X’s director of engineering, Haofei Wang, has left the company
theverge.com
theverge.com
In a way, I value Elon more than the rest, since he has no filters, what you see is what you get, unlike the rest who are walking PR machines, saying one thing while meaning and doing another. The devil you know is better than the ones you don't.
These are not your kind of years, procrastinating underperforming you cannot judge.
He's in the public eye because PR is one of his primary skills. He constantly says one thing and does another, just that his following is such that people believe him and do significant internal justifications and contradictions to do so. Musk leads the marketing hype of his companies, which consistently promise one thing and deliver another. He's doing the same with DOGE. Tesla FSD is not going to be delivered in 2017. Mars is not going to be colonized by 2050. Elon Musk lies, a lot, and a large number of people's identities involve celebrating each of those lies.
Indeed. At this point, he's a real world manifestation of an Instagram influencer: 'You'll be wealthy with these 3 tricks!' (ignores thousands of hours off-camera or how money was really made)
I'd much rather live in a world where the fascist lying sociopaths are under societal pressure to hide their true selves, rather than the one where they can openly do Nazi salutes and threaten to jail their political opponents. Give me the walking PR machine any day.
I have never heard this before, but it's an interesting perspective given some of his less coherent actions (tarriffs for you! Oh wait no, actually wait have some more tarriffs).
Also, your premise is flawed. CEOs get a lot of justifiable hate, and yes, many surely wish for employees devoted to the business, rather than proportionally devoted to each aspect of their life. However, there are also plenty of CEOs who genuinely don't want employees to work overtime. And Musk's attitude is arrogant/authoritarian even by the standards of less reasonable CEOs.
did you know that in EU way back in imperial times some of the worker protection rules where not introduced by angry workers by companies which realized that having well rested and healthy worker will long term produce much better results and then countries following up by enforcing it to boost their countries productivity (and internal stability)?
(and yes I _very_ grossly oversimplified it including lumping all EU countries together even through they had very different inner political histories)
The reason I'm pointing it out is because recently some people seem to be forgetting that at the core a lot of work protection isn't rooted in "being social/nice to your citizens" but in "having a more internal stable and international competitive" country.
Paypal? X even?
I am totally not hardcore, I value my free time, but driving the staff like this seems to have worked very well for Musk's companies.
If I drive my workers to various flavors (emotional, physical, etc) of failure to succeed economically, are you going to look up to me? If so, you've failed the litmus test. Progress is nice, but so is a reasonable balance for our short existence on this rock. Be Woz, not Jobs or Musk.
(high empathy human, early TSLA investor, own Teslas, know people at SpaceX, etc)
If Europe wants to be "more internal[ly] stable and international[ly] competitive", then its 40-hour-per-week, 5-weeks-holiday-per-year companies have to compete with Tesla, Spacex, Paypal, X etc.
And they are clearly failing to do so.
What has US tech built that Europe needs? Europe has services and great quality of life, the US has performance art capitalism paperclip maximizing for shareholder returns and is a third world country [1] [2] [3], broadly speaking. The race is not what you think it is. What are you building for? To just keep grinding or building? Or for people to live happy, healthy lives at scale? Engineering is fun, and leads to progress, but it is a means to an end, not the point of life.
[1] https://worldhappiness.report/
[2] https://dashboards.sdgindex.org/rankings
[3] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/a-visual-breakdown-of-who-o...
Bosch has been building EV’s for literal years. Just because they’re selling them as parts doesn’t mean they’re incapable.
Oh, come on.
And you are confusing personal happiness with company success. Europe prioritises the former, at the expense of the latter.
> Oh, come on.
I stand by my assertion.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43471675 ("Even if I was programming Starship's flight computers, I would miss my family too much to work more than 40 hours per week. Regardless of really believing in their work, people want to have time with their loved ones.")
There's a reason the British industrial revolution was funded by new, sugar/slave-trade money -- because it went to people open to investing in this new, weird steam power thing.
in addition many of them did end up where they are by taking advantage of a major technological change, while being quasi subventioned, while being in a huge country which has until recently exported it's culture and tech, while systematically breaking all kinds of (non employee protection related) laws and regulations (including US laws/regulations, through seldomly with consequences in the US)
there is little which indicates that mistreating your employees was overly relevant for them to get where they are in most cases
actually it's even the opposite to some degree, multiple of the US mega corps have been known to be quite good employers (e.g. MS, Google). Microsoft was also one of the first huge companies which tried out a 32h week in some of their offices (and the results of that study indicated that it was leading to improvements).
and in general I think most people have no issues with highly payed highly skilled people "working hard like crazy" if
- it's well payed (i.e. you work "crazily hard" a few years and then can lay back for years after
- it's fully free of your choice to end up there
- you are also fully free to leave if you realize it's hitting your health to hard
Like company founders working "crazily hard" at the start of their journey is as normal in the EU as it's in the US. And paying people which work "crazily hard" extra, often in form of annual Bonus payments, is also in some markets not that uncommon in the EU. Also jobs which people very often don't do for more then a few years, because it's just not healthy.
