Is Elon Musk a fraud?

[Takhisis]

only to be saved and reinstated by Microsoft CEO at the last moment.

I remember that Altman was ousted and then immediately reinstated, but not that he was Microsoft's man now.

So Musk v. Microsoft… I'd better learn how to code and develop my own Unix-like system from scratch at this rate, and only use rotary phones with copper wire even if I have to pay for the copper wiring myself.

 

[innonimatu]

I also don't see what you mean about 3d printers. People have built businesses on them and the major companies also use them. Hook it to an AI and you can have your own material game brand (if you've got the capital for the printers, that is).

It's not going to dominate any future but the financial speciation one, for the next couple of years perhaps.

I remember the hype about 3D printers. We'll print whole houses! A factory in every house!

I actually know more than a little about using those things, and CNC machines. Guess what, the shop output declined with newer equipment. It takes too long programming the things into them, compared to what the former generatuon of skilled mechanics could quickly produce in older equipment.

CNC at least scales well. 3D printers fail both in the very small scale and in the very large scale. They have few good insutrial use cases. And you can verify their resicual role by looking at the value of 3D printer machines made and comparing to the value of other machine tools made.

I also remember the hype about fully self-driving cars. They're failing, despite the huge investments made. "AI" won't ressurect that speculative bubble. Even now Apple quit its plans to attempt to do one. Cruise is folding. Etc.

AI is in another of its roughly 20-year cycle speculative bubbles. Lots of propaganda because heaps of cash are being thrown into flimsy ventures, and that cash does buy... lots of proganada to get more cash!

Einstein may have bitterly joked that human stupidity was the strongest force in the Universe. But stupidity alone doesn't move people. Propaganda does the moving, is the force.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

Einstein may have bitterly joked that human stupidity was the strongest force in the Universe.

No he didn't.
You might be thinking of: Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe.
But that is now considered to be an attribution, an old saying retroactively attributed to a famous person to give it more punch, according to Snopes.

 

[Arakhor]

Inno is referencing a different quotation.

 

[Takhisis]

One which is not proven to have come from Einstein anyway.

 

[innonimatu]

Inno is referencing a different quotation.

Right you are, I was mixing the two. And know the attribution is probably wrong. Still they're funny.

 

[Kaitzilla]

The lawsuit was by a heavy metal drummer who owned 9 shares of Tesla. (About $180 worth in 2019)

The lawyers who got the excessive $56 billion Musk compensation package thrown out in court want $6 billion in compensation.

Loading…

www.reuters.com

WILMINGTON, Delaware, March 1 (Reuters) - The lawyers who voided Elon Musk's $56 billion compensation as excessive on Friday sought a record a $6 billion legal fee, payable in the electric car maker's stock.
"We recognize that the requested fee is unprecedented in terms of absolute size," the three law firms said in a filing with the Court of Chancery in Delaware.
The fee works out to an hourly rate of $288,888, they said.
Musk blasted the request as "criminal,"...

The Tesla Gigafactory in Germany was halted for 2 weeks (first half of February) because of attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.

Tesla continues output at Gruenheide plant after Red Sea tensions disrupt

Tesla, the renowned American electric car manufacturer, has announced the resumption of production at its factory located in Gruenheide, situated out

menafn.com

Locals in Germany voted to deny an expansion of the Gigafactory, but it was nonbinding in late February.

Tesla faces hurdle in Germany as locals vote to oppose factory expansion

Tesla failed to secure locals' vote to authorize a major factory expansion for the company's battery and car assembly plant in Brandenburg, Germany.

www.cnbc.com

In early March, 2024 ecoterrorists have blown up the local electrical grid in Germany costing Tesla about $1 billion and shutting down electricity to 60,000 Germans.

Musk’s German Tesla plant suffers close to $1B in damages after attack by the ‘dumbest ecoterrorists on earth’

Arsonists set a high-voltage power mast ablaze, bringing production to a complete halt.

fortune.com

Arsonists calling themselves the Volcano Group left Tesla’s German factory without electricity on Tuesday, leading to damages the company claims could approach $1 billion.

More than 60,000 residents in Brandenburg and even parts of Berlin were also affected when a single high-voltage power mast near Tesla’s factory in Grünheide was set ablaze, raising broader questions over how to protect defenseless infrastructure critical to the economy from vandals, saboteurs and criminals.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

The lawyers who got the excessive $56 billion Musk compensation package thrown out in court want $6 billion in compensation.

