Twitter's claim of having 99% healthy content is being thoroughly mocked

[wiyosaya]

Your doing a bad job. I'm smiling

Trust me. I wasn't expecting to convince anyone who is unable to see the obvious.

IMO, Trump should paraphrase George Washington and say, "I cannot tell the truth." Even then, he would be lying because he would be telling the truth, IMO.

 

[wiyosaya]

Yes patents and the copyright thereof can certainly be gamed, however the fact that no one is trying to take Musk or any part of his teams to court over the patents in question considering how preposterously valuable they are means that no one has a case. There is no smoking gun here simply conjecture and accusation.

Part 1 - Is Musk/Tesla trying to sue some other entity, like Toyota, for instance, because he "bought the rights to put his name on the patents" - Not to the best of my knowledge. I also worked for a startup that got investments from venture capitalists. The startup was licensing technology from another company. AFAIK, the venture capitalists did not require, as part of their funding agreement, that they have their names put on the patents. It did not happen. IMO, that's not a normal agreement. The venture capitalists may take part ownership of any company they invest in as part of their agreement, and I would expect that. But to claim that they, the venture capitalists that is, wanting to claim that they were inventors of any technology coming out of such a company that they invested in is ludicrous.

His investment in Tesla obviously helped bring the company forward even though it was losing money for a long, long, long time, but as I see it, claiming you invented their technology is akin to using the Sarah Palin phrase - "Putting lipstick on a pig." Others had the brains, he just jumped in and pretended to have the brains, and now he's pretending to be something he's not.

I don't know if you are aware of this, but George Eastman, of Eastman Kodak fame, often went to other researchers, saw what they were doing, then recreated their experiments and filed for patents on the ensuing inventions. Is that ethical? He obviously gamed the patent process and literally screwed those who's research he ripped off.

 

[wiyosaya]

Part 2 -

Tesla existed before Elon Musk: Founders on how they pitched the idea

Tesla was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, but Elon Musk brought the investment to the table that brought the Roadster project to fruition.

www.greencarreports.com

The Tesla roadster based mostly by component content on the Lotus Elise shares for all intents and purposes nothing with the Tesla model S and their subsequent models. There was nothing to Tesla before Musk came on board with funding. Let me be clear, there were two engineers from silicon valley with a dream and a pitch to make. Mush provided them the capital and took on duties designing the body of the car while they created the motors and electricals. This has been excruciatingly well documented over nearly the last 20 years. The two initial founders parted ways with Tesla over disagreements with Musk around 2009, 3 years before the launch of the model S. This is well known fact and again document across hundreds of pages and periodicals across the internet.

Freudian slip, I'm sure. Yet I find it amusing.

I'm asking you to take a step back and gauge your perspective because you're a genuinely respectful cat with views I don't always agree with but I respect your commentary and it provides a counter point to my views on things which is always important. I genuinely, honestly don't grasp the fact that folks have married themselves to this near religious belief that Musk must be up to no good or some type of schill. It simply does not fit the data, if he wanted to profit from a fraud then there a hell of a lot simpler ways to do it than to build a car company from scratch (or as near as makes no difference) in the 2000's.

Perhaps its part of his "business sense" as you put it, in his "seeing" that EVs are the future and jumping in on the trend while he still can make a buck with the intent of taking over the industry?

As I see it, Tesla/Musk should be worried about their business. They are not the first in the industry. Those who have been in the business longer and have remained relatively quiet about their achievements will soon surpass him. As I see it, Tesla stands a good chance of becoming the Edsel of the modern era.

I'm honestly asking here as I don't get it, is is simply a matter of him suggesting fealty to the other political side? Like I don't get the mentality of US political discourse at the best of times but surely it can't simply be a quip about the excesses of a certain political party? Again literally asking here.

Hyperloop is most effectively compared to the vacuum tube systems used across office buildings throughout the 20th century (some places still use it but we have email now so it's just kinda quaint). You could view hyperloop as the beginning of the eventual move that took Musk and his companies out of California. Let met get this out there so it is clear, I've been to California and I'd live there tomorrow except the management is broken. I'm a child of the 80's and every Saturday morning cartoon and every cool thing of my youth came from California, I'm really quite sad that I'll never get to go to E3 but that's life. Now with that said, you cannot do business in California as it stands right now, they have gone so far as to try and decommission perfectly functional Nuclear power plants that have already paid back their sunk costs for no other reason than naked ideology and pandering. The days of California being the startup and innovation capital of the world are over...for now. The unmitigated disaster of High speed rail is talked about in engineering circles around the world, they've built an industry out of environmental protection. Hyperloop was a wake up call to a lot of entrepreneurs that the party was over but for Musk Tesla was already centered at the Freemont factory and they weren't in any place financially to pick up and move shop. That is one of the major reasons SpaceX is in Boca Chica, the primary reason is location as space flight is finicky like that.