But what Musk is pursing is so far beyond that on the unhealthy spectrum.
And a more normal employees has to be able to work their job without larger gap for like what 50 years at least. That just isn't compatible with "working crazily hard".
But Musk is just an extreme example of what you see in in general more in the US:
Indirectly force people to work harder then long term substainable and when it start causing chronic issues take "medicine" to fix it.
And then be surprised if your country has pain killer/drug addiction epidemic which doesn't just affect the people which did fall through society but like all levels of society.
And wrt. internal stability, have you looked at the US recently!? It's more unstable then it ever has been since the civil war.
Basically: 1) you select your bank at the checkout; 2) you're redirected to the bank's payment page with a QR code; 3) you scan the code from your banking app and confirm it; 4) the bank redirects back the merchants page with the payment status confirmed/declined. No payment processor involved and the money goes straight from your account to merchant's account.
For the financial systems version of straight away (2-3 business days, weekends & holidays excluded) ;)
Edit: Then why did you put a question mark at the end of a statement of fact instead of a period? What he said was true, has been true for a long time in fact (not just Europe, but a lot of the rest of the world), and you can easily google for evidence if you don't believe him, without questioning his honesty. Were you honestly that surprised that you had to ask?
The US lags so far behind other so-called "third world countries" not only in banking, but also health care, freedom from gun violence and school shootings, and now also civil rights and freedom of speech and democracy. I don't think Canada or Greenland would vote to give up their advantages and freedoms to become US states, but if they did, they sure wouldn't vote for the current administration.
I am not even sure why you were putting words like shocking, surprised, skeptical seemingly into my response. None of these are accurate descriptions of my question and response.
I hope you are doing OK because it seems like you are struggling with something.
We prioritize the private sector politically and there’s a lot of benefits, and a lot of detriments, to this.
One of the downsides is we have hundreds of more or less identical companies doing the same thing that don’t need to exist. This breeds inefficiency into systems we use, thereby opening the door for even more useless companies that just reduce friction. Friction that we decided we needed to have.
The most obvious example is healthcare in the US, but every industry experiences these detriments.
Stripe has a list of what they support: https://stripe.com/en-dk/pricing/local-payment-methods
And now because of that, there's lobbying against direct bank transfers and capping of interchange fees.
I mean, the US should definitely improve their bank2bank stuff and implement FedNow (I think that's what it's called) but there's less pressure to do so as basically everyone has and accepts credit cards (not true in lots of Western Europe).
through what matters is that in the end you can pay on most EU sites without having either paypal or a credit card
so that use case really doesn't need paypal
and for the p2p money sending you need it even less
and if you buy stuff from outside of the EU you most times can pay with both paypal or credit card, so if you have a credit card you don't need paypal for that either
https://wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this/episode/10386-pay...
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/affirm-max-levchin-par...
He didn't create it, it was a (pre-release) working thing when his company (which was failing at building an online bank) merged. He was made CEO, and spent his tenure trying to throw away the working app because it was Java on Solaris for ASP because that's what he knew.
Four months in, he gets married. The BoD attends his wedding on the Saturday, and on the Monday morning when he leaves for his honeymoon, they fire him in absentia. Not "other priorities", "family time", but "fired on your honeymoon".
Since then, most of Musk's "contribution" to PayPal has been cashing the dividend checks.
It’s like a cash advance on a credit card. Great for getting 500 bucks in your pocket, but the interest is steep.
People, like most resources, can be extended past their maximum value at the cost of longevity.
Compared to the US’s $65875, and 6.7h worked on average.
Much of that GDP per Capita for NL can be attributed to high margin industries like Oil Refining (Royal Dutch Shell, Dutch Disease), Financial Services, and Biochemicals Manufacturing [0], which are not industries where at 5.5h workday is realistic.
And once you remove part-timers, the hours worked in Netherlands are comparable to the US [1].
The bigger question should be why part-time labor participation is significantly high in Netherlands, as part-timers and youth appear to earn at least half of full-timers [1], but this could also be confounding due to age along with gender [2].