Loading…

www.reuters.com

The Tesla Gigafactory in Germany was halted for 2 weeks (first half of February) because of attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.

Tesla continues output at Gruenheide plant after Red Sea tensions disrupt

Tesla, the renowned American electric car manufacturer, has announced the resumption of production at its factory located in Gruenheide, situated out

menafn.com

Locals in Germany voted to deny an expansion of the Gigafactory, but it was nonbinding in late February.

Tesla faces hurdle in Germany as locals vote to oppose factory expansion

Tesla failed to secure locals' vote to authorize a major factory expansion for the company's battery and car assembly plant in Brandenburg, Germany.

www.cnbc.com

In early March, 2024 ecoterrorists have blown up the local electrical grid in Germany costing Tesla about $1 billion and shutting down electricity to 60,000 Germans.

Musk’s German Tesla plant suffers close to $1B in damages after attack by the ‘dumbest ecoterrorists on earth’

Arsonists set a high-voltage power mast ablaze, bringing production to a complete halt.

fortune.com

Sounds like Musk will soon end up doing nothing but feeding his favourite pigeon in a park, like that other guy.

 

[Arakhor]

It's not his lawyers this time, but the Husk is another person who thinks he's smart or too rich (or both) to pay lawyers' fees.

 

[Takhisis]

Well, meanwhile Elon Musk is now under investigation for giving Russian troops Internet access in occupied Ukraine.

(…) Ukrainian officials claimed in February to have found evidence Russian use of Starlink terminals for satellite internet, calling it a “systemic problem”.
Following the reports of misuse, SpaceX’s owner, Elon Musk, stated that the company had not sold any Starlink terminals to Russia directly. Raskin and Garcia stated in their letter that Russia’s alleged “misuse of Starlink terminals outside Russia’s internationally recognized borders poses a serious threat to Ukraine’s security, Ukrainian lives, and US national security”, and demanded the company report any complaints the satellites had been accessed.
“Russian procurement of, use of, or interference with Starlink terminals each has the potential to advance Russia’s brutal and illegitimate invasion of Ukraine,” said the letter, dated Wednesday. The Democratic lawmakers asked SpaceX to respond by 20 March.
The Kremlin has denied that its troops use Starlink, a subsidiary of Elon Musk-owned SpaceX. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment on the letter, which was first reported by the Washington Post. (…)​

 

[Moriarte]

In early March, 2024 ecoterrorists have blown up the local electrical grid in Germany costing Tesla about $1 billion and shutting down electricity to 60,000 Germans.

It's been a while since competing with Tesla in battery electric space became uneconomical in Germany. Last I checked Tesla sells the most popular BEV in the country. (Model Y) During last 10 years legacy auto companies neglected the EV phase transition almost entirely. Interestingly, since legacy auto lost the market share, at this point it is impossible for them to build new BEV-focused factories in Germany. For two reasons. Firstly, auto production is a very low margin business. In order to compete with Tesla/Chinese automakers now, one needs to compete with modern highly automated assembly lines for minuscule profit, while Chinese EV price war drove EV prices across the world to very low levels, so, potential profitability from constructing such a plant is 0. Second, the biggest automaker of Europe, VW group, is 200 billion in debt and for that reason it is unable to convince local financial circles to write loans aimed for construction of new BEV production facilities with planned profitability of 0. EV's are nice to have, they're clean, quick, economical. But Musk and the Chinese took all that's left of the profit margin for themselves and made it unfeasible to start competing in pure electric space.

So, since nothing good can be done, patriotic ecoterrorists try to solve some of Germany's problems in their own way; the locals are denying new production facilities; the ones at the top are weighing the possibility of tariffs on China if things get completely out of hand. German folk is united in their desire to strangle the electric expression of the free market economy right there on the spot. Tariffs would be tricky, however. EU relies on many electronic sub-components from China for their legacy auto industry, it is difficult to pressure someone who has high degree of economic independence.

Fortunately for European auto industry, the China-US EV price war of 2023 led to electric car maker market crash at the turn of this new year. The deck is shuffled again: massive BEV supply coming from China and Tesla satisfied current wave of demand for BEV's. That led to significant capital outflow from Tesla, BYD et al. If this battery-electric "bear market" is going to hold through this year, I suppose there will be several high profile bankruptcies in the automotive space. Small highly leverage companies will go first.

 

[Takhisis]

Regarding the title character himself:

Elon Musk details his prescription ketamine use, says investors should want him to ‘keep taking it'​

Elon Musk said he is “almost always” sober during his late-night — or, in some cases, very early morning — posting sessions on his social media platform, X.

