_louisr_

  Tesla also would not have survived without
  government money.

And Tesla is one of two American car companies that have never gone bankrupt & taken government bailouts.

  other car companies ... make and sell far
  more cars every year than Tesla has made
  since its founding.

Just looking at some data here [1][2] Tesla sold more model 3s in 2018 year-to-date than all of

1. Hyundai Accents in 2017

2. All Smartcars in any of recent years

3. Subaru Imprezas (excluding WRX/STI) in 2016

4. All Jaguars in recent years

5. Infiniti G-35s in 2013

6. Lexus ES in 2015

To have better sales than Tesla Model 3, you basically have to be a Nissan Sentra, Toyota Prius, Honda Civic, Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, Toyota Corolla, or some other extremely well-known line of cars from a reputable brand.

[1]https://insideevs.com/tesla-model-3-sales-epic-august/ [2]http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/hyundai/hyundai-ac...

Who cares what these dead media companies have to say? Journalism in the 21st century has a glut of integrity, passion, and ethics. Elon Musk has an outsized amount of every one of those traits. I don't want to hear a snippet of a heated board room conversation; I don't want to read a rumor about who the next chairman of Tesla could be; I don't want to read any sanctimonious, scowling & contemptuous trash about men so great it boggles the mind. Wake up, 21st century San Fransisco dwelling technophiles & web developers: We have an enormous glut of people willing to stand up for truth, freedom, and greatness in America, and maybe we should all cover for our great men when they misstep instead of sneering about their personal lives or "erratic behaviour". We are a country of individuals and we would do well to police our criticisms of the rare individual who can do the thing that needs to be done - accelerate the transition to sustainable energy.

Comments on "the cult of Musk" or speculations be damned.

Oh, my mistake then.

I'm glad that this article has hot takes from two random investors! One says Elon has a 25% chance of staying CEO, the other says that Tesla won't be able to raise capital with this bad news. Sweet, now I have my talking points to regurgitate to my friends & can stop thinking. Thank you CNBC and modern media.

>they should close signups

That would never, ever happen at a VC funded tech startup no matter how bad the situation was. All investors care about is growth, and all the C-suite cares about are investors.

The fate of civilization depends on the individuals that share his trait - the trait to desire most strongly a bountiful and amazing future - knowing that they will be able to successfully build companies such as Tesla and SpaceX without ruthless persecution by the government, the media, and short sellers.

> Both shorts and longs got hurt by his tweet.

The human race has been directed out of an apocalyptic technological cul-de-sac by his hand. I recognize crony behavior when I see it.

It's a terrifying reason to change the CoC because he does not want to appear racist. The mainstream media and Twitter hide the sane & reasonable people that oppose many diversity + inclusion measures, while showcasing the nastiest people from that side of the argument. Linus has taken that false image as the truth; he wants to separate himself from the people on that side. But the truth is that there are a greater number of people that oppose diversity, inclusivity, and equity efforts on the grounds that they trample an individual's moral authority & are based in Marxist lines of thought, than there are people who oppose those efforts because they have a deeply held prejudice.

It's truly sickening that the truth about diversity, inclusion, and equity is so muddled that even Linus can be deceived about it's nature. Fundamentally, the D.I.E. values are racist, Marxist, anti-capitalist, anti-merit, anti-competence at their core, and they pose a significant threat to modern working culture. Their threat is mostly their guise of compassion.

That was the product of necessary ideological conformity for their proposed system to work. Everyone who is not on board with the communist system could bring it down, so they shot dissenters. In Capitalism you can believe whatever you want to believe so long as you respect the rights of the individuals around you, and you don't incite violence, and a couple of other conditions.

Did the Communists not build tanks or burn coal? Is it Capitalism, or is it the human desire to take the path of least resistance; is it not human to consume ready-made energy that has been subsidized by the carbon capacity of the oceans and atmosphere?

It's not hilarious to thank Capitalism for lifting people out of tragedy - It's what has happened. Coal power plants in low income countries; iPhone factories creating an economic explosion in China; T-Shirt factories in Bangladesh. All of these things are the result of Capitalism and the free market, and participating countries are doing well. They are accepting some environmental damage, though. Consider that the company making the most progress in sustainable energy is, well, a capitalist company.

Alternate systems have not worked out so well, as you know. Communist planned economies led to the starvation of tens of millions, and that number increases to hundreds of millions when you add the persecution, jailing, and sometimes immediate execution of citizens of Communists states that had a history of political activity of the wrong sort. Recall that in Soviet Russia it was beneficial for each individual to "inform" on their neighbours to the KGB, so that they could claim their apartment. And it's suspected that Vladmir Putin is actually the richest person in the world.

