Elon Musk: Force for anthropic advancement or self-serving con-artist?

[Samson]

Occupant fatalities, pedestrian fatalities or both?

Occupants. This is the source data (though I have to admit it really needs confidence/credible intervals to emphasis the small sample size):

> The Data: Fire Fatality Risk in the CyberTruck and Ford Pinto, Compared

In 2 crashes and 1 incident in their first full year on American roads, the Cybertrucks burned 5 occupants who died. That would be a crash in Piedmont CA with 3 fatalities, a crash in Baytown TX with 1 fatality, and I’m including the incident in Las Vegas NV that I am sure you are all familiar with.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I can't think of a valid reason for including the Las Vegas incident if the goal is to assess vehicle safety. I'm pretty sure no vehicle on Earth is going to be safe if you sit inside it with a bomb you brought with you.

 

[Ordnael]

Weird that a car built like a tank can have so many occupant fatalities. I wouldn't even walk in streets where that beast is driven.

 

[EvaDK]

Weird that a car built like a tank can have so many occupant fatalities. I wouldn't even walk in streets where that beast is driven.

Very short frontal crumple zone, which means that a lot of the energy released in a collision, risks being absorbed by the driver/passengers inside instead of being absorbed by the car. Which is bad.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1730616684568854584

Then there's the question of how easy/difficult it is to get yourself out, or for others to get people out of a Cybertruck that has caught on fire.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Even though it looks like the Cybertruck is indeed rather unsafe, I really do have to question the "good faith" of that article. Not only because it included the case of someone deliberately setting an explosive device off inside the car, in a study that's ostensibly about vehicle safety, but also for the whole Ford Pinto comparison. The Ford Pinto is notorious for a specific egregious flaw this is true, but statistically it was pretty much average for its time in terms of fatalities, and there were significantly less safe cars on the road. So why use that as the comparison? Obviously because you're supposed to just assume the message is "17 times more dangerous than the most dangerous car ever built". But why bother being dishonest about it when "13 times more dangerous than the average 1970s" car is already more than damning enough?

 

[Ordnael]

I am very happy such a monstrosity, along with other humongous US vehicles, will never be street legal in the EU.
I also hope EU SUVs will eventually get axed in size, by regulations...they are getting too big!

 

[Smellincoffee]

The party is definitely over between Elon and Trump, as the guy who became a special government employee for 120 days for the sole purpose of finding stuff to cut now sees the GOP asking to ADD to the deficit with Trump's big beautiful bloat. (Not that the GOP adding to the deficit surprises anyone. )

 

[Birdjaguar]

Trump floats terminating Musk’s government subsidies and contracts​

From CNN's Samantha Waldenberg
President Donald Trump floated terminating Elon Musk’s companies’ government subsidies and contracts as a way of saving money, intensifying the two billionaires’ feud on Thursday.

“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it,” the president wrote on Truth Social.

Musk then commented on a tweet about how that could end the International Space Station, writing, “This just gets better and better,” adding, “Go ahead, make my day …”

Minutes earlier, Trump wrote that he’d asked Musk to leave the White House, and claimed the Tesla CEO “just went CRAZY!”

“Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY,” the president said. (There has never been a federal mandate that prohibited Americans from buying gasoline-powered cars.)

The president’s social media posts come as he said in the Oval Office earlier Thursday that he was “very disappointed” with Musk as he continues to blast the president’s massive tax and spending cuts package. Trump said he and Musk “had a great relationship,” but “I don’t know if we will anymore.”

 

[Smellincoffee]

CNN is a little behind. EM was calling for ending those subsidies last year, per a Forbes article. (Predictably, he was attacked for this because ending the credits would supposedly help Tesla.)

 

[EvaDK]

Elon reportedly just claimed that Trump is named in the Epstein files.

Grab some popcorn, fellas.

 

[Kyriakos]

Elon reportedly just claimed that Trump is named in the Epstein files.

Grab some popcorn, fellas.

Who is going to root for Elon though? The two-synapses people from the other political team likely won't either in critical numbers.

 

[Samson]

X's new 'encrypted' XChat feature seems no more secure than the failure that came before it

Elon Musk's X social media platform is rolling out a new version of its direct messaging feature that the platform owner said had a "whole new architecture," but as with many a Muskian proclamation, there's reason to doubt what's been said.

Dubbed "XChat" (not to be confused with the venerable Linux/Windows IRC app of the same name), Musk informally announced the feature on Sunday, a few days after the company formerly known as Twitter paused encryption on messaging to make "some improvements.".

