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Trevor Milton's infamous "html5 supercomputer" quote often gets shared in discussions about Nikola, and for good reason. It's one of my all-time favorite bullsh
by kevinskii 3y ago
Trevor Milton's infamous "html5 supercomputer" quote often gets shared in discussions about Nikola, and for good reason. It's one of my all-time favorite bullshit quotes:
"The entire infotainment system is a HTML 5 super computer," Milton said. "That's the standard language for computer programmers around the world, so using it let's us build our own chips. And HTML 5 is very secure. Every component is linked on the data network, all speaking the same language. It's not a bunch of separate systems that somehow still manage to communicate." [1]
[1] https://www.truckinginfo.com/330475/whats-behind-the-grille-of-the-new-nikola-hydrogen-electric-truck https://www.truckinginfo.com/330475/whats-behind-the-grille-...
- HumblyTossed 3y agoIt reads like something ChatGPT would come up with
- verdverm 3y agomaybe this is why ChatGPT outputs some of the things it outputs garbage in, garbage out
- consumer451 3y agoI am not very familiar with this founder and his company, but how does a guy like this make it past any level of due diligence on the part of his investors?
- TeMPOraL 3y agoWith a smile on their face and a billion dollar check in their pocket. Investors don't mind the bullshit if they're on the profiting side of it.
- consumer451 3y agoMan, I am a one-time failed founder and apparently I put way too much thought into it, as one of multiple failings. Meanwhile Adam Neumann gets a next go.
- mrguyorama 3y agoEarly investors aren't trying to find valuable, profitable, or innovative companies that will make a lot of money. Their goal is to sell to someone else at a higher price sometime down the line. Therefore the actual reality of the business is not useful, and often purposely ignored if the story seems like it can pull in enough bag holders.
- consumer451 3y agoDo you think he would have gotten that far in today's interest rate environment? I mean, are investors paying more attention now, or does the bigger idiot theory still work?
- lazide 3y agoIt’s about cashflow now, and that’s a lot harder (but not impossible!) to BS around.
- twic 3y agoA theory I've read on here is that VC returns come from a handful of hyper-successful firms, and the challenge is getting in on the deals in those firms at all, and the way you do that is by building a reputation as a visionary and generous investor by investing in ludicrous bullshit on founder-friendly terms. From this point of view, money given to Nikola isn't a bad investment, it's a marketing expense.
- pnw 3y agoThey did a SPAC in 2020 so his 'investors' were mostly the general public. Actual investors were pretty skeptical of them, e.g. Hindenburg shorted them extensively and called them a fraud.
- throwawayelon 3y agoAnother one you may not have heard is Elon Musk.. he's been delivering self driving cars since 2015
- consumer451 3y agoI am not a Musk fan at all, in fact I despise Musk 4.0, but what he accomplished prior to losing his mind is undeniable. He founded SpaceX, which absolutely accelerated our access to space by 20-40 years. Half of the satellites in orbit belong to SpaceX. SpaceX put more mass into orbit last year than all other countries combined. He accelerated the adoption of electric vehicles by at least ten years. If the worst of climate change predictions turn out to be true, this could make him one of the most beneficial humans of our time... that's assuming that his naive geopolitical angling doesn't kill us all, and that his brain implants don't turn us into corporate zombies. My point is, there is much about him to criticize, but he has delivered a lot in the past.
- tessierashpool 3y agoIf the worst of climate change predictions turn out to be true, this could make him one of the most beneficial humans of our time... Not really. Methane from cows causes more harm to the environment than cars do. If he had gotten the world to go vegan, that would have been doing the impossible. Musk made an idea fashionable and sold carbon credits.
- bityard 3y ago[dead]
- consumer451 3y agoI mean, Musk went the practical route. Make things that nearly everyone wants... fast cars that you can refuel at home for next to no cost. But I hear you about food. However, the sad joke is: we don't need vegan purity. If we could just convince everyone in wealthy countries to skip meat for only two days per week, then the we might actually hit 2C max temp increase. But everyone is all about paleo meat-only or vegan/vegetarian purity crap. We just needed some moderation, but that's not as sexy as being a vegan or a Hummer driver. We will pilot our extremes straight into the ground.
- happytiger 3y agoYou clearly haven’t raised money from investors with that question. /j Investors are sheep and follow their peers. There are only a handful of mavericks in investment circles, and they generate the best and the worst returns. Consider that they all invested without seeing the engine or looking under the hood of the demo vehicle. It’s in the investor lawsuit — they even poke fun at themselves about it.
- cogman10 3y agoBingo. You see this in public shareholder calls all the time. Today, you can't find a tech company that doesn't say something like "We are integrating AI with LLM into our technology to blah". They don't say that because it's a meaningful or good product, they say that because investors give you a 10% stock bump just for saying "LLM". The same thing happened with crypto, machine learning, web 2.0, etc. Investors love a good buzzword and will reward a company handsomely for using them. Hell, that's like 90% of the reason FTX became as big as it was.
- rurp 3y agoIt was wild seeing companies have their biggest stock jump ever simply by talking about crypto magic beans on an earnings call.
- cogman10 3y agoMy company just did a shareholder meeting. Of everything we described (and we had a KILLER year) basically the only questions that were asked revolved around our usage of LLMs. It didn't matter that we made a ton of money, new products, and happy customers. What mattered was how we are adding AI.
- consumer451 3y agoWell, please tell us, how are you adding AI? I say this only one-quarter sarcastically, I would genuinely like to know. The only real applications of LLMs that I have seen so far are devs "learning" new languages.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kibwen 3y agoYet more proof that we could replace CEOs with ChatGPT and lose nothing.