Imo this makes Netherlands' job market look similar to post 2010 Japan's labor market, which isn't a great thing.
That said, it does go to show that median income and personal living standards are not tied with GDP per Capita.
[0] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/528/export-basket
[1] - https://opendata.cbs.nl/#/CBS/en/dataset/81431ENG/table
[2] - https://theworld.org/stories/2014/10/01/why-do-so-many-peopl...
Sure, if you remove 40% of all the people working (maybe more?) then you are left with the people working full weeks. That’s… not very surprising? The point is kinda that so many people work part time that it significantly skews the average number of hours worked.
It’s kinda wonky that the average for full-time still sits at 40 hours though. I know very few people working 5 day weeks (e.g. 60 or 80%), and I’d assume they’re still classed as full-time due their contracts.
And how many of those 40% are working at an Oil Refinery owned by Shell PLC, an assay workbench owned by Solvias, or working on Clearing or ForEx at Goldman Sachs Amsterdam?
The majority of Netherlands' GDP is derived only from those kinds of activities in ONG, Biopharma, and Finance (also agricultural exports but that's a whole other story).
Not all jobs are made equal, and this is where productivity (as is defined in economics) comes to play.
It's the same in Japan with almost all economic activity being derived from automotive, medical device, and biopharma manufacturing along with financial services [0]. Most other roles are cost centers in some shape or form, and even Japanese companies have been offshoring roles not associated to those sectors to the rest of Asia.
From a competitiveness standpoint, it's not good, as it prevents other industries from being sparked and prevents economic diversification. If there's an ONG glut, or the EU signs an FTA with a major pharma manufacturer hub like China or India (as is the plan this year), or trade normalization between the EU-UK finally happens, then major sectors of the Dutch economy can become extremely wobbly, and reduce the ability to provide a social safety net, as those cost money. There's a reason why it's called "Dutch Disease".
Even the TNO [1] and CBS [2] has pointed out this issue, as the rise of part time labor in the Dutch economy seems to have been sparked by the Eurozone crisis.
> It’s kinda wonky that the average for full-time still sits at 40 hours though. I know very few people working 5 day weeks (e.g. 60 or 80%), and I’d assume they’re still classed as full-time due their contracts
If you are on HN, most of your peers are probably also working in tech or chill white collar jobs like government or back office work.
[0] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/392/export-basket
[1] - https://ioplus.nl/en/posts/dutch-productivity-growth-require...
[2] - https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2024/42/netherlands-lags-behin...
1926: Henry Ford popularized the 40-hour work week after he discovered through his research that working more yielded only a small increase in productivity that lasted a short period of time. Ford announced he would pay each worker $5 per eight-hour day, which was nearly double what the average auto worker was making that time. Manufacturers and companies soon followed Henry Ford’s lead after seeing how this new policy boosted productivity and fostered loyalty and pride among Ford’s employees.
Of course, this is a rarity. Most employee concessions in the US were earned with blood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike
TL;DR Henry Ford realized car manufacturing was a semi-skilled job, not an unskilled job, and hired and paid for it accordingly, quality went up and costs went down. It's not rocket science.
And the calculus was not just "the most skilled workers". It was also "diminishing returns".
Not sure why that matters. Enjoy your 40 hour work week 100 years later.
It wasn't a singular case.
He was principled enough about it that Dodge sued to compel him to put shareholders' interests ahead of employees and customers-- a suit Ford fought against, and lost.
You said the two words which will ensure this never happens in the US: "long term". Most companies have zero decision-makers who care about the "long term". They are not the company's stewards, they are its parasites. Despite popular belief, most American corporations are not ruthless money-making machines, they are festering husks being ruthlessly parasitized by sociopaths while they slowly sink to the bottom of the ocean.
I feel like many bosses want people to allocate more to a job, but don't offer the corresponding upside.
On the other hand, a lot of companies don't offer either and seem to believe that simply rallying the masses to put in 20% more time (on average) will somehow lead to outsized gains.
I agree, and I think that if you look back at the early dot com startups that did things like food, recreation, laundry and even housing right on-campus you'll see a culture that tried to actually meet that need in a way that doesn't seem unfair. The idea was "you give us everything you've got at work and everything else will just take care of itself". Then, as inevitable as death, came the investor class demanding more for less and eliminating the benefits with the hope that the sigma grindset would just perpetuate itself anyway.