As I understand it, Musk/Tesla is experiencing difficulties in Texas, now, too. And what is he doing? Running away again? Musk will not always be able to get everything he wants, and he should learn to live with it.

Getting to space is a matter of timing. And as for the Chinese, they likely have ulterior motives, too, in that it puts more technology/wealth in their hands. Even though they claim to have embraced capitalism, their government still wants unfettered control of the populace. That's not freedom. As I see it, it all plays back to the reasons the Chinese were interested in normalizing relations with the US as a result of the hand extended to them by Richard Nixon.

Exactly what has it done for the western world? Jobs have been shipped there much to the detriment of countries that have allowed this to happen, and I can argue that China wants everyone to keep filling their bank accounts while emptying the accounts of, and ruining the lives of, those who employ them, and it appears, China expects everyone to like it, while they rattle their sabres in a show of playground bullying. As I see it, it is all a sign that modern society has not evolved as far as people think. To destroy yourself for the betterment of others is totally unsustainable; doing so ultimately ends up destroying the rest of society.

 

[wiyosaya]

Part 3 -

The basic idea of something being in public is not enough to clear the bar of a patent filing as you do require a reasonable technical description of design and function (more if you expect it to withstand a court challenge). Fair use from artistic media recreation, reenactment or satire are not quite the same but I can see where you're going there.

Plain and simple - Musk was not the inventor. Pretending he was will not change that. Its a facade. What's worse, IMO, is that he seems to believe his own facade.

The was never a serious time frame for humans on Mars, if you go back and watch any of the speaking engagements it is always said light heartedly with an obvious view toward optimism and aspiration. I would point out that in the time frame we're talking about SpaceX went from the dream of a reusable booster to hundreds of successful retrievals, they built and have extensively tested the largest (by mass) man made object ever to take flight and damn near got the bloody thing into low orbit. They've won multiple NASA contracts including being the first private company to ferry crews to orbit. Like am I missing something here?

Maybe that Musk/SpaceX has royalty-free access to literally all of NASA's IP? Blue Origin has that too. You can think of the reusable rockets as a rearrangement of existing technology all of which was originally invented by NASA.

This is a categorical list of some of the most preposterously difficult undertakings any human has ever even considered and they've been successful, and when they fail they make fun of themselves to boot! Your argument seems to be he's not on Mars yet so the fact that they've redefined the state of the art in private aerospace while doing all the other things is a failure? I'm not trying to put words in your mouth I'm genuinely asking if you see it all as a fraud because they aimed for a distant planet and have only redefined how we go about orbital travel thus far while Mars is still a ways off.

It's not that they aimed high, its that they bragged about aiming high. That generates buzz in society because, IMO, society has so little to hope for so people see Musk claiming he's going to Mars and then disappoints at least some of those who would like to believe him. IMO, if you are going to do something, its better to be quiet, do it, and then say something about it after you've achieved your goal.

Also, Musk is downright flippant about it. Its as if he thinks it is an easy endeavor. Its not. Its highly technical and difficult. Musk/Tesla will not be able to do it alone - as his flippant attitude implied.

Though starship has on paper the capability to do it.

The key words there are "on paper". Most of the starship attempts have ended in disaster - so far. I find it interesting, too, that Musk/SpaceX would schedule flights to be right before dismal Tesla earnings reports.

 

[wiyosaya]

Part 4 -

I'm trying to understand your view point but from my perspective it appears that you're ignoring or at least glossing over things that to anyone else are true hammer blows of accomplishment. Yes he's a cocky mother and as a species we need cocky mothers or we're never going to get anything done. I feel like you haven't actually watched a long form factor interview with Musk as there's no "self aggrandizing" to speak of, joking yes, self deprecation and bad puns also yes, but mostly a genuine sense that the dude gets just how ridiculously difficult it is to build something.

