Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

This really is a full service blog.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

We still have time to mess this up!

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

A Senator Walker would be an insult to the state and the nation.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

You are here: Home / Science & Technology / Tech News & Issues / Late Night Open Thread: The Emperor of Vaporware

Late Night Open Thread: The Emperor of Vaporware

by | 87 Comments

This post is in: ,


Good enough for the TruFans!…

Reader Interactions

87Comments

  2. 2.

    TriassicSands

    I don’t go near Twitter, but the worst thing about it since Elon bought it, is that now Musk and Twitter are in the news every day. Please, Elon, go to Mars and don’t look back. And take Twitter with you.

    Please.

  4. 4.

    prostratedragon

    Well, the rest of that does suggest they believe in fairy tales. Imagine the descriptions of his phone read in the voice of a four-year-old.

  5. 5.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @Jesse:

    Standard practice on the right. They start with one absurdity, then quickly escalate that into a cascade of absurdities. By that time the original absurdity has long been left behind.

  8. 8.

    Craig

    Electric pickups are gonna eat Tesla. Ford and GM are pushing hard on this and can’t build enough. My buddy just got his Rivian delivered and that thing is insane. It’s mind bending quick. I ride in a lot of ride share Teslas for work, and the build quality is bunk. The door and roof trim is shoddy, I can’t stop seeing it in every car. Tesla got a lot of string as a first mover and a ton of govt handouts. Elon is murdering their brand just when the wolves smelled weakness.

  9. 9.

    Tony Jay

    Sexy Salted Jeebus on a seeded cracker, they really do think he’s Tony Stark, and even sadder, so does he.

    You just know that somewhere in the depths of an off-the-books Tesla/Space X research lab outside Phoenix there’s a team of NDA-laden nerds who’ve been spending 25 hours a day for the last five years trying and failing to put together an AI assisted cybernetic battle suit for Musk to wear to the next meeting of the board.

    Sad little man.

  15. 15.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Tony Jay: Sexy Salted Jeebus on a seeded cracker, they really do think he’s Tony Stark, and even sadder, so does he.

    Yes.. this. I was thinking that reading them burble about how a Tesla phone would totally beat the pants off Apple,

  17. 17.

    Shalimar

    Microsoft used to make an alternative to Apple and Google phones, as recently as 5 years ago.  I didn’t see those options the last few times I have looked for a phone at AT&T.  If Microsoft can’t compete in the market, how the fuck does Elon think he’s going to magically do it?

  18. 18.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @MagdaInBlack: what they said; I grew up in Silicon Valley and Musk has to be the biggest comedy show ever in an industry rife with weirdos and nerd hubris.

  19. 19.

    NotMax

    What is it B-J has against the late cohort to keep flogging us almost exclusively with this bozo night after night after night? Other dayparts immune or sacrosanct?

  21. 21.

    Shalimar

    @TriassicSands: Since I want Elon to fail and the daily stories are almost always some variation of “Elon did X stupid thing”, I enjoy the constant Twitter news.  It would scare me if he settled down and stopped lighting shit on fire.

  22. 22.

    Baud

    @Shalimar:

    I like the fail parade because Musk has real money in the game.  If it were someone like Trump who has no stake in anything, I would hate the constant attention his absurdities were getting.

  24. 24.

    dm

     

    @Tony Jay:

    Sexy Salted Jeebus on a seeded cracker, they really do think he’s Tony Stark, and even sadder, so does he.

    Jill Lepore did a podcast series on 50s science fiction and Musk several months ago. She said that the comparisons with Tony Stark really seemed to go to his head, and she detected a marked change in his public persona at that point.

  27. 27.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Shalimar: I’m imagining a scenario where the Twitter building is in flames and Muskrat is standing on the roof yelling, “Top of the World, Ma!”

  28. 28.

    Chris T.

    @Craig: Yeah, early Tesla Model S builds were done largely by True Believers, who may have gotten stuff wrong but weren’t shoddy about it. Now … not so much.

    (I have ridden in an early-ish S, and looked at Tesla before I bought my cars, and even if you get a well-built one, the interior style is pretty wretched.  That would be fine on a sub-$20k cheapie car, but not on a luxury priced one.)

  29. 29.

    bjacques

    @Baud: and, unlike with Trump 2017-2021, there’s no worry that public mockery would push him over the edge to set the country on fire. Musk’s antics are only torching his own reputation and fortune, in keeping with his cars spontaneously combusting every so often.

  30. 30.

    Frank Wilhoit

    @Shalimar: Microsoft failed in the phone space because they tried to make it part of “Windows everywhere”; but the constrained-environment branch of the Windows tree suffers from architectural decisions made decades ago that make it incurably nonperformant.  It is as if Android had been based on a port of Linux to the Apple II.  If they started fresh with today’s hardware in mind, they might be able to do something; but they don’t know how to start fresh.