Thread makes a good point that everyone should be evaluating their time investment in work vs. their potential upside, especially if they're sacrificing time to other aspects of life. (Relationships, family, travel, etc)
Giving everything you've got with a potential huge reward = risky but possibly worth it
Doing the same without a huge reward = you're a sucker, because your company is getting more from you than they're giving
Yeah they can. That's exactly what someone who does your laundry for you does. They give you that time back, and in exchange for some of your time (in the form of money, which for working people is never anything but time spent doing things other than what you want). If I make $70/hr and can buy an hour of doing laundry back for $20 I can work that hour instead of spending it on laundry, have the same amount of time and $50. Or I can work that hour and buy laundry three times, netting me $10 and 2 hours.
What could possibly go wrong if an employer provided everything for their employees?
One time he told me "In a bacon and eggs dish, the hen contributes but the pig really gets involved. I want all my team to be pigs".
I internally thought "yeah, but you are neither the hen or the pig, you are the guy eating the dish". I left as soon as I could.
Because either (a) the person using them really knows their shit and will have a response or (b) they're just full of shit.
So we can look forward to being asked for many unpaid favors, and a spate of domestic violence around the holidays.
"Ok, then I'll make a decision about..." "NOT LIKE THAT"
But there are absolutely different levels of work ethic and stamina between people. And I'm not even talking about willingness which obviously varies, but some people can work for 12 hours straight and some people are just physically incapable of doing it.
Regardless of really believing in their work, people want to have time with their loved ones.
Seems like an incredibly short-sighted and unsatisfying way to live your life.
Plenty of astronauts' kids and spouses are probably super proud of what their family member did, even with the sacrifices they all made.
Conflating Elon's ego into the picture is strawman-ing the question -- whether sacrifice in the service of a greater goal is worth it.
My answer? It depends, and it's everyone's own choice to make.
Why? You cannot critique the decisions of anyone? They are free to ignore me, or think I'm wrong. In respect to you points, an engineer is not a astronaut, a seaman or a pilot. You are not required due to the nature of your job to be away from your children, or sleep in the a cold floor like an animal.
Not even the quality of the work needs it, it's just so you don't hire more people. Sure, there are real emergencies were you might take a rain check with your kid once or twice a year, but a constant culture of grind is different. The whole "hardcore" mentality is cultivated because it is cheaper, the sacrifice is yours and the Elons of the world reap the rewards.
This is not mere personal choice, it's purposely engineered. The plan is that everyone in tech becomes a corporate GameDev, and like it.
LOLOL. These companies have really got some people fooled. My goodness. If you're actually sleeping on your office floor, all you're "in" is "in line for extreme burnout" and all you're "for" is "for making your CEO and shareholders wealthy."
On a more serious note, I see this as a net negative, both for employees and the company.
The bigger issue for me is that he's making decisions, ignoring (and now "canceling") regulators who prevent or minimize the impact of decisions he makes along that line to protect our QOL. Because Musk sure as hell isn't bringing along anything up to 8 billion of us with him.
I guess it either isn't enough of a slice, or the slice wasn't going to be valuable enough to deal with Elon, which is really saying something.
But, yeah, seems like just a nothing burger from the Verge.
How do you get three years from the article?
It's been like 20 months.
I haven't seen it in quite some time either, but it has been more common during previous downturns. Presumably because everyone is trying to find signals that tech is dead to support their preconceived notions.
Something went wrong... try reloading
These kinds of error messages are often a dead giveaway that a company (or product) doesn't know what it's doing. How can you know something went wrong, but not actually say what went wrong in the error message? Either 1. You don't have sufficient logging and/or error handling to know what specifically went wrong, or 2. You do know specifically what went wrong but don't know how to fix it or what to tell the user to do to fix it, or 3. You know what went wrong but are being deliberately vague with the user. None of the above are a really good look.
Getting told to "try again later" every day you try to send money through a payment app is not a useful error. (I'm not entirely sure if it's fraud protection, but I also have no idea why I couldn't send money because it won't give me any resolution steps).
People familiar with fraud protection or security may assume that the error message is related to fraud protection or security, but actual users are just going to be frustrated.
Just on the web? You have been labeled as bot and you are still using the service? This reminds me Stockholm syndrome.
But its true that toxic crap does pop up on my feed, esp. before the Presidential election, I felt it had gone haywire so I just block some triggering words though even that doesn't work at times..
And by bot, what I meant was when I did try to tweet, way too many times it says to "This action seems automated. Please try again later" or "You have reached your daily limit for this action... Please try again later" or Add your phone number to proceed (though I have done this ages ago) ... not been literally labelled as a bot.
