed as "Full Self-Driving Capability." That is what Tesla call it. That's misleading, to put it very mildly, it cannot safely do anything without a driver keeping their hands on the wheel and constantly monitoring it to make sure it doesn't drive under a truck or into a parked car. Calling it "Self-Driving" just encourages idiot fanbois to do stupid things.
I cant recomend this enough*
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/musk-to-burns/idipbnhifibemlbkiljhdnibgodoieli
* im very easily amused
I saw his diatribe against home working and thought that it seems a brilliant way to advertise to Tesla's competitors that they might be able to poach their top staff and the knowledge they take with them.
Just because Musk spends his 60-hour working week on Twitter doesn't mean that everyone else needs to.
^^ completely agree about the stupid robot thing being used as a distraction.
FWIW Tesla have had their wrists slapped and significant fines for how they've advertised and marketed their "full self drive".
I saw his diatribe against home working and thought that it seems a brilliant way to advertise to Tesla’s competitors that they might be able to poach their top staff and the knowledge they take with them.
Probably no coincidence that he tweeted about layoffs a couple of days later. Getting rid of your best talent first probably isn't wise though...
Fools and their money...
He’s obviously invested in upsetting ‘Democrats’ across the pond. I found this, how do they say, ‘spicy take’ (?) on the Tubes:
What does all the (largely manufactured yet now became Frankenstein’s Monster) ‘culture war’ stuff have to do with selling beans or beer or vacuum cleaners or electric cars?
What’s Musk’s long game now he’s trading divisive politics? It’s not like he’s vapour where is hasn’t been criticised for years and years is he just look at a way to silence/discredit critics by labelling them all as ‘nasty butthurt liberals’ or somesuch?
Is climate change denial just around the corner for Musk? I always wondered how you could claim to be helping to tackle climate change while simultaneously funding engineers to find a way to ‘better’ existing airliner travel with rocket travel at x1000 (fossil fuel) emissions.
It feels somewhat like we are all being trolled by an ‘edgy’ teenaged billionaire internet troll?
*oops
It’s not like he’s vapour where hasn’t been criticised for years and years is he just look at a way to silence/discredit critics
It’s not like his vapourware hasn’t been examined/criticised for years and years. Is he just looking at at a political way to silence/discredit critics? Or is this a career change to media/celeb/grifter?
Nvidia are putting a lot (a real lot) of money and effort into solving this. If you’re expecting anyone to solve this in the near term, they’d be the smart bet.
My money is on Qualcomm
What’s Musk’s long game now he’s trading divisive politics?
Isnt he is just a thin skinned manchild who cant handle criticism and hence lashes out whenever anyone dares to challenge his pronouncements?
This is an interesting point from the author of Black Swan.
Isnt he is just a thin skinned manchild who cant handle criticism and hence lashes out whenever anyone dares to challenge his pronouncements?
Possibly a large element of that - but I think he’s media savvy enough to turn it to his advantage. At least in the short term/ or while there’s still some gravy in this ‘culture war/antiwoke’ train.
It’s all a bit weird tbh, it does just make me think he’s a big troll looking forward to using his vast influence putting Trump back in power 😉
but I think he’s media savvy enough to turn it to his advantage.
And yet not savvy enough not to tweet/conduct interviews when drunk or stoned.
not savvy enough not to tweet/conduct interviews when drunk or stoned.
On the contrary surely? While (at least to cynical & skeptical old farts such as your’s truly) Musk’s (for instance) Joe Rogan appearances might come over as horribly calculated/self-conscious, the ‘jokes and tokes’ of the middle-aged mega/rich keen to project an ‘I’m not like the other billionaires - trust me’ image…
… to the YouTube/meme-media/me-me-me-me generation/demographic surely Musk’s ‘kool with the kidz’ projection is radical, and real, and just the sort of fresh waters they’re thirsty for?* Not like that stuffy, heavily-censored and fake old mainstream/old-guard politics rubbish? Add to a degree (even though it’s all fake/hustling to my mind) that last point is still a point.
