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

MaybeACoordinator

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Spottieottiedopaliscious
Spottieottiedopaliscious

Hotez is far from bulletproof.       

MissingInAction
MissingInAction
Spottieottiedopaliscious
Spottieottiedopaliscious

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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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32395

Posted
Posted
12 minutes ago, Grade of D as in David said:

I wonder what throwaway account Elon is using over on threads 

 

He probably forced some underling, perhaps one of the "meme game is strong guys" to create an account then took his phone from him so there would be no trace it was from Elon.  Then started bitching that it just worked, but not quite as good as Twitter does (at least for him).

 

 

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mchookem

mchookem 16346

Posted
Posted
6 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-tesla-buffalo-new-york-solar-plant-1b634b9e

 

TL;DR.  NY spent a boatload of cash on a building for Elon, to produce solar roofs.  Elon oversold the demand for solar roofs to the state, investors, whatnot.  Most of the employees at the facility today analyze self-driving data, to meet the minimum number of employees necessary for tax breaks.  Tesla has to stay in the building until 2029 for $1 a year.

 

 

 

 

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The former governor’s spokesman defended the project, saying the factory site has more jobs on it now than when it was an empty lot where a steel mill once stood.

Jason Conwall, a spokesman for the state agency overseeing the project, said: “Tesla has made substantial contributions to the local economy, aligning with the region’s overall economic revitalization.”

The state has agreed to amend the terms of its subsidy 12 times over the years, including by reducing the number of jobs to be created in manufacturing and shifting deadlines to accommodate the company.

Although there aren’t as many manufacturing jobs as the company and politicians had forecast, Tesla reported in February it has created 1,700 positions there, enough to meet its obligations to the state and avoid a $41 million annual penalty.  

Musk and Tesla didn’t respond to requests for comment, and Cuomo declined to be interviewed.

America’s governors are swept up in an arms race of awarding packages of taxpayer money to attract industrial megaprojects. Contributing are President Biden’s federal subsidies to build up U.S. manufacturing, particularly for electric-vehicle battery and semiconductor plants, some of which require states to kick in additional incentives. 

Last year, states gave each of eight company facilities more than $1 billion in tax breaks and other aid, according to Good Jobs First, a subsidy tracker funded partly by labor unions. Until then, there had never been a year with more than three such deals. 

In Wisconsin, a factory by Taiwan’s Foxconn that was to employ 13,000 workers in exchange for some $3 billion in state subsidies sits mostly empty. Suburban Virginia offered tax breaks to win a competition for Amazon.com’s “second headquarters,” but much of that project is on hold. 

Musk’s electric-vehicle maker Tesla and space-transportation company SpaceX have received more than $4 billion worth of tax breaks and other government subsidies since 2006, according to a Wall Street Journal review of state and federal records. Nevada has provided financial incentives, including a $330 million tax abatement this year, to help Tesla build and expand a vehicle factory complex outside Reno. 

In Buffalo, the state spent cash to build the factory, instead of offering tax abatements that stretch out over years. Cuomo, a Democrat, billed it as the centerpiece of what he called the “Buffalo Billion.”

“In building and equipping the Tesla solar-panel plant, the state became a direct investor in that project under the worst possible terms,” said E.J. McMahon, founding senior fellow at the Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscally conservative think tank. “In terms of sheer direct cost to taxpayers, this may rank as the single biggest economic development boondoggle in American history.” 

Rather than the high-tech factory workers the state intended, more than 700 of those working at the site are data analysts who review “real-time driving data that trains the AI” for Tesla’s autonomous-vehicle software, the company reported to the state in February. Others assemble components for vehicle-charging stations and backup switches for battery systems. “Tesla continues to manufacture Solar Roof,” Tesla reported about the solar-panel shingles product, but it provided no specifics.

Empire State Development, the state agency overseeing the subsidies, doesn’t keep track of what is being produced at the Tesla factory, or any others the state has supported, said a spokeswoman, Pamm Lent.

Tesla’s deal with the state requires it to stay in the factory, for $1 a year, through 2029.

Buffalo, once an engine of manufacturing, has stagnated for generations as industrial companies headed south. Previous efforts at renewal largely fell flat. In 2012, Cuomo said he wanted to spend $1 billion in state taxpayer money to turn Buffalo around, and regional leaders tapped the think tank Brookings Institution to outline an investment strategy. 