Actually, I did see an interview with him in a time when Tesla was struggling. He impressed me as a humble person. Since then, I have not seen that side of him. It's not unique to Musk or that interview. Perhaps you should take a look at this (your local library may have a copy of it) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2104994/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_Steve%20Jobs%20the%20lost
Its interesting, IMO, to see this side of Jobs - all the while literally telling people that he copied technology developed by Xerox PARC.

Even more so when your products almost universally makes everyone's lives better while being cheaper and more efficient, that just shows up the ineptitude of the competition and they REALLY don't like that!

I would not call what he's charging for Starlink cheaper, Teslas are by no means affordable to everyone - not to mention the problems they have.

IMO, it just shows Musk trying to beat everyone to the market in a hasty fashion - and you do know that saying about haste, I assume.

Fords CEO Jim Farley had the guts and self confidence to state just how far ahead Tesla is in multiple interviews after they inked a deal with Tesla for access to their chargers which shows the strength of his character.

With the years of crap that the US auto industry has produced, its no surprise to me that someone so embedded in the US auto Industry would think Musk is doing a great job.

Also Tesla created a charging network (which was subsidized in large part by US govt. EV tax credits) in less than a decade as well as a charger that is more efficient to produce, easier to use and more reliable than the one the US government created with millions in tax dollars and then Tesla open sourced the patent so other makers could use it.

That's not really surprising as I bet he did that because he realized that not everyone was going to employ his charging mechanism. If you can't take over the market by getting people to buy your product, give it away and people will flock to you and your product.

Anyways, I genuinely enjoy sparing with you as you're a good egg and have a perspective I can't have. I genuinely, honestly don't get the Musk hate but now my fingers are sore so it's time to go play some more Quake 4 on xbox 360 because I'm feeling a lil 2005 nostalgic this evening.

I hope you enjoyed your gaming session.

<...>, you can use a Starlink connection anywhere from the top of Mount Everest to a remote school houses in the DRC,

But who is going to use it on Mount Everst? The YETI? I'm willing to bet that not many in that part of the world can afford it. Perhaps the only people in that region that can afford it are those who can afford the cost of the journey to the mountain.

And then there is the interference it generates for ground based astronomical observatories - many of which have billions invested in them - and Musk/Starlink/SpaceX comes along and makes astronomy exponentially more difficult for them. Here's an example that has not yet gone to "first light". https://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/eelt/

As I see it, Starlink is an attempt by Musk/SpaceX to diversify, in the capitalistic sense, just in case his other ventures fail. He'll have millions of people dependent on his services so that he still can be "the richest man in the world."

Does he offer Starlink for free in regions where the general population cannot afford it? I really want to know, but my bet is that he does not. If he does, then he's likely relying on the fees of the service to private yachts and others to subsidize the costs. No average boater can possibly afford the cost of his "marine internet."

It reminds me of Bill Gates "contest" to design a waste treatment system for India. What some brilliant people came up with was a western-style sewage treatment plant that cost millions of dollars, and required even more millions of dollars of infrastructure. For India? Come on! That was a WTF moment for me. TS did an article on this contest if you care to search for it. For me, the answer was obvious - composting toilets. Yet it took Gates years to come to that conclusion. Honestly, he never came to that conclusion until someone came along and proposed that idea to him. WTF? Gates the genius? Laughable.

Many of these billionaires that people think are doing so much for society and everyone thinks that "Oh, they're so smart because they have a lot of money" are not as smart as people think. And its another symptom of the failings of modern society, IMO.

Tesla Megapack provides electrical stability to swaths of Australia and Neuralink looks poised to help solve some of our species most horrific medical conditions. It all exists and you can touch it, this isn't a fraud it's a reinvention of the state of the art.

IMO, state of the art exists only in the research laboratory for now - and Musk's state of the art will soon be so far surpassed, it will be a distant memory. He hasn't really gotten us that much further ahead. Heck, even the Tesla battery pack is a collection of AA-sized cells. Its as if any model of Tesla is a scaled up, battery powered, Mattel Hot Wheels car.

Hell even the spin offs created by folks he brought together whom didn't see eye to eye with him are impressive such as Lucid and Redwood materials.

I'm not going to say much, but Lucid is, to the best of my knowledge, advancing the technology.

But, IF Toyota comes through with their Solid Battery they announced, that one singular advancement will be one of the needed game changers for the EV market. Put those the "Megapack" and the world will have something. Toyota kept quiet about it and even said in the last few years that they were putting EV development on the back-burner, so to speak. BTW- I've seen "Who killed the electric car".

