Tesla fan sites propagate fake news of chip joint venture, but why? | Hacker News Reader

Tesla fan sites propagate fake news of chip joint venture, but why?

electrek.co

85 pointsimartin2k39 comments

Might be a setup for a financial scam within China (so they can point to western sources to support their claim). So it doesn't need to convince us in the west as long as somebody who doesn't speak English well believes it there.

Also need to hire a drunk, old ex-pat and put him in a suit.

It's because there's a weird cottage industry that has sprung up to write fluff about Tesla and launder their press releases. Their intended audiences are not discerning enough to know the difference or care, and evidently, they are not discerning enough to make wise investments given Tesla's comical market cap in comparison to the rest of the industry.

This "news" makes it sound like Tesla is doing something big and important, so these "news" blogs just repeat it without looking into it in the slightest.

I'm willing to bet that if you sent one of these blogs a convincing enough press release about anything that makes Telsa look good, they would publish something about it within a day.

I was assuming this would be a pump-and-dump scheme. What's even the point if there's not a penny stock with that name?

They were pumping TSLA.

If, after looking at the Annex website, it takes you longer than 10 seconds to figure out it's a scam, I have some investment opportunities for you.

On a serious note, take a look at the CPU picture on the front page, it' clearly a photoshopped Ryzen 5 (AM4 is visible in the top right). The text on the CPU is also hilarious; CPU: single node with 128 core, 256 CPUs and 512 GB of memory. It' also diffused in GArmany, not to be confused with GErmany.

So yeah, a 100% scam, contact me about those investment opportunities if still in doubt about this one.

> Werner-von-Volkswagen-Strasse

Seems legit

It's obviously right next to Klaus-von-Bayerische-Motorenwerke-Straße.

They didn't even try to seem legit, did they?

...at the intersection with Adalbert-Audi-Ring.

Could be the old scammer tactic of screening out skeptics early.

There are multiple streets named after Werner von Braun and Werner von Siemens, so why not just take another well known German brand as your fake company’s fake address?

It makes me feel like this isn't trying to fool westerners, but rather other asians/Chinese.

Bit disappointed their US headquarters weren't at General Edison Motors Plaza.

Yeah that's just bad luck - most German companies (Siemens, Bosch, Opel, Thyssen-Krupp, Daimler etc. etc.) are named after people, but they picked Volkswagen, one of the few that isn't...

The phone number "49 (400) 817-0525" is even more exciting. Germany is 49, that's correct, but Munich's area code is not 400, but 89.

Just to nitpick, we Germans love to, country prefix for Germany is +49 / 0049. They also got the postal code wrong, Germany uses 5 digits, multiple ones for each city. For some reason I didn't find the correct zip code for the Werner-von-Volkswagen-Strasse...

I don't know how many times I've been asked for a resume, and when I check?

The recruiter's business address is a fake one in some random US city. When questioned as to why, they ghost.

So apparently making up addresses very poorly, is fashionable.

AI generated?

The Volkswagens were originally humble wagonmakers but were granted a title of nobility by Ludwig II of Bavaria after they won a competition for the most beautiful swan-shaped carriage.

The fourth generation of the family later took an interest in exploring insect forms rather than waterfowl.

Also, naming Würselen on the list of locations is really interesting. This is a basically a meaningless small town apart from hosting NVidias Headquarters in Germany.

Würselen on its own is mostly meaningless, except for the fact that it's right beside Aachen (which is a city with a rather important university) - similar to, let's say, Redmond and Seattle?

Werner-von-Siemens-Strasse does exist, though!

It may not be the 'Tesla' we know. "Tesla Motors Limited" holds 5% of Annex, but the official subsidiaries of Tesla Inc. in China are named 'Tesla', not "Tesla Motors Limited". There a ton of companies named 'Tesla' in China.

My suspicion would be that this was a legend to back a face to face scam, perhaps seeking investment in the fictional company so that they can pursue this venture.

The Zurich Fund website is hosted on godaddy, which is a big warning sign in itself. It's a Wordpress site if you try /wp-admin, unfortunately it has directory listing turned off on /wp-uploads and similar.

Very few professional tech companies would ever host on godaddy. They might self-host, use AWS, azure, google, and similar. But never go with shared hosting!

Money laundering? Intelligence front? Maybe someone tried to create a legend and Tesla fans noticed it too early?

Another option: Say you want to fake your way into C-level positions. Is it out of the question that you could invest a couple of years into creating a fake success career by making up such firms and then mention them in your CV?

Yes, but "Werner-von-Volkswagen-Strasse". On the other hand, who knows. Stupider things have worked, many times before.

"Tesla blogs" make it sound like those are official company blogs but they're just a bunch of fan sites.

This is a very important distinction to make. "Tesla fan blogs" would be a better description than "Tesla blogs".

If they were official, it would read “Tesla’s blogs.”

To be fair, Tesla's version of official is a tweet from the Chief Twit.

Ok, we've put fan sites up there. Thanks!

Perhaps the news companies attempting to show that the new citizen journalists also do not check their sources?

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