
Get with the program “Elon” ..
Get with the program “Elon” .. and all your legal woes will evaporate.
To say Elon Musk's business empire is having a week of legal woe may be an understatement, after filings revealed yesterday suggest his social network X and electric car outfit Tesla both face potentially expensive court battles. Documents filed in two cases against X in Delaware – one [PDF] by a group of six former Twitter …
"Seriously, he's one of the worst, and stupidest, people in the world."
With respect, there's a fair list of contenders. Many hold political office or lead huge corporations. And some even aspire to become POTUS again.
That is I'm sure in his mind, only temporary.
The sooner those pesky humans can be replaced with his shiny robots the better. After all, Robots can't file suit... or can they?
I guess with enough enrichment/persuasion some politicians can be persuaded to give Robots the same rights as nonviable embryos... The USA and its arcane legal system is screwed up beyond belief. If you have enough mulah, you can keep appealing a verdict until you have spent more on legal fees than the the damages awarded against you. Madness.
Elon will be taking lessons from his mentor, Trump who, will gladly impart his 'wisdom' because Elon can't become POTUS... until DJT rips up the constitution on Jan 21 2025 and turns the USA into a dictatorship.
Consider, for a moment, the curious case of the Elephant in the room. It's not just any elephant but an Invisible one, conjured from the whispers of 'What If' and 'Just Suppose.' This elephant, unseen yet unmistakable, roams freely, feeding on the foliage of Fervent Belief without the tether of Evidence. Its presence as palpable as the air we breathe, yet as elusive as the wind—seen not with the eyes, but felt with the heart of Conviction.
Around it, a party is in full swing, with guests engaged in animated discussions. Amidst this gathering, the Invisible Elephant moves silently, its every step a testament to the power of imagination over observation. Some guests whisper of its menacing hazard, others of its majestic strength, though none can agree, for its form is shaped more by conviction than by reason.
He originally wanted to only use robots in his factories but he found there were lots of jobs that robots couldn't do (or do well) and so he had to employ those pesky meatbags. There were pictures a while ago of lots of robots stacked outside a factory after this failure.
Every single one of "his" ideas is something I read about old mid-20th-century adventure comic annuals I bought in 2nd-hand fayres in the 80s. Vacuum tubes, self-driving cars, big one-piece rockets, rockets for international Earth travel... it was *all* in those books. He must have just been reading the same stuff, and he internalised it as "the future". And now he's mistaking things he saw presented as "the future" as a child as his ideas and vision for a great future.
But there's a reason those things never got beyond kids comics...
In my experience, a lot of loud tech people had the same problem. I blame it for the VR trend as well; science fiction is replete with VR and AR technology, but most authors actually considered what it would do, or at least made the technology conceivably useful by writing around the technical challenges. For example, the writings of Daniel Suarez make a lot of use of AR, and it sounds great, but he allows a simple, unobtrusive, unidentifiable pair of glasses to run that for a long time, not a heavy helmet thing, and he includes a lot of complex software so the AR interface can actually identify things about the world around the user. The people trying to build it don't seem to understand why their devices, with two hours of battery life and no connection to the real world, aren't being adopted in the same way. The middle part is hard, but they seem to think they can just jump to the science fiction part.
The same is true of the people who imagine doomsday scenarios, whether just futurists or those who made the technology and want to make predictions for their own purposes. Whenever they imagine a technical advance going wrong, their picture is a lot more like something a science fiction author wrote about than what could actually happen. The authors have a good reason to do that. It's a lot more interesting to read about massive disasters than annoying technical failures. For example, one of the reasons why there was so much chaos in Jurassic Park is over-reliance on a computer program with project management failures, but take out the running from dinosaurs bit and people don't want to read it. Still, Crichton put that in and readers could see it. The pessimists tend to ignore the small failures that are incredibly likely and jump straight for the apocalyptic ones that, realistically, are very unlikely.
"I blame it for the VR trend as well; science fiction is replete with VR and AR technology, but most authors actually considered what it would do, or at least made the technology conceivably useful by writing around the technical challenges."