 

[nulll]

Part 1 - Is Musk/Tesla trying to sue some other entity, like Toyota, for instance, because he "bought the rights to put his name on the patents" - Not to the best of my knowledge. I also worked for a startup that got investments from venture capitalists. The startup was licensing technology from another company. AFAIK, the venture capitalists did not require, as part of their funding agreement, that they have their names put on the patents. It did not happen. IMO, that's not a normal agreement. The venture capitalists may take part ownership of any company they invest in as part of their agreement, and I would expect that. But to claim that they, the venture capitalists that is, wanting to claim that they were inventors of any technology coming out of such a company that they invested in is ludicrous.

His investment in Tesla obviously helped bring the company forward even though it was losing money for a long, long, long time, but as I see it, claiming you invented their technology is akin to using the Sarah Palin phrase - "Putting lipstick on a pig." Others had the brains, he just jumped in and pretended to have the brains, and now he's pretending to be something he's not.

I don't know if you are aware of this, but George Eastman, of Eastman Kodak fame, often went to other researchers, saw what they were doing, then recreated their experiments and filed for patents on the ensuing inventions. Is that ethical? He obviously gamed the patent process and literally screwed those who's research he ripped off.

I'm genuinely not trying to belabor this point I swear, when I said that there wasn't anything to Tesla before Musk came on board with funding I mean there wasn't anything. Like literally nothing, he didn't buy them out and put his name on the company, there was two engineers with an interesting/revolutionary idea and that was kinda it. Think Jobs and Woz in Woz's basement level of nothing really there yet. Musk quite literally won awards for the design of the roadster, he was there from the very beginning. This is one of the things that seems to have been retconned in recent years as there are print and paper articles in popular mechanics from the period that go into the design phase of the roadster.

Tesla: A History Of Innovation (and Headaches)

Let's take a look at Tesla throughout the years—the innovations, the hiccups and more that have brought us to Tesla AI Day 2022.

www.forbes.com

Tesla Roadster (first generation) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Musk bemoaned the fact that to try to repurpose the Lotus Elise to fit the purpose of the Roadster was a fools errand in hindsight as they sunk man hours of redesign would have been much better spent on a fresh design from the ground up that was purpose built for an EV. Basically something like the skateboard design ubiquitous across most EV's today which wasn't possible without vast redesign of the Lotus as it was design with a monocoque chassis with low passenger seating as a core design ethos.

Also the Tesla "Master plan" was published before the roadster ever came out, it literally spells out with a rough layout the companies modus operandi for the general public so as to take an open handed approach to transparency that was revolutionary for the historically clandestine auto industry (also they kinda got laughed out of the room for being naive).

The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me) | Tesla

www.tesla.com

A lot of folks have never read this as it just kinda got giggled at and forgotten. Tesla didn't forget, they kept doing what they said they would in 06.

Sarah Palin should be presented the highest honor in the land for her tireless efforts in comedy.

 

[nulll]

Part 2 -

Freudian slip, I'm sure. Yet I find it amusing.

Perhaps its part of his "business sense" as you put it, in his "seeing" that EVs are the future and jumping in on the trend while he still can make a buck with the intent of taking over the industry?

As I see it, Tesla/Musk should be worried about their business. They are not the first in the industry. Those who have been in the business longer and have remained relatively quiet about their achievements will soon surpass him. As I see it, Tesla stands a good chance of becoming the Edsel of the modern era.

As I understand it, Musk/Tesla is experiencing difficulties in Texas, now, too. And what is he doing? Running away again? Musk will not always be able to get everything he wants, and he should learn to live with it.

Getting to space is a matter of timing. And as for the Chinese, they likely have ulterior motives, too, in that it puts more technology/wealth in their hands. Even though they claim to have embraced capitalism, their government still wants unfettered control of the populace. That's not freedom. As I see it, it all plays back to the reasons the Chinese were interested in normalizing relations with the US as a result of the hand extended to them by Richard Nixon.

Exactly what has it done for the western world? Jobs have been shipped there much to the detriment of countries that have allowed this to happen, and I can argue that China wants everyone to keep filling their bank accounts while emptying the accounts of, and ruining the lives of, those who employ them, and it appears, China expects everyone to like it, while they rattle their sabres in a show of playground bullying. As I see it, it is all a sign that modern society has not evolved as far as people think. To destroy yourself for the betterment of others is totally unsustainable; doing so ultimately ends up destroying the rest of society.

