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Tech bro and billionaire worship

Started by Twed, July 15, 2018, 08:36:31 PM

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Bhazor

Quote from: marquis_de_sad on July 17, 2018, 06:10:00 PM
I'm not the first to say it, but I think Notch is the Gatsby of this universe. Ordinary slubby loser gets rich and buys a massive fuck off mansion, holding constant parties attended by the beautiful people who barely even know he exists.

Notch is such a mess. For a brief moment it looked like he would be gamings Megan Ellison. Investing big budgets into relatively risky games like Psychonauts 2 and Age of Wonders 3. Then he just turned out to be a wanker.

Prime candidate for ending on a overhead helicopter shot of his LA penthouse at night on the Evening news.

Sebastian Cobb

Not watched it but I just stumbled across this on iplayer looking for something else:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0916ghq

Jamie Bartlett uncovers the dark reality behind Silicon Valley's glittering promise to build a better world.


garnish

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on July 15, 2018, 09:54:32 PM
I'd say it's pretty fashionable within tech and leftist circles to hate on Musk. I don't think he's necessarily a good man, and definitely a bit of an egomaniac but for all his flair and vanity projects he's not really the one you should be concerned about.

If anything he provides a good distraction to some far more worrying and powerful individuals. Jeff Bezos for one. Amazon working practices are terrible to their lower-tier employees, the business itself is remarkably good at avoiding tax; crucial parts of the internet run on AWS now, to the point that if it goes down the internet itself starts to stop working properly. Microsoft or Google suffering a global outage would be an inconvenience, aws going down could tumble entire economies. He's got far too much power. In the 90's the powerful people were the ones who controlled satellites and newspapers, now it's core infrastructure.

The number of accidents in Tesla's factories is supposedly double the national average in car manufacturing, while Musk has in the past complained about health and safety requirements upsetting his ideal aesthetic of what the workshop should look like.

garnish

Quote from: paruses on July 16, 2018, 05:15:26 PM
Is he a genius or is he a successful venture capitalist? Am asking honestly as I don't know. How hands on is he with stuff like, arguably, Bill Gates was? Does he just see cool opportunities and have the cash to pay very clever people to look into them like Hank Scorpio did?

I can't imagine that you would have time to do inventions as well as earn billions of dollars - look how long it takes to set up a single game of Mouse Trap, for example.

I'm not sure he's even much of a business man, much less a genius.  Tesla is consistently cash flow negative, can't even remotely keep up with the demand generated by Musk's self-publicity and now is one of the most shorted companies in history, hence Musk very clumsily announcing he wants to take them off the stock exchange.

Tesla would be much better off with a sensible old white man in a suit in charge, with Musk as a figurehead on the proviso that he logs off Twitter.

Bhazor

Well on the way to doing a Theranos.

Once a single one of his investor loans falls through, which he uses to pay off the last loan, the whole thing is going to go to shit.

Sebastian Cobb

I know it's very fashionable to hate everything Musk touches these days, but his smart grid battery packs do seem quite promising.

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/08/06/analysis-reveals-that-worlds-largest-battery-saves-south-australia-8-9-million-in-6-months/

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: garnish on August 12, 2018, 02:40:00 PM
The number of accidents in Tesla's factories is supposedly double the national average in car manufacturing, while Musk has in the past complained about health and safety requirements upsetting his ideal aesthetic of what the workshop should look like.

Amazon is much more powerful, at the moment Tesla mostly make toys for rich businessmen. Amazon has over half a million employees and controls critical infrastructure. It employs over half a million people. It's a far bigger concern.

garnish

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on August 12, 2018, 03:14:48 PM
Amazon is much more powerful, at the moment Tesla mostly make toys for rich businessmen. Amazon has over half a million employees and controls critical infrastructure. It employs over half a million people. It's a far bigger concern.

Oh I'm not disagreeing, I just meant to point out that Tesla also treats its lower tier staff badly.

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on August 12, 2018, 03:12:08 PM
I know it's very fashionable to hate everything Musk touches these days, but his smart grid battery packs do seem quite promising.

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/08/06/analysis-reveals-that-worlds-largest-battery-saves-south-australia-8-9-million-in-6-months/

I think Musk is in large part a conman and I hate his ass, but I also don't understand the prevailing desire to see Tesla fail. An electric car company succeeding benefits everyone and should be applauded, even if it makes some idiots in Silicon Valley rich.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Some of the methods of Tesla are not to my liking but I like the ambition and willingness to apply heterodoxy to what is a fairly conservative competition/market share obsessed corporate culture elsewhere.

As for the results so far, that's kind of missing the point, Musk always manages to get someone to build the next step on the pyramid, developing a steadily more commanding view as he does so. This isn't totally unlike how small businesses use loans and overdrafts, it just means instead of convincing the bank manager he goes direct to potential investors and makes them emotionally invested in projects.

