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I found this tweet very naive and an indication that Musk really doesn't know what he's getting into. I don't see how he thinks tweet content alone will be eno

I found this tweet very naive and an indication that Musk really doesn't know what he's getting into. I don't see how he thinks tweet content alone will be enough to verify the 5% of monthly monetizable users The other poor indicator was his tweet about sampling _100_ of his own replies to detect bots. That's a horribly small sample and horrible selection bias The firehose is terabytes a day, add storage + indexes and it's pretty far from "fitting on an USB stick" in order to analyze.

oefrha 4y ago
Why would you assume ignorance instead of malice when a very smart person advised by smart people with domain knowledge makes an obviously nonsensical claim, while billions are on the line?
- shp0ngle 4y ago
  Because it’s Elon Musk.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  because Musk isn't some technical genius with amazing domain knowledge, he's the world's best salesman with a unique talent of attracting followers.
  - coffeeblack 4y ago
    There are lots of great technical interviews with him on Yt that show the opposite is true.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - waffleiron 4y ago
      Could you link a few? I'd be interested, cause it's not the feeling I get from him.
      - Isinlor 4y ago
        Here you have Dr. Daniel Rasky, a NASA Senior scientist talking about SpaceX and Elon. Daniel Rasky was involved in specific studies that were comparing operation of NASA and private companies. He also has first hand experience from working at SpaceX and with Elon. He is expert on advanced entry systems and thermal protection materials and he was for example involved in decision to select PICA as a heat shield for Dragon, and he explains how that went with Elon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxIiiwD9C0E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxIiiwD9C0E Here is Elon answering questions of National Academy of Science members about Starship. He explains in detail why he pushed the team towards steel and away from carbon fibers: https://youtu.be/da3iF2Np51A?t=951 https://youtu.be/da3iF2Np51A?t=951 Here you have another direct conversation with Elon: https://youtu.be/t705r8ICkRw?t=172 https://youtu.be/t705r8ICkRw?t=172 Here is Elon discussing with Sundy Munro mass manufacturing and engineering. Sandy Munro is a veteran engineer from General Motors supplier and directly at Ford. Sandy Munro is now running a consultancy company that tear downs cars and suggests improvements to wide range of clients from the car industry. https://youtu.be/YAtLTLiqNwg?t=78 https://youtu.be/YAtLTLiqNwg?t=78
        coffeeblack 4y ago
        Thanks, half of the videos I didn’t even know. Also, Musk was doing a physics PhD in battery tech at Stanford when he dropped out to found Zip2.
        Isinlor 4y ago
        Yup, I think he has done like 1 day of it, before he dropped off. There is some long running pattern here with getting cold feet on bad decisions ^^ .
        coffeeblack 4y ago
        He was accepted into it, that’s the important part. But then the internet took off and it was the right time to be in that place. Remember, back then he was just another immigrant kid. It’s funny how quickly the left changed from loving him for turning the car industry on its head to hating him for taking away the left’s hate machine. Oh well.
  - meatsauce 4y ago
- Isinlor 4y ago
