News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by lbriner on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @10:35AM (#30919563)
I have obviously missed something but what is the main objection to Musk being part of Twitter's board?
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by NelsonMinar on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @12:41PM (#30921252)
One problem is the culture he's created at his other companies.

"Black Tesla employees describe a culture of racism: ‘I was at my breaking point’ " https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-03-25/black-tesl...

"California sues Tesla, alleging rampant racism at factory" https://www.npr.org/2022/02/15/1080884899/california-sues-te...

"Black workers accused Tesla of racism for years. Now California is stepping in" https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/tesla-cal...

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by blueflow on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @12:52PM (#30921461)
Is he doing like, bad things, or this is the regular everyday "racism" name-calling again?

I'm having a "The boy who cried wolf" moment right now.

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by boc on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @04:13PM (#30924373)
Normally I'd agree, but his father made his fortune from emerald mining in apartheid South Africa. Elon went to an all-white prep school that explicitly didn't allow black students. There's a pretty high chance that Elon was raised in a household that may not have been amazing on the whole racism front.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by drooby on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @05:24PM (#30925238)
This is probably not accurate.

https://www.insidehook.com/article/history/errol-musk-elon-f...

Looks like his fathers background is actually hard to pin down. A biographer of Musk believes his father made most of his wealth from his engineering business.

> Elon was born on June 28, 1971, to Errol and his wife Maye Musk when they were both in their 20s. This is important because the parents divorced in 1979, nine years after getting married, and it wasn’t until the mid-1980s that the emerald mine in question came into the picture.

> The family owned one of the biggest houses in Pretoria thanks to the success of Errol’s engineering business,” a business that included “large projects such as office buildings, retail complexes, residential subdivisions, and an air force base.” Elon even admitted his father is “brilliant at engineering” despite being an overall “terrible human being.”

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by boc on Wednesday April 13, 2022 @01:25PM (#31017443)
The source on the emerald mine is Errol himself during an interview with Business Insider South Africa: https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came...

It's a primary source, not speculation. Here's some additional context: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-dad-tells-bi-abou...

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by blueflow on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @08:05AM (#30931111)
> ... but his father made ...

Judging people by skin color, not okay, we both agree.

But judging people by their ancestors seems to be the same kind of wrongdoing to me. Both are pretty arbitrary criteria that the target has no control over.

The information that Elon 'might' have a racist upbringing is not really relevant. Whats relevant is whether self-responsible Elon is doing (directly or indirectly) harm to others based on skin color or race or anything like that.

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by NelsonMinar on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @01:54PM (#30922444)
It's remarkable how all the replies to my message here completely ignore the comments in the articles made by actual Tesla employees who've been victims of racism.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by SalmoShalazar on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @04:17PM (#30924431)
People can’t escape their ideologies. This website is as tribal as anywhere else (actually, honestly worse than the median). Accepting that Tesla fosters and promotes a racist work environment is unthinkable for ideologues of a certain stripe.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by wilg on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @12:30AM (#30928504)
To me, it doesn't seem likely (from the evidence I've seen) that Elon has created a culture of racism at Tesla such that it led to some blue-collar auto workers making racist jokes and comments to each other in the factory.

I am sure that happened, and it is awful, and Tesla should answer for it in court and through the proper channels. But to some degree, this seems like the type of thing that (unfortunately) can happen in an environment like that. It doesn't seem like there is much indication that is a part of Tesla at a high level or happening in Elon's other companies.

(Also all 3 of those articles refer to the same lawsuit.)

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by tim333 on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @01:07PM (#30921687)
Tesla answered that quite well on their blog https://www.tesla.com/blog/dfehs-misguided-lawsuit

I've not heard Musk being accused of being personally racist - that was more one contractor used racist language in the presence of some other contractor stuff.

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by bequanna on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @12:49PM (#30921402)
I'm sure this is all 100% true and in no way backlash for Musk's decision to shift operations away from California and very loud criticism of CA's politicians/bureaucrats.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by jack_squat on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @01:03PM (#30921642)
Do you think that's how it works? I have no idea, what's your evidence?

California's actions seems pretty consistent with this to me: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.31...

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by bequanna on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @01:11PM (#30921744)
> Do you think that's how it works? I have no idea, what's your evidence?

Do I think that people leverage their positions of power in the govt to strike blows when they are offended or threatened? Absolutely.

