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Yes, a bit underwhelming, but it's a recruitment event and you've got to start somewhere. Question is how fast and if they can catch up with BD in terms of cont

Yes, a bit underwhelming, but it's a recruitment event and you've got to start somewhere. Question is how fast and if they can catch up with BD in terms of control.

whinvik 4y ago
It seems strange that this comment was so aggressively down voted. Anything related to Elon gets the same treatment by HN that I feel that Elon invites a visceral rather than an objective reaction.
- justapassenger 4y ago
  Because Elon is snakes oil salesman, who thinks he’s smartest and most important human in the history. He also happens to have some very successful products, that his fan base uses to silence any criticism.
  - martindbp 4y ago
    If snake-oil salesmanship is all it takes to land rockets vertically and single-handily kickstart the transition to EVs I'm all for it. We need more snake-oil salesmen leading corporate America!
    - nixarn 4y ago
      There can't be any objective discussions about Elon any more =) John Carmack finds Elon to be smart and really knowledgeable (listen to the latest podcast from Lex Fridman). And you would think HN trusts the words from Carmack? But most think Carmack, who knows Elon personally is wrong, and their opinion based on some random internet articles, is right.
      - addicted 4y ago
        Elon is super smart. He’s also a snake oil salesman. These are not contradictory statements. Unfortunately he chose his intelligence to enrich himself by fooling others. He could have chosen other options. It looked like that was the direction he was going in. By trying to help people. But it’s clear at some point he realized he can make far more money claiming to do something than by actually doing something and decided to focus on that.
        martindbp 4y ago
        > Unfortunately he chose his intelligence to enrich himself by fooling others. You make it sound like he's selling ads online or something, not building rockets and electric cars, self-driving software and now robots? Like, if you wanted to make as much money as possible and "fool" people as you say, doing a rocket company and a new car company at the same time, pouring all the $100m you earned from selling your previous company, being months from bankruptcy in both ventures seem like a very roundabout and stressful way of becoming a billionaire. I don't understand where you people get your world view from, are you exclusively reading click-bait news headlines and coming to the conclusion that Elon=Bad? How about reading some actual accounts of the early days at SpaceX for example? I can recommend "Liftoff", it's very balanced, focuses mostly on the employees of SpaceX and doesn't try to paint Elon as some kind of heroic figure, but gives credit where it's due. He comes off as a highly technical, maniacal, single-minded founder, inspiring but working his staff to the bones, and sure, also has some darker sides to his personality. It's the kind of personality that's required to pull these things off.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        tim333 4y ago
        I see no snake oil and a lot of cars, rockets and satellites which all seem to work quite well.
    - justapassenger 4y ago
      Exactly. He lands rockets so he cannot lie? Is that a new law of universe?
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    So he is at the same time a snake oil salesmen that also not a snake oil salesmen because he revolutionized 2 major capital intensive industries. You realize that makes no sense?
    - martindbp 4y ago
      People just can't give someone any credit if they don't like the person or they have slightly different political views, I guess it's just the times we live in, zero tolerance.
  - sixQuarks 4y ago
    Anyone who uses the word “snake oil salesman” to describe Elon Musk is delusional and has gone way too deep down the anti-Elon rabbit hole.
    - devb 4y ago
      Do you at least get paid for this?
      - sixQuarks 4y ago
        Kind of actually. 10x’ed my net worth since 2019 with TSLA stock. It pays when you can see through the BS fud like your statements.
- chinabot 4y ago