  31. 31.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Shalimar: Amazon couldn’t pull it off with the Fire phone either. The Tesla truck looks butt ugly. It looks like that ugly looking Buick crossover, the name of which escapes me. I’ve seen a  few Rivians. They look cool but they look like big toy trucks. Everything looks too smooth like on a plastic toy truck.

  33. 33.

    Kathleen

    A MuskPhone would be characterized by a user not being able to call or text. MuskPhone.1 would introduce calls and text and would be hyped as “cutting edge and edgy”.

  34. 34.

    Chris Johnson

    @Jesse: Projection? It could be a tell that Musk has every intention of doing stuff with Twitter that would get you kicked off any app store, or arrested.

    It’s usually projection with these clowns, why wouldn’t it be with Elon Musk? Most likely he’s telling you what he wants. Points for understanding the reality that he’d get kicked off app stores for it, sometimes they don’t even get that far.

  35. 35.

    Kathleen

    @satby: That was one of the most informative articles I’ve seen on social media manipulation. She has helped to keep me sane.

  38. 38.

    Eolirin

     

    @Frank Wilhoit: Oh please, this is nonsense. Android was less performant in actual real world usage than Windows Phone was at the time. It was and continues to be a mess of an OS, architecturally.

    MS failed to make any progress in that market because they were two years late to market and had to deal with a hostile environment from carriers and OEMs, which made it impossible for them to get a large enough user base to durably attract app developers (Google freezing out access to their services, going so far as preventing MS from building alternatives to their apps using APIs they allowed other third parties to use didn’t help either). If they had beaten Android to market, and had adopted license free policies like Google had sooner, they would have had a decent chance of becoming the dominant player instead of them. They didn’t and there isn’t room in the market for three OSes. Barely room for two.

    That being said, nothing stops Musk from making an Android phone with an alternative store pre-installed. Amazon made a play at that and failed to get enough traction to keep it going, though they still have an Android tablet line that works like that. So Musk could keep setting money on fire.

  40. 40.

    Geminid

    @Craig: I wonder if ten years from now Tesla will look like Blackberry, a company which prospered early on with a product that was ahead of its counterparts, but then was left in the dust by more capable competitors.

  41. 41.

    Eolirin

    @Geminid: I think the only difference will be that those more capable competitors will be the old guard, where the one two punch of Blackberry and Apple more or less killed the existing dominant players in mobile.

    But that makes some amount of sense when you consider that evs aren’t really a disruption to the car as much as they are to gas stations and parts of the manufacturing process.

  42. 42.

    trnc

    @Craig: Electric pickups are gonna eat Tesla. Ford and GM are pushing hard on this and can’t build enough.

    Not to take anything away from the work done by Ford or GM, but let’s face it – it’s a lot easier to compete against a company whose product design is based on the Mission Impossible tape.

    A Tesla caught fire Tuesday on Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania, causing firefighters to battle flames that refused to stay extinguished.

    The accident took place in Clearfield County when the driver of the vehicle was unable to avoid a piece of debris in the road, according to WTAJ-TV.

    As if that wasn’t bad enough, it also follows the cryptocurrency model – use a shitload of resources to end up with nothing (which I realize is the trend for Elon in general).

    “As Engine Tanker 17 and Engine Tanker 19 arrived on scene it was quickly discovered that this was not your typical vehicle fire as crews quickly utilized just over 4,000 gallons of water,” according to a Facebook post from Morris Township Fire Company #1.

    “In total approximately 12,000 gallons of water was utilized,” the fire department posted.

    “To give you an idea of the severity, crews can normally extinguish a fully involved vehicle fire with approximately 500 gallons or less.”

    https://ijr.com/tesla-repeatedly-bursts-flames-interstate/

  43. 43.

    Eolirin

    @Jesse: If Twitter’s content moderation fails sufficiently it will be impossible to keep the levels of hate speech and child pornography on the platform below the threshold Apple and Google will tolerate from a social media app.

    It’s a tacit admission that the path Musk is on will ultimately result in that kind of moderation break down, though it’ll be framed as being about right wing voices not being tolerated by big tech.

  44. 44.

    VOR

    @trnc: this fire behavior is due to the batteries. My guess is other EVs will have similar fire issues.

    There are some thing I like about Tesla vehicles. The direct to consumer sales model without dealer middlemen to tack on “market adjustment” fees. Designing components optimized specifically for a particular car rather than parts from a 3rd party which require another bracket and fasteners. I’m intrigued by the giga cast concept which could replace 10s or even 100s of welded parts with a single enormous cast piece. Can such a casting be repaired?

    But Musk has convinced me not to buy a Tesla.

  45. 45.

    Kay

    He’s fighting “woke” now. Because of course he is.