I believe it’s known as “good optics“
What do you throw a drowning lawyer?
It reminds me somewhat of Sick Bicycle Co's approach to product testing.
When you lay it out in simple terms like this, yep, it sure does look like a scam.
Thols2 - give your anti-Tesla diatribe a rest. You come across like a vaccine-denier picking and choosing the bits and pieces you can find in the media to support your case.
It literally says on the page with accident statistics "we count any crash in which Autopilot was deactivated within 5 seconds before impact".
You can overcome stupidity to an extent with technology, but eventually you will come across a sufficiently determined idiot.
So, if I understand this correctly, a frontal crash will usually mean the system failed whereas other crashes are more likely to be the fault of another vehicle. What this means is that the Tesla system is woeful at avoiding obstacles.
It literally says on the page with accident statistics “we count any crash in which Autopilot was deactivated within 5 seconds before impact”.
Ermm, yes?
You seem to be implying the person disabled it and then crashed for shits and giggles?
As opposed to it disengaged itself because its confused or the driver disengaging it by desperately slamming on the brakes/steering to try and dodge the scenario the self driving has put itself in.
I worked in the industry and I wouldn't trust any of these "semi autonomous" systems at all.
The company I worked for saw it as an advantage that the driver was ultimately responsible, as they could save millions on testing their systems properly. And don't expect the regulators to do the job either. I think for pedestrian detection, they just test it once and give it a pass or fail. For a system dealing with complex situations, human behaviours and weather conditions it's an incredibly poor way of making sure these things are robust.
The all-or-nothing approach is the only one that makes sense. Thats the approach taken by Waymo, Wayve, FiveAI amongst others. Google realised pretty early on humans are incredibly poor at watching and checking a semi autonomous car.
Google realised pretty early on humans are incredibly poor at watching and checking a semi autonomous car.
They are not that good/attentive when actually driving so take that responsibility away but expect them to still stay focused just in case is recipe for disaster.
I think the lesson here is
Don't announce multi billion dollar takeovers when you are high as shit!
So he's pulled out
Twitter are suing him and Twitter shareholders are likely too as well
https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1545537997214564354?t=gORrOWNfVnf_uIPfg5WfrQ&s=19
He’s a bit rubbish at pulling out.
Not read the whole thread, so probably been mentioned multiple times, but it baffled me why the world's richest bloke would invest most of his fortune in a social media platform that could collapse/wither away into nothing - they all die eventually
would invest most of his fortune
I got the impression that he was largely getting the money from elsewhere rather than it all being his
I got the impression that he was largely getting the money from elsewhere rather than it all being his
Richest man in the world borrows money. Wow haha. Not disputing your input, but bloody hell, aint it ridiculous?
I thought he was rinsing Tesla for it though, hence the share crash?
Just sort the world debt you massive **** - that said, not sure who the world owes money to.....
H is about to spend the rest of his life in court fighting Twitter. Unless he moves to Mars.
He needs investigating by the SCC now. pump and dump king
Richest man in the world borrows money.
TBF If I was buying something like Twitter I wouldn't use my own money either.
He thought he was king Midas but has seen his Tesla stock drop & his crypto stock drop so now he's trying to back out after seeing (I presume) a lot of commercially sensitive details about Twitter.
This is/was a merger, not a takeover/purchase due to the share exchange. Tesla is overvalued, perhaps getting Twitter while those shares were overvalued was seen at the time as financially sound. Now that Tesla’s shares have dropped in value and the Twitter price is locked in, it seems like less of a good deal. Hence why he’s trying to back away from it. @$44bn and given Tesla’s recent stock fall, Twitter would need a substantially greater percentage of Tesla to complete the merger. That’s perhaps more percentage than Musk really wants to give.
It’ll be interesting to see if he can wriggle out of it.
