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Re:Nikola’s founder steps down from board as company faces f... by itsoktocry on Monday September 21, 2020 @12:13PM (#24545099)
>This told me all I needed to know.

How is this any different the nonsense Musk pumps out:

     1. Machines in the factory moving so fast you need a strobelight
     2. Solar tiles that will print money
     3. Full self-driving on all cars since 2016
     4.  A brain chip that will cure autism
and on and on...
Re:Nikola’s founder steps down from board as company faces f... by bob33212 on Monday September 21, 2020 @12:28PM (#24545316)
Milton cannot explain why HTML5 is secure, because it doesn't make any sense. He is just repeating buzzwords.

Musk can explain how he could build a very fast factory. Maybe he is wrong and there is some sort of thermal limit that he is going to hit before getting it to that speed. But it is a real plan. He isn't just throwing out buzzwords to attract investors.

Re:Nikola’s founder steps down from board as company faces f... by sidcool on Monday September 21, 2020 @12:47PM (#24545577)
Musk delivers late. But he does deliver. At this point, any question on Musk's engineering/business acumen cannot stand. He's weird, too ambitious and optimistic. But not a charlatan. The hundreds of thousands of Teslas being driven worldwide and the astronauts flying to and from the ISS are a testimony. But he is weird.
Re:Nikola’s founder steps down from board as company faces f... by theptip on Monday September 21, 2020 @12:53PM (#24545654)
Musk is overly optimistic and makes marketing claims and predictions about the future. I think Musk's worst estimates could actually be false advertising (e.g. the claims about Autopilot). But in most cases they are understood to be within some bounds of possibility, even if it's a 95th %ile best-case estimate.

Milton made fraudulent claims about the existing technology that they had built, which is I think categorically different than most of Musk's futurology. There's no sense in which Milton's claims might be true; they were objectively false statements at the time they were made.

Re:Nikola’s founder steps down from board as company faces f... by mlindner on Monday September 21, 2020 @12:28PM (#24545318)
Because:

1. Elon Musk has admitted many times since that point that he was wrong (something Trevor never does) about factory automation.

2. The solar tiles exist.

3. Turns out making super good AI takes more time and Elon is always too optimistic, that is still their goal however that they are working towards.

4. That's still their goal and they're working towards it.

You can't call someone a fraud just because they haven't reached a goal yet and it's taking longer than expected.

Re:Nikola’s founder steps down from board as company faces f... by 1MoreThing on Monday September 21, 2020 @02:48PM (#24546971)
Good advice that is applicable towards doomsday cults as well.
Re:Nikola’s founder steps down from board as company faces f... by FireBeyond on Monday September 21, 2020 @03:12PM (#24547220)
Is there any evidence to suggest that a "brain chip" will ever "cure" autism?
Re:Nikola’s founder steps down from board as company faces f... by valuearb on Monday September 21, 2020 @03:58PM (#24547750)
What would limit a brain chip from accomplishing that goal?
Re:Nikola’s founder steps down from board as company faces f... by FireBeyond on Monday September 21, 2020 @05:12PM (#24548537)
Current understanding of autism is that it is a developmental disorder, and not something characterized by excess/insufficient hormones. It is hard to imagine how a disorder that challenges information processing in the brain could, with our very limited understanding of how such things actually work, be handled by a chip saying "You should respond to such stimuli in X manner, not Y manner". It's not a case of "X is handled incorrectly, tell the brain to do Y instead".

I could potentially see such a thing working for, say, epilepsy, where we might be able to "mute" or counter a stimuli that causes seizure, but, at least for the forseeable future, I don't see "brain chips" working in contexts other than concrete causal links, stimuli, reaction/response mechanisms - I think one hint is that there's nothing we can do to "medicate" autism. Medications currently used are for "byproducts" of ASD, such as ADHD, anxiety, not the disorder itself. Indeed, the closest (and we're not particularly close) we have come to thinking of how to manage ASD is gene therapy, which wouldn't be manageable by a "brain chip".

