Elon Musk: Officially a fraud and piece of shit. Official or unofficial war criminal?

[Brisketexan 105066]

1 hour ago, Humble Beast said:

Tbf there’s a lot of big tech companies in their pockets. Apple and Google pretty prominently come to mind. 
 

Not sure what this means exactly 
 

 

"files on free speech suppression" = "Twitter's moderation policies" also = Elmo has no fucking idea what "free speech" actually is.

I mean, my business has "files on free speech suppression."  It contains things like "don't say racist/sexist shit to your co-workers" and "don't reveal confidential client information."  And that's just an insular business.

In order to maintain its advertiser base, I'm betting that many TV networks have policies like "don't broadcast shows that are socially offensive, like hourlong videos of anal sex orgies or 'documentaries' on why the nazis were right to exterminate jews."  No matter how many times you submit your production to the fine folks at the Discovery Channel, they will not broadcast it.  Because the fine folks at General Mills won't advertise their cereal on your network if you show that shit.  Those aren't "free speech suppression" policies.  They are "we are a business that has to have some modicum of civilized behavior in order to attract both the users and advertisers that are needed to make us a successful business."

If you want to run a social media business, you will have moderation policies.

If you want to run a social media site without any moderation, you need to accept that it won't be a functioning or profitable business ("My Pillow" ads and ads for crypto and doomsday prepper supplies excepted, of course).

None of Elmo's critics are pointing out anything revolutionary.  We're pointing out the obvious. The fact that "pointing out the obvious" = "criticizing Elmo" says more than enough.

[Fudge Nuggets 19189]

12 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

How is this different than Facebook?  It's a free for all shit fest for the most part, which is why everyone's aging parents have gone full-stupid over the last few years.  Who advertises there?  How does lizard boy manage this shit better than Elrond the half man? Or does he?

Lizard Boy knows to keep his fucking mouth shut. 

[Brian Fantana 6680]

5 hours ago, NoName said:

i think its a flat $8 now? but yeah, this is absolutely the thing you handle behind closed doors. he should have just charged $11 for it and then said he has to charge more because of Apple's cut and made more money across the board since they can't adjust what you pay for it via web/android/ios, but he is a moron and didn't.

He should have thought about Twitter's consent decree with the FTC and not done it at all, hence the real reason he had to shut it down.

[Brisketexan 105066]

Just now, Fudge Nuggets said:

Lizard Boy knows to keep his fucking mouth shut. 

Bingo.  As any married man will tell you, perhaps the smartest shit I've ever said is the shit that I could have said, but didn't.

Elmo hasn't absorbed that lesson.  And I don't think he's capable of doing so, because he's a narcissist sociopath.

[Captainant 27637]

7 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

How is this different than Facebook?  It's a free for all shit fest for the most part, which is why everyone's aging parents have gone full-stupid over the last few years.  Who advertises there?  How does lizard boy manage this shit better than Elrond the half man? Or does he?

Well for one, most of the facebook insanity happens inside of groups that you won't see unless you're connected to them either directly or by a friend. Twitter is all public all the time, so that sort of hate speech is much easier to get amplified and turn into an embarrassment for twitter, whereas on FB, it's somewhat easier to hide and suppress before it becomes a major story

[Humble Beast 258]

5 hours ago, Chopper said:

edit and actually the 4th reason, if the lack of moderation has been sufficiently recorded or verified, then yeah it's very possible twitter is going into the dustbin with gettr and social. I've seen several reports this morning, all only subjective, about how horrible it's become over there with nazis, incels, russians and chinese misinformation.

Man, tell me more about these reports you’re receiving over the newswires. Would you say they’ve been “flooding the zone”?  Sounds like exciting stuff. A hellscape, even.  

Edited November 29, 2022 by Humble Beast

[Sawbonz 27540]

6 hours ago, HenryJames said:

 

[HornOnTheBayou 8912]

So these special files will be released in two weeks, right?

[MeerkatBong 115]

53 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Well for one, most of the facebook insanity happens inside of groups that you won't see unless you're connected to them either directly or by a friend. Twitter is all public all the time, so that sort of hate speech is much easier to get amplified and turn into an embarrassment for twitter, whereas on FB, it's somewhat easier to hide and suppress before it becomes a major story

Sounds like Facebook then is much more insidious and dangerous. Twitter seems to be transparent with their lunacy for all to see and subsequently flee and flock to Mastadon. I mean that’s what you and everyone else complaining already did, right? I’ve read Mastadon has really taken off the last month or so.

[Francisco 2.0 32387]

So, details on why Elon is butthurt over Apple:

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/28/musk-apple-app-store-twitter/

Quote

In the first quarter, Apple was the top advertiser on Twitter, spending $48 million on ads on the social network, according to a document reviewed by The Washington Post that was compiled from internal Twitter data. Apple’s spending accounted for more than 4 percent of Twitter’s revenue that quarter.

 

 

So, publicly shame them into resuming spending seems totally normal.  

 

 

[Firemans4Horn 18034]

5 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

So, details on why Elon is butthurt over Apple:

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/28/musk-apple-app-store-twitter/

 

So, publicly shame them into resuming spending seems totally normal.  

 

 

elon’s understanding of the amendment’s are challenged. 
 

[wildcat09 29346]

The far right is coming for dril?

[Francisco 2.0 32387]

When does Cuban get banned?

 

 

 

[NoName 16351]

2 hours ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Elon's phone talk is trending on social media right now. His fan club thinks it is a great idea. Among the counter side comments beside the ones with images of phones on fire,  a pundit remarked that Musk would buy/absorb a developing phone company, push the owners out and rebrand it as his phone, which was pretty funny. And accurate.

it would honestly be a fantastic grift. we have seen so many folks try to do it over the last 2 decades and nobody has been able to really do it and make it last.

it would end up being a hard fork of android, privacy focused with subpar hardware and cost the same as an iphone.

which is something you can buy today. and it's shitty.

if andy rubin couldn't make it work with the essential phone (new phone manufacturer + stock android) i very seriously doubt that musk can or will. ~99.4% of the world is using either iOS or Android.

[atomheartbevo 89628]

1 hour ago, HornOnTheBayou said:

So these special files will be released in two weeks, right?

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

"files on free speech suppression" = "Twitter's moderation policies" also = Elmo has no fucking idea what "free speech" actually is.

I mean, my business has "files on free speech suppression."  It contains things like "don't say racist/sexist shit to your co-workers" and "don't reveal confidential client information."  And that's just an insular business.

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

In order to maintain its advertiser base, I'm betting that many TV networks have policies like "don't broadcast shows that are socially offensive, like hourlong videos of anal sex orgies or 'documentaries' on why the nazis were right to exterminate jews."  No matter how many times you submit your production to the fine folks at the Discovery Channel, they will not broadcast it. 

Yeah, I have a feeling that Elmo has no fucking clue what's in those files, just that they are the moderation policies, and whatever employees that are left, that dug them responded "YESSIR" when Musk asked if they were the files on what was allowed.  Hell, one of the remaining employees in that area probably printed them out, stuck them in a folder and hastily scribbled "FREE SPEECH POLICIES" across the front of the folder.

And this is going to be a true "Okay dog, you caught the car, and the car is accelerating rapidly, you planning on letting go anytime soon?" scenario.

Because if those are the files we are thinking of, about content moderation, it's going to be a lot of "DON'T ALLOW NAZI SHIT, DON'T ALLOW WHITE SUPREMACY" etc. and if they are and Musk posts them for the world to see, his fanboys will lose their minds and demand that he remove all of those restrictions, and if he tries to keep any, they will melt down and claim he hates free speech.

Of course, he'll probably take a poll so that he can deflect the blame onto the internet, but advertisers will not give one fuck.

Whatever advertising/customer relations/PR people he has left have got to be refreshing the fuck out of their email, various job sites, etc.

 

[atomheartbevo 89628]

58 minutes ago, MeerkatBong said:

Sounds like Facebook then is much more insidious and dangerous. Twitter seems to be transparent with their lunacy for all to see and subsequently flee and flock to Mastadon. I mean that’s what you and everyone else complaining already did, right? I’ve read Mastadon has really taken off the last month or so.

Facebook has far more data to play around with, given the size of the user base and that it links FB accounts among friends and relatives and explicitly defines those relationships.

Check out "Social Dilemma" on Netflix to get a peak at what former employees think in terms of it (and other platforms) trying to manipulate you into reading or posting one more time and keeping you addicted.  

Or watch "The Great Hack" on Netflix, that, well here's the summary: Exploring how a data company named Cambridge Analytica came to symbolise the dark side of social media in the wake of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as uncovered by journalist Carole Cadwalladr.

[NoName 16351]

58 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

So, details on why Elon is butthurt over Apple:

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/28/musk-apple-app-store-twitter/

 

So, publicly shame them into resuming spending seems totally normal.  

 

 

holy fucking shit, he is aggressively attacking their NUMBER ONE advertiser on Twitter from Q1?

he really is bad at this.

[Sawbonz 27540]

19 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

When does Cuban get banned?

 

 

 

Cuban set it up so only Musk can reply lol

[Neonmoon 38129]

This has nothing to do with any moderation policy. Elon is likely referring to any internal communication regarding the ban of Trump or any other similar politicized banning. It is chum for his worshippers. 

[atomheartbevo 89628]

58 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

So, publicly shame them into resuming spending seems totally normal.  

Elmo is against cancel culture, but he's trying to sic his fanbois on Apple by publicly naming and shaming them.

But that's not cancel culture.  It's just trying to force them to advertiser, because the Constitution's 1st Amendment specifically states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, nor should Apple have the right to pull its advertising from Twitter or have a 30% royalty policy that has been public knowledge for over a decade but that should be considered secret because it was only recently revealed to our Most Revered Lord Elon Musk.

[atomheartbevo 89628]

11 minutes ago, NoName said:

if andy rubin couldn't make it work with the essential phone (new phone manufacturer + stock android) i very seriously doubt that musk can or will. ~99.4% of the world is using either iOS or Android.

Rubin tried twice - technically the first time was when he founded Danger Inc, which produced the Sidekick, which was ahead of Google/Apple.

But put him aside for the moment - Microsoft couldn't fucking do it, and they were in the smartphone space well before Apple and Google as well (I went through a couple of generations of PocketPC/WindowsMobile before iPhones even came out), including full touchscreens.  And they tried again later.

But I would love for Musk to try it, because he would have to start giving up more Tesla stock, and probably try and leverage twitter somehow, or even SpaceX.

If you could get him out of Tesla and get real leadership in there, Tesla might have a chance in the long run, but that window is closing since the Big Three are all pushing electric versions of quite a few of their vehicles.

[NoName 16351]

1 minute ago, atomheartbevo said:

Rubin tried twice - technically the first time was when he founded Danger Inc, which produced the Sidekick, which was ahead of Google/Apple.

But put him aside for the moment - Microsoft couldn't fucking do it, and they were in the smartphone space well before Apple and Google as well (I went through a couple of generations of PocketPC/WindowsMobile before iPhones even came out), including full touchscreens.  And they tried again later.

But I would love for Musk to try it, because he would have to start giving up more Tesla stock, and probably try and leverage twitter somehow, or even SpaceX.

If you could get him out of Tesla and get real leadership in there, Tesla might have a chance in the long run, but that window is closing since the Big Three are all pushing electric versions of quite a few of their vehicles.

i would LOVE to see him try, seriously. it's all 100% totally and completely posturing - which is his go to move.

[atomheartbevo 89628]

22 minutes ago, NoName said:

holy fucking shit, he is aggressively attacking their NUMBER ONE advertiser on Twitter from Q1?

he really is bad at this.

It really is beautiful.  Here we are a ways into his tenure, and he still doesn't understand what free speech means, and he still doesn't understand how advertising works, and he still doesn't understand that the advertisers are his customers, and trying to name and shame your customers when they stop giving you money is kind of frowned upon in the business world. 

And he probably thinks that $48 million in advertising is a major thing for Apple, but Apple spends billions on advertising every year.

At least the robot at Facebook knows his own limitations and when not to engage with other people or companies.  Then again, FB has been profitable for years.

[Francisco 2.0 32387]

You would think these yokels would have literally sprinted out the door this morning and picked up some Android device, because reasons.  But no:

 

 

 

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

What plausible reason did he have to dive headfirst into the culture wars?

There is no business rationale for it. Meaning, doing so was never going to benefit him financially.

Playing the role of divider really only works if you’re playing for power, not money. He obviously can’t run for President…so why is he doing this?

[atomheartbevo 89628]

2 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

so why is he doing this?

Because he doesn’t really understand what it is that he is doing?
 

[Francisco 2.0 32387]

2 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

What plausible reason did he have to dive headfirst into the culture wars?

There is no business rationale for it. Meaning, doing so was never going to benefit him financially.

Playing the role of divider really only works if you’re playing for power, not money. He obviously can’t run for President…so why is he doing this?

 

Because he's winging it.   He really has no idea what he's doing, so he wanders day to day doing something, anything that can generate publicity.  Because his actions sure as shit aren't helpful at generating revenue.

