Tesla has completely fumbled a spectacular lead in EVs and managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And instead of turning it around, we're supposed to believe they are going to completely pivot and then take over a market with far more developed competitors (e.g. Boston Dynamics).
That Elon is riding this wave amidst the transparency of the whole thing is the funniest part. It's like watching people lose money at the "three cup" game but the cups are clear.
I'm not sure how defensible the lead was. The only reason BYD isn't the only game in town is tariffs. The pivot to Optimus is ridiculous though. They can't get a car to drive truly autonomously after more than a decade and they want to expand the degrees of freedom?
Tesla had a good brand image in the early 2010, they could have positioned themselves like the quality/luxury brand for EV and have people buy Tesla for the brand itself like people do for Apple.
Instead they let Elon made their brand so toxic people are actively avoiding it.
That was 10-15 years ago, but back then Musk appeared different, and Telsa was new. Today you can buy a Tesla, they are no longer the status symbol they once were. A 15 year old Mercedes is a status symbol in the US, a 15 year old Tesla is not, Tesla didn't capture the status symbol market (which might have been a good decision - what wasn't a good decision was for the CEO to go public about political views that are lot of his potential base to not support)
No, it's the reverse. Someone who finds Musk's behavior so abhorrent they fear being affiliated with it will actually find reasons they don't really want a Tesla.
It doesn't help that Tesla, making extremely low quality and uncomfortable cars for the price point, provides plenty of dislikable things to find.
Facebook as a monopoly of a sort and so is hard to get away from. If I don't like Tesla there are many other options. Even if you only buy EVs, there are a lot of options that you can buy today. The only people who have to buy Tesla are the type who are buying 10 year old EVs (the limited range on 10 year old Nissan rules them out).
Difference is their product is so good as to be basically irreplaceable (good = strong network effects, which is the only flavor of "good" that matters)
I'm glad Tesla is pivoting to a product that can drop your bag of groceries in the worst case, instead of one that can slam you into a concrete divider at 75mph.
In general, any robot that has servos powerful enough to be any of use is surprisingly dangerous to be around. While it's much easier to apply various limiters, the raw power in those engines will always pose a significant level of risk if anything goes wrong. If you're hovering above a human who sits up suddenly, you might get your nose broken. If it's a robot instead, it will have the strength and mass to easily mutilate you in the same kind of accident.
The robot could leave the ironer standing on your clothes and walk away; it could leave your empty pan on the stove at max heating; it could take a nice hard grip of your throat for a few minutes.
Do you remember EVs before Tesla? They were glorified golf carts using lead-acid batteries. The performance and range were awful. The Roadster and the Model S changed all that. I'm not saying I remember this perfectly but as I recall, Tesla's original objective was to show that an EV could be a real car, look attractive (or at least normal), and to create demand for EVs that would force all manufacturers to start making them. The ultimate value in Tesla was supposed to be batteries, which all cars would eventually need.
…and the guy shuffling the cups is Dave Chappell’s crackhead character.
My theory has always been Trumps grand con was acting like what poor people thought a rich person was like, Elon acts like what morons think a genius is like.
The insane conclusion that amoral and mostly unaccountable conglomerations have the right to direct US legislation and policy without limit is why we are in this mess. Until we sentence an entire Board of Directors to a life sentence in prison, I think I will remain unconvinced that "corporations are people".
Outrage is fast. It’s legible. It doesn’t require grappling with incentives, enforcement mechanisms, or tradeoffs.
But outrage has a cost:
It replaces diagnosis with blame.
It trains the public to expect villains, not mechanisms.
It produces demands that can’t be implemented.
It gives cover for inaction, because nothing concrete is being asked.
From the perspective of power, it’s almost ideal. Lobbyists show up with clear goals and specific language. The public shows up angry, divided, and incoherent. Guess who wins.
Proposing life in prison for people who are doing lawful things is a non-starter.
The other part of the preceding comment was about citizens united. A concrete action would be to pass a law that explicitly excludes corporations from the definition of people and restricts the kind of lobbying/legalized-bribery that currently empowers the powerful.
maybe this is what blindsides most developers into disregarding the threat of AI to their jobs. We work off some idealised version of what the industry actually is which we presume AI will fail at, instead of the reality.
