Elon Musk

Oddly enough today several third party apps are failing on twitter. Its currently questionable whether its an outage or whether they have been blocked.

This is what I had been fearing. If it’s not now, it’s only a matter of time. All the original talk of advertisers boycotting twitter initially left me very confused as I didn’t realise you got adverts in your timeline as I’ve never used their app or website. Not looking forward to moving from only seeing people I follow to an Instagram/Facebook style advert fest.

I’m guessing no new surprises from the man himself over the last couple of weeks

His lawyers might have persuaded him to stop saying dumb shit online.

Elon Musk is set to become the rare CEO to fight a securities class action at trial next week, where he will defend his 2018 tweet announcing he had ‘funding secured’ to take Tesla private https://t.co/rizud8CDXC

— Reuters (@Reuters) January 13, 2023

Betamax would record ceefax in the background while recording the last hour of F1. VHS couldn’t do that.

Back on topic, the twitter app is flakey as… Used to be ok.

nope, that is exactly how it works, incredibly! Someone mentioned on another thread that it’s cheaper for them to build cars to the same spec, and just lock features that aren’t paid for, rather than build multiple variations of a vehicle.

That is what I meant although it wasn’t clear. It’s got heated seats in it, but you haven’t actually specified heated seats when you bought it so as far as you’re concerned it doesn’t have them. The fact they are physically there is irrelevant, to BMW.

But in the minds of the car buying public it is very relevant indeed.

I’m not bothered about this subscription malarky for heated seats etc – some enterprising hacker/tuner will always figure a work around easier than it would be to bolt in heated seats to a car that was never built with them.

I’m not bothered about this subscription malarky for heated seats etc – some enterprising hacker/tuner will always figure a work around easier than it would be to bolt in heated seats to a car that was never built with them.

Presumably you would say goodbye to your warranty if you did that, but a potentially a good option if you could revert to factory state without trace easily enough.

Thinking about it I’ve done exactely the same on my current cart – enabling a £450 auto-headlight dipping option with 5 minutes of coding.

Oddly enough today several third party apps are failing on twitter. Its currently questionable whether its an outage or whether they have been blocked.

“Oddly enough” several of these 3rd party apps are appearing in the Developer Portal as “Suspended”. See Twitter Developers Forum

Discounts to clear inventory are what you expect from Vauxhall and Ford, not a premium brand. That’s gonna hit Tesla’s share price.

https://cardealermagazine.co.uk/publish/tesla-slashes-price-of-model-3-and-y-in-move-that-will-damage-used-prices-further/277651

Looking like Tesla’s days as a car maker are numbered. The premium brands have caught up and surpassed them and don’t have so much glass they look like goldfish bowls! 🙂

hmm, Teslas still have the best range for long runs – even the top end brands are a bit disappointing. It will come (I hope) but it’s not happened yet.

Much as I have come to dislike Elon Musk there was a lot of smarts about Tesla – sorting the supercharger network, the ‘let’s not redesign the petrol car’ approach and the over the air updates from the off (or at least since I started following them).

It’s still quite hard for the automotive industry to let go of its embedded ideas and processes. That’s not to say that Musk wasn’t just lucky picking a technology that was going to take off anyway and somehow had a team that wasn’t completely hooked on automotive industry thought patterns (which may have predated Musk, I’m not sure).

Clearly something isn’t going right though …

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/01/tesla-drops-prices-up-to-20-percent-in-attempt-to-drive-sales/

hmm, Teslas still have the best range for long runs – even the top end brands are a bit disappointing.

This belongs on the EV thread really but no they don’t. They are decent but not the best overall. Tesla tell bigger porkies about range than some other manufacturers do, and they allow you to charge to 100% which deteriorates the battery so their range comes at a cost.

https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/

Porsche got much better range than the WTLP, an astonishing 35% more in one case.

Could he be a massive genius? If he wants to take Tesla private again – sell all your shares whilst it’s outrageously high, use some of that money (and other peoples) to buy another, very public company and systematically ruin it and by association decrease Tesla’s stock price. When the time is right, buy all the stock back, restore normal service to Twitter and he gets Tesla back, can sell or keep Twitter and has hundreds of billions extra too.