Most SF is that way. At least the good stuff is. Everything works except for one or two things that seem a bit out there. It's a bit of handwavium and some of that has come to fruition over the years. I love "A Logic Named Joe" that was written ages ago but describes the internet and modern computers very well with a dash of AI. It makes me wonder if the nerds that were reading these stories used the author's ideas after becoming an engineer as a basis for much of the tech we have now. Are we going to have a Quantum HOLMES IV in the moon that becomes self-aware? The rest of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is engineering, not science or fantasy. The Handwavium element is Mike.
I agree with that. SF authors get to skip some of the technical challenges because their job is to show us what would happen, not make it work. The good ones clearly think it through. For example, with VR, a lot of authors who included VR involve more than just virtual imagery. They have tactile and auditory elements to their VR, which means that users can interact with virtual objects naturally, rather than doing the weird hand movements. Sure, it's hard to build, but they realize that it is necessary. Or in my example of Suarez's AR, where it is only vision, the use cases adjust to make that restriction useful, displaying information overlays rather than separate environments. I think the authors are spending more time considering reality than those actually trying to build the devices.
"Every single one of "his" ideas is something I read about old mid-20th-century adventure comic annuals I bought in 2nd-hand fayres in the 80s."
The Cybertruck was a concept drawing by Curtis Brubaker that was printed in a 1978 Penthouse magazine. A wee bit different than a comic, but entertaining none the less.
"There were pictures a while ago of lots of robots stacked outside a factory after this failure."
When every other car maker on the planet would also like to get rid of the pesky meatsacks and combined have thousands of years of experience making cars, it was a bit cheeky of Elon to come along and claim he was going to build an automated car plant. That it didn't turn out very well and came within a whisker of killing off the company should have been a big slice of humble pie. But, Nope, he never learns. After struggling to get the Model X to the market, Elon said he insisted on too many features that bogged down the design process and he learned his lesson. Every subsequent vehicle has been through the same bloat. For the believers that think he will finally have exercised all of those demons now and can finally rein in his fantasies to make a low priced EV, good luck with that. The unpolished Cybertruck just barely wasn't held back to make it amphibious as well as ugly.
Elon's cars will never be "affordable" for most people. This is not his market. Earlier Cadillacs had air conditioning and cruise control when few others did, and now it's standard equipment. But back then, only those with a lot of disposable income could afford cars with them.
In the "Marketing Cycle" world these customers are the "early adopters". The masses will not have this for a decade or more.
Early in Ford's history, Benz sued him over their invention of "The Automobile". Benz lost Ford's patent challenge, i.e. "too broad" or similar. European car makers only wanted cars for the WEALTHY and not for the masses, after all, and Ford wanted his own employees to own some of the cars they made [mostly for PR I bet but he understood the MASS market].
Anyway new/shiny is generally bought by early adopters. In a decade or so the features that CAN be in mass market cars will end up there, and patent royalties will enrich the inventors.
@Winky*. what is this right you speak of ? Looks like the usual stiff the peasants by the wealthy to me. Terms right and left have become meaningless IMHO. Choices are between self appointed, usually at taxpayers expense, bureaucracies who dress differently but both want to micromanage everyones lives, both want a populace infested by Maos "self criticism " to keep dissent uncertain and weak. All want unaccountable power because the high priesthood leaders know best.
In a saner time, Elon would be recognised as a classic American robber baron in the mould of Jay Gould. Politics is secondary to him. It's just a means to an end. So "hard right" isn't really a fair description.
But it's a mistake to try to see all rich and powerful people as "the same". They're as different from each other as the rest of us.
Sure, but that is an aspect, not the defining trait. Two people can have money and power and nonetheless use those things to do two completely unrelated, opposed, or perpendicular things. To describe us as different on that basis is logical. To describe them as the same based on that aspect is oversimplified.
or in the sights of a .50cal sniper rifle from half a mile away.
{I'm not advocating the use of such a weapon, only making a comparison}
All those scumbag lawyers will be first up against the wall. Instead of Gucci bags, they will from Shoprite or Wallmart and lined with dog poo.
"Hard right"
I do not think those words mean what YOU think they mean...
If 'hard right' (Adolph, Mussolini) is not a mirror clone of 'hard left' (Mao, Stalin) then I think your definition might be "inaccurate" at best... [in fact both circle around and meet at the bottom, In My Bombastic Opinion]
There's reports of Boring tunnels being contaminated with some kind of sludge that is burning the skin of employees, and has left permanent scars on at least one or two employees. This has attracted the attention of OSHA... in Nevada, so you know it's got to be pretty bad. And of course the employees who reported it requested anonymity fearing retaliation, which seems about right given Xitler's history.
