Perhaps now with all his controversies…but Tesla would not be the company it is today without him. Musk may not be a genius engineer and is a shit human, but what he is—wealthy and willing to make risky bleeding edge tech investments with extremely long ROIs and have the patience to wait them out is what makes Tesla, SpaceX, and Starlink names we all know.
It is that sense of undisciplined risk taking that I am referring to. Model Y was supposed to be a money maker. Instead he let the better part get to him and added so many bells and whistles that it delayed it and was not even cheap.
Tesla production had so many problems before. Lots of jobs were lost because of this. Guess who remembers those job cuts? Me. Part of me believes anyone with slightly more discipline could have done a better job.
With any other investor those production issues would never had existed because the production lines themselves would have never existed. Most normal capital providers would have not allowed or taken such a bold risk. So is it sad that jobs were lost? Sure. But they existed at one point when otherwise wouldn’t have with the standard more risk averse investor looking for a more immediate ROI.
His lack of discipline and departure from conventional wisdom is the reason Tesla, SpaceX exist today. Without his patience and capital they would all be footnotes of failed companies in their respective industries.
I think you could probably make the argument that those industries might not even be serious if Musk’s risks and patience didn’t demonstrate their viability.
You are claiming that without Elon, there would be no Tesla. That is acknowledged. He should not be the leader anymore. And should not have been the leader for a while.
> His lack of discipline and departure from conventional wisdom is the reason ...
... he is good at startups. Without his resources (network of talent located in Tesla and SpaceX), none of those startups would do anywhere as well. But Tesla and SpaceX would do better!
The discipline line isn't even that high. Just stay down and stay quiet until you have a press release. Like every other billionaire did. But given his Twitter habits it's clear that he has this compulsive need to be in the limelight, no matter the method nor perception.
Yeah, but that is where it starts. It’s like people who comment vs just reading/sharing the same opinion. Only a tiny fraction speak out. There are lots more who share the same opinion but just haven’t/don’t voice it.
Additionally there are those who attended the other rallies yesterday not at the dealerships but at other locations holding signs declaring their opinion towards Musk.
Hell, I just paid off my Tesla and I’m thinking of dumping it because I don’t want to be seen as someone who supports him.
The brand is 100% tarnished.
Only when sales/stock price take a long sustained hit will there be anything done.
Yep, it’s a mob of epic proportions. My neighborhood of 250 homes gets at least that many protesting when the HOA sends out nastygrams about dirty mailboxes.
We never even make the local community news. Maybe if I can get Musk to join the HOA we could get some exposure.
There's a reason most CEOs and billionaires try to stay out of the spotlight and try to influence things behind the scenes instead.
We'll see how things turn out for Musk in a few years.
At least Starlink, and hence Spacex, won't be affected too much, the service is too valuable for the US military, various industries (aviation, maritime) and also private customers as long as no credible alternative is in sight.
But the isolationists are devaluing the military industrial complex? If you cant buy protection via shoddy equipment purchases - then war goods what are they good for?
The first mafiosi patron running a protection racket into the ground.
I think for Elon, he has long figured out the same thing Donald Trump figured out that the way to success is by saying brash things that you are always in the spotlight and therefore always known.
Tesla and other stocks are not valuated based on the economics. They are meme stocks. Inflated because of gen y/z bros. Uber was the same way a few years ago when Travis was there. For as long as they are doing something "cool" like Tesla Robots, the stock will get attention, nvm that the robots were fake.
Without Elon, Starlink would get a more microscopic examination and it would likely not have investors' drive that a stalwart would bring.
FDA falls under the Department of Health and Human Services. So you can see where the overlap is.
I don't know the exact reasoning for the structuring, but FDA contains the office of neurological and physical medicine devices. So thats the part impacted here.
That's weird. It was a bad pun but not flag worthy (I remember it said something to the effect of "why is the fda investigating starlink? Is it going to provide snacks to us?")
But i also don't know what more context to add. DOHH is what FDA is a part of. FDA has an office dedicated to neuroscience. BCI solidly applies to neuroscience so that's where the buck ends. I don't know why DOHH put that neuroscience office under the FDA in particular, that's a history lesson I didn't take yet.