RE: a Twitter/Musk phone; it would be trivially easy to accomplish.  Plenty of white-box Chinese companies will produce a phone for low cost.  But the trouble is, he will have to license Google's tech stack in order to get access to the Google App store, among other things:

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/11/28/should-be-easy

Quote

The hard part wouldn’t be the phone hardware; surely Twitter or Tesla or some new Musk-owned entity could easily slap their own brand on a white label Android handset. The hard part is that what he’s really talking about is making his own phone with his own app store. (Android phones that don’t play by Google’s rules also don’t get access to Google Play Services, which is effectively a closed-source segment of the Android operating system. Outside of China, I’m aware of zero successful Android phones that don’t use the Google Play app store by default.)

 

 

[Brian Fantana 6680]

9 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

What plausible reason did he have to dive headfirst into the culture wars?

There is no business rationale for it. Meaning, doing so was never going to benefit him financially.

Playing the role of divider really only works if you’re playing for power, not money. He obviously can’t run for President…so why is he doing this?

Because he is a large, bored child despite his claims of "constantly working"

And yes, it's all about power. What reason does he have to actually care about money? He has the infinite money glitch*.

*Unless he does something monumentally stupid, which he is kind of doing.

[Brisketexan 105066]

What plausible reason did he have to dive headfirst into the culture wars?
There is no business rationale for it. Meaning, doing so was never going to benefit him financially.
Playing the role of divider really only works if you’re playing for power, not money. He obviously can’t run for President…so why is he doing this?

Because narcissists don’t need admiration, or respect, or affirmation. They feed on, and desperately need, unconditional slavish adulation.
Generally speaking, you only get that from the modern right/alt-right. They, and their followers, mistake intensity of support for amount of support. Elon needs people who would give their lives for him, who declare every move he makes to be the most transcendently brilliant thing any human has ever done.
Elon flushes a turd? GENIUS. Disposing of human waste is a brilliant move!
Elon smears the very next turd all over his face? GENIUS. Real superbraingeniuses like Elon know that ACTUALLY, human shit rejuvenated the skin!
You only get that kind of slavish devotion wrapped up in psychotic cognitive dissonance, in any real numbers, from one crowd. The crowd that is presently gushing all over every word he says on Twitter, as we speak. You know who they are.

[atomheartbevo 89628]

We knew he was ignorant about a lot of things, but holy shit, even today there’s multiple examples of him still not understanding free speech.

 

[Nivek 16923]

Logged on to Twitter and saw houston trending. There there is some talk of the boil water stuff and then glory hole porn. Just in a normal feed on Houston.

Great job Elon. This wasn’t censored, it didn’t have a “sensitive content” warning that you see on the Ukraine stuff.

Sigh….business man my ass. Guy is a moron with the ethics of Fastow, arrogance of Skilling.

[ShaggyBevo RIP 3868]

7 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

We knew he was ignorant about a lot of things, but holy shit, even today there’s multiple examples of him still not understanding free speech.

 

There is a huge segment of our society that believes free speech equals freedom from repercussions for running your pie hole. The Bill of Rights only guarantees the govt can't stop you from running your pie and nothing more.

[Eskimohorn 5630]

What plausible reason did he have to dive headfirst into the culture wars?
There is no business rationale for it. Meaning, doing so was never going to benefit him financially.
Playing the role of divider really only works if you’re playing for power, not money. He obviously can’t run for President…so why is he doing this?

Its the Spite Store business model. He’s playing with other people’s money and there’s unlimited dark money from authoritarian governments that see it as a platform for journalists and activists. They want it gone. And there’s a lot of compromising private info there for the taking.

The PGA is targeted with a new competitor paying billions for exhibition matches

Ukraine is targeted (literally)

Twitter is targeted and is being gutted and poised to be the next scat site

Further and more implicit discussion on what’s happening and why is not necessary and more CR

But for all the talk about freedom of speech, it remains an anti-trust issue (one company with so much power). Our laws are light years from providing consumers options in the market place. There is no service like Twitter and its going to leave an enormous hole, scattering communication and communities throughout the world.

Its also may be a national security issue. Compromising conversations and massive data sent to adversarial foreign governments is a potential disaster.

[Chopper 17230]

4 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

How is this different than Facebook?  It's a free for all shit fest for the most part, which is why everyone's aging parents have gone full-stupid over the last few years.  Who advertises there?  How does lizard boy manage this shit better than Elrond the half man? Or does he?

Aging parents have gone full stupid because of fox news. The groups those people may be in on facebook reinforce the bullshit, but it's almost all fox news. Although that's just an impression as I haven't been on fb for about 10 years.

4 hours ago, Humble Beast said:

Man, tell me more about these reports you’re receiving over the newswires. Would you say they’ve been “flooding the zone”?  Sounds like exciting stuff. A hellscape, even.  

I get that you're trying to push a counter argument but you seem to have run out of partially intelligent things to write.

[Chopper 17230]

This chart published today by Wa Po shows it's either white supremacists or bots, or both, that are overtaking twitter.

One perplexing thing is why the article focused on politicians...I don't think any real people on twitter really give a fuck about hearing from politicians - with a very few exceptions.

[MeerkatBong 115]

You guys all with great answers are not being led witnesses and vocalizing what DefinitelyNotHollywood was trying to get you to say that he's in the bag for PUTIN and RUSSIA and CHYNA! He's clearly doing this to divide America and hurt us as a billionaire interoperative working from the inside out! Plus he's a foreigner; he can't be President! Distrust the motives of the foreign billionaire!

[Sawbonz 27540]

 

[Francisco 2.0 32387]

 

 

[Post Oak 20208]

15 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Here we go.  A story about another of Musk's ventures other than Twitter that has wild claims, yet doesn't really do anything.

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-boring-company-tunnel-traffic-11669658396

 

 

 

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Boring’s only tunnel open to the public is a 1.6-mile “loop experience” under the Las Vegas Convention Center. There, Teslas with hired drivers ferry convention-goers through neon-lit white tunnels at speeds of about 30 miles an hour.

Boring has yet to make good on its most ambitious pitch: that it can design tunnel-boring machines that are so fast to operate that they will drive down costs and shake up the industry. Tunneling industry veterans question some of Mr. Musk’s claims.

The company has believers. This spring, tech-focused venture-capital firms Sequoia Capital and Vy Capital led a $675 million fundraising round that valued Boring at $5.7 billion. Major real-estate firms including Brookfield, Lennar and Tishman Speyer are among the investors.

“Their technology is now past the state-of-the-art, and improving at an exponential rate,” Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire wrote in a post on the firm’s website, announcing the round.

Mr. Maguire declined to comment and the other investors didn’t respond to detailed requests for comment.

Mr. Musk has frequently criticized government regulation, calling it an impediment to building new infrastructure. At a WSJ CEO Council event in 2020, he said he had moved from California to Texas, where Tesla was building a new factory, in part because of government regulations. Government should “just get out of the way,” he said.

The Boring Co., based in Pflugerville, Texas, occupies an odd place in Mr. Musk’s business empire, which includes Tesla, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, and most recently Twitter Inc. He launched the tunneling venture with a tweet in December 2016 that many took as a joke. “Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging…” Mr. Musk wrote.

“I am actually going to do this,” he added in a second tweet.

At Boring’s helm is Mr. Davis, a longtime lieutenant to Mr. Musk who came from SpaceX. Some of the space contractor’s investors have complained about Boring soaking up SpaceX’s resources, including employees and equipment purchased with SpaceX funds.

Mr. Musk’s leadership style—he recently told his Twitter employees they must be “extremely hardcore” or resign—pervades Boring, too, several former senior executives said. Boring employees work long hours and weekends, and the company has struggled to retain employees, particularly in technical positions such as engineering, they said.

For years, the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority had sought a solution to an enviable problem: Freight-focused Ontario International was steadily gaining passengers. Airport officials decided a link to a nearby commuter rail station would help it grow even more.

The authority issued a request for proposals for a light rail line, estimated to cost between $1 billion and $1.5 billion, when Boring’s pitch showed up.

The authority struck a preliminary deal with Boring in February 2021 for a narrow-diameter tunnel filled with autonomous EVs for $45 million.

“When I went to the public and shared this, the enthusiasm was overwhelming, just for something new and different,” said Janice Rutherford, a county supervisor and transportation authority board member. “And it’s the Boring Company, so Elon Musk brings that kind of sexiness to it, if you will.”

Over time, the company and the transportation authority dropped references to autonomous vehicles. By late 2021, cost projections rose to almost $500 million, agency documents show.

The authority asked for a third-party environmental review, required by state law, of the Boring proposal’s impact, records show. That’s when the process came to a halt.

“We tried to reach agreement with them,” said Carrie Schindler, the authority’s deputy executive director. “We went through the standard request for proposal process. And ultimately at the end of that process, they decided not to propose.”

Boring had powerful boosters from the time Mr. Musk declared his war on traffic in late 2016. Trump administration officials counseled the billionaire on how to pursue his stated goal of building an underground Hyperloop from New York to Washington. The Hyperloop, a concept Mr. Musk revived based on a proposal from the 1970s, calls for moving passengers through vacuum tubes at around 700 miles an hour. Despite an influx of investor interest, no commercial system has ever been constructed.

