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Lest we forget: "The entire infotainment system is a HTML 5 super computer," Milton said. "That's the standard language for computer programmers around the wor
by ToDougie 1y ago
Lest we forget:
"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."
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-... - April 24, 2019
- pinkmuffinere 1y agoWow, this is like an instant cure for imposter syndrome. I might hang this on my wall.
- nerdsniper 1y agoWow. Quotes like these really illustrate to me that I may have some massive blind spots and lack a lot of skills that help make people lots of money. This fellow is worth $3 billion and just spouts gibberish. What skills does he have that I completely lack?
- maxbond 1y agoMaybe what you have that Milton lacks is integrity.
- kibwen 1y ago> What skills does he have that I completely lack? As George Carlin would say, it's a big club, and you ain't in it.
- lostmsu 1y agoIs your tongue smooth?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 1y agoPoetry. The ability to be awed by the wonders all around him, and to transmit that awe to others. A true communion with the fantastical.
- takinola 1y agoThis is not even a joke.
- 0_____0 1y agoI think this is perhaps one factor that feeds into the "reality distortion field" I have seen around particular leaders. You don't feel like they're trying to goad you into seeing it their way, you just sort of naturally start to believe in their project (their? is our project, comrade!).
- kridsdale3 1y agoCharisma (or Riz, now, I guess) is just a naturally in-built trait in some segment of the population. We evolved to be collective and cooperative by following leaders. We have never had a meritocratic or scientific system for choosing who to follow.
- whatevertrevor 1y agoI do agree with your conclusion, but I'd add that charisma is also very much learned, like a lot of other traits. Lots of trials at seeing what people respond to and honing in on what works, weeding out what doesn't and if you're in the serial entrepreneur/cult leader business: an ever evolving language of sophistry that keeps up with the baseline level of critical thought, but also weeds out actual skeptics quickly because you don't want them around your followers.
- 0_____0 1y agoI think it's important to point out that even extremely intelligent and talented individuals can lack critical scepticism when deciding to follow a leader or stay with a particular project. I've seen so much human energy and engineering talent go into a business that everyone should have known, didn't have organization, strategy, or actual leadership to build real product and be a viable business.
- cogman10 1y agoUsually rich parents. That said, looks like this guy is actually more of a "self made man" as he started several businesses out of college with moderate success. The first was an alarm company (Spoiler, those are generally MLMs and there's 100 of them). Looks like he was just successful enough at it. It's not shocking to me that someone who starts an MLM ends up in trouble with the SEC.
- xnx 1y ago> It's not shocking to me that someone who starts an MLM And it's not shocking that someone from Utah starts an MLM. MLM and other scams seem to be the main industry in Utah.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rhcom2 1y agoAlong with soda shops and cookie companies. A non-snarky comment is in my experience the LDS church puts a great deal of emphasis on entrepreneurship, wealth, and "excellence in all things" that leads some to do great things and others to shamelessly steal and cheat.
- terminalshort 1y agoBeats the hell out of the "everybody successful got there by luck and/or being a bad person" attitude around here, that's for damn sure.
- skippyboxedhero 1y agoFraud is an essential subcomponent of entrepreneurship. You cannot have one without the other. If I am trying to get you to invest in something, you have to swap cash today for a vague promise about the future. This does not make it less wrong but fraud is essential.
- 1y ago
- candlemas 1y agoHe doesn't have a conscience.
- terminalshort 1y agoSales
- kolbe 1y agoNearly all people value good articulation over intelligence. This is why people who interview well get jobs over people who do good work. It's why Steve Jobs makes billions while Woz doesn't. And why Trevor Milton can bilk investors of claims about HTML5 supercomputers while nerds get brushed off talking about tensor-chip accelerated attention models. The truly great founders, CEOs, and investors of our generation have generally been people who could see the difference between articulate and intelligent, and valued intelligence as the driving characteristic of people who built their products.
- kadushka 1y agoWoz did make billions though
- HWR_14 1y agoHe didn't. First, he gave away a good chunk to early employees who didn't have stock when the IPO happened. Then, he liquidated his Apple in the mid-1980s. He certainly could have made billions if he had been greedy (not given any away) and lazy (just lived off the dividends and never sold) and never done another thing in his life - more billions than Bezos.
- dylan604 1y ago> It's why Steve Jobs makes billions while Woz doesn't. I'm going to have to disagree. There are many things that make the two Steves different. Woz was just never interested in the same things Jobs was. Woz wanted to make cool shit. Jobs wanted to have his products rule the world.
- anthem2025 1y ago[dead]
- quickthrowman 1y ago> What skills does he have that I completely lack? 1. The ability to lie shamelessly. 2. Charisma. 3. Confidence. The last two (or all three, really) can be combined into ‘salesmanship’, more or less.
- lstodd 1y agoIMO it all combines into confidence. Which you can't project so to say if you can not make yourself believe in your own lies for a moment, and charisma is just another name for confidence. Or hutzpah for that matter. Key point is to not let yourself forget what is that you're doing: manipulating people. Or in other words, don't forget that there is such thing as reality. Many fell into this one trap.
- yard2010 1y agoI want to add from my own experience, he doesn't have to be accountable for anything. This post supports it.
- basch 1y agoConviction is a good combination of the last two. Or to cover it all Shameless Conviction.
- sneilan1 1y agoIt's not skills that got him ahead. It's the connections to the "right" people that can be benefit him the most.
- cheema33 1y ago> What skills does he have that I completely lack? The ability to tell tall tales that are completely disconnected from reality. And be able to do so with utter confidence.