Colonialism and slavery are pretty rough, but they are not a product of capitalism as much as a product of human malevolence and brutality. I'm sure you would find evidence of colonialism and slavery in pre-civilization times and in non-capitalist societies, so that argument falls flat.

Also, regarding the 8 richest individuals - If the rest of the world is getting on OK, why should we not have a couple of super rich people around? Why is that inherently bad? Why do _you_ think you should have a say of where that money belongs, exactly?

Right... More scientists and researchers making less than minimum wage is surely the answer

Enough of this ideological driven media company. This company's actions do not align with "restoring civil society".

Correct

If Elon avoided a mental breakdown in 2008, he certainly won't get one now.

Buy a 5$/month Protonmail account and forward your gmail to it, and slowly migrate all of your various email-authenticated services to point to your protonmail account. Plus Protonmail makes it very easy to run email from a domain that you already own, like your portfolio domain.

> the industry will quite easily wipe the floor with tesla when market is ripe.

It won't be easy.

1. the industry has a chain of dealers that will have to sell EVs alongside gas cars - how can they say that the gasoline cars are the cars of the past (Tesla's stance) when they have to sell gas cars, too? Thus the dealers will not sell EVs that strongly by principle. "Yeah, the other 90% of the cars on this lot are dead as history. You'll do well not to buy one of those." Traditional dealers will never say that to their customers. But Elon has been giving that message to Tesla customers for a decade and EV shoppers are listening.

2. Where are they getting their batteries from? Tesla already has the battery factory. Every other company is going to have to have some kind of battery deal with LG or Panasonic or whoever, and thus no vertical integration, like Tesla already has.

3. How is "the industry" going to sell cross-country travel? Buying a Tesla, you have access to a world-wide charging network that is super-quick to charge the cars, and incredibly expansive. "the industry" cannot just whip a charging network up, out of thin air.

4. Tesla has re-invented _the car_, not just electric vehicles. Look at the Model 3 dashboard. It stands out! "the industry" is still building EVs in their existing factories, with existing interiors and exteriors, that look and feel like gas cars but with an EV powertrain. There are literally tens of brands that look and feel similar to each other, and only one car brand - Tesla - that is actually unique. You think folks are not going to notice that? Tesla is not on the same planet, design and feel wise, as the other carmakers, which all exist in the same small, close-minded space. Customers are noticing that.

Did George Bush or Obama understand in great detail the consequences and intended usage of every law they make a decision about?

1. It took me 4 months, give or take 2. No

Actually you need to work to practice his suggestions. From any starting point and any country, it is possible to create a personal brand, gather equity, and choose good business partners.

They're very useful as reminders. I understand the tweets but it helps to view your personal career with them in mind, and having the list does help.

> It's pretty obvious to me that a deliberate and intentional effort has been made to ensure that only people who own a lot of property have any voice in the system; to flip that relationship around and make it a moral statement is frankly a little scary.

Well, it hasn't been a deliberate and intentional effort to exclude those without property or net worth from the decision making process - People like that, who reside at the bottom of the hierarchies they inhabit, have never in history been looked to for guidance or input on any decision. I'm making an evolutionary biology claim: Folks with no clout can only have a say if it is deliberately & intentionally given to them. It's the opposite of your speculation that it's been taken from them.

And frankly why _should_ someone who cannot gather value for themselves have a say in economic decisions that will affect others? The reason we have these big evil hierarchies, where the poor are dispossessed and a small group of tycoons at the top make the decisions, is because they have a track record of good decisions. If you suddenly took some progressive initiative to invite some idlers to give input on tax law, they might make a decision that inadvertently lowers your country's GDP by half a percent for five years.

>If we want to be nervous, let's investigate inequality of net worth

And we should find ourselves completely at ease at the end of our investigation, for in every species success is distributed inequitably. Inequality of net worth is a natural law, and human society is no exception. And we need to keep very hard working people motivated to keep working very hard by ensuring them that they will always keep the lions share of their labour's products.

You have nothing to back up the statement that "reusable rockets are not a hard problem", and let me back up this claim of mine by pointing out that only partial reusability exists today. In addition I invite you to build reusable rocket systems, sir, since you have already claimed that the problem is "easy". You could make some good money solving that problem, and you would once and for all put this argument to bed.