Mr. Musk tweeted in July 2017 that he had “verbal govt approval” for Boring to begin building the Hyperloop. Besieged by calls from the media and government officials, White House staff helped come up with a follow-up tweet, according to former government officials. “Still a lot of work needed to receive formal approval, but am optimistic that will occur rapidly,” Mr. Musk later tweeted.

That fall, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan was standing at a fenced-off site affixed with Boring signs near Fort Meade and telling a videographer to “get ready” for a high-speed train from Baltimore to Washington. Mr. Hogan declined to comment.

An aide to Mr. Hogan toured a parking-lot test site at the company’s then-headquarters near Los Angeles International Airport, getting a look at a tunnel-boring machine the company purchased secondhand. Boring named it Godot, the title character in Samuel Beckett’s play about a man who never shows up.

The Republican Hogan administration sped up the bureaucratic process for Boring, granting a conditional permit in October 2017 and an environmental permit a few months later.

All Boring had to do was bring its machine and start digging, former Maryland officials said. But months, and then years, passed. Maryland was waiting for Godot.

Boring deleted the Maryland project from its website last year.

The company also captured the attention of Chicago’s then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who wanted a high-speed rail link between O’Hare International Airport and the downtown business district.

In 2017, Mr. Musk proposed a Hyperloop-like solution, in which 16-passenger pods would be propelled through an underground tunnel on electric “skates” moving up to 125 miles an hour. Mr. Musk said he could do it for less than $1 billion, and that Boring would finance the job and keep the fare revenue for itself.

Mr. Emanuel’s Democratic administration selected Boring to develop the system. At a press conference with Mr. Musk, the mayor dismissed “doubters,” who he said also would have questioned other landmark projects, like the 1900 reversal of the flow of the Chicago River.

Mr. Waguespack, the alderman, and other elected officials challenged the cost estimates as absurdly low, warning that taxpayers would be on the hook if Boring couldn’t build as cheaply as it proposed. “It was a lot of flash and dash and not any kind of public discussion about whether it was even necessary or not,” Mr. Waguespack said.

Mr. Emanuel said in an interview that the company had promised to assume financial risk for building the proposed tunnel. The proposal didn’t go any further after Mr. Emanuel decided not to seek a third term.

Other Boring projects announced with fanfare, including a 3.6-mile underground high-speed transportation link from the Hollywood subway line to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, also have failed to materialize.

Some sites where Boring once courted public attention are now abandoned. The entrance to its first demonstration tunnel sits behind a chain-link fence in a lot near SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif. In the California desert town of Adelanto, where city leaders once hailed the arrival of a Boring research operation, stacks of concrete lining segments sit alongside a short U-shaped section of tunnel partially blocked off with plywood amid rattlesnake warning signs.

For the past year, Boring has been directing potential clients to its work in Las Vegas as a showcase for what systems in their cities could look like.

“We’re fans of the Boring Company,” said Steve Hill, chief executive of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. “We’re fans of clean transportation systems that are great. So we want to help.”

The convention authority paid Boring about $50 million to build two 0.8-mile single-direction tunnels connecting different wings of the sprawling convention center. It opened in the spring of 2021. This year, Boring completed a short offshoot between the facility and Resorts World casino and hotel.

The Clark County and Las Vegas city government councils have approved a 34-mile loop of tunnels that Boring will finance. Private casino and resort owners are being asked to pay for stations. The company plans to break ground soon on segments, Mr. Hill said.

Boring signed a 50-year contract to operate the Vegas loop and will collect revenue from ticket sales, sharing a small percentage with the city and county after crossing a quarterly revenue threshold.

To get a permit to begin operating the convention loop, Boring had to run a demonstration showing that it could move 4,400 passengers an hour.

Boring passed the test and received its permit, in a category called ATS, for Amusement and Transportation Systems—the same one that local officials award to roller coasters.

Crowds strain the network of individually driven cars far more than mass transit like light rail, according to some of the former executives. In social media postings, visitors have documented the loop’s Teslas sitting, underground, in traffic. The fleet of required accredited drivers adds to labor and administrative costs.

At the convention’s jam-packed auto products show this month, visitors queued in 10 lines in a subterranean station, waiting to hop into Teslas that drivers steered through a pair of tunnels just inches wider than the sedans themselves.

Boring employees directed attendees into cars. Mr. Davis, in a safety-orange sweatshirt, paced among them and talked to convention officials who later said he often manages operations on site. When approached by a reporter, he declined to comment.