Central to the plan, laid out in a 2013 policy paper, was to avoid directing too much state aid to a few large companies. New York’s publicly stated goal was to incubate a handful of small startups in promising economic niches.

Cuomo’s adviser on the Buffalo project, State University of New York nanoscience professor Alain Kaloyeros, recruited solar-panel startup Silevo and LED lighting company Soraa to anchor the planned high-tech hub. The state said it would spend $100 million to build Silevo’s plant, in exchange for the company creating 1,300 jobs.

As it was finalizing that deal, Kaloyeros learned that SolarCity, then the country’s leading solar-panel installer, was considering acquiring Silevo. Musk was SolarCity’s chairman and largest investor. His cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive ran the company.

Working the phones, Kaloyeros tried to ensure that SolarCity would commit to keeping Silevo in Buffalo when they announced the acquisition, according to people familiar with the conversations.

Without alerting Cuomo, Musk and his cousins wrote in a blog post that the Buffalo factory would manufacture enough panels annually to produce one gigawatt of electricity. That is the equivalent of more than three million solar panels, according to the Department of Energy. “We are in discussions with the state of New York to build the initial manufacturing plant,” Musk and his cousins wrote, vowing to start operating “one of the single largest solar panel production plants in the world” within two years.

Cuomo was irate at being upstaged by Musk, according to the people familiar with the talks and email correspondence reviewed by The Journal. Kaloyeros told the governor’s staff in an email that Musk had “jumped the gun” in stating a goal of producing one gigawatt of power. Kaloyeros assured the administration that Cuomo would soon have his own news to break.

“The actual deal being considered is much bigger..5 GW to 10 GW..with 5,000 jobs..and that is being saved for the governor,” he wrote. Rather than scold Musk for frontrunning Cuomo, Kaloyeros wrote, “I prefer to shame Musk instead into joining the governor in announcing the much bigger deal asap.”

In September 2014, New York agreed to spend $750 million on the solar project, more than seven times its initial commitment.

Because the SolarCity project was to be so big, New York bumped its other original Buffalo tenant, Soraa, promising to find it another home. Soraa has since left New York.

At the August 2015 construction ceremony, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said the new facility, called Riverbend, would soon churn out 10,000 solar panels a day and create 3,000 jobs.

That October, SolarCity persuaded the state to remove the term “high-tech” from the jobs agreement, and reduced, from 900 to 500, the number of jobs that would be required to be in “manufacturing operations” at the Buffalo plant. 

By the summer of 2016, SolarCity was about $3 billion in debt and nearly out of cash. Tesla acquired it. Some Tesla shareholders sued, alleging Musk was using the carmaker to bail out another of his interests. A Delaware judge ruled in Musk’s favor last year, citing an increase in Tesla’s share price as evidence the SolarCity acquisition hadn’t harmed investors.

Musk’s vision for the Buffalo facility was that it would make a new kind of solar product. “It’s not a thing on the roof, it is the roof,” he said in an August 2016 SolarCity earnings call. “I’m pretty excited about what we’re doing in Buffalo.”

Many of Musk’s employees, as well as bankers advising Tesla on the SolarCity transaction, were blindsided by his focus on solar roof tiles, a product that was only in the early design stage. Responding to the exasperation, one executive wrote, “It’s Elon’s world. We all just live in it,” according to an email later disclosed in the shareholders’ lawsuit. 

In April 2017, Cuomo secured another $500 million for the project, about half of which went into the Tesla facility, bringing New York’s total investment in the factory to $959 million.

For a few years, the Buffalo site hummed with manufacturing, but it was carried out by Panasonic, Tesla’s supplier of solar cells. The Japanese company employed about 400 people in Buffalo before deciding in early 2020 to pull out.

Musk acknowledged in a June 2019 deposition for the shareholders’ lawsuit that he hadn’t been focused on solar energy for much of the previous two years because of the pressure to mass produce Tesla’s long-delayed affordable electric vehicle, the Model 3. He said he had redeployed every solar worker he could to Model 3 duties, which weren’t being carried out in Buffalo. “Just a little bit longer and then we can focus on solar, and you’ll see a dramatic turnaround,” he said.

At present, what was supposed to be a solar-panel factory is mostly populated by Tesla data analysts.

“In all honesty, they needed the jobs” to avoid paying the state penalty associated with the deal, said Will Hance, a 24-year-old data analyst who has worked at the Tesla Buffalo site since October. “As a whole, we are the biggest department there.”

Hance is part of an effort to unionize the factory, led by Tesla Workers United, which is affiliated with the Service Employees International Union. Labor leaders have been wary of Musk’s involvement from the outset, given his companies’ opposition to unions.

To prepare for Tesla’s arrival and a wave of solar-manufacturing jobs, Buffalo built a $44 million training center on the city’s economically disadvantaged East Side. The training center, which has graduated about 500 people in its four years of operation, has sent about 20 people to work at Tesla, most of them as equipment-maintenance technicians, its executive director said.  

Thirteen students have graduated from a separate solar-manufacturing training program started by Buffalo’s public schools. A spokesman wouldn’t say how many of them have been hired by Tesla.

Tesla has said little about its solar production in disclosures to investors. Musk has made no public appearances in Buffalo.

Democratic State Sen. Liz Krueger, chair of the senate finance committee, said the state should invest in infrastructure and worker training instead of “spending billions of taxpayer dollars pretending we’re very good at being angel investors.” 

State Sen. Ryan last visited the site just before the Covid pandemic. He and another public official who was on the tour later said that the activity they witnessed didn’t look like full-scale manufacturing work.

“We still want to wake up tomorrow and hear that Tesla is really going to invest in this factory, and we’re gonna have the jobs and the ripple economy that we were promised,” Ryan said in a recent interview. “So, everyone’s reluctant to dance on Tesla’s grave because we still want it to happen.”

Tesla’s troubles with solar in Buffalo were overshadowed by a federal corruption probe into the construction of the factory. Kaloyeros and others, including one of Cuomo’s closest aides, were convicted of rigging the bid process to award the construction contract to a politically connected local contractor. The convictions were subsequently vacated by the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

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RDCanecutter

RDCanecutter 26460

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So when Elon drove Cybertruck around Austin, did he zig here and zag there, yknow, seeing the sights, or did he drive AROUND Austin, as in encircle it strategically like unto J.E.B. Stuart riding around the entire Union Army?

And did he wear a plume while he was driving?

And is Cybertruck known as Cybertruck with no "the" or "a", indicating that it is a real person the same as Bonfire?

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Anastasis

Anastasis 23481

Posted
Posted
23 minutes ago, totallynotabuttpirate said:

Every time I see Analstasis both-siding yet another thread, I have to ask, who the fuck upvoted him 20k+ times? 

No one both sidesing the miracle whip debate you fucking dork. Stick to pirating butt holes weirdo.  

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dcbc

dcbc 14497

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, tbone_ said:

I gotta be honest, I don’t hate the truck. It’s ridiculous, and I agree that Elton is losing his marbles, but part of me kind of digs that beast.

It's a bit of a Delorean with a lift kit and big tires.  But a Delorean with a lift kit and big tires would be cooler.

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Willfully Horn

Willfully Horn 8041

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Posted (edited)
10 hours ago, Anastasis said:

And here comes the miracle whip. Just take a moment to reflect and appreciate that he didn’t post a TikTok embedded in a tweet as the vehicle to share his wisdom with you. 

The only thing I know about MW is it’s your your mom’s preferred lube, narcissist.

As for tuna salad, add these pickle bits.

Spoiler

(Based on one gallon dill pickle chips.) Fickle pickles.

 

Drain pickle juice. Add one pound sugar, and one small bottle tobasco. Shake once a day for a week. Enjoy.

 

Edited by Willfully Horn
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Celery Man

Celery Man 20982

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, dcbc said:

It's a bit of a Delorean with a lift kit and big tires.  But a Delorean with a lift kit and big tires would be cooler.

It’s an Aztec in a Delorean costume.

I don’t know if that works though since it would probably be a nicer car

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32395

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Posted

This has already been covered, but here's some more details.