Everything looks good here. The biased Wikipedia editor can no longer edit pages on post-1978 British politics. The whistleblower can no longer speculate on any editor's off-wiki behaviour.

No more biased edits from the accused, and no more witch-hunting from the whistleblower.

Relevant quotes from article:

  Philip Cross is indefinitely topic banned from edits relating to post-1978
  British politics, broadly construed. This restriction may be first appealed
  after six months have elapsed, and every six months thereafter

  KalHolmann is indefinitely restricted from linking to or speculating about
  the off-wiki behavior or identity of other editors. This restriction may be
  first appealed after six months have elapsed, and every six months thereafter

Well done Wikipedia.

  Reusable rockets weren't a hard problem

Armchair engineer over here

Well hold on, I don't disagree that we are on a planet of dwindling resources. It's the method of environmental improvement that will have the greatest positive effect that is the root source of disagreement. That's the crux of the problem - what is the process of solving these problems?

I would argue that arguing over how big our websites are is not the important factor. I submit to you that PC electricity usage is the most relevant quantity we need to discuss when it comes to consumption of bits. I argue that the increased load on the network of sending more bits is negligible compared to the many endusers and their PCs that consume our data.

If we agree that PC electricity consumption is the most important thing to address, then we must ask whether or not the electricity generation process is bad for the environment. Most likely, electricity is generated by hydroelectric dams or coal/combustibles power plants. Suppose we replace those two types of power generation with low-maintenance, 50-year-lifetime solar panels (for which the tech exists). Can you still argue that the increased amount of bits sent over the wire for heavy modern websites is an environmental negative that we should address? I would say, no, at this point we have reduced the environmental impact of most electricity-consuming devices, and we can ignore PCs for the time being.

Therefore it is not the personal computer and the quantity of bits it consumes that should be your focus. It should be electricity generation.

I would like to ask you to consider whether or not your compassion-based arguments contain any resentment. Are you acting and speaking entirely on the grounds of compassion? And if so, how can you be sure that your supposed actions are going to reduce suffering of people and the planet and not have the opposite effect? How can you suggest solutions, like decreasing the weight of websites, and know with a high degree of certainty that it will produce the desired outcome (environmental preservation)? Could it have an unintended consequence?

  Since when is doing something efficiently and non-wastefully not a good idea for its own sake?

I agree we should make things efficient for their own sake. But that's not what people are arguing about. They are arguing that the modern web is bad, and their reasons are weak. The modern web is terrific and we should not carelessly denigrate it, which is what I'm against.

Do not denigrate the modern web in the name of efficiency when your measure for evaluating websites is wrong and you incorrectly assume that the difference between a 1mb and 10mb payload matters to the actual operation of the site and visitor satisfaction.

Re: That comic you once saw.

Yeah, what if we shut down all coal power plants and make the earth better? Oh wait, now we have destroyed our critical infrastructure and our government/nation has absolutely no leverage to even make decisions regarding the environment. If people would stop dumbing down these complex problems, it would be a good thing.

1. Well how is the format of plaintext the best method of getting information to the end user? What if you added a thin indexing layer on top of the plaintext? That would allow people to jump through huge documents with ease, but it's no longer plaintext. Sounds more valuable to me. Where is the line? What's the ideal?

2. Fair enough

3. Referencing "increasing the entropy in the universe" isn't a good argument because the amount of entropy increase due to humans is much, much less than how much entropy is increased by particles being blasted out of all the stars in the universe (unless I fundamentally misunderstand what entropy is). I think that stars blasting out particles is a much larger contributor to entropy than humans not using computer bits effectively.

And also what does entropy as a concept have to do with anything, anyway? Why should human engineering tasks have such considerations? If being super efficient with an abundant resource has a large cost (of some sort), but low efficiency has no business- or environmental- downside, then why be efficient with it?

In your last bit you argue that it's acceptable to send a site that is bigger than even the most bloated HTML/CSS page; I don't think that's true for any site/app that wants to be fast. It slows you down and people notice and stop using your service unless it's required of them.

I think that in general things are not as bad as you make them out to be, and your arguments have some merit but are mostly revealed as nonsense when the rubber hits the road. Universe entropy is completely unrelated to modern software engineering and web sites that have a lot of devs and are not SalesForce are not _that_ bloated.

SalesForce slowness does not equate to "all customers of web apps are getting a bad deal".

Go look at reelgood.com. Imagine if Salesforce worked like that. It should be clear as day that this is a SalesForce problem, not a modern-web problem.