  Because Elon probably spends max couple of hours per week on Twitter acquisition? His modus operandi is taking quick decisions and backtracking if he is wrong. Actually it's not only his modus operandi, SpaceX according to NASA evaluation is also working that way. It's basically depth first search vs. breath first search. Dr. Daniel Rasky, a NASA Senior scientist https://youtu.be/MxIiiwD9C0E?t=1464 https://youtu.be/MxIiiwD9C0E?t=1464 : > I think there are some things and kind of going back to in some ways back to the Apollo days if you take a look at kind of the environment that NASA had in Apollo it was kind of what Elon has with his young engineers. you had you know people trying things and in what works and what doesn't work I think over the years we've gotten into a very risk-averse profile and we're I call it full matrix engineering that okay that all concerns that anyone can raise have to be chased down a hundred percent before you can make any decision. Okay, so yeah like a full matrix of all the things that may be pertinent to a certain decision and you have to fill that entire array before you can make a decision to go forward and there's times when that makes sense but it doesn't make sense for everything we do. SpaceX uses a sparse matrix okay 51% okay when do when we get to 51% okay enough we're gonna make a decision and then we're going to try it and move on.
  - Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
    > His modus operandi is taking quick decisions and backtracking if he is wrong. That is the modus operandi with products/services, it's not anything new anyways. It has been named in a bunch of different ways ranging from "agile" , "move fast break things" etc. also less charmingly "Microsoft vaporware products" or "Google graveyard", "Steve Jobs' bluffs" They all indicate the same strategy: ship something and get feedback, if feedback is ultra-negative then you can always kill it. However when legal stuff is signed, and especially legal stuff of this magnitude then the only way in which you leave yourself room to backtrack is if there is a clause which lets you do so in the legal document. When legal stuff is signed is not in your hands anymore, you have to treat it as being in the courts hands. Because that is what happens if you backtrack.
    - Isinlor 4y ago
      For car industry and space industry it is a complete revolution. From what I understand he can legally backtrack from the deal, but he would have to pay some billion dollars penalty. Not cheap by any means, but he can afford that. And having billion dollars at stake you can try to look for a lot of legal reasons to not pay that billion. But my guess is that he genuinely thinks that 5% number is not accurate based on his twitter feed comments. His feed comments is mostly crypto scammers. Some independent people also claim that 50% of his followers are fake. Twitter claim of 5% is very specific and probably accurate in a legal sense. But if you have tens of billions at stake and a deal that looks like a mistake it's entirely reasonable to dig deeper.
- hef19898 4y ago
  It can easily be both!
- coffeeblack 4y ago
honkdaddy 4y ago
To be pedantic, USB sticks do come in TB sizes these days. Either way though, I expect Musk, the richest man alive, can afford to pay a handful of senior engineers a couple weeks pay to store and run some analysis on the firehose. It's a lot of data, but at "fuck-you" level money it's certainly manageable.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  Sure, it's manageable. I mean, trivially, Twitter manages it and Elon is worth more than Twitter, so clearly he can afford to process the data. They question is how long will it take, and how much money will he spend reproducing the analysis done by the company he's about to buy.
agnosticmantis 4y ago
As a statistician I chuckle seeing the genius rocket scientist lacks the most rudimentary understanding of stats 101. Maybe from now on we should use statistics as the epitome of difficult intellectual activity instead of “rocket science”.
- smcl 4y ago
  Or running a Python script? https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/06/01/elon-musk-crikey-dogecoin-jackson-palmer-python-code/ https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/06/01/elon-musk-crikey-dogeco...
- coffeeblack 4y ago
  It was a reply to a tweet. Please use context.
  - altacc 4y ago
    It was a statement by the richest person on the planet on communication channel that he regularly uses to his declare personal and business intent and which is obsessively over analysed and therefore has real effects on business markets. Please use context ;)
    - coffeeblack 4y ago
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