Re:Nikola’s founder steps down from board as company faces f... by valuearb on Monday September 21, 2020 @05:56PM (#24548898)
Autism is a broad spectrum of behaviors, but one consistent symptom is not being able to “quiet” excess stimuli (as I write this my daughter exhibits her self stimulation behavior by running back and forth across our family room).
Re:Nikola’s founder steps down from board as company faces f... by nickik on Monday September 21, 2020 @09:16PM (#24549936)
With people like you it always blows my mind how one can have such a restricted mindset.

You are nip picking a few things and vastly distorting the actual claims to make your point, while totally ignoring everything that actually was accomplished. Elon gets asked about 50 things every day and he gives his median prediction.

If you actually go back 10 years and look at his prediction for Tesla and SpaceX he is remarkably accurate, far, far, far more then literally anybody else.

Tesla underestimated the difficulty of mass production. That happens to basically every company that has extreme growth and the handle the problem and are now in very profitable production and own a huge market share in that cars market. They are massively improving manufacturing as was confirmed by independent experts.

They have 28% of global full EV market thanks that production system that you dismiss. The are outselling BMW, Mercedes and Lexus combined in the US. But of course instead of saying that, lets point out that they had 1 year of production issues.

> Solar tiles that will print money

Can you actually provide a source for that statement? Solar roof was to expensive and didn't sell well, so they made them cheaper and they are mass producing them now. They are not printing money, but they are increasing the numbers they sell and it should turn into a nice buissness.

> A brain chip that will cure autism

Again, nobody ever claimed they would have this right now. Its technology with lots of potential and that's how it was communicated. Elon is literally spending his private money on long term development project that has the potential to help many people and wouldn't get funding otherwise. And people like you shit on him, its baffling to me how somebody can have this reaction. Yeah fuck him for trying to work on some of the hardest problem in the world.

He is to optimistic on self driving, that is literally the only valid argument people have.

Truly baffling to me.

Re:Nikola’s founder steps down from board as company faces f... by JetSpiegel on Sunday October 04, 2020 @10:07AM (#24679159)
> > Solar tiles that will print money

> Can you actually provide a source for that statement? Solar roof was to expensive and didn't sell well, so they made them cheaper and they are mass producing them now. They are not printing money, but they are increasing the numbers they sell and it should turn into a nice buissness.

"They" who? Not Solar City.

Re:Nikola’s founder steps down from board as company faces f... by admn2 on Monday September 21, 2020 @02:20PM (#24546665)
Nikola direct listed their stock so they faced no scrutiny. It opened at $10 and then went up to almost $80 due in part to massive FOMO-inducing posts on Tikok and WallStBets.

If the founder doesn't have the self-awareness not to say non-sensical quotes like that knowing he will be fact-checked, it's a bit concerning.

I don't understand how GE invested and didn't find anything in Due Diligence. They really couldn't see the Robinhood effect? Is FOMO that fervent in the space thanks to Tesla? Reminds me a lot of the crazy multiples RX Bar, Dollar Shave, and Native Deodorant got as all the incumbents got freaked out about losing fractional market share to "digitally native" brands.

Re:Nikola’s founder steps down from board as company faces f... by dpiers on Monday September 21, 2020 @12:17PM (#24545151)
Both emperors are naked, one just has a much higher approval rating.
Re:Nikola’s founder steps down from board as company faces f... by itsoktocry on Monday September 21, 2020 @12:19PM (#24545190)
Agreed. I wonder if this will have more people asking questions about Tesla.

Tesla is a tougher one, because they do produce a good product, while exaggerating far more than they produce.

Re:Nikola’s founder steps down from board as company faces f... by nickik on Monday September 21, 2020 @08:58PM (#24549875)
Tesla literally own more then 50% of the US EV market. The own like 18% of the global EV, and 28% of full electric market. And they have been increasing global market share year over year. They have grown the amount of products they sell every year. They have the largest global charging network. The build the biggest battery in the world. The list goes on.

In 2015 Musk said they want to produce 2020 they want to produce 500k vehicles, and even with covid they will come close to this or even hit it.

To compare the two is beyond ridiculous. Nikola literally never deliver a single vehicle or achieved a single significant engineering goal.

If you actually think they are remotely comparable there is something seriously wrong with your perspective on the world.

Re:Nikola’s founder steps down from board as company faces f... by rasz on Monday September 21, 2020 @06:49PM (#24549261)