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by mywittyname on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @05:21PM (#30925207)
He lost in court, multiple times. And he'll probably continue to lose.

It's not that people in the government have a vendetta against him. He's just petulant and thinks himself above the law. So, while I'm sure it's enjoyable to to knock him down a peg, he's doing it to himself allowing blatantly illegal shit to happen in his companies.

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by mynameisvlad on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @10:43AM (#30919669)
A decent chunk of people in the previous thread were saying he’s doing it to kill the bot that tracks his plane’s movements. In general, he seems to be an active enough user that there’s concerns he will use his new power as a way to shield himself from the consequences of his activity.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by sebzim4500 on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @12:27PM (#30921070)
>A decent chunk of people in the previous thread were saying he’s doing it to kill the bot that tracks his plane’s movements

Those people are idiots though. The kid said he would turn off the bot for $50k. You think Elon bought 9% of Twitter to avoid paying $50k?

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by root_axis on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @12:44PM (#30921326)
I don't think it's about that, but I am absolutely sure that Musk would sooner pay 100x the cost in order to send a "fuck you" to someone that rankled him rather than take the ego hit and pay the 50k even if it's a pittance to him.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by daemoens on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @02:19PM (#30922811)
No it's because it's extremly simple to setup another account to do the exact same thing. You'd have 10 new ones the next day asking for the same amount.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by panick21_ on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @01:47PM (#30922336)
That a totally insane take. Maybe if it was Bezos or somebody. Not for some kid.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by root_axis on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @02:50PM (#30923244)
Not insane at all, Elon has a long history of petty behavior.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by panick21_ on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @01:53AM (#30928888)
Yeah he spends 9 billion to be petty against a random kid with a twitter account that just republished public information. Again, that's literally an insane thing to believe. If you can't see how insane that is I can't help you.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by root_axis on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @02:47AM (#30929155)
You keep saying "that's insane" as if that's supposed to mean something. "Richest guy on the planet makes a capricious stock investment"... yeah, totally insane lol.

I won't go so far as to call you insane for not being able to imagine an edgy rich guy spending a lot of money for petty reasons, but I'll instead say that your refusal to even accept the idea as a possibility is a bit naive.

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by panick21_ on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @05:18AM (#30930073)
You really think getting rid of a twitter bot is that important? Seriously? Like wtf. I just can't even imagine how anybody can even consider that.

Musk clearly has much better other reason that make about 1000% more sense. He has been one of the biggest twitter accounts for a long time. He clearly cares about speech (whatever you may think about it) and he talks about that often in talks to governments around the world and so on. In your version that is all some elaborate front in order to take down some twitter bot?

If you think any non-insane person would spend 9 billion to ban a twitter account that just publishes public information I really don't know what to say anymore. Even if that bot was removed, anybody else could set up the same thing again.

Whatever you my think of Musk and calling 'edgy' or 'petty' or whatever, what you suggest is literally a 100% totally crazy thing to do. No human that is not insane would consider this a logic course of action.

If it was about that and he didn't want to pay the 50k publicly, there are about 1000 possible other ways that could have been achieved other becoming gigantic investor in twitter.

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by misiti3780 on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @10:31AM (#30932380)
haha, the sad thing is they keep doubling down
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by therouwboat on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @03:21PM (#30923668)
Its not like he lost that money, twitter stock is up 20%.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by scop on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @12:13PM (#30920866)
By "shield himself from the consequences of his activity" I think Elon literally meant "I don't want to get shot by some crazy person following my movements". No perfect solution, but I can get his motivation.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by mynameisvlad on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @12:59PM (#30921563)
ADS data is public. Just because a Twitter bot puts it in a nice easy to digest format doesn't mean the data isn't out there, and there's nothing Elon or really anyone can do about it.

It is trivial to track a plane if you have its tail number and Elon only flies on a small number of jets.

And, no, by "shield himself from the consequences of his activities", I mean things like calling someone a pedophile on Twitter. He is one of the biggest Twitter drama quee s and it would be a lot easier to clean up his messes if he practically owns the company.

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by E4YomzYIN5YEBKe on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @01:32PM (#30922080)
Voter registrations make people's home addresses public information (in many states) but posting that on Twitter violates their doxxing rules.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by mynameisvlad on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @04:11PM (#30924340)
Doxxing is very specific-- you are revealing the link between the pseudonymous account and the holder. Elon Musk is a public figure, and posts under his own account.