In what way doesn't it "make sense"? If supporting such a company (and, thus, owner/CEO/figurehead) makes you feel bad, why should you do it?
Perhaps it doesn't make financial sense, assuming the boycotted product is truly the best but that is not the only dimensions humans operate in, right?
> Why is everything so political it makes no sense to not buy a well engineered product because you don’t agree with someone’s political views.
The "someone" in question literally threw Hitler salutes on an open stage in front of the whole world watching. That's beyond "political views", that's beyond "hysterical takes" - there are lines that plainly should not be crossed.
In any case, Tesla and "well engineered" doesn't match up either, at least when looking beyond the drivetrain. Rust, poor fitting of surfaces, the Cybertruck being too unsafe to legally drive on European roads, issues with modern ECUs, long lead times for basic spare parts... need I continue?
Are you part of the people who said to kids "vote with your wallet if you're unhappy"?
Because i'd love to see the Wenn diagram of people who complain about things being "too political" and people saying to two generations "vote with your wallet" or something among the line of "you're free to buy something else/change operator". Probably a nice oblong.
Musk has spent over a decade linking himself inextricably with the brand. He can hardly turn around and conplain when people go "ugh, that car's associated with that Hitler-salute arsehole, can't buy that"; this is very much something that he brought upon himself.
Frankly there's a reason that you generally don't hear much about the CEOs of most consumer goods companies (the CEO of VW, for instance, is so obscure that he _does not even have a Wikipedia page_); part of the job is to shut up and refrain from causing trouble.
> Why is everything so political it makes no sense to not buy a well engineered product because you don’t agree with someone’s political views.
By providing more money and wealth to someone, you are also providing them with more power and influence. If you disagree with someone's political views and actions, why would you give them more power to implement things you disagree with?
As for "well engineered": [citation needed]
Both Consumer Reports and JD Power do not have Tesla anywhere near the top:
Wasn't Tesla a political statement to begin with? They ended up being good cars with a different political statement, as a result the value proposition equation needs to be re-balanced by something like lower cost or better car.
I'm tired of people complaining why everything is political. Besides that everything IS political, in this specific example you would decide to give 40k+ dollars and a 6-8 year trust relationship to a guy making nazi salutes.
Are you sure it doesn’t make sense to you? There’s nothing a company owner could do that would make you feel icky giving your money to them? Think about your values and then imagine a CEO who stands against them publicly, and works to undermine them. If you would still give them your money, do you really believe in your values all that much?
(And forget about musk here - I mean your values and a hypothetical CEO)
The stock price is fucked if Musk leaves. The car business might survive, though.
I have no faith they can deliver on FSD/optimus/AI/cheap model. But with SEC kneecapped, I think the next rabbit out of Elon’s hat will be spectacular.
More spectacular then the self driving cars in 2014, people on Mars in 2024 and a Hyperloop that's shuffling ppl in a vacuum pipe? Frankly, I'm not sure how much further we can go. It's been full on fantasy tech since he's become well known.
While the self driving works surprisingly well in 2025, it's been 11 years since the promised date and you still get the occasional assisted suicide attempt via Tesla in the news. (Near fatal crashes while not paying attention because of "self driving")
>Many people don't like what the owners of Chick-fil-A are up to but apparently they do really good chicken at fair price so people keep buying it anyway.
I would guess that Tesla is losing the premium they can put to their prices and that is pushing Tesla value to a transactional value. No more apologists for the build quality or features that are pay now get it next year(every year, next year), if Tesla makes good cars and sell them at good price people will buy and if they don't people won't
I still think its true, if Tesla makes good cars they will sell at fair value(no more premium to save the planet). In Turkey for example, no one is protesting Tesla even though there were huge protests in support of Palestine. Musk is literally in the US government, literally was the biggest supporter of Trump who announced ethnic cleansing intentions and no one in Turkey associate the brand with this stuff. For some reason they associate Coca-Cola, Starbucks, McDonald's, Burger King etc but never Tesla. Influencers close to the organizations doing the protests even work with Tesla on promotional content. I tried mentioning this to see what they think in automotive forums, it gained no traction. Tesla's are good value in Turkey thanks to the tax breaks on electric cars, no one wants to hear the political aspects.