 

https://www.theautopian.com/elon-musk-predicts-level-4-or-5-full-self-driving-later-this-year-for-the-tenth-year-in-a-row/

 

Quote

There are lots of things I don’t understand. Dutch. Crocs worn by people over 14 or if you’re not wading in water. String theory. People who get really into wine. But, perhaps most significantly, I absolutely do not understand why Elon Musk, noted billionaire, entrepreneur, Twitter messer-upper, and general Big Deal would claim that Tesla is going to achieve Level 4 or 5 fully automated self driving this year. I don’t understand it because not only do I think Tesla isn’t anywhere close to achieving this goal, but he’s made this same promise for an entire decade. Yes, my friends, 2023 marks the tenth time Elon has predicted full, no-human-required autonomy “this year” or sometimes “next year.” Why does he keep doing it?

 

Quote

This latest prediction came at the opening ceremonies at the 2023 World AI Conference in Shanghai, China. Elon video-phoned in his remarks and was displayed on a big screen at the conference, where he said this:

 

 

Quote

Yes, that’s right, this year. According to Musk,

“I think we are very close to achieving full self-driving without human supervision… I think we will achieve full self driving, depending on what level you call it, four or five, I think later this year.”

Now, he does add

“Now I’ve been wrong about this prediction in the past,”

Yeah, no shit. Which is why I’m writing this, because if I made wrong public predictions about things nine years in a row, I might consider holding back for that tenth one. But hey, I’m not the richest man in the world, am I? I’m just some dipshit whose last major purchase was five quarts of motor oil.

 

Quote

Here’s a video (admittedly compiled by a known Tesla FSD critic, but all of the clips are of Elon himself, saying these words) of Musk promising full, no-human-needed driving automation for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2022.

 

 

Spoiler

 

Then we have another prediction for 2021 instead of 2022 in this earnings call:

 

 

So, that’s nine times, total, and with his newest prediction of later 2023, that brings us up to a nice, round ten times.

Ten times! Why? Why does he do this? I don’t understand it? Who is this helping? The FSD Beta software, while impressive in many ways, has not shown itself to be anywhere near close to being able to drive without human intervention at the levels that would be needed to qualify as a Level 4 or 5 system. Remember, those levels aren’t based on a given feature set,but rather describe the demands of the human and the operational driving domain.

Current Tesla FSD Beta is a Level 2 system, because the driver is always needed to be alert and ready to take over at a moment’s notice, something we saw very publicly demonstrated a couple weeks ago when, during a livestreamed debate between a pro-FSD Beta advocate and a critic, the Tesla operating under FSD Beta ran a stop sign and almost smacked into another car, but the crisis was averted because the human took control:

 

I’m sure Elon is telling the truth when he said in that video at the AI conference that he “almost never needs to touch the controls,” but that’s not nearly enough to qualify a system that, if it were to be Level 4 or 5, would not require any human attention whatsoever. And FSD in its current state has by no means proved itself to be ready to operate with no human attention, not by a long shot.

What I don’t understand is the motivation for these claims here. Is he simply unaware of the current state of the software? Is he just wildly optimistic? Is this a deliberate tactic to achieve some manner of financial gain I’m too dumb to fully understand, or is it just a boast? Maybe he doesn’t care? I mean, I think most people would feel pretty self-conscious after being so publicly wrong for so many years in a row – he can’t just let one year slide by without making the same dumb claim? It’s already July, mothertruster!

What’s this do to the poor staff that works on FSD at Tesla? The big boss has just handed them a near-impossible unofficial deadline; even if it’s just said in passing, it’s still said very publicly, and that has to be putting pressure on that team.

I don’t know. Maybe this is what happens if you’re so rich that nobody can tell you to shut your big yap anymore; you end up saying shit like this to the whole world, with seemingly zero ability to self-reflect. Maybe this is all a side effect of a medical condition caused by an overabundance of Vitamin D in Musk’s colon, caused by people like these blowing so much sunshine up his ass:

tweets.jpg

 

Fucking hell.

Since Elon has decided to make this, again, tenth bold prediction that Tesla will have L4 or 5 fully automated, no human needed driving before the year is out, maybe I’ll indulge myself and come up with a prediction of my own:

No, they won’t.

 

 

 

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MrBig

MrBig 5424

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, Celery Man said:

What is Mr Beast? Nothing makes me feel older than YouTube personalities 

IMG_3191.jpeg.9af71f8384346b043ae0bb78086a8d0d.jpeg

Elon looks fucking pathetic begging for MrBeast to post on Twitter. 

I thought MrBeast was LABeast from YouTube fame 15 years ago. Different guy. This clip makes me think of everyone at Twitter right now freaking out about what they’ve done so wrong.

 

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32395

Posted
Posted

Here's something Musk fanbois won't want to read or acknowledge:

 

https://www.theautopian.com/elon-musks-tesla-commits-to-core-socialist-values-in-china/

 

Quote

Here’s the thing about Musk, though. He can happily tell California, the SEC, American regulators or even his landlords to eat shit and generally, he’ll skate. But the Chinese government? You don’t get to say no to those people. If you do, they’re happy to find you a nice gulag somewhere until you learn your lesson, or for the rest of your life, whichever comes first. Funny how that works.

 

 

Quote

In China right now, you basically have a ton of new EV brands springing up and competing viciously with each other. Margins are razor-thin. It’s part of why Chinese automakers want in on Europe and other places. But now, the government’s cracking down on a price war that companies like Tesla, BYD and maybe a couple of others could easily win, and in doing so would tank a bunch of smaller players.

 

Quote

And when the Chinese government asks you to do something, they don’t want you to half-ass it. From the Financial Times:

Elon Musk’s Tesla has joined Chinese automakers in pledging to enhance “core socialist values” and compete fairly in the country’s car market after Beijing directed the industry to rein in a months-long price war.

 

 

Quote

Folks, I’m wheezing. The idea of Mr. Destroy The Woke Mind Virus signing a “socialist values pledge” is giving me so much energy, I don’t need any more coffee this morning. I don’t even need lunch later. My body will draw life force directly from this moment and this moment alone, like Superman getting power from the Earth’s yellow sun. I’m not even sure I can die anymore.

More on that:

 

Spoiler

The joint letter, which came at the behest of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, appeared to signal a truce among the top EV makers in the world’s biggest car market.

Miao Changxing, a senior inspector at the ministry, said China’s car industry needed to avoid “reckless” price-cutting.

The letter — which uses language popular with Chinese president Xi Jinping and the ruling Communist party — also highlights how Tesla is navigating an increasingly fraught US-China business landscape and rising competitiveness in the world’s biggest EV market. Tesla was the only foreign carmaker to sign.

[…] The episode is the latest reminder of the tightrope many multinationals must walk amid increasing assertiveness from the Chinese government and hawkishness in their home markets. In recent years, accusations of obeisance to Beijing have hit countless companies from HSBC and Nike to the hotel group Marriott and car company Daimler.

You wanna play in the world’s biggest car market? You play by Xi Jinping’s rules. And don’t forget it.

 

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Celery Man

Celery Man 20982

Posted
Posted
58 minutes ago, MrBig said:

Elon looks fucking pathetic begging for MrBeast to post on Twitter. 

I thought MrBeast was LABeast from YouTube fame 15 years ago. Different guy. This clip makes me think of everyone at Twitter right now freaking out about what they’ve done so wrong.

 

Oh man I remember that guy…. drinking vintage crystal pepsi

 

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NoName

NoName 16367

Posted
Posted
14 hours ago, dcbc said:

It's a bit of a Delorean with a lift kit and big tires.  But a Delorean with a lift kit and big tires would be cooler.

A delorean had stainless steel body parts attached to a fiberglass body.

Cybertruck has no underbody to attach to, which everyone who knows jack shit about cars (aka know more than me) says it's going to be a monumental issue for them and there is a reason no one uses stainless steel as the "exoskeleton" without attaching to an underbody.

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Neonmoon

Neonmoon 38130

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Posted
35 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

He’s calling Zuckerberg a cuck, yet Musk is the one who can’t stay in a relationship, complete with his last one involving the mother of his last couple of kids leaving him as well.

Musk called someone else a cuck while half his Twitter platform left him to spend time with someone else 

 

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Chooky

Chooky 13317

Posted
Posted
43 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

Musk called someone else a cuck while half his Twitter platform left him to spend time with someone else 

 

And one of his partners left him for a trans girl. Billions of dollars aren't enough for many people to continue being around him, business or personally. 

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