I agree whole heartedly with everything you've said regarding the Government of Xi Jinping, the sooner Western countries re-shore their enterprises and bring technical work back to the countries where labor and environmental legislation is actually a thing the better. There has certainly been a massive leap forward for the lot of the average working Chinese citizen and we would all be better off if that had of taken a different direction toward a more open exchange of skills and discovery but Xi's rule seems to have taken the country down an unsustainable path for Western relations from a vast number of different vectors.

The difference here is that Tesla didn't hop on the train as it was picking up speed they built the train and shoved it out of the station. What I mean by that is that while there were other players in the race such as Nissan with the leaf and my personal favorite the Chevy volt (a hybrid but a hybrid done correctly with an electric drivetrain and an ICE engine only there as a massive range boosting generator allowing the ICE to run at a fixed RPM disconnected from the drive train allowing for maximum efficiency). Tesla built a desirable product and made it cool by seeding it to influential people where it would get seen, this may seem trivial but it began the transition from the stereotypical "geeky" prius driver of an eco vehicle to it being the hip new thing. It worked, it cost them dearly but it drove enough demand that when the Model S came along people were waiting for it with reservations, they made it the iPhone of cars, the luxury good to be seen in like a Benz S class or a Rolls. It took years of near bankruptcy and cuts to staffing that hurt the company but it survived a recession that bankrupted 2 of the 3 huge US automakers, Ford only survived by selling every other company they owned a controlling interest in (Mazda, Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover and a few more I'm not remembering).

Tesla was still just a non serious rich mans toy to the rest of the auto industry till the Model 3 came along and for the first year or so it still didn't register. Fast forward till the most recent earnings quarter and Tesla is the number 1 EV maker in the world, their only competition is BYD in China where Tesla outsells BYD in there home market and BYD vehicles face sizeable regulatory hurdles to expand into the NA market though the EU is a good option for them. The top selling vehicle on the planet for Q1 and Q2 this year is the Model Y. Tesla is one of only 2 EV makers on the planet to make a profit on their EV's, the other is BYD and again they're market constrained as of yet. Tesla currently has ~$23Billion USD in liquidity while Toyota is the worlds most indebted company sitting atop debt of $186Billion USD. Ford is currently the closest thing to a competitor that Tesla has from the legacy automotive brands and they're losing 45-60% on each Lightning pickup truck that they sell (I recently stated that they were making a small profit on each unit but I had it wrong as they only make a profit when averaged against their ICE business).

Tesla is basically selling more Model Y's than all other Western car makers are selling EV's combined (including EU brands such as VW and other) and they're making a profit of at minimum ~17% per unit sold where as their closest non Chinese competitor is losing around 50% per unit sold while falling further behind on sales. For example the Mustang Mach E is stagnant on Ford lots with almost 4 months of saleable inventory while Tesla's production to sales lag is around 4 weeks (basically transit time as the largest portion of their production is at the Shanghai Gigafactory). Tesla is by the numbers the best positioned automaker on the planet right now, they also own the largest and most reliable charging network on the planet, there are endless commentaries about their reliability being suspect and it is all baseless. Superchargers wildly out review ever other charging network in user reviews as well as third party industry evaluation, Munro and associates engineering analytics firm in the US as well as others have spent the last couple of years beating the drum about the Superchargers significant superiority.

 

[nulll]

Part 3 -

Plain and simple - Musk was not the inventor. Pretending he was will not change that. Its a facade. What's worse, IMO, is that he seems to believe his own facade.

Maybe that Musk/SpaceX has royalty-free access to literally all of NASA's IP? Blue Origin has that too. You can think of the reusable rockets as a rearrangement of existing technology all of which was originally invented by NASA.

It's not that they aimed high, its that they bragged about aiming high. That generates buzz in society because, IMO, society has so little to hope for so people see Musk claiming he's going to Mars and then disappoints at least some of those who would like to believe him. IMO, if you are going to do something, its better to be quiet, do it, and then say something about it after you've achieved your goal.

Also, Musk is downright flippant about it. Its as if he thinks it is an easy endeavor. Its not. Its highly technical and difficult. Musk/Tesla will not be able to do it alone - as his flippant attitude implied.

The key words there are "on paper". Most of the starship attempts have ended in disaster - so far. I find it interesting, too, that Musk/SpaceX would schedule flights to be right before dismal Tesla earnings reports.