    The biggest assholes in the world jumped on the anti-woke bandwagon. It’s this horrible collection of bitter, irritable middle aged (sort-of ) celebrities who believe the world must remain exactly the same as when they were in college.

  46. 46.

    Geminid

    @VOR: I’m not up on technologies involved, but I sense a spirit of “that old wheel must be outdated, so we must reinvent it.” Or even replace it with…a yoke!

  47. 47.

    Kay

    Skilled trades here who took cash incentives to leave Ohio and go work for Tesla and then returned say the quality at Tesla sucks because the management sucks. They have been saying it for years.

    My son did electrical at a stamping plant in Toledo which used to be Ford but is now split into “lines” for various automakers – they make Tesla parts along with parts for other automakers in different areas of the (huge) facility. He says the Tesla line is all temps – “the sad part of the factory”

    Musk WAS really good at PR and getting government subsidies though and now it seems he isn’t even good at that.

  48. 48.

    different-church-lady

    MUSk: “I want to be president of the United States”

    CONSTITUTION: “You can’t. You’re not a citizen.”

    MUSK: “Then I will build my own United States.”

  50. 50.

    randy khan

    Apple has been the most trusted brand in the annual global survey for something like 9 or 10 years, so the people who think the Tesla brand is better are smoking something.

    But none of these people have any idea how much work it is to develop a modern smartphone – both hardware and software (although since Android is open source, I guess they could shortcut a bit by doing a fork from the main version), let alone to get the phone approved by carriers so that, you know, it will work when you turn it on.

  51. 51.

    randy khan

    @Eolirin:

    It’s a tacit admission that the path Musk is on will ultimately result in that kind of moderation break down, though it’ll be framed as being about right wing voices not being tolerated by big tech.

    It’s a common feature of right-wing social media that they are incapable of getting rid of the things that even they say they agree shouldn’t be on their sites.  Basically, the focus on ideology makes it impossible for them to be competent.

  52. 52.

    Baud

    @Layer8Problem:

    And that’s how he burned up the rest of his money and reduced himself to pushing a grocery cart in the street.”

     

    Bullshit. The shopping cart will be self driving.

  53. 53.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @satby: Just read Kanefield’s article, which I had bookmarked yesterday and then forgotten about, so thanks for the reminder. She is thoughtful and a pleasure to read.

  56. 56.

    trnc

    @VOR: this fire behavior is due to the batteries. My guess is other EVs will have similar fire issues.

    Sure, but the Elon culture of problem denial could make the problem persist for Tesla. IE, Ford and GM will acknowledge problems at some point, review engine designs and press the battery manufacturers to improve their product, depending on where the problem lies. Tesla will refuse to acknowledge for much longer, especially if their design is the problem, and may not even push the battery maker because that’s a tacit admission of a problem.

    ETA: More fun with stats.

    https://www.tesla-fire.com/

  58. 58.

    Halteclere

    John Galt starved to death in his gulch.

    I’ll use that line the next time someone tries to tell me about “Objectivism”.

  60. 60.

    Tony G

    @Baud: Well, at this point Twitter has become a right-wing website with little or no content moderation.  Basically Stormfront with (for now) a larger user base.  So Elon’s fantasy of getting kicked out of the App Store might soon come to pass.

  62. 62.

    Tony G

    @Baud: The shopping cart crash into other shopping carts and then catch fire.  Then Elon will whine because “IT’S NOT FAIR”.

  64. 64.

    Tony G

    @Halteclere: Murray Rothbard, one of the “major libertarian intellectuals” of the twentieth century was a de-facto supporter of the slave economy and polity of the American South prior to1865.  (Rothbard had written that he would have supported the Confederacy during the American Civil War.). So … the answer to the question of “how could John Galt and hiss fellow prima donnas have survived in the desert?” might have been SLAVERY.  Slavery for freedom!

  65. 65.

    Another Scott

    @Eolirin: Network effects are real.

    Android won market share early on because the iPhone was too expensive.  Now it’s too big a market (even though AFAIK Apple’s ecosystem still makes the vast majority of the cell phone profits).

    Zuckerberg tried to make a phone too.  Nobody (relatively speaking) wanted it even though he had a claimed multi-billion user captive audience.  Nobody wanted the Fire phone.   Nobody will want a TwitPhone either.  Margins are too small, competition is too intense, hardware has too many critical choke points, and things move too fast.

    It’s all just more mouth noises to feed his insatiable ego.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  69. 69.

    pat

    @pat:

    It just occurred to me, maybe they should be carrying a foam fire extinguisher.  Also interesting that everything that was burnable, burned.  Just the rims left…

    This is probably the end of this thread.  Must get some work done.

  70. 70.

    BellyCat

    @satby: Kanefield’s post is very good and worth the read.  Missing, unfortunately, are deeper thoughts on repairing the “news”. Guessing (hoping?) she has a few thoughts on this as well.