Mr. Musk has lately tweeted videos of a Boring-designed machine, nicknamed Prufrock after the title character of the T.S. Eliot poem, digging test holes in the Texas dirt. Boring says Prufrock is designed to dig at one mile a week, and that a succeeding version will be able to dig 7 miles a day.

Boring says it can improve tunneling speeds with fully electrified machines and by digging continuously, rather than stopping to assemble sections of the tunnel wall. The company also says angling machines in from ground level will help avoid the cost of first digging a shaft to launch the machine.

Veterans of the tunneling industry note that tunnel-boring machines have been electrified for decades, and that neither continuous construction of the tunnel lining nor digging in from aboveground is new.

Boring’s speed claims are “totally unrealistic,” said Lok Home, president of the Robbins Co., a leading maker of tunnel-boring machines. “There’ll be improvements here, for sure, but there’s not going to be a revolution.”

Industry veterans said that in terms of cost, factors like property acquisition, permitting and engineering work, and the sheer complexity of digging through rock or soil matter far more than tunneling speed.

As for most of the tunneling Boring has done, in the desert soils of Las Vegas, Mr. Home said, “That’s about as easy as it gets.”

Public officials across the country remain eager to land Boring projects, and some are eyeing the roughly $1 trillion federal infrastructure law as a source of potential funding.

In Fort Lauderdale, Democratic Mayor Dean Trantalis is pointing to the availability of the funding as he tries to sell the public on a $100 million pair of Boring-built tunnels that would ferry beachgoers back and forth from downtown. Mr. Trantalis said that he was awe-struck by Boring’s Las Vegas project, which he toured last year.

North Miami Beach officials want to use federal infrastructure money to pay Boring for a tunnel project to reduce traffic.

On a lark, Vice Mayor Michael Joseph tweeted at Boring and Mr. Musk in February 2021. Company officials quickly expressed interest. “They just called me out of nowhere and said, ‘Hey, this is Boring,’ ” Mr. Joseph said. “I was very surprised they responded to my tweet.”

In Ontario, the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority hasn’t abandoned its tunnel dream. The authority is seeking bids from other construction companies to build tunnels, and from operators to run electric vehicles inside.

Ms. Schindler credited Boring with introducing local officials to the possibility of subterranean transportation that might cost less than more conventional aboveground systems.

“While I’m disappointed we’re not in design at this point and headed towards construction, I’m grateful for the disruption that I think got us going in a really viable direction,” she said.

The authority said it would still welcome a bid from the Boring Co.

 

Boring could actually be a benefit to cities as a whole if he wasn't so focused on making it just a Tesla tunnel.

[NoName 16351]

9 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

RE: a Twitter/Musk phone; it would be trivially easy to accomplish.  Plenty of white-box Chinese companies will produce a phone for low cost.  But the trouble is, he will have to license Google's tech stack in order to get access to the Google App store, among other things:

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/11/28/should-be-easy

i like Gruber but this really isn't his area of expertise at all. its easy to do, and it's easy to do wrong. you can get someone to white label a piece of shit phone, license Android (stock) and roll it out and it will 100% absolutely and totally suck because it is shit silicon, shit camera, shit screen and shit battery. Android won't be optimized for the phone, which is one more place it will suck.

in other news, here is more from Blind via twitter:

 

Quote

 

Elon Musk is yelling about Apple today (I'm not going to quote-tweet him, he's getting too much attention as it is). Instead, I'll highlight an interesting commentary which points out functional, not political, issues that are deterring advertisers on Twitter. /1 

The commentary comes from an advertising director who manages a $80m/year advertising budget for a tech company, $9m of which formerly went to Twitter. S/he highlights a number of issues that would be critical concerns for any advertiser: /2

⚠️ Performance (user engagement with adverts) is way down - too few people are clicking through now

⚠️ Brand safety is terrible now – ads are appearing next to porn and antisemitic posts.