The best way to view the SpaceX/NASA relationship is as what we in Canada call a Crown Corporation. SpaceX is a private company in every meaningful way but they have a specialized arrangement with the US government that has perks (patent access) and responsibilities (being a reliable launch provider for US centric interests). At the end of the day a Shuttle launch cost $450 million USD inflation adjusted and a Falcon 9 Heavy gets to orbit for $90 million USD, NASA and the US citizenry gets a massive deal on launches all while driving bright young minds into the spaceflight industry for the first time in 2 generations.

Here in Canada we privatized the hell out of basically everything from the 70's to the 2000's eh! Many folks were really justifiably concerned that it would be nothing more than a government handing over the keys to the bank and walking away but what we got as a country was some of the most absurd increases in efficiency of any G level country. From CN rail toe Fortis it worked marvelously, basically it's like a soft socialism where you get most of the benefits of effective government regulation and the efficiencies of a market directed management structure where Canadian citizens can invest in the companies stock in the knowledge that their money won't go missing to knit a golden parachute and the Canadian government gets reliable industry at a reduced cost of overhead and more money stays at home in industry. No one thought this would work, but it did...well except for Air Canada but that is a story for another time over much beer!

The Germans takes this a notch further with the Gmbh system they have which allows even very small companies (like limited partnerships and such) to be technically part of the government yet still private. More stable again than the Canadian system but has added drag in theory as well. Many Scandinavian countries have similar systems, soft socialism for capitalists if you will. To me the IRA in the US and the grants and provisions from NASA regarding SpaceX are a step in the same type of direction (Just don't let Bernie know! )

SpaceX raptor engines are a completely in house design as they're methane fueled though I'm sure the turbo pump designs borrowed form the RS25's on the space shuttle. The Raptors are currently the most efficient engines going whereas the RS25's held the distinction previously. The grid fins on the reusable boosters are a SpaceX original as well as the concept of independently pilotable reusable boosters, no one even considered that was even theoretically possible before considering the G loading and precision required to pilot them back down but after some hilarious failures they made it work. If NASA had the tech previously they would have done it as the biggest issues for NASA has always been cost to orbit, the shuttle was supposed to fix that but the refurbishment costs were more than an order of magnitude higher than projected. One of the reasons, the CIA, NSA and DARPA continued doing Titan launches out of Vandenberg AFB for the more clandestine things the US military gets up to. Though recently they use their own purpose built mini un manned shuttle.

Boeing X-37 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[nulll]

Part 4 -

Actually, I did see an interview with him in a time when Tesla was struggling. He impressed me as a humble person. Since then, I have not seen that side of him. It's not unique to Musk or that interview. Perhaps you should take a look at this (your local library may have a copy of it) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2104994/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_Steve%20Jobs%20the%20lost
Its interesting, IMO, to see this side of Jobs - all the while literally telling people that he copied technology developed by Xerox PARC.


I would not call what he's charging for Starlink cheaper, Teslas are by no means affordable to everyone - not to mention the problems they have.

IMO, it just shows Musk trying to beat everyone to the market in a hasty fashion - and you do know that saying about haste, I assume.

With the years of crap that the US auto industry has produced, its no surprise to me that someone so embedded in the US auto Industry would think Musk is doing a great job.

That's not really surprising as I bet he did that because he realized that not everyone was going to employ his charging mechanism. If you can't take over the market by getting people to buy your product, give it away and people will flock to you and your product.

I hope you enjoyed your gaming session.

But who is going to use it on Mount Everst? The YETI? I'm willing to bet that not many in that part of the world can afford it. Perhaps the only people in that region that can afford it are those who can afford the cost of the journey to the mountain.

And then there is the interference it generates for ground based astronomical observatories - many of which have billions invested in them - and Musk/Starlink/SpaceX comes along and makes astronomy exponentially more difficult for them. Here's an example that has not yet gone to "first light". https://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/eelt/

As I see it, Starlink is an attempt by Musk/SpaceX to diversify, in the capitalistic sense, just in case his other ventures fail. He'll have millions of people dependent on his services so that he still can be "the richest man in the world."

Does he offer Starlink for free in regions where the general population cannot afford it? I really want to know, but my bet is that he does not. If he does, then he's likely relying on the fees of the service to private yachts and others to subsidize the costs. No average boater can possibly afford the cost of his "marine internet."