I remain surprised at how long people can flog horses I figured would be dead decades earlier in enterprise. Too scared to fix fundamental issues and still running off the fumes of vendor lock-in with exasperated end users.
I worry that software and the industry is more resistent then we might imagine. Consider the insanity of Elon Musk's arbitrary cuts to twitter and the resilience of that platform in the years that followed.
It might simply be the case that buying more tokens and kicking the code enough times might give a "good enough" result for the industry to continue. I don't want to believe this but the discussion of how awful the openssl code base is seems to suggest that might be the case. You just need to automate the process of caution we have around it. We should all be hoping that Gastown fails but I feel like it might succeed.
The insanity is how he enacted them. Like the idea that everyone should come to his office with print outs of the code they've written, or that everyone has to come into HQ to do some all-nighters. Just an absurd hunger-games attitude to his workforce, full of horrific coginative biases and discrimination against some of the workforce (e.g. against those with young children or those with disabilities who might be less able to commit to all-nighters).
There was an article on here 15ish years ago to the effect of "everything's broken all the time. Everyone who writes software knows it, yet we all tolerate it."
I'd love to find that sometime. Maybe it's time to ask Gemini once again to look for me.
Honestly, this is absurdly funny, but it makes me wonder whether we'll ever see Computer Science and Computer Engineering as seriously as other branches of STEM. I've been debating recently whether I should keep working in this field, after years of repeatedly seeing incompetence and complacency create disastrous effects in the real world.
Oftentimes, I wonder if the world wouldn't be a bit better without the last 10 or 15 years of computer technology.
This is really something that’s making me quite fed up with industry. I’m looking towards embedded and firmware in hopes that the lower in the stack I go the more people care about these type of things out of business necessity. But even then I’m unsure I’ll find the rigor I’m looking for
I’ve been thinking the same thing lately. It’s hard to tell if I’m just old and want everyone off my lawn, but I really feel like IT is a dead end lately. “Vintage” electronics are often nicer to use than modern equivalents. Like dials and buttons vs touch screens. Most of my electronics that have LCDs feel snappy and you sort of forget that you’re using them and just do what you were trying to do. I’m not necessarily a Luddite. I know tech _could_ be better theoretically but it’s distressing to know that it’s also not possible for things to be different for some other reasons. Economically, culturally? I don’t know.
Your logic is exactly why Trump's gambits always work. Everyone knows that individually standing up to a bully is a good way to get the raw end of the deal; so nobody stands up and the bully continues racking up wins.
It's certainly not guaranteed, but taking an aggressive defensive stance is the ONLY possible way to stop having your lunch money stolen.
I mean, I understand the frustration, but this like asking why don't the Russian citizens just, you know, make Putin stop invading Ukraine.
I did my part, but I have 70 million compatriots that are just all too willing to allow the earth scorching as long as it means they don't have to see another black little mermaid.
We would see exactly what people in the US have been dealing with for 10 years. Everybody would wring their hands and say "unbelievable!" and then nobody with the actual capability to do anything about it actually does.
The entire world is just rooting for Father Time on this particular problem.
If the US actually did invade Greenland it would mean the end of US Europe trade and cooperation as we know it and the end of NATO (and likely UN). China would suddenly be the main trading partner, also in military equipment. It would be the end of US as it is today.
Honestly I think he's right. This is all for one man's vanity and the Republicans are fine with letting him do whatever he wants as long it means they get their policy wins and, more importantly, he doesn't post something nasty about them on Truth Social.
There are a lot of problems with age verification schemes, but you are doing your position a disservice by suggesting that anybody that doesn't want their kid to be bullied on Snapchat is actually just a puppet of fascist regimes trying to stifle political speech.
You should learn to appreciate the nuance of opinions that differ from your own if you actually want to, you know, convince anyone of anything.
>anybody that doesn't want their kid to be bullied on Snapchat is actually just a puppet of fascist regimes trying to stifle political speech.
They are fascists if they want to prevent everybody else's kids using social media just because they're too shitty parents to teach their own kids that sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me.
This is why so many new teams' first order of business is invariably a suggestion to "rewrite everything".
They're not going to do a better job or get a better product, it's just the only way they're going to get a software stack that does what they want.
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