Musk's declaration, however, didn't reveal much about the nature of the changes, and has been enough to cause some encryption experts to doubt what was stated by the world's richest man.

"All new XChat is rolling out with encryption, vanishing messages and the ability to send any kind of file," Musk said in a tweet. "Also, audio/video calling.

"This is built on Rust with (Bitcoin style) encryption, whole new architecture," Musk added. And here's where the skeptics and cryptocurrency fans in the digital town square pounced: There ain't no encryption on the Bitcoin blockchain.

As reported by crypto news site Coindesk, experts have been quick to point out that, while there's plenty of cryptography and digital signing involved in Bitcoin, the blockchain itself isn't encrypted, and there really isn't such a thing as "Bitcoin style encryption."

In other words, it's worth questioning whether XChat is going to be encrypted in a way that most people think of encrypted chat: End-to-end encryption (E2EE) that renders messages completely unreadable by anyone who might happen to snoop in them, be it an illicit intermediary or the platform that hosts the messages itself. That's how Signal and Meta-owned WhatsApp work.

As was the case in 2023, when then-Twitter first announced encrypted messages under owner Elon Musk, it doesn't appear that XChat will offer true E2EE. The help page, which was updated with the launch of the service, still warns "currently, we do not offer protections against man-in-the-middle attacks" and says that Twitter itself, "as a result of a compulsory legal process," could compromise so-called encrypted DMs on the platform without the sender or receiver being aware.

 

[H4run]

Elon reportedly just claimed that Trump is named in the Epstein files.

Grab some popcorn, fellas.

I love the childish banter. Out of all the versions of Musk I’ve seen since his debut (where peoples amazed with a billionaire smoking weed in joe rogan podcast), this is the only version I like. I hope he keeps it up and pulls Trump's hair and pant (if there is any) even stronger. Go, Musky!

 

[EvaDK]

Musk is high on something quite often. He looked high as a kite at Trump's inauguration, as well when he brought his son into the oval office.

I reckon he's slightly delirious through half of the day, every day. Especially when he's on X

 

[Akka]

 

[Kyriakos]

It's interesting - and telling - that Elon had been expected to be thrown out like trash for a few months now. Too bad he was too stupid to realize it would happen.
Perhaps even worse is that he now tried to hit back - for someone relying on US subsidies and bonuses (emissions credit selling) to survive, it's doubly ridiculous.

"Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That's the real reason they haven't been published. Have a nice day DJT"

 

[r16]

donald Trump has been in the Eppstein lists right from the beginning . With "the fight" now taken on the aspects "funnier" stuff , the rich and whatever will take out the risks and stuff . The Rich feel they have the right to commit sins , they will come out as cleaned and stuff . Eppstein also on record of donating to 26 Democrats and 3 Republicans in the 90s before the DC elites felt a need to shun him . Like not that they had problems with his service , which he kept on providing basically until the day he was like made free . The US is not out of the woods , in regards to the monarchy thing .

no , the fight between them is no risk to the system they have set out to establish . Like the US Democrats would even try to reform when they get back in ?

 

[Zardnaar]

View attachment 733797
It's interesting - and telling - that Elon had been expected to be thrown out like trash for a few months now. Too bad he was too stupid to realize it would happen.
Perhaps even worse is that he now tried to hit back - for someone relying on US subsidies and bonuses (emissions credit selling) to survive, it's doubly ridiculous.

"Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That's the real reason they haven't been published. Have a nice day DJT"

Very good o7

 

[Kyriakos]

AOC ^^

 

[Birdjaguar]

President Donald Trump said that Elon Musk would face consequences if he chooses to fund Democratic candidates to challenge Republicans who vote for the president’s sweeping domestic policy bill.

The comments came in another phone interview with a network journalist — this time from NBC News. On Friday, Trump spoke to ABC’s Jonathan Karl, CNN’s Dana Bash and CBS’ Robert Costa.

“If he does, he’ll have to pay the consequences for that,” Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker. “He’ll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that.”
Trump said he believes his relationship with Musk is essentially over.

“I would assume so, yeah,” Trump said.

While Trump said he’s within his authority to cancel Musk’s federal contracts, he said, “I haven’t given it any thought.”

What lawmakers are saying: House leaders have denied the feud between Musk and Trump has had an impact on the effort to get Trump’s bill across the finish line in Congress. But other fiscal hawks and conservatives in the House are seizing on Musk’s underlying criticism of the bill, warning that Musk is right about the math.