Additionally, a jet plane, whether private or public, does not have any rights. You cannot "doxx" an airplane. Aside from the practical benefits that ADS-B provides, the public nature of it holds everyone accountable.

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by minhazm on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @12:20AM (#30928435)
Doxxing isn't only for pseudonymous accounts. There are people with actual profiles that use their real names on Twitter and with a little bit of research you can publish all kinds of personal information about them like their current address which can be a real safety issue and would definitely violate Twitter's TOS.

> You cannot "doxx" an airplane. I think it's pretty obvious that Elon Musks plane will most likely have Elon Musk inside of it. So by doxxing the plane you're doxxing the person. Just think about the same example with a car of someone who may be receive a lot of negative attention, you can tweet out the location of their car and that may put them in harms way. The car has no rights either but revealing the information is still a safety issue. It's just that for planes the data is public because the idea of a plane identifying an individual location is not a common one since so few people own private planes. Another analogy is a bus vs a car. I think most people would be fine with a bus having live tracking and in fact many people depend on that, but for an individual car it doesn't make sense.

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by peeters on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @01:20PM (#30921870)
Plenty of things are public but are unethical to broadcast, and can range from benign to extremely creepy or harassment.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by manquer on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @12:25PM (#30921032)
Buying Twitter is hardly solving the problem.

The content creator can just move to Facebook/Instagram or /tiktok or wherever.

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by tmp_anon_22 on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @11:58AM (#30920637)
Its a modern incarnation of a billionaire buying a newspaper. Has that ever worked out well? Has it ever been altruistic?
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by neilc on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @12:22PM (#30920995)
I don't think Bezos' ownership of the Washington Post has gone badly so far.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by manquer on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @12:28PM (#30921072)
Not much for WaPo perhaps, but for bezos that put him in the target sights of lot of people

Many of them state sponsored like Saudi government which targeted him after kashtogi.

He also got hacked and his dick pics were maybe compromised.

Those hacks could have accelerated his divorce too.

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by topspin on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @06:10PM (#30925722)
And yet, in a remarkable display of self unawareness, WaPo has declared[1] that Musk's move "Could Be Bad News for Free Speech."

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/elon-musks-twitter-i...

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by peeters on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @01:12PM (#30921756)
I'm pretty neutral on Musk but he has an established track record of saying stupid shit on Twitter and ruining others' days/lives. Market manipulation, libel, trolling, etc. I guess I don't trust that a man with that kind of track record would be a positive influence on the social media hellscape we already have.

This is acknowledging that he also shares awesome stuff, like technical SpaceX details, and that he often engages with people in a real cool way.

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by jillesvangurp on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @12:59PM (#30921562)
None; sounds like a good change for Twitter and probably the best thing that happened to their board in quite some time. I did laugh out loud when I heard about this yesterday. There is a more than a bit of history between Elon Musk and his many detractors and a lot of that involves Twitter. So, Elon Musk buying himself a seat on the board is more than a bit ironic.

The man definitely seems to float from one controversy to another and quite a few of those controversies seem to involve Twitter. Buying a big share in Twitter is kind of a ballsy thing to do. But why not? Might I suggest shorting the stock if you disagree ;-).

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by jdrc on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @03:07PM (#30923465)
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by AustinDev on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @03:29PM (#30923757)
The linked article is from Bloomberg so you can add him to the list people who are big mad.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by ausbah on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @10:41AM (#30919634)
likely something about the platform not promoting free speech enough via overreaching censorship, interpret that how you like
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by sixQuarks on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @12:08PM (#30920787)
HN has a bias against Elon Musk. That’s pretty much what you need to know.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by mhh__ on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @12:14PM (#30920882)
Or for Elon Musk, depends who you ask. HN is't a person's initials.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by sixQuarks on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @12:43PM (#30921310)
Puh-lease. Bias means tendency to lean a certain way, you can’t have bias in 2 opposite directions.

The pro Elon crowd here is a minority. Something I’ll never understand, being that this is an entrepreneurial forum and Elon is the worlds best entrepreneur. Jealousy perhaps?

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by mhh__ on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @01:33PM (#30922109)
What I'm saying is that you can't reduce the whole site down to one made up measure of bias.