There's a huge difference between spending $10 at Chick-fil-A and spending $50K on a Tesla. Automobiles are the second most expensive item people purchase. They think a little more about that purchase than they do a chicken sandwich.
I don't know specifically what's going on in Turkey, but I have seen that January sales in Europe had dropped an average of 50%. That kind of sales decline should make anyone sit up and take notice.
I don't disagree, it's just that in UK people have plenty of options and can choose to make a political statement but I would be surprised if they still will do that if Tesla was such a good deal like in Turkey(in the Turkish case, the taxes on ICE are outrageous and as a result a Model 3 would cost about the same as VW Golf).
> senior managers said that they believe “the company would be better off if Musk resigned.”
Would that even help at this point? The association between musk and tesla would still remain - e.g. musk’s ownership of tesla shares is a pop culture topic at this point.
Depends. for T$LA? It'd be catastrophic since it's a massively overvalued stock propped up by Musk hype. It would drop to slightly above average values and they'd be lucky if they were still in thr fortune 100.
For Tesla as a company? It's be a huge wound but the reputation would improve in all metrics if Musk stepped down. Employee morale would go up, there's probably be less corner cutting with build quality, they may actually be able to adopt LiDAR and have a proper FSD one day, and they can start to rebuild their foreign relations
So your answer depends on if you think a company is bound to its shareholders or to their customers and workers. Sadly there's a clear answer in America.
Interesting, this post was removed (shadow delisted). I don't see it on the in the first 3 pages anymore after it was at number 11 just a few minutes ago.
Users flagged it. We can only guess why users flag things, but in this case it's not hard to guess: there have been countless stories like this and people are (rightly) tired of the repetition.
Edit: If you (or anyone) want further explanation, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43093299 and the links there. If, after that, you have a question that I haven't already answered, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
People voted for radical change yet want to absolve themselves of the inevitable friction.
Though in the case of Musk he still might have had similar turmoil given the valuation of TSLA dwindling in 2024 and his antics on X. I don't know if a campaign against a tech person in the news should be suppressed just because people are "tired" of seeing it (meanwhile, AI posted a dozen times per day).
Is it too late to build in a simple regex filter for accounts?
I don't think HN users wanting to preserve HN for its intended purpose of intellectual curiosity has much to do with "absolving themselves". It's simply a question of having a forum with that purpose rather than another.
"man is not a rational animal: he is a rationizing animal" -Robert A. Heinlein
We have varying phases of new hyped tech get many low quality articles that don't inspire curiosity but nonetheless satisfy some people's need to circle around the same talking points. I just find it unfortunate that the moment any overhyped tech is linked to "the real world" that we start to dismiss it.
I suppose the answer isn't surprising given the population's disposition of acting like computer scientists and not software engineers, but is techs effect on actual people not intellectually curious? Are we fine just tinkering with ideas and throwing pandora's box out for the rest of the world to handle?
>s simply a question of having a forum with that purpose rather than another.
Well I don't have any data, but at this point I don't think this is happening organically. That's my main concern. It's no coincidence this only seems to happen with negative press for a certain person, when months ago pretty much all news on this subject would not be flagged (hence the first part of my comment).
You do have the data, but if your data says otherwise, there's not much I can do. I'll just keep doing what I'm already doing and try to fight the suppression.
I don't think what you're seeing is suppression—it's just the preference of the bulk of the community. That's frustrating when you feel strongly that it should be otherwise (for good reason), but there isn't some extraneous nefarious force at work here; it's just that most HN users don't want the site to turn into a battlefield.
> HN users wanting to preserve HN for its intended purpose of intellectual curiosity
Curiosity is sustained and long term. Curiosity is being willing to understand things completely.
What you're arguing for is novelty and distraction. That is shallow thinking, not curious thinking.
A month ago after Musk's fascist salutes you said, "This sort of flare-up always feels absolutely critical in the moment—how can one possibly justify not dropping everything to orbit around it?—and then vanishes. Their half life is so brief that I'm surprised people don't notice how ephemeral they are. They come in an endless sequence, and they aren't what HN is supposed to be for. They're also not that hard to resist; it's not as if this is a borderline call."