- Centigonal 3y agoTrevor Milton is to CEOs what Billy Mitchell is to pro gamers
- HideousKojima 3y agoBilly Mitchell is a liar and a cheater, but he actually is really good at Donkey Kong. He has a publicly verified (in front of a crowd) score over 900,000. Much like how Lance Armstrong is both an excellent cyclist and a doped up cheater. Billy is definitely an awful human being in other regards than just his cheating though, at least from what I've been able to tell.
- dmboyd 3y agoThis is sort of unfair because I’m sure this must’ve been part of the training set. But hilarious nonetheless. https://chat.openai.com/share/6a1fdfb4-9228-480f-961e-fa2c4bc533f5 https://chat.openai.com/share/6a1fdfb4-9228-480f-961e-fa2c4b...
- peteradio 3y agoI like how it adds in a positive environmental impact completely out of its ass, just like a real Marketer!
- asveikau 3y agoMight be because the prompt is about an electric vehicle, buyers of which would be interested in environmental impact.
- lazide 3y agoChatGPT is all about replies that are believable. If there is real data,cool. But if not, also cool. Just like people!
- wk_end 3y agoThis is substantially worse than anything ChatGPT would come up with. Edit: never mind: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38686399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38686399
- happytiger 3y agoIt’s like a math proof lol. Validated peak tech. We have created an unlimited bullshit generator.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoHonestly, it doesn't - I can't imagine ChatGPT producing this density of blatant bullshit, not without a specialized prompt forcing it to. Bad as it is, ChatGPT by default still has some statistically average dignity.
- ravenstine 3y agoIf I was already an investor and saw that, my eyes would bug out so fast that they'd leave my skull and achieve orbital escape velocity. That quote is peak Dilbert boss.
- test77777g 3y ago[dead]
- spacecadet 3y agoLOL soooo good. The principles never get old!!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gxyt6gfy5t 3y agoYet GM still gave them millions
- peterfirefly 3y agoMary led and that mattered.
- cvhashim04 3y agoNetflix has a couple series, a “Dictator’s playbook” and “Mafia boss’ playbook”. What they really need to do is make one for tech scroungers and frauds like SBF, Holmes, Newman, Nikola founder, etc.
- dylan604 3y agoWhy stop there? These are the obvious scams, but let's look deeper. Let's look at how "legit" companies are screwing their users by using all of their personal data and convincing the public that everything is perfectly normal
- nradov 3y agoThat's a good one. But in terms of sheer cluelessness, hubris, and word salad incoherency I still prefer this quote from Jeff Davis, co-founder of Razorfish. They were valued at $4B in 2000. "I think this definitely is not a fad, what's occurring right now. This is absolutely real; this is a revolution; we're packing rifles; and this is going to be something that's going to change the course of the way the world is functioning. We've asked our clients to recontextualize their business. We've recontextualized what it is to be a services business. We radically transform businesses to invent and reinvent them." Their actual business? Building web sites for other companies. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-dot-com-kids/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-dot-com-kids/
- auggierose 3y agoSounds like he was bang on right?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wnevets 3y agoThat wasn't wrong in 2000, just bad timing.
- figassis 3y agoI mean, circa 2000 where was the BS?
- tessierashpool 3y agoeverywhere
- I_Am_Nous 3y agoBack Street's back, all right!
- happytiger 3y agoI mean, sure, but didn’t every single one of those clients have to adjust everything because of the rise of digital? “Just a website” was common criticism and still is. Great quote though. Those were heady days.
- 77pt77 3y agoThey do this because it works. Until sometimes it doesn't.
- alternative_a 3y agoOh, there is always SoftBank to the rescue.
- henry2023 3y agoNot even ChatGPT could hallucinate this.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoThat sounds like a challenge! > ChatGPT CEO: Our company has spearheaded the development of Quantum Neural Cloud Computing, a revolutionary paradigm in the realm of artificial intelligence and data processing. We've seamlessly integrated quantum computing principles with neural network architectures, creating an unparalleled synergy that redefines the boundaries of computational capabilities.
- kirrent 3y agoDespite being on shaky ground due to local minima, barren plateaus, classical simulability, and more, variational quantum computing is definitely a real field. ChatGPT can't even hallucinate properly.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ssss11 3y agoOh my god. The audacity to say that.. to even think of saying that bs!!!
- ssss11 3y agoAlso this snippet: “The truck uses voice-activated controls rather than pushing buttons and reaching for various controls to help maintain a driver's focus on the driving task. “ …is bound to never have problems haha /s
- hef19898 3y agoAnd the other hapf of Nikolas name is sellingg that as the latest shit in order to save a buck on levers and buttons.
- sandworm101 3y agoBecause nothing does more to increase driver focus than getting in a heated argument with a machine. My rental car last month, towards the end of a long drive in a snowstorm, told me it was "time to take a break" and displayed a coffee cup on the dash where the speedometer used to be. I swear if it wasn't a rental car I would have put my fist through that screen.
- I_Am_Nous 3y agoI was driving a new company vehicle recently and while I'm cruising at highway speeds, it would pop up a warning that my washer fluid was low. Not sure when the optimal time to tell me is, but I can almost guarantee telling me at 60 mph is below optimal.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y agoThat sounds illegal. I thought even Tesla got dinged for moving the defrost option. Obscuring the speed seems bonkers.
- sandworm101 3y ago
- joegibbs 3y agoI don't think a single one of those sentences makes any sense at all, except for HTML5 being very secure, which is trivially obvious since it's not even a programming language.
- 7e 3y agoIt sounds like something Elon Musk would say.
- dessimus 3y agoExcept it's missing a 2-5 year timeline that will never come to fruition.
- pyinstallwoes 3y agoMakes me think that reality is truly leaking in some way. That's something a worse model of LLM's would create.
- taskforcegemini 3y agothat's something Roy and Moss would have written for Jen