Maybe it is stockholm syndrome... social media does seem like a way to get my fix (cut out Instagram cause of doomscrolling on an ex's profile, Reddit cause its pretty toxic too but its still good place to get some esoteric knowledge, HN has been very good, Facebook is useless unless I try to sell something... speaking of which if anyone is open to buying a 21 speed cycle in Bangalore, please DM)
I hate that stupid name.
Not much of a story to be honest.
What? I don’t get it. So almost 3 years and “growing profile” to reach the same valuation? What was the growth for?
Musk actually wanted to terminate the sale, but the twitter board chair pursued legal action to force the sale[1] at the $44 billion discussed here.
If Bret Taylor did not force Musk to pay that severely inflated price, Donald Trump would likely not be president today. Not all heros wear capes.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_Twitter_by_Elon...
As a political transaction, if anything, Musk paid very little for what he got.
Musk didn't intend to buy Twitter. That's incredibly clear from his statements in and out of court in the months leading up to the purchase. (Also, the fact that he had to be dragged into court.)
Musk being Musk, however, once he was forced to, made lemonade from lemons.
Financing stochastic terrorism ain't cheap, and a lot of innocent people get caught up in the crossfire of his personal family feuds against the "woke mind virus".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_terrorism
>Stochastic terrorism is a form of political violence instigated by hostile public rhetoric directed at a group or an individual. Unlike incitement to terrorism, stochastic terrorism is accomplished with indirect, vague or coded language, which grants the instigator plausible deniability for any associated violence. A key element of stochastic terrorism is the use of media for propagation, where the person carrying out the violence may not have direct connection to any other users of violent rhetoric.
MSNBC guest accuses Musk and Libs of TikTok of promoting 'stochastic terrorism' on Twitter. Kristofer Goldsmith claimed Elon Musk is deliberately trying to turn Twitter into a 'raging cesspool':
https://www.foxnews.com/media/msnbc-guest-musk-libs-tiktok-p...
>An MSNBC guest accused Elon Musk of promoting "stochastic terrorists" like Libs of TikTok to cultivate an "extreme far-right audience" on Twitter Monday.
>During a segment on "Deadline: White House" focused on the emergence of extremist groups in the U.S., host Nicole Wallace asked self-declared fascism-fighter Kristofer Goldsmith to discuss how Musk's purchase of Twitter has contributed to the issue.
>"Elon Musk is very deliberately cultivating an extreme far-right audience, and very specifically an anti-trans audience," Goldsmith, who serves as CEO of Veterans Fighting Fascism, responded.
>Goldsmith claimed that Twitter accounts like Libs of TikTok and Gays Against Groomers created a "trans panic" online by using "slurs to try to dehumanize trans-Americans and trans individuals abroad and say that they're predatory toward children." He also blamed them for causing alleged threats against "drag events."
>Both accounts repost others' social media content to expose members of the LGBTQ+ community and others who espouse radical views to children.
>"What they’re doing is they’re taking this like QAnon myth, their Pizzagate pedophile conspiracy theory…and they’re mainstreaming it. All through what has become one of the most, whether we like it or not, important social media platforms in existence," Goldsmith said.
>According to his website, Goldsmith, who has made frequent appearances on MSNBC, describes himself an "investigator and consultant who takes an unconventional approach to fighting against domestic fascist organizations and unlawful militias."
>Goldsmith told Wallace that he believes Musk is intentionally destroying Twitter and turning it "into a raging cesspool because Elon thinks he has something to gain from the chaos."
>"That is why he is promoting not just stochastic terrorism on his own, but he’s interacting with stochastic terrorists like Libs of TikTok and Gays Against Groomers and all of these other far-right activists who single out the trans community and the broader LGBTQ+ community with acts of violence and threats of violence," he alleged.
>Libs of TikTok, which boasts over 1.4 million followers on Twitter, was suspended six times prior to Musk's takeover for allegedly violating the platform's "hateful conduct" policy. The second installment of the "Twitter Files," revealed last week that Twitter internally acknowledged that the account had "not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy" but still proceeded with the suspensions anyway.
>The account publicly thanked Musk for giving her a sense of "vindication" by publicizing Twitter's internal communications.
>"They suspended me multiple times knowing I never violated any policies. This is what happens when you talk about things that they don’t want you to talk about," she wrote on Twitter. "So glad those days on Twitter are over. Thanks @elonmusk."
>Musk responded to her post, promising to make Twitter "much better" under his leadership.
>"You’re welcome. Twitter won’t be perfect in the future," he tweeted, "but it will be much better."
> As a political transaction, if anything, Musk paid very little for what he got.