Maybe it is jealousy, maybe it's that he's a neurotic moron who's more than happy to try and ruin the careers of little people.

How many of the great entrepreneurs of history got embarrassed after their scheme doesn't work and call their competitor a paedophile? You can recognize his skills while also recognizing that he's not a very nice man.

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by 0F on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @01:44PM (#30922293)
No, the bias is everywhere and HN is just reflecting that universal bias. It’s very popular to dislike Elon musk and it’s very unpopular to be a supporter. Count the number of supporters vs detractors in any mainstream thread — musk haters will be the majority every single time despite the fact that his detractors refer constantly to a phantom army of supporters. Every Reddit thread is basically 100 people responding to non-existent “fan boy” straw men. And they also like to spread the falsehood that Elon musk used gem mine money to become successful. It’s literally just made up nonsense.

People like to act like his pedo tweet was some kind of crime against humanity. Let’s have a look at your twitter if you’re so indignant. People are such shameless hypocrites.

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by mhh__ on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @02:55PM (#30923321)
I have never called anyone a paedophile on the internet, no. Have you?
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by 0F on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @03:23PM (#30923690)
The average person has simultaneously been outraged at his pedo tweet and also tweeted the same or worse. Have you actually been on twitter? It’s mostly irrational hate and insults

Also I assume you’re British so it’s not the same. You people have a problem with pedophiles. You actually bleep out when people say the word and censor the word when people write it. It’s like some kind of big deal over there. That’s just you bro, nobody else is like that.

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by mhh__ on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @03:58PM (#30924166)
None of that last paragraph is true other than me being British.

You're completely in the realms of fantasy. Seriously?

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by 0F on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @04:43PM (#30924756)
I’ve seen it so maybe uncommon but not untrue. But it’s 100% true that British people have a weird problem with pedophilia, even compared to other western countries. Problem both in the sense that you all seem to be pedophiles and also in that the topic is enveloped in moral dogma.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by mhh__ on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @04:50PM (#30924831)
I'm glad that I only seem to be a paedophile, that means I won't get found by the police for a little while yet. You should join in, it's fun.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by panick21_ on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @01:56PM (#30922479)
He is involved in global conspiricy to manipulate Dogecoin so he can buy more Slave mines to mine cobalt. That a fact.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by honeybadger1 on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @01:50PM (#30922386)
Jealousy indeed, I am a fan of Elon because I can appreciate that he is an engineer first in almost every way he communicates professionally. It is very obvious he keeps abreast to physics, engineering, and he even has core IT knowledge. I watched a 30 minute video where he spent 2 minutes explaining a trace route to a interviewer in detail and it made me like him even more.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by SalmoShalazar on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @04:25PM (#30924535)
You could claim jealousy, but that’s reductive. Elon Musk annoys a lot of people, for a plethora of reasons. It’s pretty easy to find wide ranging genuine criticism of him from numerous perspectives, if you want to actually understand. Or you could hand wave it all away and claim jealousy I guess, just know it’s a lazy explanation.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by sixQuarks on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @07:39PM (#30926566)
It’s more lazy to claim all the criticisms about him are true. So many of these criticisms are based off of clickbaity headlines. If you actually follow him closely, actually listen to his interviews over time, you will see he is very consistent in his words and actions. There is no doubt in my mind that he aims to do good for humanity as a whole.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by rc_mob on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @12:47PM (#30921364)
We have fair and objective criticism of Elon Musk. Your failures to accept or understand the criticism does not constitute "bias".
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by panick21_ on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @01:52PM (#30922400)
There is certainly fair criticsm but quite often people have totally aburd claims.

Like he bought twitter because of flight bot.

Or idiotic ideas about how everything he does is some 7D galaxy brain chess to achive some dubiously defined goals.

Some people really go close to conspiricy theory mode and still get upvoted.

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by fallingknife on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @12:21PM (#30920960)
Two reasons.

- Haters who can't stand people more successful than them, and who is more successful than Elon Musk? So anything he does is terrible.

- Since Trump, HN mostly supports social media censorship of opposing political ideas, and Elon Musk has expressed that he doesn't like this censorship.

Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by samarama on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @01:41AM (#30928839)
Science denials isn’t political “idea”, it’s just plain and destructive science denial.
Re:Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors by EricE on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @03:56PM (#30924131)
The gatekeepers are loosing control - or so they feel. Always fun to watch totalitarians get the boot.