You were clearly wrong. It hasn't vanished. You should be curious about that.
Bias is a real problem in AI systems. Will you be at the event? What questions will you put to Musk about his biases and how they will be reflected in Grok?
I appreciate your thoughts on curiosity, but I don't think that argument addresses the situation as it is. The alternative here is not deeper curiosity—it's screaming matches and outright war.
Commenters who want to fight about these topics are not operating in curiosity mode, seeking to learn from each other. They're operating in battle mode, seeking to destroy each other, vent rage, and deploy verbal weapons such as snark, name-calling, and talking points at the enemy. None of that is what HN is for, as should be obvious to anyone who has read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html or spent much time here.
> You were clearly wrong. It hasn't vanished
HN has been around for 15+ years. A month isn't long at all. My expectation is still that this will subside, and when it does, it will sink into a swamp of amnesia, the same as has happened in the past.
They won't forget Musk's fascist salutes either. If anything, Musk's salutes have been more public, have done more brand damage, and have revealed worse character.
Musk and Zuckerberg are showing you who and what they are.
You may be right that people will remember that, and yes that's an interesting data point to compare it with.
I was talking about something else though. My claim is that the HN baseline will return to the status quo ante, just as it has after past political tsunamis, and that when it does, the current fever for every political story to be on the frontpage will fade into oblivion. I may be wrong about that, but we will have to wait to find out.
> showing you who and what they are. Pay attention.
That's a trope, indeed already a cliché, of internet political arguments. It would be in your interest to avoid those because although on a surface level they intensify a comment, at a deeper level they make it less persuasive (to the persuadable reader). I know you didn't ask for commenting advice and normally I wouldn't go there, but HN's guidelines specifically ask commenters to omit internet tropes: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
> I may be wrong about that, but we will have to wait to find out.
You are wrong.
> That's a trope, indeed already a cliché
Dude, that you think you might be right demonstrates that you haven't been paying attention.
Musk doesn't just have form, he's going for the record.
There will be a stink around Y Combinator's AI Startup School event. Musk will bring the stink with him.
And the source of that stink may be as simple as attendees having family members sacked by DOGE. Or it might be because he's of such weak character that he lies about being good at video games. Or perhaps it will be America's sell out of Ukraine, something Musk has advocated for:
Positive ones are flagged even more quickly. It's true that some of the flags come from people who like/dislike the evil/great one, but the deeper issue here is the repetition. Anything this repetitive is going to generate an allergic response; all the more so if the repetitive topic is also an intensely divisive one.
But are they just trying to hide and conceal they still support him, trying to hide and conceal that they supported him, or do they truly regret and repent for supporting him?
Based on my anecdotes, most probably fit in the former category.
It takes a great deal of hate and bigotry to be able to support someone like Trump in the first place.
That doesn't go away over night. But I think a lot of them are trying to hide their support because they know that their votes are actively making America worse. But the original hatred and bigotry remain.
I think one of the problems Tesla is going to have is that those who agree with Musk are often conservatives who are on average not very interested in buying any electric car. And those who are interested in buying an electric car are more likely to be liberal and dislike Musk.
I can't wait to buy the new Model Y. Fantastic car. If I were to choose products based on the CEO's behavior outside the company (vs their behavior running the company), I'd have no time left to live, and I wouldn't be buying anything from communist and other authoritarian countries.
Is Korea and Japan communist, authoritarian companies? My impression is that Hyundai and Kia has more than caught up on Evs now. Japan isnt that far back either.
You can't buy a Chinese car even if you wanted to because we have like 200% tarriffs on them. Great response to competition, America.
To clarify, I make decisions based on how good the product is, not who the CEO is, nor what country it is coming from. I think it is hypocritical of people to reject Teslas because of Musk's opinions or civic contributions.
Okay, that's your opinion to have. Meanwhile, reality is based on reputation and contracts are lost over behavior all the time. The original form of "politically correct" was an etiquette meant to minimize those odds of losses due to bad PR.
I do think the opinion of this clashes with your stance on not wanting to buy "communist" country products though.
You do realize that Trump increased the deficit almost twice as much as Biden did? (Trump: $8.3T, Biden: $4.6T) Anyone truly concerned about the deficit should have voted Democrat.
As for corruption, you realize that the 2nd largest donor to the Democratic party (SBF) is in jail now. OTOH, the largest donors to the Trump campaign were appointed to positions of power.
> You do realize that Trump increased the deficit almost twice as much as Biden did? (Trump: $8.3T, Biden: $4.6T)
Why is that talking point, I mean statistic, not adjusted for the pandemic? I think I know why. Also deficit spending and govt spending continued to be high or increasing during 2022/2023 when inflation was taking off because the post covid economy was heating up, resulting in stubborn inflation that hurt the most vulnerable folks.
The majority did not vote for Trump. He only received 49.8 of the vote. Turnout was at 63.7%, so Trump received the votes of around 31% of all eligible voters.
>when the Country needed Americans to call out the corruption
Just for the record, Trump tried to get the attorney general of the Southern District of New York to drop the case against the mayor of New York, a Democrat, in exchange for the mayor to give ICE carte-blanche to do what it wants in the city. So illegal was the requested action that seven people including the acting attorney general resigned immediately in sequence. Mind you, the acting attorney general was appointed by Trump literally three weeks before her resignation. And the resignations only stopped because Bove threatened to fire everyone in the office (30 odd people) if someone didn't accept. If that wasn't enough, and since some on the thread mentioned Soviet propaganda, Homan the border czar trotskies out Eric Adams on Fox News and forces him to applaud what ICE is doing, and then Homan proceeds to tell Eric Adams on national television that if he backs out that he Homan will be in his office right away and "up his ass".
That level of corruption would be choreographed nicely to Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre."
If you want to read two bad-ass resignations by Republican attorney generals, read Sassoon's and Hagan Scotten's resignation letters.
Thank you! It seems like the people from r/politics are coming over here to astroturf and it needs to stop. To hell with their "bastion of free thinkers" attitude when the discussions surrounding such divisive topics aren't even productive. It's just rage bait.
If I want to stress myself out, I'll go and read world news.
No, the people who talked about Elon Musk for 12+ years are continuing to talk about Elon Musk. Just because you don't like the stories doesn't mean people will stop posting about him.
I always prescribed to "don't like it, don't read it" personally. And it's not my fault Musk decided to go political. I remember the cravings from years back.
>It just means you read boring shit.
Life isn't candy and rainbows. Gotta eat your veggies and be aware of the world around you.
I don't like posts about privacy or drm for example. But those are on topic. This place was obsessed with snowden for years. On topic.
Live tweeting the ongoing "coup" isnt vegetables or awareness. It's deranged political obsession masquerading as social responsibility. I don't need someone to mash F5 on cnn.com and sprint here to tell me the sky is falling. No really this time its different because <current administration> blah blah
>Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
So what happens when interesting collides with "off-topic"? Who wins out?
>Live tweeting the ongoing "coup" isnt vegetables or awareness. It
A tech company is being protested against. We have plenty of those submitted here. It is interesting how tech companies act and react to the world, as well as the people using it.
>'s deranged political obsession masquerading as social responsi
Sure, just like GenAi, block chain, and crypto. Where's the line? You can dismiss anything as political if you try hard enough.
You can just say you don't like tesla news and be done with it instead. I don't like that we pick and choose when you show off tesla, and it always seems like tesla's good news stays up. Does that not strike you as political manipulation of our community?
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 175 ms ] threadTesla production had so many problems before. Lots of jobs were lost because of this. Guess who remembers those job cuts? Me. Part of me believes anyone with slightly more discipline could have done a better job.
His lack of discipline and departure from conventional wisdom is the reason Tesla, SpaceX exist today. Without his patience and capital they would all be footnotes of failed companies in their respective industries.
I think you could probably make the argument that those industries might not even be serious if Musk’s risks and patience didn’t demonstrate their viability.
> His lack of discipline and departure from conventional wisdom is the reason ...
... he is good at startups. Without his resources (network of talent located in Tesla and SpaceX), none of those startups would do anywhere as well. But Tesla and SpaceX would do better!
Additionally there are those who attended the other rallies yesterday not at the dealerships but at other locations holding signs declaring their opinion towards Musk.
Hell, I just paid off my Tesla and I’m thinking of dumping it because I don’t want to be seen as someone who supports him.