The billionaire Tesla CEO’s comment was made in an interview with journalist Don Lemon, during which Musk discussed his use of the medication ketamine. Musk, who is known for his often erratic behavior, has faced scrutiny following recent reports about his alleged drug use and the potential impact on his companies.

“There are times when I have sort of a … negative chemical state in my brain, like depression I guess, or depression that’s not linked to any negative news, and ketamine is helpful for getting one out of the negative frame of mind,” Musk told Lemon. Musk added that he has a prescription for the drug from “an actual, real doctor” and uses “a small amount once every other week or something like that.”

While Musk said he doesn’t drink and doesn’t “know how to smoke pot,” he didn’t specify whether he was talking about ketamine or another substance when he said he is “almost always” sober while posting late at night.

Spoiler :

Musk has previously posted on X about his prescription use of ketamine, a drug used primarily in hospitals as an anesthetic but which is increasingly being explored as a potential treatment for depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions. Musk’s comments offer greater insight into the use of the drug by one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people.

Musk denied that he overuses the medication, saying, “if you use too much ketamine, you can’t really get work done. I have a lot of work, I’m typically putting in 16-hour days … so I don’t really have a situation where I can be not mentally acute for an extended period of time.”

Musk said he believes his depression is genetic and added that he doesn’t believe his ketamine use will impact his companies or their government contracts.

“From a standpoint of Wall Street, what matters is execution,” he said. “Are you building value for investors? Tesla is worth about as much as the rest of the car industry combined … so from an investor standpoint, if there is something I’m taking, I should keep taking it.”

The wide-ranging, 90-minute interview between Musk and Lemon — which kicked off a feud between the two men and resulted in the end of a planned deal for X to pay Lemon to post his new streaming show on the platform — covered far more than Musk’s ketamine use, including Musk’s criticisms of diversity, equity and inclusion programs and demand for Tesla’s Cybertruck.

Advertisers on X​

Musk also discussed the state of the core advertising business on X, which has suffered since the billionaire acquired the company formerly known as Twitter because of a rise in hateful and controversial content on the platform. Musk previously said advertisers who left X over concerns about antisemitic content could “go f**k yourself” and accused them of killing the company.

In the interview with Lemon, Musk said that almost all of the company’s advertisers have returned, and “it’s a very short list of advertisers who are not coming back to the platform, and our advertising revenue is rising rapidly and our subscription revenue is rising rapidly and I feel very optimistic about the future of the X platform.” Still, the billionaire appeared uninterested in adjusting X’s policies to appease advertisers who have left the site.

“You can choose where you want your advertising, what you want your advertiser to appear next to, but you can’t insist on censorship of the entire platform,” he said. “If you insist on censorship of the entire platform, even where your advertising doesn’t appear, then obviously we will not want them as an advertiser.”

 

[pob]

Using ketamine for depression seems most effective in one-off or very infrequent use, not weekly as Musk is doing. Regular ketamine use has seriously bad side effects, particularly to memory (I know from personal experience).

 

[Samson]

Musk’s Neuralink hosts livestream showing quadriplegic playing online chess

Elon Musk’s brain-chip start-up, Neuralink, has livestreamed a patient appearing to play online chess using only his mind.

In a video posted on the X social media platform on Wednesday, Neuralink introduced Noland Arbaugh, 29, as the first human patient to be implanted with its brain-computer interface technology.

Arbaugh, who described becoming paralysed from the shoulders down in a diving accident, said that using Neuralink had become “intuitive” after practising imagining moving the cursor on the screen.

“Basically, it was like using ‘the Force’ on the cursor, and I could get it to move wherever I wanted. Just stare somewhere on the screen and it would move where I wanted it to, which was such a wild experience the first time it happened,” Arbaugh said, referring to the superpowers possessed by the Jedi in the Star Wars films.

Arbaugh also acknowledged the technology was “not perfect” and they had “run into some issues”.

“I don’t want people to think that this is the end of the journey. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but it has already changed my life,” he said.

The video comes nearly three years after Neuralink posted a video appearing to show a monkey playing the computer game Pong with its mind.

Neuralink is not the first company to use an implant to allow a patient to use a computer by thinking.

Australia-based Synchron, which uses a less invasive technique that does not require cutting into the skull, implanted its device in a patient in July 2022.

Spoiler Twitter video :

https://twitter.com/x/status/1770563939413496146

 

[Takhisis]

We'll all be Lobot soon enough.