It reminds me of Bill Gates "contest" to design a waste treatment system for India. What some brilliant people came up with was a western-style sewage treatment plant that cost millions of dollars, and required even more millions of dollars of infrastructure. For India? Come on! That was a WTF moment for me. TS did an article on this contest if you care to search for it. For me, the answer was obvious - composting toilets. Yet it took Gates years to come to that conclusion. Honestly, he never came to that conclusion until someone came along and proposed that idea to him. WTF? Gates the genius? Laughable.

Many of these billionaires that people think are doing so much for society and everyone thinks that "Oh, they're so smart because they have a lot of money" are not as smart as people think. And its another symptom of the failings of modern society, IMO.

IMO, state of the art exists only in the research laboratory for now - and Musk's state of the art will soon be so far surpassed, it will be a distant memory. He hasn't really gotten us that much further ahead. Heck, even the Tesla battery pack is a collection of AA-sized cells. Its as if any model of Tesla is a scaled up, battery powered, Mattel Hot Wheels car.

I'm not going to say much, but Lucid is, to the best of my knowledge, advancing the technology.

But, IF Toyota comes through with their Solid Battery they announced, that one singular advancement will be one of the needed game changers for the EV market. Put those the "Megapack" and the world will have something. Toyota kept quiet about it and even said in the last few years that they were putting EV development on the back-burner, so to speak. BTW- I've seen "Who killed the electric car".

A fair few of the interviews he does still have a similar vibe though I personally feel that he's just dealing with so much drag and adversity constantly that it has put him on his toes neurocognitively to be perpetually expecting some type of attack. He spoke several years ago about reducing the possible attack vectors by which hit piece profiteers could come at him, after which he sold the sports cars and luxury homes save one residence in the Bay area for business use while moving his general residence to a Boxable tiny home in Boca Chica TX.

The dramatic docudrama "Pirates of Silicon Valley" did a great job of displaying Jobs early days with Apple before he was forced out, especially the "interesting" way Apple collected tech and concepts.

Starlink here in Canada right now is $140 Canadian ruppies/mth with a set up and hardware fee of around $850 up front, a bit costly up front as a comparable Fibreop 5GB/s land line from Bell Aliant is $135-140/mth at my apartment in St. John's NL and I believe the install cost was around $200. The difference is you can take star link with you anywhere, I have co-workers that use it at home and then take the dish up to their cabin hours outside the city (on the map it literally used to say Newfoundland Wilderness) and use it there with no meaningful loss of utility. Factor in the reduction in resources to run hard lines on poles, through sewers or buried under ground and this starts making a lot more sense really quickly. I believe you told me you were in New York city? If that's accurate then I can see the loss in utility there as no Satellite solution is going to be great in a dense urban area with such verticality.

A base Model 3 right now with EV credits (which vary wildly by country and sometimes state/province) comes in well under $40K US and it is most likely that's going down at least a bit more as there is a new Model 3 coming later this year. Not cheap but the average new car price in the US is around $48K according to Kelly blue book so it's getting down there to where the average person can get a wildly more efficient form of transport. As for their issues, there are still some panel fitment issues and such but that is getting better as production proceeds same as all car makers EV or ICE. I follow a lot of EV pundits from all over the world whether it be the UK, Germany or Australia (My French sucks so I gave up on following a couple of pundits from the Francophone sphere), this constant background hum about how Tesla has glaring build quality and safety defects is almost entirely a US media thing. Please don't take my word for it, the Aussies in particular make a lot of light of the fact that the entire US motoring press and media in general. A good experiment would be to do a small statistical analysis of using a vpn to set your location to different countries and then use different search engines to agglomerate a reasonably balanced cross section of media sentiment by country. Tesla has had the highest customer satisfaction rate for years at around 91% and they also have the highest conquest sales numbers (sales taken from other manufacturers) of any auto maker. No one knows the name of the product yet but he next vehicle after Cybertruck is planned to be a small affordable hatchback according to the roadmap which will be built at the currently under construction Mexico Gigafactory. Think sub 25K USD, Chevy spark type competitor with luxury car levels of tech.

3 Ways Tesla Creates A Personalized Customer Experience

Tesla isn’t just the fastest growing car company, it’s the fastest growing company in the world. And at the root of its growth and innovation is personalization.

www.forbes.com

Tesla cleans up in conquest sales, according to latest loyalty survey

For the second year running, Tesla converted the most buyers from one brand to its own

www.cnet.com