A forklift fell down a hill in May, nearly crushing its driver, Bloomberg reported. According to Fortune, the Boring Company reported 36 injuries across its job sites in the first six months of 2023, including heat exhaustion, head contusions and a crushed hand or elbow.The chemical sludge in the tunnels appears to have been a particularly pervasive risk. Photos and video in both reports show an ankle-high, stagnant pool of brown liquid in the incomplete tunnels. Bloomberg reported that chemical accelerants arrived in long hoses to help grout set in the tunnels, but often ending up mixing with the dirt and water on the floor. Workers routinely walked through the liquid, and sometimes it splattered up past their boots and even onto their faces, according to Bloomberg.
According to worker testimony in the reports, the polluted liquid hurt — badly. As one worker told Bloomberg, “You’d be like, ‘Why am I on fire?’”
“I’ve had accelerant in my face, in my eyes, in my mouth. I’ve thrown up from it,” an employee told Fortune, later adding, “All the electricians at some point were burned by chemicals.”
The picture in the article is worth looking at. You'd be excused for thinking that was a sewer line.
https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/boring-company-vegas-chemical-sludge-18693769.php
Then, over at Neuralink, the FDA found multiple serious issues with the animal research lab, such as missing documents.
The laboratory problems identified by FDA inspectors included missing calibration records for instruments such as a pH meter used in one of the studies. For another study, seven instruments including a "vital signs monitor" had no record of having been calibrated. Neuralink conducted experiments on hundreds of animals, including monkeys.Other issues included quality assurance officials not signing off on the final study report or documenting any deviations from approved protocols or standard operating procedures.
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/fda-finds-problems-animal-lab-run-by-musks-brain-implant-company-2024-02-29/
And then also at Xitter, the attempt to sue Center for Countering Digital Hate because they pointed out that Xitter was serving up ads alongside Nazi and other deplorable content, causing an advertiser stampede for the exit, doesn't seem to be going too well.
X is seeking damages from the center, arguing that the platform lost tens of millions of dollars from advertisers fleeing the site in the wake of the nonprofit's findings.But in order to make this case, X had to show the group knew the financial loss was "foreseeable" when it started its account and began abiding by Twitter's terms of service, in 2019, before Musk acquired the site.
X lawyer Hawk argued that the platform's terms of service state that the rules for the site could change at any time, including that suspended users whom the group says spread hate speech could be reinstated.
And so, Hawk said, if changes to the rules were foreseeable, then the financial loss from its reports on users spreading hate should have also been foreseeable.
This logic confused and frustrated the judge.
"That, of course, reduces foreseeability to one of the most vapid extensions of law I've ever heard," Breyer said.
To be a fly on the wall in the judge's chambers after that hearing.
https://www.kyuk.org/2024-02-29/judge-skeptical-of-lawsuit-brought-by-elon-musks-x-over-hate-speech-research
There's reports of Boring tunnels being contaminated with some kind of sludge that is burning the skin of employees, and has left permanent scars on at least one or two employees.
The pictures linked show a dirty, contaminated work site after the tunnel's been lined, and if that puddle has grout accelerant in it, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near it. The safety data sheets for those products typically show them to be corrosive, acutely toxic, irritant and hazardous to eyes. Use of them might be necessary, but it's impressively poor working practice to leave it puddled on the floor. It suggests a job being rushed, poorly supervised and with lax hazard management.
Then again, it's Elmo, would we expect anything different?
"It suggests a job being rushed,"
As slow as the job is going? A real tunneling company would have installed and finished a much larger tunnel ages ago.
Las Vegas is trying to one-up Dubai on silly projects. LV has a monorail for Pete's sake. They could have taken money to extend that so it made a whole loop through the area rather than the somewhat incomplete state that it's in. So now they pay PT Mush to make sewer pipe size tunnels to drive Tesla vehicles in? Bonkers. The convention center loop, which was silly to start with, could have done better with slidewalks. They try to pump it up as being useful, but I've never had a great need to get from one side of LVCC to the other in one go. I start at one end and pace the aisles at the shows to wind up back at my starting point when I've done the whole route. If I have an appointment, I think it would be faster to walk and there's always the chance of meeting somebody I know with an after hours party ticket to hand me. Next week I'll be there for a photography conference, but this is their first year back and it's really small so it will only be in one hall. I may go to another show in April (I think) that should use up the whole facility, but that remains to be seen if it will be that large. Those shows plus going to watch the dragon swallow the sun in Texas will mean 3 big trips in the first half of this year. Good grief.