  He's generally a force of good for the world but can come over as a bit of a dick sometimes, there are much worse people out there if you need to hate on someone.
  - justapassenger 4y ago
    I don’t know. Richest person in the world, whose ego is only thing bigger than his wealth, is pretty good person to direct at least some hate at. And while some of his lies are just to kill competition/extract money from the rich (like FSD), but some are just disgusting. With neuralink he was openly telling people for few years that his implants will solve their health issues. Implants that killed most of the monkeys in the labs. It’s disgusting to lie to people with really serious health conditions, give them false hope and likely have them reject other treatments, because Elon said he’ll fix them. You don’t think it’s a good reason to pour some hate at him?
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      > With neuralink he was openly telling people for few years that his implants will solve their health issues. He has invested mostly his own money in that. Are you claiming there is no medical use what so ever for the technology they are developing? Based on what knowlage do you make that claim? > Implants that killed most of the monkeys in the labs. What data is that based on? > It’s disgusting to lie to people with really serious health conditions, give them false hope and likely have them reject other treatments, because Elon said he’ll fix them. What? I have heard most of Neurolinks presentation and not a single time did Elon ever suggest that people just delay other treatments. Neurolink has clearly mostly done animal trials and product demonstrations. I at least have never heard Musk claim that Neurolink would have a product on the market within a short time period. Please provide sources for these claims?
    - chinabot 4y ago
      I used to think like this, then I looked at myself.
  - the_only_law 4y ago
justapassenger 4y ago
I assume they’ll catchup as fast as they catch up with their FSD to Waymo. Which is driving customers for years, while Tesla’s FSD cannot go without intervention for more than few miles, at best, in any more complex environment. And yes, I know Waymo uses HD maps and limited geo area. So does Tesla, and they’re explicitly mapping and testing areas driven by popular influencers. And it’s assuming that there’s actually a market for humanoid robots. Other than futurology folks getting excited about that form factor, there’s no real market for it, and research shows that humanoids robots are almost never a most optimal answer.
- martindbp 4y ago
  If you mean catch up as in FSD is making billions while Waymo is losing billions, yes the comparison is apt. Boston Dynamics tech is very impressive but they don't seem very good at commercializing it. Tesla bot may be janky now, but I could imagine it could do some useful tasks in their factories in 5-8 years or so. We'll see, I think the development will take even longer than self-driving, but at least it will be fun to follow the progress if they're as open as with FSD
  - m00x 4y ago
    Tesla FSD isn't making billions. What are you on?
    - martindbp 4y ago
      It is. Let's check by two measures: 1. 160k people have bought and recieved FSD Beta at somewhere between $5 and $15k (today's price). Let's say an average of $8k, that means $1.28 billion. More have bought it but are waiting to get access. 2. FSD take rate is estimated as of now to be around 7% of vehicles sold world-wide. At the current price of $15k and the estimated 1.4 million vehicles sold this year, that amounts to $1.47 billion. Numbers are rough estimates, 50% of revenue is held in reserve until FSD is out of beta, and many haven't received the beta yet, still by any measure they are making and will make billions. What you personally think of the product, or if you think Elon is a "snake oil salesman" is not really relevant. To strong arm any counter argument, it's possible that all these buyers will realize it actually sucks/doesn't work, sue the company and the whole thing falls apart, but I don't see any indication of it. There are plenty of unhappy and happy customers with FSD, but they've clearly found something that people are willing to pay a lot for and many are happy with it. Clearly it needs to improve much further in order to sell this to the wider public beyond people who think it's fun to babysit an AI.

Yes, a bit underwhelming, but it's a recruitment event and you've got to start somewhere. Question is how fast and if they can catch up with BD in terms of control.

whinvik 4y ago

It seems strange that this comment was so aggressively down voted. Anything related to Elon gets the same treatment by HN that I feel that Elon invites a visceral rather than an objective reaction.

justapassenger 4y ago
Because Elon is snakes oil salesman, who thinks he’s smartest and most important human in the history. He also happens to have some very successful products, that his fan base uses to silence any criticism.
- martindbp 4y ago
  If snake-oil salesmanship is all it takes to land rockets vertically and single-handily kickstart the transition to EVs I'm all for it. We need more snake-oil salesmen leading corporate America!
  - nixarn 4y ago
    There can't be any objective discussions about Elon any more =) John Carmack finds Elon to be smart and really knowledgeable (listen to the latest podcast from Lex Fridman). And you would think HN trusts the words from Carmack? But most think Carmack, who knows Elon personally is wrong, and their opinion based on some random internet articles, is right.
    - addicted 4y ago
      Elon is super smart. He’s also a snake oil salesman. These are not contradictory statements. Unfortunately he chose his intelligence to enrich himself by fooling others. He could have chosen other options. It looked like that was the direction he was going in. By trying to help people. But it’s clear at some point he realized he can make far more money claiming to do something than by actually doing something and decided to focus on that.
      - martindbp 4y ago
        > Unfortunately he chose his intelligence to enrich himself by fooling others. You make it sound like he's selling ads online or something, not building rockets and electric cars, self-driving software and now robots? Like, if you wanted to make as much money as possible and "fool" people as you say, doing a rocket company and a new car company at the same time, pouring all the $100m you earned from selling your previous company, being months from bankruptcy in both ventures seem like a very roundabout and stressful way of becoming a billionaire. I don't understand where you people get your world view from, are you exclusively reading click-bait news headlines and coming to the conclusion that Elon=Bad? How about reading some actual accounts of the early days at SpaceX for example? I can recommend "Liftoff", it's very balanced, focuses mostly on the employees of SpaceX and doesn't try to paint Elon as some kind of heroic figure, but gives credit where it's due. He comes off as a highly technical, maniacal, single-minded founder, inspiring but working his staff to the bones, and sure, also has some darker sides to his personality. It's the kind of personality that's required to pull these things off.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - tim333 4y ago
        I see no snake oil and a lot of cars, rockets and satellites which all seem to work quite well.
  - justapassenger 4y ago
    Exactly. He lands rockets so he cannot lie? Is that a new law of universe?
- panick21_ 4y ago
  So he is at the same time a snake oil salesmen that also not a snake oil salesmen because he revolutionized 2 major capital intensive industries. You realize that makes no sense?
  - martindbp 4y ago
    People just can't give someone any credit if they don't like the person or they have slightly different political views, I guess it's just the times we live in, zero tolerance.
- sixQuarks 4y ago
  Anyone who uses the word “snake oil salesman” to describe Elon Musk is delusional and has gone way too deep down the anti-Elon rabbit hole.
  - devb 4y ago
    Do you at least get paid for this?
    - sixQuarks 4y ago
      Kind of actually. 10x’ed my net worth since 2019 with TSLA stock. It pays when you can see through the BS fud like your statements.
chinabot 4y ago
He's generally a force of good for the world but can come over as a bit of a dick sometimes, there are much worse people out there if you need to hate on someone.
- justapassenger 4y ago
  I don’t know. Richest person in the world, whose ego is only thing bigger than his wealth, is pretty good person to direct at least some hate at. And while some of his lies are just to kill competition/extract money from the rich (like FSD), but some are just disgusting. With neuralink he was openly telling people for few years that his implants will solve their health issues. Implants that killed most of the monkeys in the labs. It’s disgusting to lie to people with really serious health conditions, give them false hope and likely have them reject other treatments, because Elon said he’ll fix them. You don’t think it’s a good reason to pour some hate at him?
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    > With neuralink he was openly telling people for few years that his implants will solve their health issues. He has invested mostly his own money in that. Are you claiming there is no medical use what so ever for the technology they are developing? Based on what knowlage do you make that claim? > Implants that killed most of the monkeys in the labs. What data is that based on? > It’s disgusting to lie to people with really serious health conditions, give them false hope and likely have them reject other treatments, because Elon said he’ll fix them. What? I have heard most of Neurolinks presentation and not a single time did Elon ever suggest that people just delay other treatments. Neurolink has clearly mostly done animal trials and product demonstrations. I at least have never heard Musk claim that Neurolink would have a product on the market within a short time period. Please provide sources for these claims?
  - chinabot 4y ago
    I used to think like this, then I looked at myself.
- the_only_law 4y ago

justapassenger 4y ago

I assume they’ll catchup as fast as they catch up with their FSD to Waymo. Which is driving customers for years, while Tesla’s FSD cannot go without intervention for more than few miles, at best, in any more complex environment. And yes, I know Waymo uses HD maps and limited geo area. So does Tesla, and they’re explicitly mapping and testing areas driven by popular influencers. And it’s assuming that there’s actually a market for humanoid robots. Other than futurology folks getting excited about that form factor, there’s no real market for it, and research shows that humanoids robots are almost never a most optimal answer.

martindbp 4y ago
If you mean catch up as in FSD is making billions while Waymo is losing billions, yes the comparison is apt. Boston Dynamics tech is very impressive but they don't seem very good at commercializing it. Tesla bot may be janky now, but I could imagine it could do some useful tasks in their factories in 5-8 years or so. We'll see, I think the development will take even longer than self-driving, but at least it will be fun to follow the progress if they're as open as with FSD
- m00x 4y ago
  Tesla FSD isn't making billions. What are you on?
  - martindbp 4y ago
    It is. Let's check by two measures: 1. 160k people have bought and recieved FSD Beta at somewhere between $5 and $15k (today's price). Let's say an average of $8k, that means $1.28 billion. More have bought it but are waiting to get access. 2. FSD take rate is estimated as of now to be around 7% of vehicles sold world-wide. At the current price of $15k and the estimated 1.4 million vehicles sold this year, that amounts to $1.47 billion. Numbers are rough estimates, 50% of revenue is held in reserve until FSD is out of beta, and many haven't received the beta yet, still by any measure they are making and will make billions. What you personally think of the product, or if you think Elon is a "snake oil salesman" is not really relevant. To strong arm any counter argument, it's possible that all these buyers will realize it actually sucks/doesn't work, sue the company and the whole thing falls apart, but I don't see any indication of it. There are plenty of unhappy and happy customers with FSD, but they've clearly found something that people are willing to pay a lot for and many are happy with it. Clearly it needs to improve much further in order to sell this to the wider public beyond people who think it's fun to babysit an AI.