I think the fact that he tried to get out of it, indicates that this wasn't a long term plan, though he did eventually make political use out of it.
There was no harm in trying to get out and potentially buying it at a half price. He tried and failed.
Musk is a lightning rod. Surely he must realize that after he has served his purpose, he will be cast aside and likely end up imprisoned if not worse, right?
Have people paid no attention to what happens to almost everyone in Trump's orbit? In Musk's case it will be hugely politically valuable to use him as a sponge for anger, pretend that he was free-ranging, and cast him aside. Therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. We've seen this pattern with Trump time and time again, and it's amazing that Musk seems so completely delusional about this guaranteed outcome.
This is not to say that there won’t be a breakup, there may yet be. But it seems like Musk was able to parlay his Twitter investment into tremendous direct influence over the government, a pearl without price. I don’t know that he ever cared whether Twitter made money or not.
If Trump turned his cult against Musk, Musk would be done. Immediately all of the bootlickers and retweeters would deride everything Musk has said or done. Musk's money would be meaningless, and he'd be the next "Soros" in their minds.
Musk clearly cares incredibly about whether Twitter makes money, and has been desperately flailing around to try to make it viable. They're currently suing advertisers who don't advertise there, which is farcical. Musk really believed his grand "we'll be your bank!" thing would be some simple thing (because everything is super easy to do for someone who doesn't actually understand or do any of it)
Musk is very exposed to Trump now: he needs pardons or abeyance of enforcement for DOGE, all of his companies are exposed to multiple regulators, and he depends on government contracts. A lot of the money he throws around in politics is leveraged on his stock holdings, so a regulatory move which affects that would also cut into his ability to fight back.
In contrast, while Trump was somewhat addicted to X he doesn’t need it after the election the way he did before and he’s shifted a lot to Truth Social. Before the election, he depended on Musk’s money but he’s been taking in a huge war chest which he can use to keep Republicans in line, too.
Both have absolutely colossal egos. Both demand being the centre of attention at all times, and both have a weird Mafioso "family dynasty" thing going on. I mean, look at Musk dropping in on various Trump meetings. I don't think you could say he was being sycophantic at all, but quite contrary is giving off major "these are my employees" energy.
Add that Musk is increasingly whiny. He's starting to realize that the people aren't going to love him for the things he is doing, and he's realizing this isn't the long term advantage he thinks.
At some point, sooner rather than later, they're going to disagree on something. It might not even be a big thing. Or maybe Trump will just decide it's political capital to jettison Musk during some crisis or other. The egos will clash, Musk will be declared a "RINO" (like almost 100% of Trump's first cabinet and underlings) and every protection will evaporate.
Musk's "favorability rating" is collapsing (currently -19 and dropping). He is a sponge taking all of the negativity, and once he has absorbed enough he's going to get jettisoned.
This matters less than you think. Trump has no problem setting aside his ego to further his agenda. Remember his leaked calls with the Mexican president? Remember his submission to Putin in Helsinki? His entire cabinet is made up of people who have trashed him, his own VP called him literally the next Hitler. Trump acts very rationally when it comes to power dynamics, casting off Elon only creates problems for him, no benefits.
> but quite contrary is giving off major "these are my employees" energy.
That's just the vibes you're picking up, Trump doesn't care about this, he's the one sitting at the desk. What he cares about is the unending stream of praise that Elon glazes him with. "Trump was right about everything", "Trump is the greatest president ever", walking around in Trump swag etc etc. Allowing Musk to crash a couple meetings with the press means nothing.
> and he's realizing this isn't the long term advantage he thinks
Elon is all-in, he's burned every other bridge, a Trump alliance is the only long-term advantage he has.
> Musk's "favorability rating" is collapsing (currently -19 and dropping).
Except with Trump's base, where it has climbed from -10 to +50. There is close to 0 possibility of Elon being jettisoned.
Everything Trump does -- on geopolitics, trade, business, law -- is 100% based upon his ego. Trump's bizarre hostility towards Canada and Europe is not based upon reality, it's based upon how Trump feels they have treated him (look at Trump's endless attacks on Canada...while the US has a $100B trade deficit with Vietnam of all places). Zelensky has thanked Americans and America endlessly, but to Trump and his puppy Vance, it's about thanking them personally.
Trump's ego is the root of literally everything the US does now. The world power being led based upon this clown's mafiosa type behaviour, which apparently the majority of America is happy to go along with. The guy sharpies maps and lies with every utterance if it serves his ego (in a manner that breaks the average person's brain, unable to comprehend that someone could be so insanely deceptive always, so they assume he surely can't be and it must be everyone and reality that is wrong). He holds laughable fake golf championships, that he of course wins on every outing. He posts fake man of the year magazine covers. It would be laughable if it wasn't so profoundly tragic.