This had the feel of the greatest showman in the world being the greatest showman in the world, but now there will be the nasty side of court battles, i believe there's a huge back out clause that Twitter put in the contract, so guessing Musk will be trying to use some of that sensitive information he was provided to try and reduce any potential payments.
i believe there’s a huge back out clause that Twitter put in the contract
There is a billion due if it is cancelled for semi sensible reasons but the really problematic bit for him is in theory they can force him to go ahead with the purchase if he doesnt have those semi-sensible reasons.
Is "I was drunk and stoned and it was late at night and I clicked on 'Buy Now' by mistake" a semi-sensible reason for cancelling?
If he gets one (a free pass for being stoned) for purchasing Twitter, we should all get one for eBay.
He’s on the hook for about 25 billion $
Watch doge coin get pumped next week. There is already a lawyer from the US who is holding Twitter shares talking about class action litigation.
This sounds about as plausible as anything.
If he gets one (a free pass for being stoned) for purchasing Twitter, we should all get one for eBay.
Conversely I'm quite looking forward to demanding $7,000,000,000 in compensation from the next eBay buyer to pull out of a purchase claiming that they "bid by mistake".
. As far as I know there is only one lawsuit against Tesla for the self driving allegedly injuring someone.
The dead have difficulty in attending court and giving evidence.
The fish rots from the head.
Car is sold twice since, and now has a new owner (my customer). It says 90, badged 90, has 90-type range
I'd be looking at/for whoever rebadged it
I’d be looking at/for whoever rebadged it
So first owner gets a free upgrade from a warranty mix up and keeps quiet about it. They or a subsequent owner rebadge the car and effectively scam the subsequent buyer who gets the mix up reversed when the company find out they're getting something that wasn't paid for. If I sell you fake tickets to a concert but you then get evicted by security when the people who paid for your seats turn up, do you blame the band for not letting you in?
The point is that telling customers that a software update is going to fix a problem but using it to remove functionality instead is pretty deceptive. They should have explained what was happening and given the owner a chance to sort it out. If the misconfigured battery reading was Tesla's fault, they should have just sucked it up for goodwill.
The point is that rebadging then selling on a car when you've benefited from a mistake is pretty deceptive. If the current owner had been aware that 'this is actually a 60 but has 90 range thanks to a Tesla cockup' then they may have acted differently.
Mate of mine works at Tesla quite often. Says Elon is really ****ing odd.
He quite likes working there though. The upshot of Elon thinking he can do everything better than everyone else is that he refuses to hire people with any experience. So he hires a bunch of extremely bright, extremely motivated 20-somethings, who don't know what they're doing, but learn quickly and are fun to be around. It does sound quite a laugh sometimes
So he hires a bunch of extremely bright, extremely motivated 20-somethings, who don’t know what they’re doing, but learn quickly and are fun to be around. It does sound quite a laugh sometimes
Problem there is that they don't have the experience or seniority to ask tough questions and point out when Musk is doing dumb shit. The Hyperloop was always bullshit, Musk was just making impossible promises, as usual. This suggest he knew that and was just using it to sabotage public transit plans in California. If Musk had hired engineers with experience on high-speed rail, they would have told him his dreams were just fantasies and then he would have had to sack them. Hiring kids straight out of school means it will take several years for them to see through the bullshit.
It’ll be interesting to see if he can wriggle out of it.
Dusting this off. It would seem the answer is no he cant.
Announced he is going ahead now just prior to the case kicking off properly. I assume he was told he was going to lose badly quite possibly risking having some stuff out in the public domain he really would prefer not to be.
There were some rather embarrassing/sad messages about the financing side of things which didnt shine a great light on all those involved already.
Spinning it as a new ground braking app called X???
Realized he would be hung out to dry in court and his financial dealing being looked into via the SEC in the US
Musk said public transit was “a pain in the ass”
Man who has had wealth his entire life in "Not understanding how everyone else lives" shocker. Christ, rich idiots are such a PITA
Spinning it as a new ground braking app called X???
Which apparently is going to do everything. Ho hum.
Going to be some upset bankers at Morgan Stanley and a few other banks who had agreed to provide 13 billion of financing for it. Since if they dont find someone to see it to then they have to carry the cost themselves and not much chance of finding many people interested at least without a steep discount.
I guess they realised they were screwed back at the start of the lawsuit but still had a glimmer of hope remaining.
Seems he's an apologist for Russian expansion:
The ****.
I've Never Met a Nice South African.
Anyone watched the Elon Musk Show on iPlayer? Worth watching? Is all singing his praises or actually more balanced?
My prediction on doge came true 10% rise before he needed cash for Twitter even though the banks look to have funded most of the deal.
I've not seen the been show I imagine he controls the output?
The Twitter hellscape seems to be turning things up to 11.
It's going to be amazing watching this absolute helmet do a Kanye and flush 44 billion down the drain.
I can not wait.
I'm going to miss twitter, could be a really good source of interesting opinions & expert knowledge
Monty Burns buying it marks it's end, I fear, really hope I'm wrong
But the Kanye thing perfectly summed it up
https://twitter.com/HeatherMoAndCo/status/1585809481602064384?t=ZvaIIj430WPgVo7tRrz4gA&s=19
Has he turned it into 4chan yet?
He has sacked the top level exc team. I bet trump is back by the weekend's cull of other staff.
Elon is a dangerous man
Someone said that the best thing Musk could do with Twitter was buy it and close it. Looks like he's just going to let it burn itself down instead.
It’s going to be amazing watching this absolute helmet do a Kanye and flush 44 billion down the drain.
Elon's going to soon discover the same thing the owners of Gab, Parler, Truth Social etc either knew from the start or soon found out, making any actual money from social media depends on having a huge user base with loads of 'normies' who actually buy stuff for your advertisers to market to.
Any corner of the internet that declares itself a 'Free Speech Fundamentalist' zone eventually ends up flooded with Nazis, Pedophiles and Scammers, basically the very worst people imaginable. As a result the 'normies' very sensibly decide they can't be bothered with all this, leave and take their advertising dollars with them.
Then the trolls, with no 'libs' to 'trigger' eventually get bored and go elsewhere as for the average sadist it's no fun when you have nobody to be horrible to.
It would all be very funny if the process wasn't going to involve so many people from minority groups being subjected to a torrent of horrific abuse, intimidation and threats.
I'm sure the former CEO/CFO are delighted he didn't try to keep them on. Over 100m in severance payments between them and no need to try to sit through the Russian botfest to come.
Caher
Full Member
I’ve Never Met a Nice South African.
Pretty poor post no matter the subject to group all South Africans together.
It is sad as I will probably just leave twitter. It is still my main news feed from local government, police etc. I've also tried Facebook for current news, but their algorithms are terrible so you keep getting things a day to 2 after it happens.
How much do we bet that tech nerds at Google/Apple/ Facebook are, as we speak, frantically writing code for a a "Twitter-alike" and are forecasting that it needs to be in place in this quarter.
Why would you? Social media companies sound like a absolute nightmare to run. Leave it to ByteDance while you sit back and enjoy the spectacle of watching Zuckerberg and Musk walk in ever smaller circles until they disappear up their own arseholes.
dead in the water
Pretty poor post no matter the subject to group all South Africans together.
Not a Spitting Image fan then?
PS Thanks Caher for earworming me. This is torture.
Why would you?
Twitter earns something like $5B a year, doesn't it? You have to understand that that's how Silicon Valley works, it's the Free Market capital of the world, it may have at one point been home to nerds and misfits, but those people are now chained to their desks making money for people like Elon. If something doesn't work (Twitter) then the answer is not, rake over the coals to see what went wrong and do better next time, the answer is (according the Silicon valley executives) make another one, the first one made a shit tone of money.
Why would you?
Because they have the potential to be massive social influence machines and wealthy egomaniacs love the feel of all that power in their hands.
Whether that means they can actually control what influence these platforms have or whether they just end up 'riding the tiger' is another matter entirely.