Or is he a massive idiot?

Or is he a massive idiot?

Occam’s razor

It’s still quite hard for the automotive industry to let go of its embedded ideas and processes. That’s not to say that Musk wasn’t just lucky picking a technology that was going to take off anyway and somehow had a team that wasn’t completely hooked on automotive industry thought patterns (which may have predated Musk, I’m not sure).

The Tesla Roadster was based on a Lotus design. Tesla’s chief designer was hired from Mazda. He apparently worked for GM and VW before that.

When it comes to high-quality mass-production, Tesla need to look at industry leaders and learn how they do it.

Interesting to see a lot of US brands at the top. Not something I was aware of. Always thought the likes of Toyota, Mazda etc,. were up there but they seem fairly poor in that measure.

kerley
Free Member
Interesting to see a lot of US brands at the top.

Indeed. Some of those brands at the top used to be at the bottom. My scepticism senses are tingling.

A lot of the Top US brands are utility vehicles with a lot less to go wrong and when they do go wrong, it doesn’t stop the vehicle functioning, so it’s still doing its job. Also a lot of lease vehicles in the US are returned after the 3 year lease when the vehicle is out of warranty. Also, many US brands only warranty the power train. Tesla are 4 years and more comprehensive.

My scepticism senses are tingling.

The problem with car quality comparisons is that only the manufacturers have detailed information about their own vehicles. AFAIK J.D. Power uses customer reports of faults, but a critical fault and a minor one both count towards number of faults per vehicle. Cars with complex infotainment systems are apparently more likely to be reported as faulty than simple ones. However, somebody paying 50K for a car does not expect to find bodges like this.
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/314871-tesla-model-y-owners-confused-to-find-wood-bracing-car-components

When it comes to high-quality mass-production, Tesla need to look at industry leaders and learn how they do it.

might help if you actually provided some context to that chart!

The “problems” recorded are surveyed from owners and include – and also seem to give equal weight to – things like the wheels falling off but also niggles with the infotainment system, driver aids and “driver experience” whatever that means (but sounds subjective!). They specifically point out that all BEV cars have more of these issues than ICE cars and when you consider just these, Tesla are actually better than average (226 PP100 for Tesla vs the average of 240 PP100 from non-Tesla manufacturers)

They also point out Tesla are improving year-on-year, here is the up-to-date chart… you might notice Teslas now have less reported issues than some of STWs most beloved brands – Audi, VW, Volvo

might help if you actually provided some context to that chart!

The “problems” recorded are surveyed from owners and include – and also seem to give equal weight to – things like the wheels falling off but also niggles with the infotainment system, driver aids and “driver experience”

You mean context like the explanation I gave in the post just above yours that said basically the same thing you said?

A lot of US cars are of very basic construction so they don’t go wrong at first, but later in life they do. Remember that survey is subjective, not a methodical analysis of actual reliability.

Remember that survey is subjective, not a methodical analysis of actual reliability.

Yes, as I discussed above. However, it is a reflection on customer satisfaction – customers are reporting things that they believe should not have happened.

You mean context like the explanation I gave in the post just above yours that said basically the same thing you said?

apolgies, didn’t see your much-later follow up post after you’d already realised you were wrong 😉

Going back to twitter, looks like Elon’s decisions may be enabling the Taliban to legitimise themselves on the platform now.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/17/twitter_blue_taliban/

And back to Tesla…

wow: that 2016 tesla self-driving demo that essentially kicked off the entire industry-wide spending spree…it was fake https://t.co/F5uXGvzfiU

— Max Chafkin (@chafkin) January 17, 2023

Tesla tell bigger porkies about range than some other manufacturers do, and they allow you to charge to 100% which deteriorates the battery so their range comes at a cost.

Not a fan of Musk, but I’m not sure you’re correct on that.

Back when California was struggling with power issues they did an over the air update to unlock the cars to higher capacity. Which infers that the standard range quoted doesn’t use all the capacity.