All of the members of Trump's team have to subjugate themselves and metaphorically lick his toes at every meeting, in a scene that would make North Korea look on with shame.
EDIT: The US government just published the DNS for trumpcard.gov, likely for their "sell citizenship for $5M" hilarious plan. For anyone to seriously downplay this sociopath's extraordinary ego and need to be pandered to constantly is amazing.
>"Trump was right about everything"
Surely you realize that Musk's actual message was that he, Musk, was right about everything, right? Musk is happily going with this Trump is my puppet thing, and nonsense like this is Musk making it his own and about himself. Similar to how he often wears a black MAGA hat, because he's trying to make the cult his own. He won't succeed.
>Except with Trump's base, where it has climbed from -10 to +50. There is close to 0 possibility of Elon being jettisoned.
Sure, in the same way that Republicans suddenly hate Zelensky. The cult will follow whatever the cult leader demands.
With every passing month those big DOGE savings aren't going to materialize -- oh the excitement they all had for those imaginary $5000 DOGE savings checks they would get -- government will continue to fall apart, trade wars will put millions out of work and stagflation is going to go nuts, Americans will realize they are a global pariah (hey, but they've got El Salvador and Russia, so there's that), and things will turn really quickly. Musk will be an easy bit of chum to toss in the water. Trump loses nothing.
We'll revisit this. Musk absolutely will not last the term, and I doubt he'll make it to midterms. And when he is jettisoned, he should realize the outrageous, perilous danger he will be in.
You don’t think it helps his ego to bring these folks to heel? To make Marco Rubio preside over the destruction of a foreign policy system he personally values?
> Except with Trump's base, where it has climbed from -10 to +50.
The same folks suddenly hate Canada. They swing, wildly. The core principle is “what is Trump saying today” - what he said yesterday is unimportant.
If Trump turns on Musk, so will they.
The idea that X had any influence on the election is laughable.
2. Even if it were somehow representative, is it more plausible that all of these people were on X getting these ideas (a platform that is small relative to other media), or that these ideas were simply blasted everywhere?
3. And even if it were somehow representative, and they did get those ideas from X, what makes you think that not having those ideas "false" ideas would have changed the election outcome [1]? People more often use "facts" to justify political positions they've already made, not the other way around.
[1] https://time.com/7263845/facts-dont-matter-misinformation-es...
Likewise, the idea that a hammer has influence on building a house is laughable. But, of course, that is not what was said. It was said that Elon Musk had influence, helped by tools like X.
I fully expect that "Elon is gonna come and clean up all the useless jobs in government just like he did at X!" won a lot of votes. So, while X itself has no influence – it is inanimate, it was undoubtedly an important tool in allowing Musk to achieve the influence he offered.
> it was undoubtedly an important tool in allowing Musk to achieve the influence he offered.
I doubt it completely, mainly because there is no evidence of this, but please do cite the evidence that convinced you of this. Until then, I'll consider the most plausible scenario to be that this is a convincing story you've told yourself because social media is likely a big part of your life, and the lives of your immediate social circle, so of course you would think it was important, despite X/Twitter's relative unimportance compared to other social media.
Sure. I can agree that "He used a hammer to help build that house" and "A hammer was an integral part of building that house" can be taken to mean the same thing. So it follows that X was an integral part of getting Trump elected by way of Musk using it to convince people that he has some kind of skill in hacking and slashing jobs and thus is able to do the same in government.
> mainly because there is no evidence of this
You didn't hear Trump say that he would call upon Musk to do reduce government – what at some point was labelled DOGE? In fact, he even followed through with it! This is all news to you?
> this is a convincing story you've told yourself because social media is likely a big part of your life
It was a convincing story reported in the mainstream press. I don't live in the US, so maybe it has all been made up – I'm not there to witness anything else, but that seems highly unlikely. Methinks you've been listening to Donald for too long if you are calling "fake news" here. We in my country still believe that the press has credibility. But if you know something else to be the case that contradicts what was reported, logically it is you who should be telling me. Me "proving" it to you makes no sense. You clearly didn't think that one through.
“Tremendous power” you say?
This is why he wanted to backout. The metrics had changed, by no fault of Twitter or him.
I think people completely forgot about this part: After the initial offer he tried to back out of it, saying Twitter wasn't actually worth that much. Twitter sued Musk to force the deal through, and it was finalized after months in court.