⚠️ Nobody at Twitter is responding to complaints from advertisers /3 

⚠️ Entire advertising management teams at Twitter have been laid off - advertisers have nobody to talk to any more

⚠️ The interface for advertisers is broken and no longer works properly, preventing them from running campaigns /4 

⚠️ Discrepancies are appearing between campaign data from the Twitter Ads API and the UI – they can't get accurate data about campaign performance. Advertisers can't figure out which is correct anymore since they can't contact anyone at Twitter. /5 

None of these have anything to do with "wokery" or "activism" or "censorship" – they're basic issues of customer service. (Twitter's real customers are the advertisers, not us users). They appear to be going unaddressed and clearly result from the recent mass layoffs. /6 

Put simply, advertisers won't return if they think advertising on Twitter will harm their reputation, they're not getting the response from consumers they want, they can't post or analyse their campaigns, and they can't speak to anyone at Twitter. This is utterly basic stuff. /7

Going forward, the best metric for how serious Musk is about getting Twitter back on an even keel is how quickly (or if at all) he fixes the problems above. Given how he seems to be picking fights with advertisers, I'm not sure that he's even aware of these issues. /8 

 

 

[NoName 16351]

8 hours ago, Eskimohorn said:

Its the Spite Store business model. He’s playing with other people’s money and there’s unlimited dark money from authoritarian governments that see it as a platform for journalists and activists. They want it gone. And there’s a lot of compromising private info there for the taking.

The PGA is targeted with a new competitor paying billions for exhibition matches

Ukraine is targeted (literally)

Twitter is targeted and is being gutted and poised to be the next scat site

Further and more implicit discussion on what’s happening and why is not necessary and more CR

But for all the talk about freedom of speech, it remains an anti-trust issue (one company with so much power). Our laws are light years from providing consumers options in the market place. There is no service like Twitter and its going to leave an enormous hole, scattering communication and communities throughout the world.

Its also may be a national security issue. Compromising conversations and massive data sent to adversarial foreign governments is a potential disaster.

authoritarian governments don't want a centralized place where dissidents go to talk go away, they want to be able to backdoor into it and read convos. it doesn't help them at all to spread those dissident and conversations to the seven corners of the earth..

[wildcat09 29346]

9 hours ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

What plausible reason did he have to dive headfirst into the culture wars?

There is no business rationale for it. Meaning, doing so was never going to benefit him financially.

Playing the role of divider really only works if you’re playing for power, not money. He obviously can’t run for President…so why is he doing this?

Because he's recently divorced.

[HenryJames 66038]

He's Gollem at this point and Twitter is his precious.

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

8 hours ago, MeerkatBong said:

You guys all with great answers are not being led witnesses and vocalizing what DefinitelyNotHollywood was trying to get you to say that he's in the bag for PUTIN and RUSSIA and CHYNA! He's clearly doing this to divide America and hurt us as a billionaire interoperative working from the inside out! Plus he's a foreigner; he can't be President! Distrust the motives of the foreign billionaire!

What are his motives for jumping into the culture wars and dividing us?

[NoName 16351]

 

[Nivek 16923]

27 minutes ago, Post Oak said:

Boring could actually be a benefit to cities as a whole if he wasn't so focused on making it just a Tesla tunnel.

For those that could benefit from a subway system, they should invest in that, rather than contracting a company that exists to bleed investors.  

[Homercles 10205]

8 hours ago, MeerkatBong said:

You guys all with great answers are not being led witnesses and vocalizing what DefinitelyNotHollywood was trying to get you to say that he's in the bag for PUTIN and RUSSIA and CHYNA! He's clearly doing this to divide America and hurt us as a billionaire interoperative working from the inside out! Plus he's a foreigner; he can't be President! Distrust the motives of the foreign billionaire!

Donkey Cigar, Monkey Cigarette, Turkey Chew…wasn’t there a Juul in there too?

He’s, by far, the most visible ‘victim’ of the various Outrage Machines that actually are dividing our country.  And yes, the vast majority of them are right wing and yes there are documented + intelligently-inferred instances of influence from those countries.  Just because there haven’t been concrete consequences for internal individuals (Jan 6 players, Trump taxes, etc) or Putin/Xi/et al doesn’t mean that the adults in the room are wrong to be suspicious. 
 

The jury is out on his motives, I tend to lean towards a confluence of (narcissism ^ surrounded by yes men) + (possible drug problem * broken heart) more than some sinister motive as of late.  I’d say that’s a damn good reason to be glad he’s ineligible to run for President because I’ve seen a variation of that formula before, and it certainly did much more to further divide us than unite the country.  
 

But you keep on keepin on, and I await the day we see Platypus Pipe or Shark Snuff or whatever comes next.  

[956 Worldwide 34702]

There is nothing on Apple’s Twitter feed at the moment. 

[Francisco 2.0 32387]

8 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

There is nothing on Apple’s Twitter feed at the moment. 

Never has been.

Article from 2017:

https://www.scoopwhoop.com/tech/apple-tweeting-or-not/

 

 

 

[atomheartbevo 89628]

11 hours ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

so why is he doing this?

1 hour ago, wildcat09 said:

Because he's recently divorced.