  71. 71.

    J R in WV

    @Jesse: ​

    Why would Twitter get pulled from the App Store?

    Because Elom is going to allow all the Nazi hatreds to blossom on his Twitter platform, and neither Google nor Apple want to be associated with pure Nazi propaganda.​
    ​
    ​

  72. 72.

    J R in WV

    @🐾BillinGlendaleCA:

    Now I’m really jealous !! that’s an amazing piece of Hi Tech camers, with so many pixels. Can’t wait to see what all you get up to with that tool to work with !!

    Good luck with it, Bill.

  73. 73.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @J R in WV: Bingo! The same reason a lot of the companies advertising on Twitter stopped their ads.  They didn’t don’t want to be associated with racist, facist, homophobic, transphobic posts on Twitter if it’s going to cut into their profits and hurt their public image.

  74. 74.

    Calouste

    @randy khan: Tesla phone could get around the carriers by just using Starlink and WiFi, which would probably make it a whole lot more expensive. And the phone itself could be an Android clone made by some obscure company with a T slapped on it for branding. The fanboys would buy it, but few other people.

  75. 75.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @randy khan: none of these people have any idea how much work it is to develop a modern smartphone – both hardware and software (although since Android is open source, I guess they could shortcut a bit by doing a fork from the main version), let alone to get the phone approved by carriers so that, you know, it will work when you turn it on.

    This. And then make it earn a healthy profit margin… good luck!

  76. 76.

    Tony G

    Elon actually seems to think that he’s The Smartest Man in the Universe, and (for some reason) he’s attracted a cult of fan-boys who believe the same.  It would be entertaining to see him lose ever nickel and actually get a job somewhere. But, the billionaires protect their own.

  78. 78.

    Martin

    @Another Scott: The iPhone ecosystem – the hardware plus apps plus accessories is estimated to have a GDP of about $1.5T.

    Nobody is displacing the iPhone with a phone. Maybe with a different bit of hardware, but won, the phone wars are.

  80. 80.

    Martin

    @Calouste: So Jobs originally floated the idea that the iPhone would operate off of unlocked wifi. He really underestimated the potential consequence of unlocked wifi (it’s bad).

    But Starlink caps the size of the market. It’s aggregate bandwidth isn’t that high. Calculations are that the network can support about 1-2 million total customers in the US. That’s about 25 million globally. 25 million is ballpark how many iPhones Apple sells on their launch weekend, just to put that in perspective.

    Musk could launch a replacement network, and at some point that will be cost effective, but we’re talking a decade to get an adequate network in place.

  81. 81.

    Martin

    @J R in WV: More specifically, Musk is railing about the ability of a corporation (Twitter) moderating hate speech, overlooking that Apple has the ability to change their App Store guidelines to produce the same effect. They get to define what ‘adequate moderation’ means and can change it at any point.

  82. 82.

    Ruckus

    @Martin:

    I’ve had several cell phones. A flip phone way, way back, over 2 decades ago back. A Blackberry – which was way better than the flip phone. An Android – because it was less expensive than the iPhone. But I’ve had an iPhone for the last several years and if necessary, I’d buy another. My service costs the same either way, the phones are now about the same price, but for me the iPhone works far better. Yesterday I was helping one of my neighbors attempt to get her Android based phone working, about 30 minutes on the phone with the t mobile service guy and no luck, she’s likely to have to purchase a new phone.

  83. 83.

    Ruckus

    @Tony G:

    If money equaled smart elon would be the smartest. But his entire life he’s had basically endless money which means he never really has had to work, struggle, worry about the lights going on or the fridge going off, live in a crap apartment, drive a 20 yr old car and actually fill it up himself, he could buy his way out of situations that he otherwise might have gotten into – too deep, or be drafted during a war, or not be able to afford decent healthcare. And he’s never even been close to worrying about his next meal or $200 bottle of wine. His “regular” suffering is worrying about his pen working to sign a big check, or which $400 dinner he wants. He spends money foolishly that we can’t even think about playing Monopoly.

    Elon is the poster boy that rich people want to aspire to be and I’d rather live on SS than be him for 30 seconds.

  84. 84.

    Ruckus

    @Geminid:

    Blackberry was left behind because it failed to recognize that it’s original design was holding them back. Yes if you had the correct size fingers you could type on it like a wizard (seen it done on an airplane by my seat mate. Once.) but the keyboard took up nearly half the front so the screen couldn’t be made much bigger and was therefore useless for how most people use their phones. They were actually pretty good phones for their day and the keyboard worked well – if you didn’t have large fingers and hands. And yes as I said above I owned one.

  85. 85.

    BellyCat

    Yet another temporal thread begging for a durable commentary thread. And we complain about the “instant urge” of the news corpse…

Comments are closed.