In fairness, that was a frothy time for stocks. Twitter stock price was at an unsustainable price (IMHO) when he bought it.
Not saying that they aren’t competitors, but it is more like they have been out-executed by Meta even before Musk’s acquisition. Way before.
To be more fair, any company being compared to FB would mostly look worse.
All of these numbers are fantasy. Similarly Musk has been giving lenders stakes in "xAI" as well to compensate for the eventual failure of their loans, and again that is being reported as X debt losing its discount.
Everything in US equities is absolute farce, especially anything that involves Elon Musk. It's all fantasy numbers.
Exactly. Then you would also agree that the entire startup industry, especially these AI startups are beyond overvalued.
What matters is when it all crashes down to reality.
Considering that was probably all Elon's money, he could've priced the round any way he wanted.
Same for all Elon stuff ... Poor Elon
Last year I would have been be proud to works for SpaceX, today I will not accept an offered Tesla -_-'
I enjoy the product, but wish they'd spend more time making the core elements of the product work. For example, aspects of the API just don't work as expected, like for some reason search and mention endpoints do not have support for long form posts (>280 characters) enough though X supports posts with thousands of characters. The result is the API appears to work for some posts and just silently fails for others.
In addition to the API issues, we've struggled with inexplicable labeling/suspension and shadow banning, even on the personal account I've had for over a decade (seemed to be triggered by using my VPN). I understand the desire to control spam, but it seems excessive. Or if you do it excessively, at least provide adequate tools/support to request review.
On my app's X account I paid for both API access ($200/mo) and the Verified Org status ($2,000) and had a hard time getting support that took days to reply, when it did reply at all. And when the person replied they had nothing to do with the account label process, so weren't able to help, which was quite frustrating. It was fine since this was a little side project, but if this was a business at scale and I was paying that much in addition to ad spend I'd be furious.
Anyway, I know nothing about the Head of Eng or what's at the root of these issues, but I'm a big fan of X and hope they're able to fix these things. It's such. valuable tool. I'm even fine if it's pay to play, but if someone is on the higher tiers of your paid plans the support should be available when they need it.
At the risk of sounding blunt, they probably fired the people who actually built the API at Twitter and it's now (internally) in maintenance mode. They very openly don't care about giving other companies data -- even with the new pricey API tiers -- or making the non-app/-website experience good at all. I doubt any of the new item types -- Articles, ordered media in tweets, etc. -- even have an API exposed.
I think it might be worth stepping back and thinking about what the core elements of the product is. Not just with X, but with with all social media.
Personally I've migrated from thinking 'damn this is broken' to 'oh thats a feature not a bug'. I'm embarassed how long this really took me across a lot of platforms, but when I stopped thinking about my needs as driving product design decisions it all was less frustrating (albeit more disturbing).
"Do it somewhere else" is just as bad a piece of advice as you would think "integrate with X" is.
Genuine question: what value are people finding on X these days? I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, but I gave up on the site due to the rampant toxicity awhile ago. Are people just highly curating their feeds?
It started to feel like going to a trash dump with the intention of finding things that aren’t trash. Perhaps possible, but extremely smelly and occasionally the cause of a bed bug infestation.
There are still a few Nitter instances running, so I use a web browser to check up on a few individuals (journalists, economists) sporadically.
(I don't have any apps from The Socials installed on my phone (and never have): always web-based lurking.)
I know myself well enough to know that it'd be a bad idea for me. I have enough issues with screen time as it is, I don't need it in my pocket as well.
I find value in:
1. Good ML accounts that allow me to stay up to date. Didn't find such concentration of them anywhere else, even after some have left. This is what mostly keeps me there.
2. Current info about the russian aggression from a few trusted accounts, mostly in ukrainian. Again, as I don't want to use Telegram, it's hard to find those in other places, though some good ones are also on Mastodon and Bsky.
https://bsky.app/profile/emollick.bsky.social/post/3lku5ei5l...
I've be working to relearn math and there happens to be a large group of others also doing the same with Math Academy and sharing daily updates on X.
I found this inspiring (especially as the lessons got harder) so I tweeting my updates too. But I also wanted a way to independently track my progress across math and other areas to see progress over time, even if I changed tools or stopped tweeting.
So that's the reason I built app on X: So my tweets get logged in a GitHub-like habit graph to show progress over time. It just pulled my bio/profile from X (login with X) and tracks my habit tweets. It's super simple, but meets my needs perfectly. My habit page: https://xtreeks.com/gabemays
I understand the questions around the long-term stability of the API, but I'm optimistic.