My main concern from the commercial point of view wouldn't be cash flow but them diversifying too much too early.

garnish

Well cash flow is a fairly good indicator of whether he's able to operate a viable business or not.  There's plenty of Silicon Valley giants out there that didn't make a profit for at least a decade, but that's less important than whether a company can cover its daily outgoings with something other than short-term borrowing.  Tesla is consistently cash flow negative, so the problem is that Musk isn't going to get to the next stage of the pyramid before the investors catch on and sweep the rug out from under him.

Sebastian Cobb

All the hype around Tesla cars and batteries probably will probably get investment thrown around into battery tech that probably wouldn't have got funding otherwise. The energy sector seems to have a bit of a problem with not putting r&d in the right places (wind's always a safe bet but tidal and geothermal seem to have a lot of untapped potential).

Electric cars are still pretty weird when you think about it. At one end you've got a mad richboy plaything and the other you've got impractically small runabouts like the Renault zoe with not much in the middle.

Bhazor

Quote from: Pearly-Dewdrops Drops on August 12, 2018, 03:45:06 PM
I think Musk is in large part a conman and I hate his ass, but I also don't understand the prevailing desire to see Tesla fail. An electric car company succeeding benefits everyone and should be applauded, even if it makes some idiots in Silicon Valley rich.

Tesla's electric car company is terrible though. Instead of producing well priced family cars people would actually want to buy he's going straight for overpriced gaudy sports cars with terrible safety records and ineffecient energy usage. There's also the obsession with "self driving" cars which I'm still not sure who is the audience for that. There is definite reason for concern that money that could have been invested in small electric start ups or expanding the facilities of an established manufactuer is instead being dumped into the money pit of Tesla.

Sebastian Cobb

I thought tesla was looking to build an affordable pedestrian saloon at some point. It doesn't seem like anyone has attempted to fill that gap. There's a big hole between the zoe and the tesla as far as I can tell.

Are teslas that inefficient if you don't rag them? I thought they had much better range than other electric cars?

Blumf

Sad fact of capitalist life means Tesla have to aim for the rich people market first - low volume, high cost. You can't just jump into high volume, low cost. That takes a lot of time, investment, development and, learning. Tesla are famously struggling with medium volume, medium cost with their Model 3, and that's around £30k, BMW 3 series money, not Ford Focus.

Put it another way, how many low price brands have entered the market in the past few decades with completely new models? Dacia is just old Renaults, Daewoo never managed to stick, Geely are struggling to make any impact with their range, despite cheap Chinese labour, and have instead started buying up premium brands (i.e. low volume, high price). Similar story with SAIC.

Why would Tesla be any different? It really is a tough market.

One of the biggest problems Tesla will have going forward is everyone else is now fully on board the EV train. Traditional manufacturers can adapt parts and platforms to bring down costs and reduce R&D time whereas anything Tesla do is starting from scratch. Plus your existing manufacturers have a full dealer network to draw upon.

Jaguar's I-Pace already made the Model X look dreadful. Audi are expecting to have a Model 3 and a Model X competitor out by 2020. I can't imagine why anyone would be looking at a Tesla in the middle of the next decade.

Sebastian Cobb

And yet the hype around teslas probably gave all those manufacturers a massive kick up the arse.

I think that's going to be the case with his grid batteries and possibly the solar roof. None of it will necessarily make him money but it'll get vc's throwing money at places in the periphery that they otherwise wouldn't.

I'm trying to remain objective, musk is a bellend but there are people who seem to revel in slating everything he does because he's a prick just like there are people who think he can walk on water.

garnish

In case anyone hasn't seen this: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/elon-musk-azaelia-banks-twitter-acid-grimes-instagram-story-a8490826.html

QuoteElon Musk has responded after rapper Azealia Banks made a series of lurid claims about him.

The Tesla founder was tweeting while on drugs and may have invited the musician to his house to have sex with him and his girlfriend Grimes, she suggested.


Quote"I waited all weekend while grimes coddled her boyfriend for being too stupid to know not to go on twitter while on acid," Banks posted on Instagram. "It was probably some weird threesome sex shit to being with."

im barry bethel

Quote from: Blumf on August 17, 2018, 10:39:12 AM
Why would Tesla be any different? It really is a tough market.

Ford and VW entered as volume manufacturers, rather than try and build a marque business Musk should have built an OEM business supplying the drivetrain and batteries to established manufacturers who are already tooled to manage volume production, but that wouldn't sit well with his ego.

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on August 17, 2018, 11:41:35 AM
And yet the hype around teslas probably gave all those manufacturers a massive kick up the arse.

Maybe at the higher end. The bigger kick up the arse for the industry was VW's diesel scandal kickstarting their electric focus and everyone else scrambling to cover them off.