oefrha 4y ago

Why would you assume ignorance instead of malice when a very smart person advised by smart people with domain knowledge makes an obviously nonsensical claim, while billions are on the line?

shp0ngle 4y ago
Because it’s Elon Musk.
Barrin92 4y ago
because Musk isn't some technical genius with amazing domain knowledge, he's the world's best salesman with a unique talent of attracting followers.
- coffeeblack 4y ago
  There are lots of great technical interviews with him on Yt that show the opposite is true.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - waffleiron 4y ago
    Could you link a few? I'd be interested, cause it's not the feeling I get from him.
    - Isinlor 4y ago
      Here you have Dr. Daniel Rasky, a NASA Senior scientist talking about SpaceX and Elon. Daniel Rasky was involved in specific studies that were comparing operation of NASA and private companies. He also has first hand experience from working at SpaceX and with Elon. He is expert on advanced entry systems and thermal protection materials and he was for example involved in decision to select PICA as a heat shield for Dragon, and he explains how that went with Elon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxIiiwD9C0E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxIiiwD9C0E Here is Elon answering questions of National Academy of Science members about Starship. He explains in detail why he pushed the team towards steel and away from carbon fibers: https://youtu.be/da3iF2Np51A?t=951 https://youtu.be/da3iF2Np51A?t=951 Here you have another direct conversation with Elon: https://youtu.be/t705r8ICkRw?t=172 https://youtu.be/t705r8ICkRw?t=172 Here is Elon discussing with Sundy Munro mass manufacturing and engineering. Sandy Munro is a veteran engineer from General Motors supplier and directly at Ford. Sandy Munro is now running a consultancy company that tear downs cars and suggests improvements to wide range of clients from the car industry. https://youtu.be/YAtLTLiqNwg?t=78 https://youtu.be/YAtLTLiqNwg?t=78
      - coffeeblack 4y ago
        Thanks, half of the videos I didn’t even know. Also, Musk was doing a physics PhD in battery tech at Stanford when he dropped out to found Zip2.
        Isinlor 4y ago
        Yup, I think he has done like 1 day of it, before he dropped off. There is some long running pattern here with getting cold feet on bad decisions ^^ .
        coffeeblack 4y ago
        He was accepted into it, that’s the important part. But then the internet took off and it was the right time to be in that place. Remember, back then he was just another immigrant kid. It’s funny how quickly the left changed from loving him for turning the car industry on its head to hating him for taking away the left’s hate machine. Oh well.
- meatsauce 4y ago
Isinlor 4y ago
Because Elon probably spends max couple of hours per week on Twitter acquisition? His modus operandi is taking quick decisions and backtracking if he is wrong. Actually it's not only his modus operandi, SpaceX according to NASA evaluation is also working that way. It's basically depth first search vs. breath first search. Dr. Daniel Rasky, a NASA Senior scientist https://youtu.be/MxIiiwD9C0E?t=1464 https://youtu.be/MxIiiwD9C0E?t=1464 : > I think there are some things and kind of going back to in some ways back to the Apollo days if you take a look at kind of the environment that NASA had in Apollo it was kind of what Elon has with his young engineers. you had you know people trying things and in what works and what doesn't work I think over the years we've gotten into a very risk-averse profile and we're I call it full matrix engineering that okay that all concerns that anyone can raise have to be chased down a hundred percent before you can make any decision. Okay, so yeah like a full matrix of all the things that may be pertinent to a certain decision and you have to fill that entire array before you can make a decision to go forward and there's times when that makes sense but it doesn't make sense for everything we do. SpaceX uses a sparse matrix okay 51% okay when do when we get to 51% okay enough we're gonna make a decision and then we're going to try it and move on.
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
  > His modus operandi is taking quick decisions and backtracking if he is wrong. That is the modus operandi with products/services, it's not anything new anyways. It has been named in a bunch of different ways ranging from "agile" , "move fast break things" etc. also less charmingly "Microsoft vaporware products" or "Google graveyard", "Steve Jobs' bluffs" They all indicate the same strategy: ship something and get feedback, if feedback is ultra-negative then you can always kill it. However when legal stuff is signed, and especially legal stuff of this magnitude then the only way in which you leave yourself room to backtrack is if there is a clause which lets you do so in the legal document. When legal stuff is signed is not in your hands anymore, you have to treat it as being in the courts hands. Because that is what happens if you backtrack.
  - Isinlor 4y ago
    For car industry and space industry it is a complete revolution. From what I understand he can legally backtrack from the deal, but he would have to pay some billion dollars penalty. Not cheap by any means, but he can afford that. And having billion dollars at stake you can try to look for a lot of legal reasons to not pay that billion. But my guess is that he genuinely thinks that 5% number is not accurate based on his twitter feed comments. His feed comments is mostly crypto scammers. Some independent people also claim that 50% of his followers are fake. Twitter claim of 5% is very specific and probably accurate in a legal sense. But if you have tens of billions at stake and a deal that looks like a mistake it's entirely reasonable to dig deeper.
hef19898 4y ago
It can easily be both!
coffeeblack 4y ago

honkdaddy 4y ago

To be pedantic, USB sticks do come in TB sizes these days. Either way though, I expect Musk, the richest man alive, can afford to pay a handful of senior engineers a couple weeks pay to store and run some analysis on the firehose. It's a lot of data, but at "fuck-you" level money it's certainly manageable.

HWR_14 4y ago
Sure, it's manageable. I mean, trivially, Twitter manages it and Elon is worth more than Twitter, so clearly he can afford to process the data. They question is how long will it take, and how much money will he spend reproducing the analysis done by the company he's about to buy.

agnosticmantis 4y ago

As a statistician I chuckle seeing the genius rocket scientist lacks the most rudimentary understanding of stats 101. Maybe from now on we should use statistics as the epitome of difficult intellectual activity instead of “rocket science”.

smcl 4y ago
Or running a Python script? https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/06/01/elon-musk-crikey-dogecoin-jackson-palmer-python-code/ https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/06/01/elon-musk-crikey-dogeco...
coffeeblack 4y ago
It was a reply to a tweet. Please use context.
- altacc 4y ago
  It was a statement by the richest person on the planet on communication channel that he regularly uses to his declare personal and business intent and which is obsessively over analysed and therefore has real effects on business markets. Please use context ;)
  - coffeeblack 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]