- rasengan 1y agoEither corruption was always happening maximally, and we've finally begun to notice , or corruption has reached a new maximum. Either way, it's maximum corruption. And we, the people, continue to choose "public discourse" as a mechanism to bring awareness and, perhaps, attend to the issue; yet, the discourse available to the people is limited, both economically and even in social media, algorithmically. I hate to sound like a decentralization fanatic, but decentralizing power away from centralized actors is the only way we will be able to right these wrongs and essentially bring fairness to society. We, the people, deserve to reap rewards based on skill and the proper application thereof.
- terminalshort 1y agoWe are much closer to zero corruption than maximum corruption. How many times have you bribed a public official in your life? In many places it is considered a routine part of navigating bureaucracy. And if you think decentralization brings fairness I suggest you visit some of the more decentralized parts of the world. Decentralization can solve some problems, but that's not one of them.
- SilverbeardUnix 1y agoYou have ethics and the ability to feel shame.
- wrs 1y agoGoogle "dark triad".
- paulpauper 1y agoneed to get me one of these HTML 5 supercomputers
- itsoktocry 1y ago>What skills does he have that I completely lack? You'd be amazed how "successful" one can be if willing to lie, cheat and/or steal.
- vkou 1y ago> What skills does he have that I completely lack? It does not take any special skills to do this. All it takes is having no integrity.
- kaptainscarlet 1y agoIt's not a lack of integrity. Such people actually believe their own bs. They are functional schizophrenics.
- cindyllm 1y ago[dead]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- somenameforme 1y agoI think the skill most people lack is just initiative and risk tolerance. Behind many, if not most, highly successful people, there's often a story of them just trying lots of stuff until something sticks. I have a pack of a few friends who have been doing this for years. I think most of their ideas are pretty awful, but who knows, maybe one day they'll be right? Even this site is maybe a good example. You can apply to YCombinator with little more than a partner, plan, and pitch. The worst that happens is they say no, and if they say yes then you get a $500k funded shot at your idea with lots of advice on top and people trying to help you succeed. Yeah the chances of acceptance are low, but if you've ever read applications for pretty much anything, a ridiculous amount are just complete garbage, so your chances are better than the numbers suggest if you're halfway competent.
- terminalshort 1y agoThis is correct. HN is full of people making mid 6 figures that can't seem to get over the idea that people making 7 figures or more are doing it unfairly just because those people aren't scaled up versions of themselves. You don't have to be smarter than a good engineer to be a good founder or CEO because it's fundamentally a different skill set and risk tolerance. They latch onto single cases of fraud and generalize it to all rich people because it is convenient. Of course theft and fraud occurs at all levels on the org chart, but it doesn't make the news when some IC steals a couple hundred K from his company.
- zamadatix 1y agoThere are plenty of fair points many would find uncomfortable trying to accept from above, particularly around how much risk is sensible to take and deal with. Hell, even knowing and believing people tend to undervalue risk... I still don't think I take enough risk myself. At the same time, I think going from mid-6 to 7 figure income is a lot less controversial than 10 figure net worth. It's still unlikely to be related to whether someone is a scaled up version of another, but at what point you consider the reasons for earning that much "fair" tend to go a lot deeper than plain fraud.
- whatevertrevor 1y ago
- Terr_ 1y agohttps://xkcd.com/1827/ https://xkcd.com/1827/
- boringg 1y agoThat can't be real - wow. They were the company that rolled the vehicle downhill to make it look like progress right?
- paulpauper 1y agoyeah https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/09/nikola-admits-prototype-was-rolling-downhill-in-promotional-video/#:~:text=Nikola%20admits%20prototype%20was%20rolling,a%20two%2Dlane%20desert%20highway. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/09/nikola-admits-prototype...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Animats 1y agoBy order of Trump, that never happened.[1][2] Financial claims against Milton are now void. The Führer is never wrong. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/28/trump-pardons-nikola-trevor-milton-ceo-securities-fraud-electric-vehicle.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/28/trump-pardons-nikola-trevor-... [2] https://www.justice.gov/pardon/media/1395001/dl https://www.justice.gov/pardon/media/1395001/dl
- ourmandave 1y agoThe founders argued over the presidential pardon having to much power, and decided that congress's impeachment power would prevent abuse.
- RealityVoid 1y agoHah! Guess they didn't see these voting patterns coming! They gave you “A republic, if you can keep it.” - I will admit, you gave it a pretty good run.
- pear01 1y agovoting patterns? The founders didn't want most people to vote.
- russdill 1y agovue, it's vue.
- bflesch 1y agoSomeone should be selling motivational posters with these kind of funny quotes from our dear "tech leaders". There should be a gallery of funny quotes to choose from so I can put them on my wall and feel better about myself.
- pinkmuffinere 1y agoSame!! I'd definitely consider buying some for myself, and perhaps also as gag-gifts for other tech friends lol. I happen to have access to amazon merch from forever ago, which doesn't have posters, but does allow throw pillows.... I might spend the weekend playing with one lol
- pinkmuffinere 1y agolol Here's the throw pillow: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FRZPJDZ4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FRZPJDZ4
- vjvjvjvjghv 1y agoAnd it receives data from a set of tubes which some experts call "internet"
- ManuelKiessling 1y agoThat’s so wrong that even the opposite of it is wrong.
- camdroidw 1y ago[dead]
- dreamcompiler 1y agoThis sounds a lot like Ted "The Internet is a series of tubes" Stevens. You can just hear the frustrated aide trying to explain a concept to him in the simplest possible terms and then he totally mangles it.
- metadat 1y agoAh, thanks, I thought it was a series of tubes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes