Re: Elon Musk (yet another authoritarian)
Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2023 11:10 pm
Elon Musk made Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2023 list — but was called an 'online troll' fiddling on a 'toxic violin' while Twitter 'burns.
Same Party, Different House
https://fanlax.com/forum/
Now that got me to spit out my orange juice! Play the George Costanza card, "Ok, I'm out!!" Always end on a high note.ardilla secreta wrote: ↑Fri Apr 21, 2023 8:02 am This morning I burnt my English muffin to a nice degree of smoldering cinder. I considered it highly successful.
But was it only a test muffin?ardilla secreta wrote: ↑Fri Apr 21, 2023 8:02 am This morning I burnt my English muffin to a nice degree of smoldering cinder. I considered it highly successful.
30 years? Neither will that fool, even if he’s alive…Farfromgeneva wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 3:59 pm This is like being a Four and hanging out with 1.5s to make yourself look better it seems. Come on everyone join me in the mud!
Elon Musk Urges More Companies to Shrink Like Twitter
Billionaire says paring a workforce can lead to improved productivity
By Chip CutterFollow
May 24, 2023 10:00 am ET
Elon Musk discusses the significant cuts at Twitter and its efforts to reach profitability, during a virtual appearance at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit in London.
Elon Musk said more companies should consider running lean like Twitter.
The billionaire Tesla chief executive, speaking virtually at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit in London on Tuesday, said plenty of staffers aren’t adding value to U.S. companies and that employers might do better with fewer people. Twitter has shrunk from about 8,000 employees to roughly 1,500 since Musk acquired the social-media company last year.
“There’s a potential for significant cuts, I think, out of companies without affecting their productivity,” Musk said, adding that staffing cuts could increase productivity by speeding up operations. “At any given company, there are people who help move things forward and people who sort of try to slam the brakes on.”
Layoffs at Twitter cut far deeper than most. Musk’s efforts at the company have drawn attention across the corporate sphere from bosses in other industries, many of whom have quietly wondered whether Musk’s slimmed-down staffing model could be replicated elsewhere.
In recent months, high-profile companies including Facebook parent Meta Platforms, Amazon.com, Goldman Sachs, Alphabet’s Google and others have cut thousands of positions, and a number of executives have begun to more broadly reconsider the value of some white-collar work.
Musk said Tuesday that Twitter wasn’t profitable, but that it had stabilized its operations and could potentially be cash-flow positive next month.
“When the acquisition closed, I would say it was analogous to being teleported to a plane that was plunging to the ground with its engines on fire [and] the controls don’t work,” he said. “We had to do some pretty heavy-handed cost-cutting.”
Elon Musk: 'The Most Valuable Thing I Have Is Time'
During The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit in London, the executive chairman of Twitter discusses managing his schedule and having an assistant who works part time.
Musk said Twitter might do some additional hiring, but he described the current staffing levels as reasonable. Though Twitter has had some technical outages since the acquisition, Musk said they weren’t “massive ones.” The social-media company is also launching products and features more quickly now, he said.
“Twitter was in a situation where you’d have a meeting of 10 people and one person was an accelerator and nine were the set of brakes. So you didn’t go very far,” he said. “Now, we’re gung-ho about releasing functionality even at a little bit of risk to site stability so long as it’s not too serious.”
As jobs change and artificial intelligence expands, Musk said people will also need to adapt. Asked to name the most important skills for the future, Musk said young people should understand software, technology and AI to thrive in a more technical world that could undergo vast changes in the coming decades.
“Over a 20- to 30-year time frame, I think things will be transformed beyond belief,” Musk said. “You probably won’t recognize society in 30 years.”
The will of the people = codified law, what idiocy and dishonesty-I’m sure right wing low information reader main stream media will jump all over that quote.jhu72 wrote: ↑Thu May 25, 2023 1:11 am The great "free speech absolutist" honors 80% of censorship requests made by authoritarian governments.
That's not the lesson. The lesson is: you don't give one freaking company special deals that you don't offer to EVERY business in your State, you F'ing morons!Farfromgeneva wrote: ↑Thu Jul 06, 2023 7:13 pm Get that gubmint money!
*cradle please have a roll of to and pack of wet wipes ready and nearby before reading this story below
New York State Built Elon Musk a $1 Billion Factory. ‘It Was a Bad Deal.’
New Tesla facility in Buffalo was supposed to house a huge solar-panel operation, but the project hasn’t turned out as planned.
By Julie BykowiczFollow
and Ted MannFollow
July 6, 2023 10:04 am ET
BUFFALO, N.Y.—New York spent nearly $1 billion over the past decade on Elon Musk’s ambitious plan for what was supposed to be the largest solar-panel factory in the Western Hemisphere, one of the largest-ever public cash outlays of its kind.
“You almost have to pinch yourself, right?” New York’s then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at a construction ceremony for the factory in 2015. “That this is too good to be true.”
Eight years later, that looks like a pretty good assessment.
New York state paid to build a quarter-mile-long facility with 1.2 million square feet of industrial space, which it now owns and leases to Tesla TSLA -2.10% for $1 a year. It bought $240 million worth of solar-panel manufacturing equipment. Musk had said that by 2020 the Buffalo plant each week would churn out enough solar-panel shingles to cover 1,000 roofs.
The Tesla solar-energy unit behind the plan, however, is averaging just 21 installations a week, according to energy analysts at Wood Mackenzie who reviewed utility data. The building houses some factory workers, but also hundreds of lower-paid desk-bound data analysts working on other Tesla business.
The suppliers that Cuomo predicted would flock to a modern manufacturing hub never showed up. The only new nearby business is a Tim Horton’s coffee shop. Most of the solar-panel manufacturing equipment bought by the state has been sold at a discount or scrapped.
A state comptroller’s audit found just 54 cents of economic benefit for every subsidy dollar spent on the factory, which rose on the site of an old steel mill. External auditors have written down nearly all of New York’s investment.
“It was a bad deal,” said state Sen. Sean Ryan, a Democrat who represents Buffalo. “A cautionary tale is you can’t give governors too much power to get on the phone with egotistical billionaires.”
Musk’s electric-vehicle maker Tesla and space-transportation company SpaceX have received more than $4 billion worth of tax breaks and other government subsidies since 2006, according to a Wall Street Journal review of state and federal records. Nevada has provided financial incentives, including a $330 million tax abatement this year, to help Tesla build and expand a vehicle factory complex outside Reno.a fan wrote: ↑Thu Jul 06, 2023 7:37 pmThat's not the lesson. The lesson is: you don't give one freaking company special deals that you don't offer to EVERY business in your State, you F'ing morons!Farfromgeneva wrote: ↑Thu Jul 06, 2023 7:13 pm Get that gubmint money!
*cradle please have a roll of to and pack of wet wipes ready and nearby before reading this story below
New York State Built Elon Musk a $1 Billion Factory. ‘It Was a Bad Deal.’
New Tesla facility in Buffalo was supposed to house a huge solar-panel operation, but the project hasn’t turned out as planned.
By Julie BykowiczFollow
and Ted MannFollow
July 6, 2023 10:04 am ET
BUFFALO, N.Y.—New York spent nearly $1 billion over the past decade on Elon Musk’s ambitious plan for what was supposed to be the largest solar-panel factory in the Western Hemisphere, one of the largest-ever public cash outlays of its kind.
“You almost have to pinch yourself, right?” New York’s then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at a construction ceremony for the factory in 2015. “That this is too good to be true.”
Eight years later, that looks like a pretty good assessment.
New York state paid to build a quarter-mile-long facility with 1.2 million square feet of industrial space, which it now owns and leases to Tesla TSLA -2.10% for $1 a year. It bought $240 million worth of solar-panel manufacturing equipment. Musk had said that by 2020 the Buffalo plant each week would churn out enough solar-panel shingles to cover 1,000 roofs.
The Tesla solar-energy unit behind the plan, however, is averaging just 21 installations a week, according to energy analysts at Wood Mackenzie who reviewed utility data. The building houses some factory workers, but also hundreds of lower-paid desk-bound data analysts working on other Tesla business.
The suppliers that Cuomo predicted would flock to a modern manufacturing hub never showed up. The only new nearby business is a Tim Horton’s coffee shop. Most of the solar-panel manufacturing equipment bought by the state has been sold at a discount or scrapped.
A state comptroller’s audit found just 54 cents of economic benefit for every subsidy dollar spent on the factory, which rose on the site of an old steel mill. External auditors have written down nearly all of New York’s investment.
“It was a bad deal,” said state Sen. Sean Ryan, a Democrat who represents Buffalo. “A cautionary tale is you can’t give governors too much power to get on the phone with egotistical billionaires.”
Gee, I wonder how these businessmen turn into billionaires. It must be "hard work", right?
Elon is as well. Why he thinks he’s different is beyond me.NattyBohChamps04 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 09, 2023 10:28 pm A real, actual tweet in 2023 from a guy running multiple businesses at once and complaining about people working multiple jobs. A guy getting tons of government cheddar in subsidies and tax incentives and complaining about handouts. A guy hailed as a genius hero from a handful of groups as a free speech absolutist who is censoring words and accounts.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1678098028849143809
I wasn't sure I'd ever be on Zuckerburg's side about anything, but here we are.
He is in cahoots with the Feds....he will be just fine.Kismet wrote: ↑Sun Jul 23, 2023 2:18 pm TWITTER COMES TO AN END!
Elon Musk announced that tomorrow, after 17 years, Twitter will be rebranded as X. EACH "Tweet" will now be called an "X"
Nuts. He's already lost $20 billion of the $44 billion it cost him to acquire the business. Whatever ad volume is left will shortly be leaving too.
The folks who financed the deal must be in panic mode.
“X” marks the jerk!!Kismet wrote: ↑Sun Jul 23, 2023 2:18 pm TWITTER COMES TO AN END!
Elon Musk announced that tomorrow, after 17 years, Twitter will be rebranded as X. EACH "Tweet" will now be called an "X"
Nuts. He's already lost $20 billion of the $44 billion it cost him to acquire the business. Whatever ad volume is left will shortly be leaving too.
The folks who financed the deal must be in panic mode.
Deep State!youthathletics wrote: ↑Sun Jul 23, 2023 7:29 pmHe is in cahoots with the Feds....he will be just fine.Kismet wrote: ↑Sun Jul 23, 2023 2:18 pm TWITTER COMES TO AN END!
Elon Musk announced that tomorrow, after 17 years, Twitter will be rebranded as X. EACH "Tweet" will now be called an "X"
Nuts. He's already lost $20 billion of the $44 billion it cost him to acquire the business. Whatever ad volume is left will shortly be leaving too.
The folks who financed the deal must be in panic mode.