The brand is 100% tarnished.
Only when sales/stock price take a long sustained hit will there be anything done.
They only care about their money.
He'll sue everyone for not buying his cars or have the DoJ go after the protesters claiming some sort of illegal boycott...
We never even make the local community news. Maybe if I can get Musk to join the HOA we could get some exposure.
We'll see how things turn out for Musk in a few years.
At least Starlink, and hence Spacex, won't be affected too much, the service is too valuable for the US military, various industries (aviation, maritime) and also private customers as long as no credible alternative is in sight.
The first mafiosi patron running a protection racket into the ground.
Tesla and other stocks are not valuated based on the economics. They are meme stocks. Inflated because of gen y/z bros. Uber was the same way a few years ago when Travis was there. For as long as they are doing something "cool" like Tesla Robots, the stock will get attention, nvm that the robots were fake.
Without Elon, Starlink would get a more microscopic examination and it would likely not have investors' drive that a stalwart would bring.
I don't know the exact reasoning for the structuring, but FDA contains the office of neurological and physical medicine devices. So thats the part impacted here.
But I also can't guess why the FDA would investigate Starlink?!?
But i also don't know what more context to add. DOHH is what FDA is a part of. FDA has an office dedicated to neuroscience. BCI solidly applies to neuroscience so that's where the buck ends. I don't know why DOHH put that neuroscience office under the FDA in particular, that's a history lesson I didn't take yet.
Perhaps it doesn't make financial sense, assuming the boycotted product is truly the best but that is not the only dimensions humans operate in, right?
The cybertruck is not well engineered. Maybe their other cars are but not the cybertruck.
Why is everything so political…
I have no obligation to buy a product that enriches a person as shitty as Elon Musk. Politicization by boycotting his products is warranted though.
The "someone" in question literally threw Hitler salutes on an open stage in front of the whole world watching. That's beyond "political views", that's beyond "hysterical takes" - there are lines that plainly should not be crossed.
In any case, Tesla and "well engineered" doesn't match up either, at least when looking beyond the drivetrain. Rust, poor fitting of surfaces, the Cybertruck being too unsafe to legally drive on European roads, issues with modern ECUs, long lead times for basic spare parts... need I continue?
Because i'd love to see the Wenn diagram of people who complain about things being "too political" and people saying to two generations "vote with your wallet" or something among the line of "you're free to buy something else/change operator". Probably a nice oblong.
Frankly there's a reason that you generally don't hear much about the CEOs of most consumer goods companies (the CEO of VW, for instance, is so obscure that he _does not even have a Wikipedia page_); part of the job is to shut up and refrain from causing trouble.
By providing more money and wealth to someone, you are also providing them with more power and influence. If you disagree with someone's political views and actions, why would you give them more power to implement things you disagree with?
As for "well engineered": [citation needed]
Both Consumer Reports and JD Power do not have Tesla anywhere near the top:
* https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/cars-driving/which-car-...
* https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2024-us-vehi...
* https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2023-us-vehi...
I have no faith they can deliver on FSD/optimus/AI/cheap model. But with SEC kneecapped, I think the next rabbit out of Elon’s hat will be spectacular.
While the self driving works surprisingly well in 2025, it's been 11 years since the promised date and you still get the occasional assisted suicide attempt via Tesla in the news. (Near fatal crashes while not paying attention because of "self driving")
>Many people don't like what the owners of Chick-fil-A are up to but apparently they do really good chicken at fair price so people keep buying it anyway. I would guess that Tesla is losing the premium they can put to their prices and that is pushing Tesla value to a transactional value. No more apologists for the build quality or features that are pay now get it next year(every year, next year), if Tesla makes good cars and sell them at good price people will buy and if they don't people won't
I still think its true, if Tesla makes good cars they will sell at fair value(no more premium to save the planet). In Turkey for example, no one is protesting Tesla even though there were huge protests in support of Palestine. Musk is literally in the US government, literally was the biggest supporter of Trump who announced ethnic cleansing intentions and no one in Turkey associate the brand with this stuff. For some reason they associate Coca-Cola, Starbucks, McDonald's, Burger King etc but never Tesla. Influencers close to the organizations doing the protests even work with Tesla on promotional content. I tried mentioning this to see what they think in automotive forums, it gained no traction. Tesla's are good value in Turkey thanks to the tax breaks on electric cars, no one wants to hear the political aspects.