I've heard people speculate that the real point of Boring is just to screw up the bidding process on public works projects. Presumably so they can then make the case for selling more Tesla cars because if you're stuck in traffic they don't emit any pollutants... unless they're on fire or something. Never mind that Tesla factories pump out ridiculous amounts of pollution compared to their counterparts.
No it isn't. It's essentially a new way of talking about what has been the law (in the US at least) since the 1960s, but has basically never been followed and only rarely enforced. Which is to say, applicants for a job should be considered on the merits of their skills for a particular position, not the color of their skin, if they have a penis, or other similar considerations. If companies hadn't been ignoring this particular law for literally decades, then they would already have a diverse workforce and there wouldn't be any need for a special program to try to promote it. Just look at how pale and male the average board of directors is for Fortune 500 companies. And they all just play musical chairs every couple of years, so you have the same stale ideas just being recirculated over and over again. That tends to hold true at all levels of management in these selfsame companies.
I know Scott Adams started letting his freak flag fly a couple years ago, but he pegged it pretty well in the Dilbert TV show episode where Dilbert and Wally end up on the board of their company. The only thing the original board members talk about is golf, and when Dilbert wants to actually talk about making changes at the company, they finally compromise on him holding a golf club while he talks.
"Just look at how pale and male the average board of directors is for Fortune 500 companies."
Those boards are the end of a very long chain. Some of that chain has, indeed, been comprised of exclusions. It shouldn't be expected that even over the course of a decade things at the top will change that radically. There are changes and it's not impossible to find women and people with a complexion darker than than of a pale blue Scottish person sitting on corporate boards of publicly traded companies. For most, that's the culmination of a decades long career. There's also still cultural roadblocks that some communities impose on themselves when it comes to education and career decisions where in others, an emphasis is put on aiming towards upper level management positions and high paying professions.
"Is a good week for the rest of us."
Maybe, maybe not. I don't know where my mother's pension funds are invested. If they been guzzling the KoolAid, I have to be concerned. Thank goodness our family trust holds no stock in anything tainted with a strong musky smell. I'm hoping I'm not going to be called on to support mother and rather hope there will be something left in her estate when her number is called.
Uh,.. what?
(unions are not necessarily bad, and I do not believe Elon intentionally discriminates nor endangers his employees. But l[aw]Yers often go after deep pockets because poorly written laws ENABLE them to.)
people need to THINK instead of *FEEL*. *FEEL* has been making bad decisions since human history began, and like beer goggles, often results in a hangover and a possible "coyote ugly" situation.
Once upon a time, I would have said this very tongue-in-cheek, but less and less these days... It seems like evidence is piling up that we really are NPCs in some giant simulation and people like Xitler are the actual player characters. Which is why they can seemingly defy all logic and reason with no apparent consequences. I'd also posit that we are living in the test environment for some kind of right-wing authoritarianism wet dream expansion pack.
He has been very very lucky, very privileged, and yes, kind of bold.
He got started by his daddy giving him money from daddy's emerald mines. He took that and started a shitty worthless internet bank, but then Peter Thiel needed an internet bank for Paypal and merged with Elmo's shitty worthless internet bank, giving him his big break.
Since then he's been half good at having smart people tell him what to invest in - he invested in Tesla, then kicked out the founders. He started SpaceX. In both cases, both companies have entire teams of people dedicated to keeping Elmo from doing too much stupid damage because he is a stupid mingeing twat. When they don't manage to keep him from making his own decisions, you get the Cybertruck. And of course there's Twitter. And then there's the hyperloop (which was obviously right out of the gate an extremely impractical idea from a very stupid person) and the Boring Company.
He's been so busy with Twatter and the Cybertruck at Tesla recently that he has had hardly any time to eff SpaceX up, so it's doing great.
Basically if you rich, if you are lucky, and you are willing to take a lot of bets, and most importantly you can find much smarter people to run your stuff, you too can luck into being super rich.