If I want advice on establishing a fin tech company in the 90s I’ll ask Elon Musk but not on anything else. Only thing worse than Musk are the Musk fan-boys. “My liege…”
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What sucks is that his successes with SpaceX and Tesla over the last 7 years since that article was posted have lent an air of authenticity and infallibility to the things he says and does amongst Musk’s most devout fans. I do want SpaceX and Tesla to succeed, but Musk can honestly leave and I don’t think anybody would miss him except for his acolytes. I actually want Musk to leave his positions at the two companies at this point because I could then think more positively about the tech that’s being built and developed.
Musk running his mouth about wanting to go to Mars and offering people loans that they can pay off makes me pessimistic for humanity’s future in space. It makes it difficult for me to see advancements in rocket tech and manned spaceflight as more steps toward space becoming an awesome place that we can colonize and explore in the future. Instead, with people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos as poster-boys, I see space becoming a commoditized, commercialized playground for the rich.
I’ve instead turned my focus toward cool robots and robotics tech, where there don’t seem to be any egotistical superstars (that I know of) clamoring for attention. The SoftBank-owned Boston Dynamics has Spot, which is commercially available now, and it’s fun theorizing how Spot can be used to help people around the world. For example, last week I was thinking about food delivery during quarantine, and how you could have Spot deliver food to people who are either quarantined or under shelter-in-place orders. But people love comparing Spot and Atlas (their humanoid robot) to Terminator or that one dog thing from Black Mirror and I rarely see any discussion about the cool things they can do beyond all that snark.
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If he just stayed the hell off Twitter and focused on getting his Tesla factory to build those ventilators as quickly as possible he could come out of this thing looking like a hero, but noooo…
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Let all remember Musk has a very self-interested motivation to downplay the severity of the covid crisis… A financial self-interest…
If Tesla’s market cap remains above the $100 billion mark on an average over six months including at least 30 consecutive days, Musk can then implement this payment plan and buy about 1.69 million shares at about $350 each. The payout would be more than $346 million considering the current stock price according to a Forbes report.
Tesla’s share price for some reason had essentially doubled in the period from November to February and Musk was on track for reaping an incredible bonus at that valuation, but then came the virus. The stock has rapidly lost all that value it had previously gained.
The company has come very close to financial collapse in the recent past, only to eek its way out. But a sudden and total drop in demand will not be easy to overcome. The guy has incredible luck and marketing talent so we shall see.
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This is my favorite typo of the day, heck, the week. It so works.
Thank you for that.
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Some if not all of that spike was from what’s called a “short squeeze.” Tesla has, or had, a legion of short-sellers, but if the price starts going up then it can spark a race to cover the short, which drives the price up, which forces more short-sellers to cover, and so forth.
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Thanks for that info! Good to know that a company essentially doubling in valuation was due to gambling on the stock market. What could go wrong? At least Tesla took advantage of the situation by issuing stock… They’re probably going to be happy to have that cash in the coming months.
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I just want to but in and point out how beautiful these graphs are. Increase in covid-19 is following such a perfect exponential growth curve over most of the world. Of course it will kill some of us, which sucks but we can go to our death beds knowing that we were killed by a classy virus which knows where it is going and how fast.
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Musk is a classic case of something I have seen in a number of engineering and scientific experts, even business experts of various stripes – and I’ve probably been guilty of it myself at times.
Thinking because they’re good in one or a few areas, they know everything about everything. And being… wrong, about that.
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We’re headed for a new Depression. This isn’t going to end soon.
Musk knows this. He knows that people aren’t going to be interested in his overpriced, overhyped toys when this all shakes out. He’s in a more precarious position than other billionaires, because unlike Bezos whose companies are designed for a world where no one goes anywhere, or the Waltons or Westons who provide things people need (even in a Depression, people need to eat), he’s gone all in on shiny, luxury aspiring goods. He’s not part of a royal family that holds the reins of power. I am not saying things might not change and non-royal billionaires might find themselves on the hard end of a redistribution project, but they’re better situated to ride out a world where people work to survive rather than aspire.
He’s scared. He needs to convince people everything is fine. He needs to convince himself that everything is fine. He’s Dunning-Krugered himself into one hell of a corner and is finally starting to realize it.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’ll skate on this like he’s skated on everything else. But if there’s one thing that is true about assholes and grifters – the more assholish they are and the more spinning they do, it’s a sign that they’re far closer to the edge than they want you to know.
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This is Linus Paulding level arrogance. I grant he knows a lot in his area. This is not that. Go build something useful. Didnt he say something about making ventilators? That’s a good high tech application! Go figure out how to do that! Let us do our jobs.
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Based on current trends, the US is on pace for 5-10 thousand deaths a day by end of April. But that could be drastically improved with a collective effort from individuals and the government getting its shit together. Actively discouraging people from taking this seriously isn’t just being an asshole, its murderously wrong.
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Engineer’s disease or Engineer’s syndrome.
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So, great at tech and rocketry, but intellectually and morally dubious, and you wouldn’t want the experience of working for him.
Truly the 21st century’s Werner von Braun.
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You mean the singer who thinks hot dogs are made from vegetables? She’s hatable already.
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I hope not…
WvB was a real-life Faust who ended up building a weapon that killed more people building it than being hit by it.
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My parents are both quite elderly and I discussed the possibility of improvising a ventilator with my dad about a week ago. The scenario on our minds is one where our hospitals are overwhelmed to the point where formal medical care is out of the question, but a way is needed to keep vulnerable people breathing.
We are not working in a vacuum (so to speak). My dad has his own scuba gear and has always maintained it himself. So we have some experience in life support equipment. If we won’t both isolating ourselves, I might be around it his place looking for a way to build a ventilator from available parts.
Better to do this now than two weeks down the track.
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Musk have cool things and can be asshole as all humans. But cool so much more so this is why he has 30 mln followers . Please dont make boinboing suck in stupid antimask crusade
