Elon Musk Becomes First Trillionaire as SpaceX Starts Trading
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
What, exactly, is the "next level new accelerated technology"? That's a lot of hype-y buzzwords, but what does it mean? What's the actual technology?
Starlink? I mean, we already have internet. Is Starlink that much better, to deserve this glowing description?
Or is it some other tech? If so, what is it?
If you can write that glowingly, can you put some substance behind it? Or is it just hype?
- John Maynard Keynes
> My only regret in life, is that I did not drink more champagne
Company literally does not make money, and his other major company is getting dumpstered in its market too.
The stock price reflects the potential of the business in the future as well as its current concrete value.
if that's the reason, why people invest in amazon then since Amazon literally need 20 years for that company to be profitable
because they are not targeting dividend that's why, they expect the exponential growth by re-investing profit to grow the business at scale
we literally live in YC subs where (almost)every startup isn't profitable either but VC still invest, I wonder why you write this
The real profits will eventually come from selling a McMansion on Elysium.
This video is basically saying that cooking data centers in space is possible. It is.
The question is if it's better, in any way, to putting them on earth. It isn't.
The common misconception I see is that people think that space is cold like Antarctica is cold. It isn't. Antarctica is cold because there is lots of matter, very cold. Space is cold because there is no matter. No matter to put the heat into and take it away.
It's the same reason that a hard boiled egg takes minutes to cook in water, but 30 to cook in the oven. Now put it in a vacuum insulated thermos and see how long it takes to cook.
Radiation is the weakest of the three heat transfer modes. So much so that in engineering school we often cross it off as negligible compared to the other two (convection and conduction).
Do the heat transfer math yourself, let us know what you find.
One of the comments on the YouTube video you linked says it best. " The only reason to do this is if you have a company who's business is to get things into space".
Instead of just stating “it won’t work” why don’t you actually do the calculation yourself and show why it won’t work?
Yes they have an incentive to put things in space, but it actually is a decent idea if they can execute on it the same way they did with Starlink. There’s huge demand for compute, many data center projects on earth are being scuttled because of NIMBYs and lack of power, there are no NIMBYs in space and a sun synchronous orbit means you can power them without batteries.
This talk will help put it in perspective: https://californiaconsultants.org/event/energy-and-thermal-m...
In order to talk about these things we need to think about the power from the grid, all the way to the cooling water coming out. Not just talk about how we can calculate or optimize each little piece. Of course we can do that, it's the overall system we are talking about and need to understand.
Forest for the trees.
What do I mean by that here?
He does the calculations for 20 kW. Which sounds like a lot. It's only enough to cool one node, not one rack, one node, in a modern data center. The starlink satellite he referenced is viewed as the absolute most modern thermal design in a satellite.
Most data centers have 2000-5000 nodes and the hyperscalers have 100,000 or more.
So to replace a single data center we need 2000-5000 of these things up there, at a minimum, or one thing that is 2000-5000 times bigger.
And maintenance.
And the hardware gets obsoleted every few years.
Or you could just put it in the desert in Nevada. But we don't need rockets to get there.
You know he's not going to sleep with you, right?
A lot of these modern bubble stocks are underpinned by a bunch of intangible collectibility reasons that realistically only exist because of a huge cash glut in the US stock market.
Maybe it goes on for a long time, but realistically as baby boomers start drawing down on their retirement portfolios and/or dying there's reason to believe money will start leaving the markets in the next 20ish years.
I wish my country had a trillionaire. That would give my day to day life meaning
If he actually tried to sell it and turn it into cash it would be less than $1T.
For the uber rich it is called "buy-borrow-die".
And this is why the idea of a wealth tax has so many tres comas types up in arms.
Income has a specific definition if you want to be pedantic, and types of income are always taxed.
If you have a 401(k), yes. It's a way to turn a 25% credit card debt into a 5% loan.
The hitch is that while you can pay the credit card company over 30 years, the 401(k) loan is less than a decade, resulting in higher payments short-term, but money saved in the long term.
I have never once understood this "oh it is only paper money" argument.
The exchange regulations have just been inexplicably loosened a month ago to allow this circus to happen. Beforehand, a company would have to show profitability and stability and wouldn't be allowed to be listed on an index for at least a year after its IPO.
So there is no wonder why the price is as it is. Perfect scam for wallstreet and the little guy get screwed so even better.
Meanwhile, here in our little tech bubble, we pretend it's not happening -- that he's not spending half the day amplifying some of the literal worst people on Earth and blathering about how immigrants are coming to rape our culture. Just focus on the IPO. Don't look behind the curtain.
Where is a good chunk of this newfound money going to go? Into the pockets of AfD, Reform, and other far-right monsters around the world.
It's all just... abhorrent. Beyond words. Regretfully, I start to understand the state of society that can foment revolution. Never before have I felt such impotent fury at the state of things.
I can only hope his career ends as Ruggiu's once did: in shackles in front of an international tribunal.
I feel second hand embarrassment for all the bankers and analysts who have felt the need to pump this
Right now there are a few stories on "/newest" calling out what is going on. A few of them:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48514107
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48513464
Also plenty of people upvote these stories when they come up. Yes, most of them are not welcomed by the HN moderating rules/team, and yes a large portion of them get death-flagged.
But please do not disregard the people silently doing something about it. It only reinforces the lie that "people who care about democracy" are outliers and alone. No we are not!
What does it take to make someone persona non grata in SV tech? Absolutely nothing, as long as they keep bringing in the big bucks. Nazi salutes, incitement of racial violence, thousands dead from starvation and cut-off medical care -- doesn't matter in the slightest. In a functioning society, Musk would not be able to go anywhere without being swarmed by protestors.
A few more things that can give you perspective:
"Hope can be the consequence of action, not just its cause" https://youtu.be/WK6kRaBzbg4?t=114
https://feld.com/archives/2017/10/hope-consequence-action/
Elon Cancelled This...Let's Do it Anyway https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxmqTLps334
Finally, sometimes we just need a break. It is OK to take a break. Do not burn yourself out. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Finally, to quote a historian, "You're always in history, and your choices matter" (src: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFbzg_bp-Q0)