I don't know specifically what's going on in Turkey, but I have seen that January sales in Europe had dropped an average of 50%. That kind of sales decline should make anyone sit up and take notice.
Would that even help at this point? The association between musk and tesla would still remain - e.g. musk’s ownership of tesla shares is a pop culture topic at this point.
For Tesla as a company? It's be a huge wound but the reputation would improve in all metrics if Musk stepped down. Employee morale would go up, there's probably be less corner cutting with build quality, they may actually be able to adopt LiDAR and have a proper FSD one day, and they can start to rebuild their foreign relations
So your answer depends on if you think a company is bound to its shareholders or to their customers and workers. Sadly there's a clear answer in America.
Hypocrisy everywhere.
Edit: If you (or anyone) want further explanation, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43093299 and the links there. If, after that, you have a question that I haven't already answered, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Though in the case of Musk he still might have had similar turmoil given the valuation of TSLA dwindling in 2024 and his antics on X. I don't know if a campaign against a tech person in the news should be suppressed just because people are "tired" of seeing it (meanwhile, AI posted a dozen times per day).
Is it too late to build in a simple regex filter for accounts?
We have varying phases of new hyped tech get many low quality articles that don't inspire curiosity but nonetheless satisfy some people's need to circle around the same talking points. I just find it unfortunate that the moment any overhyped tech is linked to "the real world" that we start to dismiss it.
I suppose the answer isn't surprising given the population's disposition of acting like computer scientists and not software engineers, but is techs effect on actual people not intellectually curious? Are we fine just tinkering with ideas and throwing pandora's box out for the rest of the world to handle?
>s simply a question of having a forum with that purpose rather than another.
Well I don't have any data, but at this point I don't think this is happening organically. That's my main concern. It's no coincidence this only seems to happen with negative press for a certain person, when months ago pretty much all news on this subject would not be flagged (hence the first part of my comment).
You do have the data, but if your data says otherwise, there's not much I can do. I'll just keep doing what I'm already doing and try to fight the suppression.
Curiosity is sustained and long term. Curiosity is being willing to understand things completely.
What you're arguing for is novelty and distraction. That is shallow thinking, not curious thinking.
A month ago after Musk's fascist salutes you said, "This sort of flare-up always feels absolutely critical in the moment—how can one possibly justify not dropping everything to orbit around it?—and then vanishes. Their half life is so brief that I'm surprised people don't notice how ephemeral they are. They come in an endless sequence, and they aren't what HN is supposed to be for. They're also not that hard to resist; it's not as if this is a borderline call."
You were clearly wrong. It hasn't vanished. You should be curious about that.
In four months Y Combinator will hold an AI Startup School event with speakers including Musk: https://events.ycombinator.com/ai-sus
Bias is a real problem in AI systems. Will you be at the event? What questions will you put to Musk about his biases and how they will be reflected in Grok?
Be curious. Ask those questions.
Commenters who want to fight about these topics are not operating in curiosity mode, seeking to learn from each other. They're operating in battle mode, seeking to destroy each other, vent rage, and deploy verbal weapons such as snark, name-calling, and talking points at the enemy. None of that is what HN is for, as should be obvious to anyone who has read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html or spent much time here.
> You were clearly wrong. It hasn't vanished
HN has been around for 15+ years. A month isn't long at all. My expectation is still that this will subside, and when it does, it will sink into a swamp of amnesia, the same as has happened in the past.
They won't forget Musk's fascist salutes either. If anything, Musk's salutes have been more public, have done more brand damage, and have revealed worse character.
Musk and Zuckerberg are showing you who and what they are.
Pay attention.
I was talking about something else though. My claim is that the HN baseline will return to the status quo ante, just as it has after past political tsunamis, and that when it does, the current fever for every political story to be on the frontpage will fade into oblivion. I may be wrong about that, but we will have to wait to find out.
> showing you who and what they are. Pay attention.