This is funny, but the underlying problem isn’t – Bluechecks used to indicate a confirmed person so you knew who was posting and whether to trust them. That’s gone now so Twitter’s value as a news aggregator is probably going to fade as it gets overrun with fake celebrity accounts promoting fake news, or just running scams.

We have decided to keep this up until either the blue checkmark goes away or until Twitter suspends this account.

— Russian Embassy in USA (@benjaminwittes) April 2, 2023

Came across this article today and then noticed this thread as popped up again so it must be fate:

https://medium.com/predict/musk-overruled-tesla-engineers-and-now-they-are-in-serious-trouble-2e37269e387a

I remember reading that Tesla was going camera only a few years ago and thinking, ‘That doesn’t really sound feasible’ but at the time I thought Musk still might be relatively smart and not just a ego manic fantasist.

So maybe my understanding of AI and data-processing was letting me down (which was weird because with my background in AI systems I actually tend to be more optimistic than most when it comes to self-driving technology).

Good to know my instincts weren’t that far off.

Yes, it reminds me of when Apple tried to go fanless on Macs and they had overheating problems. AFAIK, Steve Jobs demanded they make a completely silent computer and the engineers were too scared to tell him they couldn’t do it.

Not surprised they tried, I had one of the CRT iMacs and you could hear it in ten next room.

Whilst these stories sort of help push my Anti-musk schadenfreude to new heights, none of it really changes the fact that the guy is still in post (X3).

If I was an investor in any of the companies he’s cuckooed his was into operating I’d be demanding his replacement or pulling my investment out while there’s still some pumped up value to recoup.

Twitter doesn’t really matter, he’s doing what he was always going to do, turn it from a “social media” app into an electronic loudhailer for wealthy individuals and corporations, it was always going to die, Elon has just sped that process up, let’s reserve it a spot next to ‘myspace’ in the interweb graveyard…

Tesla? Have squandered their headstart by focussing on tech-bro toys and neglecting build quality and/or affordability, the lumbering dinosaurs of the motor industry are catching up, and China is coming in strong to steal their lunch, that’s why the US is about to double down on protectionism for native companies…

Space X? If you divorce the company from Elon’s Martian escape fantasies they’re a viable company, they’ve got various contracts with the US government and commercial companies want to use their services, they just need the CEO to SFU (or stand down) and let them crack on…

Basically he’s a liability and I wouldn’t want my money tied to him…

If this is true

I’d call that a rapid unscheduled disassembly of your business model

From a friend still employed at Twitter. Things are a little hectic! pic.twitter.com/8V6HaVEZpO

— jordan (@jdan) April 21, 2023

Curious how many people actually signed up for Twitter Blue yesterday and today? Well, I've got the numbers and I'll be telling them to @JoyAnnReid on MSNBC in ten minutes.

Here's a hint: They were net +28 between signups and cancellations. Not 2,800. Twenty-eight.

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) April 21, 2023

Wtf he launched it on 4/20 to please all his pothead fanboys?

This is what happens to your launchpad when you think it would be funny to launch to the world's largest rocket on 4/20, instead of when it's ready.

It will probably be at least a year before the FAA will approve another Starship launch. pic.twitter.com/tXytW309a6

— Christopher David (@Tazerface16) April 21, 2023

@thols2 Power Mac Cube looked amazing though.

Power Mac Cube looked amazing though.

It did, it looked amazing. I don’t think customers complained about the visual design side of things.

Wtf he launched it on 4/20 to please all his pothead fanboys?

Lucky it was delayed by two days…

errmmmm??

BREAKING: Elon Musk has allegedly revealed a secret alt account where he pretends to be a child version of himself posting a lot of bizarre sexual content pic.twitter.com/HaItr9Cl31

— The Serfs (@theserfstv) April 25, 2023

Christ, what a freak.

Hes gone full george soros antisemtic conspiracy theory today..

which wasnt the play I was expecting

Elon Musk, who has overseen a rise in antisemitism and other hate speech on Twitter, made a series of attacks on George Soros, tweeting the Jewish-born investor and liberal philanthropist hates humanity and “wants to erode the very fabric of civilization.” https://t.co/wIg98bVGmn

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 16, 2023