Blumf

Quote from: im barry bethel on August 17, 2018, 05:06:55 PM
Ford and VW entered as volume manufacturers

Yeah, 115 and 81 years ago respectively. Not exactly a fair comparison, the market was very different back then. Try finding a successful entry since 2003.

Quoterather than try and build a marque business Musk should have built an OEM business supplying the drivetrain and batteries to established manufacturers who are already tooled to manage volume production, but that wouldn't sit well with his ego.

As has been pointed out, the major car brands were not really engaged with full electric until Tesla showed there was a market for it. Lip service and dabbling with electric, hydrogen, and the odd bit of hybrid, whilst the majority of R&D was being spent on refinement to the ICE (part of the reason why they've been so slow to bring out full electric is the sunk cost on that). So who would a Tesla OEM be selling to back in 2003?

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Blumf on August 17, 2018, 10:39:12 AM
Sad fact of capitalist life means Tesla have to aim for the rich people market first - low volume, high cost. You can't just jump into high volume, low cost. That takes a lot of time, investment, development and, learning. Tesla are famously struggling with medium volume, medium cost with their Model 3, and that's around £30k, BMW 3 series money, not Ford Focus.

Put it another way, how many low price brands have entered the market in the past few decades with completely new models? Dacia is just old Renaults, Daewoo never managed to stick, Geely are struggling to make any impact with their range, despite cheap Chinese labour, and have instead started buying up premium brands (i.e. low volume, high price). Similar story with SAIC.

Why would Tesla be any different? It really is a tough market.

That's 'cos daewoo just bought a mk2 astra factory and kept making them.

im barry bethel

Quote from: Blumf on August 17, 2018, 05:24:29 PM
Yeah, 115 and 81 years ago respectively. Not exactly a fair comparison, the market was very different back then. Try finding a successful entry since 2003.

As has been pointed out, the major car brands were not really engaged with full electric until Tesla showed there was a market for it. Lip service and dabbling with electric, hydrogen, and the odd bit of hybrid, whilst the majority of R&D was being spent on refinement to the ICE (part of the reason why they've been so slow to bring out full electric is the sunk cost on that). So who would a Tesla OEM be selling to back in 2003?

Toyota and Honda both had full electric models way before Tesla, which in itself was a knock off of the GM effort, instead of letting Toyota and Daimler in on all his shiney secrets then letting them go off and develop market and sell in numbers he should have worked with the manufacturers instead of competing. Tesla was and should have remained a technology r&d outfit not a manufacturer, two different worlds for a company of that size

Sebastian Cobb

In fairness didn't he release a load of patents for decent battery tech and stuff?

Urinal Cake

The best thing for Tesla is to get bought out by a GM, Ford etc as a performance brand. Let Musk do his Mars thing

Musk was an important example regarding the possibilities of electric power but when you make Azaelia Banks seem reasonable you've jumped the shark.

Blumf

Quote from: im barry bethel on August 17, 2018, 06:36:53 PM
Toyota and Honda both had full electric models way before Tesla,

So did the milk board. Low range, slow, and ugly, whilst still being expensive. Unsurprisingly, they didn't sell, who'd have thought?

Quotewhich in itself was a knock off of the GM effort

You mean the one, that was fairly popular but then they suddenly withdrew and scrapped.

You seem to be under the misapprehension that electric cars are somehow new. But they've been around since the start of motoring history. Some of the first land speed record holders were electric. Pointing out earlier version doesn't change the fact that at the start of this century, major brands were not interested.

Quoteinstead of letting Toyota and Daimler in on all his shiney secrets then letting them go off and develop market and sell in numbers he should have worked with the manufacturers instead of competing. Tesla was and should have remained a technology r&d outfit not a manufacturer, two different worlds for a company of that size

And we're back to the fact that mainstream brands were not interested in developing EVs at the start of the century. Who would a Tesla OEM sell to? Very simple question.

Show me a BMW electric from 2000, a Mercedes, an Audi, a Ford, a Vauxhall (GM having stopped production, and were about to scrap all their EVs), None of the big names were interested. All their R&D was focused on the ICE, with lip service paid to anything vaguely electric.

The Jap brands, to their credit were at least trying with hybrid tech. I believe the Nissan Leaf is the number one EV currently, so it's paying off for them, and they didn't need Tesla's help. Who'd have thought? Some companies put the time and effort into developing new tech, and it happens. Other companies don't and nothing happens until they've been shown up. But hey, we got to put urea in our diesel engines, so that was the 90s and 00s R&D well spent.

Sebastian Cobb

There was also the Gee Wizz I suppose.

Blue Jam


Sebastian Cobb

Funny that smoke-and-mirrors libertarian tech bros need drugs to sleep at night.