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

MaybeACoordinator

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wildcat09

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35 minutes ago, MrBig said:

Elon has spent months telling Tesla owners to buy FSD for over $10,000 because it was just a drop in the bucket compared to all the money they would make turning their Teslas into driverless taxis. Now Elon has changed his tune by making a completely different car that has to be the taxi now. Is he putting LiDAR into these things without telling people? That’s the only way they could ever be permitted to be on the road. This would really fuck things up for people buying into his FSD gimmick. 

It's a good thing nobody who posts here bought a Tesla thinking they'd be able to use it as a robotaxi soon.

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Hotez is far from bulletproof.       

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Absolutely.    Would you like other guys pointing out Hotez deficiencies?   It was actually more about Hotez but whatever? Why stick around? All the constructive back and forth

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1 hour ago, MrBig said:

Elon has spent months telling Tesla owners to buy FSD for over $10,000 because it was just a drop in the bucket compared to all the money they would make turning their Teslas into driverless taxis. Now Elon has changed his tune by making a completely different car that has to be the taxi now. Is he putting LiDAR into these things without telling people? That’s the only way they could ever be permitted to be on the road. This would really fuck things up for people buying into his FSD gimmick. 

@Guadaloopyhas been quiet on this thread lately. I’m curious about his opinion on last night’s event and the prospect of his Model 3 becoming an income producer. 

1 hour ago, Mittens said:

 

I’m sure a lot of top tier techbro talent is going to jump at the prospect of working in a corrugated building in Bastrop.

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Francisco 2.0

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https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/11/24267262/elon-musk-donald-trump-politics-republican

 

How SpaceX became the MyPillow of government contractors

 

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It really has been something to watch Elon Musk turn SpaceX into the MyPillow of rocket companies, hasn’t it?

Christ, I guess I have to list off all the depressing stuff from the past few months: the Trump rally, the creepy assassination comments, the even creepier comments about impregnating Taylor Swift, spreading hurricane misinformation on X (and thus hindering relief efforts), claiming his own child was “killed” by the “woke mind virus,” that kind of thing. I have seen a lot of people suggest this is political radicalization, and sure, maybe it is. But I can’t help noticing a sick business logic, too.

 

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I have never accused Musk of being anything other than self-interested. As I see it, his only real politics are: Elon Musk should get to do whatever he wants, forever. And his latest political outbursts strike me as being clearly connected to his money. He’s come to the same conclusion as Donald Trump, which is that it’s particularly easy to grift Republican voters, and there are lots of rewards and very few consequences for doing so. Donny, these men are nihilists. 

 

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On the face of it, it might look stupid for a businessman to alienate one of the major US political parties. Musk has a long history of taking subsidies from local, state, and federal governments. His business SpaceX is built essentially on agency contracts in the heavily regulated aerospace industry. But I’m guessing Musk has figured out he can leverage the culture wars to his advantage.

 

Spoiler

Those of you familiar with SpaceX may recall its litany of lawsuits against the government. For instance, in 2005, the company alleged that Boeing and Lockheed Martin had engaged in anticompetitive behavior meant to keep SpaceX from letting its Falcon 9 compete in government contracts. (The Falcon 9 didn’t have its first launch until 2010.)  

And in 2014, Musk sued the US Air Force over a $11 billion sole-source contract awarded to the United Launch Alliance. (The Falcon Heavy wouldn’t have its first launch until 2018.) SpaceX got concessions, dropping the suit after the Air Force agreed to speed up its efforts to certify SpaceX to launch military satellites — and making more launches available for SpaceX to compete on.

Now I personally, as a woman familiar with the linear concept of time, find these suits odd. How could SpaceX compete using a rocket it hadn’t yet launched? Sure, the “indefinite delivery / indeterminate quantity” contracts existed for the Falcon I, but that wasn’t what SpaceX was suing over. And yet, these suits got Musk what he wanted: more possible government contracts. In fact, such suits have been as much a hallmark of SpaceX as its rockets.

If you are the kind of person who uses lawsuits to get what you want, you may have made note of the fact that Donald Trump appointed 200 federal judges, including “nearly as many powerful federal appeals court judges in four years as Barack Obama appointed in eight,” as Pew Research puts it. In 2021, more than a quarter of active federal judges were Trump appointees. Let’s not pretend that’s insignificant; if it were, the Federalist Society wouldn’t exist. If Musk supports Republicans, they’ll keep appointing judges who believe things that favor Musk — and he might even get lucky and get some blatantly partisan judges, who’d support him because of his affiliation.