That's a trope, indeed already a cliché, of internet political arguments. It would be in your interest to avoid those because although on a surface level they intensify a comment, at a deeper level they make it less persuasive (to the persuadable reader). I know you didn't ask for commenting advice and normally I wouldn't go there, but HN's guidelines specifically ask commenters to omit internet tropes: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
You are wrong.
> That's a trope, indeed already a cliché
Dude, that you think you might be right demonstrates that you haven't been paying attention.
Musk doesn't just have form, he's going for the record.
There will be a stink around Y Combinator's AI Startup School event. Musk will bring the stink with him.
And the source of that stink may be as simple as attendees having family members sacked by DOGE. Or it might be because he's of such weak character that he lies about being good at video games. Or perhaps it will be America's sell out of Ukraine, something Musk has advocated for:
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/04/1126714896/elon-musk-ukraine-...
There's lots to choose from.
As for whether this is something worth being curious about, definitely.
I think they'll be fine once the new model is out.
My coworker's combat veteran son lost his job in Huntsville last week. A direct result of Elon and his meddling.
Two weeks ago, my coworker's elderly neighbored committed suicide after learning that they wouldn't be able to afford their medication each month.
My coworker took his Trump photo down the next day and he has been trying to sell both of his Teslas.
People are definitely waking up and changing.
It takes a great deal of hate and bigotry to be able to support someone like Trump in the first place.
That doesn't go away over night. But I think a lot of them are trying to hide their support because they know that their votes are actively making America worse. But the original hatred and bigotry remain.
You can't buy a Chinese car even if you wanted to because we have like 200% tarriffs on them. Great response to competition, America.
I do think the opinion of this clashes with your stance on not wanting to buy "communist" country products though.
As for corruption, you realize that the 2nd largest donor to the Democratic party (SBF) is in jail now. OTOH, the largest donors to the Trump campaign were appointed to positions of power.
These types love to shoot themselves in the foot.
I wish my ex would find a new man so she'd stop texting me and asking me to help her with random stuff.
Why is that talking point, I mean statistic, not adjusted for the pandemic? I think I know why. Also deficit spending and govt spending continued to be high or increasing during 2022/2023 when inflation was taking off because the post covid economy was heating up, resulting in stubborn inflation that hurt the most vulnerable folks.
Just for the record, Trump tried to get the attorney general of the Southern District of New York to drop the case against the mayor of New York, a Democrat, in exchange for the mayor to give ICE carte-blanche to do what it wants in the city. So illegal was the requested action that seven people including the acting attorney general resigned immediately in sequence. Mind you, the acting attorney general was appointed by Trump literally three weeks before her resignation. And the resignations only stopped because Bove threatened to fire everyone in the office (30 odd people) if someone didn't accept. If that wasn't enough, and since some on the thread mentioned Soviet propaganda, Homan the border czar trotskies out Eric Adams on Fox News and forces him to applaud what ICE is doing, and then Homan proceeds to tell Eric Adams on national television that if he backs out that he Homan will be in his office right away and "up his ass".
That level of corruption would be choreographed nicely to Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre."
If you want to read two bad-ass resignations by Republican attorney generals, read Sassoon's and Hagan Scotten's resignation letters.
If I want to stress myself out, I'll go and read world news.
>It just means you read boring shit.
Life isn't candy and rainbows. Gotta eat your veggies and be aware of the world around you.
Live tweeting the ongoing "coup" isnt vegetables or awareness. It's deranged political obsession masquerading as social responsibility. I don't need someone to mash F5 on cnn.com and sprint here to tell me the sky is falling. No really this time its different because <current administration> blah blah
>Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
So what happens when interesting collides with "off-topic"? Who wins out?
>Live tweeting the ongoing "coup" isnt vegetables or awareness. It
A tech company is being protested against. We have plenty of those submitted here. It is interesting how tech companies act and react to the world, as well as the people using it.
>'s deranged political obsession masquerading as social responsi
Sure, just like GenAi, block chain, and crypto. Where's the line? You can dismiss anything as political if you try hard enough.
You can just say you don't like tesla news and be done with it instead. I don't like that we pick and choose when you show off tesla, and it always seems like tesla's good news stays up. Does that not strike you as political manipulation of our community?
Jonathan Swift