Consider Texas, which has taken a real interest in Musk’s affairs. During Musk’s Twitter acquisition, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced an investigation of Twitter bot numbers — an investigation that neatly aligned with the argument Musk was making to try to get out of buying the social media company. Of course, there’s also the Texas judge who owned Tesla stock and greenlit a Musk-backed lawsuit against Media Matters for America. (The judge in question is known for his politically conservative rulings.)

But wait! There’s more. In 2020, SpaceX was awarded almost $900 million in rural broadband subsidies from the FCC under Trump. But in 2022, the Biden-era FCC rescinded that funding since “the applicant had failed to meet its burden.” Two Republican FCC commissioners objected, and now a Republican House Oversight Committee chair is probing the FCC’s decision.

Culture war issues are meant to motivate a largely apathetic voter base that doesn’t especially give a shit about government appropriations. They have been used historically by Republicans, starting with Barry Goldwater, in order to enact specific financial policies that have largely hurt lower-class Americans. It seems Musk has paid enough attention to this particular historical quirk to decide the culture war can help him, too.

Does this sound cynical? I suppose. Sincere, coherent political beliefs are largely the province of the bourgeoisie and nerds who paid attention in government class. The Elon Musks of the world are interested in power. Not everything Musk says is necessarily calculated or politically beneficial — his partisan allegiances have also extended to having friendly conversations with mask-off white nationalists and reposting theories that women are incapable of thought. Crucially, however, there are no negative consequences for these actions — only more attention, which seems to be his personal heroin.

Consider the rocket situation. For NASA, Musk is the only game in town besides Boeing, and he knows it. He also knows that even if he publicly misbehaves — smokes weed, for instance — NASA will do nothing punitive. And I do blame the brain geniuses at NASA. Instead of having in-house rockets for launching our spy satellites, we’re now dependent on Boeing (lol, lmao), the United Launch Alliance (a joint venture that includes… Boeing), and SpaceX. (Sure, Jeff Bezos’ also-ran Blue Origin exists, I guess, but come on.) By outsourcing its engineering, NASA put the national security apparatus at the whims of contractors gone wild.

And Musk’s gamble appears to be that being a visible Republican will benefit him more than being neutral, presumably because he assumes, probably correctly, that Democrats won’t punish him for this. So when it comes to, let’s say, SpaceX’s environmental damage, the safety record of Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving,” and working conditions for his employees, aligning with Republicans lets him suggest any examination of his behavior is politically motivated. Convenient, isn’t it?

You can see the ambition even with the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. By courting the right, as he has unquestionably done, he has attempted to create a value proposition for a company he has largely destroyed. The skew also gives him an excuse: if X dies, Musk can claim it wasn’t because it was mismanaged but destroyed by the radical left or whatever. Thanks to his friendly judges, he can even take those “radical left” critics to the cleaners in court!

Look, Musk’s appearance at the Trump rally launched a thousand think pieces and the goofy photo that launched a thousand memes. But to talk about Musk’s political convictions, you have to talk about the only thing he really believes in: money.

 

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Captain Ron

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4 hours ago, NoName said:

Really interesting read from someone who knows their shit.

 

It's too long to screenshot and I can't copy from my phone 

Here’s the text:

 

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At Cruise I built robotaxis that completed 250k driverless rides, including the first rides ever in a major city.

With the Tesla event coming up, many people have asked for my thoughts. I truly hope they get robotaxis working. Autonomy is the fastest and most effective way to eliminate car accidents, and we desperately need this.

I don’t know what we will see tonight. What I know is that it takes a non-trivial amount of work to go from making a car mostly drive without interventions to safe, robust, and legally compliant robotaxi network that meshes well with local communities.

So here are 15 key things to look for from new robotaxi players:

1) Getting stuck - is there a method for remote operators to relocate unoccupied vehicles that are blocking traffic or emergency vehicles? What happens if there are no available remote operators and the vehicle becomes stuck?
2) Detecting collisions - is there a high recall system that can detect collisions, including minor contact with cycles or pedestrians? Does this comply with local, state, and federal reporting requirements?
3) AI override - is there a way for remote confirmation of critical, long tail decisions (is it safe to stop on these railroad tracks, was that a collision or not, is it ok to enter this emergency scene, is that officer telling me to stop)?
4) First responders - is there a way to remotely unlock cars and provide access to first responders who need to relocate a stuck vehicle? Is there a training program in place? Is there live phone support?
5) Connectivity dropouts - do these cars have Starlink, cellularly redundancy, or some other way to remain connected? What happens if telemetry is lost for an active but unoccupied vehicle and it gets stuck?
6) Sensor cleaning - is there a way to clear blocked or dirty sensors? Are various forms of degraded performance detected and mitigated?
7) Degraded states - in the event of a computer, sensor, or software failure, can the vehicle utilize a backup system to safely pull out of traffic or otherwise reach a safe stopping location? Is there coverage for all known or plausible faults? Will this work properly on highways where pulling over is not necessarily a safe option?
😎 Congestion control - will vehicle take diverse routes to avoid creating traffic jams? If 20 vehicles arrive at a busy concert venue is there any “air traffic control” to ensure they don’t get stuck in a cluster?
9) Emergency vehicle detection - do vehicles correctly pull over or yield to emergency vehicles? Can they traverse active emergency scenes when necessary or appropriate?
10) Long tail detections - do they avoid flooded areas, downed power lines, wet cement, caution tape, crossing guard hand motions, open pits or manhole covers?
11) Liability - who is at fault when a vehicle causes property damage or injury? Are there high recall data logging systems in place as needed to absolve the owner of liability when the other driver was truly at fault?
12) Regulation and permitting - will these vehicles operate in states with public reporting requirements and meet all requirements? If vehicles do not have a steering wheel or traditional controls, will they be self-certified by Tesla as FMVSS compliant?
13) Bad weather - does the system correctly degrade its performance in the event of sudden changes in weather? What happens if a trip is in progress when weather becomes severe? Will it refuse to operate if conditions are too severe?
14) Pullovers - does the system avoid pulling over in bus stops, restricted areas, or in front of private driveways? What happens someone needs the car to be moved from their driveway?
15) Local laws - does the system obey local traffic laws, and who pays the ticket if there is a violation?

Tesla will undoubtedly solve all of these eventually. Have they done it yet? Who knows. I’m still very excited to see what they’ve been cooking up.

I wonder what this guys thought are today?

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19 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

It's a good thing nobody who posts here bought a Tesla thinking they'd be able to use it as a robotaxi soon.

What’s amazing is that Tesla remains the most valuable car company by market cap.  It’s twice as valuable as Toyota although Toyota sold over 11 million cars to Tesla’s less than two last year. 
 

Based on what? The Cybertruck is eating shit. They have no new models in development and their lineup is worse than legacy electrics.  FSD is just vaporware. I hate the Chinese but Beijing is backing Xiomei and BYD.  
 

Total delusion. 
 

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Captain Ron

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25 minutes ago, NaTeWHO said:

Elon Musk is the man!

fc8c4fff8fbe44e779a7969d969d9ee2.gif

 

elon-musk-dancing.gif

 

He still won’t let you lick his taint.

 

Musk has assembled an impressive engineering team, but Gwynne Shotwell is much more instrumental in todays success than Leon.

And now this

image.thumb.png.2d91672e2e4972c9a7b5b01523dad6fa.png

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Homercles

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At first I was confused, thinking the van thing was the ‘taxi’, figuring it made sense to not have a 2-seat taxi…then I realized that it was better that they’re only going to kill two people at a time when they invariably run over a cigarette butt, veer off the street, and crash into Harry’s Discount Dynamite and Daycare.  

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tomahawk dunk

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2 hours ago, totallynotabuttpirate said:

There's a rumor going around a SpaceX employee Slack channel that Elon is demanding they go with camera-only navigation and safety systems for all future launches. No other sensors or measurement inputs, just cameras. 

Ketamine is hell of a drug.

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Fudge Nuggets

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2 hours ago, totallynotabuttpirate said:

There's a rumor going around a SpaceX employee Slack channel that Elon is demanding they go with camera-only navigation and safety systems for all future launches. No other sensors or measurement inputs, just cameras. 

Because space is just loaded with landmarks for a camera to use for navigation. 

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Captain Ron

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4 hours ago, totallynotabuttpirate said:

There's a rumor going around a SpaceX employee Slack channel that Elon is demanding they go with camera-only navigation and safety systems for all future launches. No other sensors or measurement inputs, just cameras. 

Well yeah. You gotta cater to all those governments buying the DX model rockets. They gotta have Full Self Driving too. 

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Homercles

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3 hours ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

Because space is just loaded with landmarks for a camera to use for navigation. 

SR-71 used Star tracking cameras in the 60’s to navigate, along with a slew of other weapons…but yeah, not so much first few minutes of flight 

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