aguyfromnb

Exactly. I think some HNers would be amazed if they read the terms associated with Tesla doing business in China.

Hey, it's the guy who called Tesla a "good corporate citizen" just a few months ago. Let's add: breaking stay-at-home orders, called the US government "fascist" while praising China, hired people to hack the personal computers of a whistleblower (as reported in a recent deposition filing), extorted the California government, and forced their workers back to the factory floor amid the pandemic to the list of "good" things.

I think the rule with Elon Musk is all his estimates are extremely optimistic and you need to multiply them by two or three to get closer to reality.

What about all the promises that have been made that never came to fruition? Do we just exclude those from this formula?

A lot of folks on HN seems to be approaching this whole situation from the I have a ton of money, can work from home, have a car mental model.

You think poor people are using Uber to get around?

Our lockdowns were so badly done they didn't even decrease the daily case count.

Is it any wonder? Look at the comments here. Look at guys like Elon Musk breaking quarantine for economic reasons and getting praised for it. Conspiracies abound.

This didn't happen in less partisan countries. Like absolutely everything else in the US, the lockdown became a political issue, for and against it.

Where I'm from, everyone took it seriously and in a matter of weeks we got down to ZERO active cases. Then again, we don't hate people who have different politics.

There won’t be any more farmers in the future but only farming corporations.

Is this any different than, "pretty soon there won't be any local movie rental places (or retail places), it'll just be content delivery corporations"?

I do share concerns about this kind of movement, and think it needs to be done judiciously, in every industry. However, I do not agree that just because you're "small" or "independent" you are inherently better or care more. There are pros and cons. People are people and don't become "evil" by working for larger firms.

Silicon Valley seems to be very suspicious of corporate consolidation in every industry, but turns a blind eye as Facebook/Google/Amazon do it on a scale rarely ever seen.

Why do people conclude that without making a valuation?

Most retail investors are not making any valuations whatsoever. The investment criteria is "this company's future is bright/bad", even though price is the most important factor. Then, recent momentum makes you look good...for now.

Carmakers are also defined as a COVID19 critical industry, and every other carmaker manufacturing in the United States is either open, or capable of open today. This puts Tesla at a serious disadvantage.

So locking down is just "locking down", but arbitrarily classifying car building as essential during a massive economic downtown is a-okay with you? Seems reasonable.

and every other carmaker manufacturing in the United States is either open, or capable of open today.

Wrong, many are opening on May 18th, which is when the government of CA would have opened Tesla. They couldn't wait 10 days.

This puts Tesla at a serious disadvantage.

First of all, what does the health of the public have to do with the fairness of car competition?

Second, I thought Tesla had unlimited money and unlimited demand? What's the issue if they're closed for a few weeks?

The podcast was boring nonsense. Elon or China claiming things don't make them true.

May 18th, the exact date Alameda County was going to allow Tesla to open until Musk had another hissy fit.

What does one thing have to do with the other?

The public health officials who, believe it or not know more about this than Elon Musk,said they want specific metrics met before opening. Period.

So Elon did what he does and is bullying them. He called the public health official in charge, a pediatrician at Oakland's Childrens Hospital "ignorant" and "unelected". His horrible fanbase is loving it,and spamming the Alameda County offices with complaints. Why doesn't he say that about the officials in China? He'd be out on his ass, that's why.

You don't think a controversial, SV darling CEO suing to allow his non essential business to open amidst a pandemic is notable?

What about his public attacks on the civil servants involved in determine the rules for public safety?

What about the fact he's decrying "unelected officials" and "fascism" in the US,while praising the CCP and expanding Chinese production?

It's unbelievable people continue to defend this man here.

China bound.

The "outrage mob" isn't real.

You have got to be kidding me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_shaming

It's a waste to society to have someone like Musk working in finance where he would largely be working on financial gain for a small number of individuals.

Where on earth does this narrative come from that Musk isn't working for financial gain?

The guy rammed a pay package beyond anything the world has ever seen past a weak board, and just took his first payment, $700MM+ in equity, which is far beyond what the company has ever earned in GAAP profits in its entire existence.

If he doesn't care about money, how do you explain that?

bought / founded two other companies that are killing it by making things better than anyone before them. And now starlink.

Don't forget that he's curing autism, blindness and paralysis, and will eliminate the need for humans to talk within 5-10 years with Neuralink!

you're misquoting me. I meant to say they are going back to work.

Oh, so when I asked if people were "going to go back to work like nothing happened", and you replied "Ackchyually, Asian countries are going back to work" you deliberately left out the "like nothing happened" part, and are now agreeing that it's not "back to normal"? Got it.

Further compound that by countries like Sweden that are business as usual

Not true.

You already know it will lead to higher unemployment since pandemic -> everyone staying home ->

In what other pandemics did everyone stay home and unemployment went way up?

and yet their published numbers continually show greater engagement.

Do you think this might have anything to do with the fact that, as an advertising company, it's crucial that they are able to tell companies that engagement is increasing?

Everyone going back to work is not an unrealistic scenario since there are countries in Asia that are already doing this.

You're not following the economic story very closely if you think any of those countries are "back to normal".

Also keep in mind unemployment rates are expected during a pandemic.

Do you have a source to anything at all about how any of this was "expected"?

The markets already know the figures are terrible and that’s priced in already.

I'm amazed that there are still people out there that believe the stock market is composed of a ton of rational actors calculating the net present value of future cash flows from these busiensses, and buying and selling shares accordingly. I'm sure that's how Shopify has valuation metrics far higher than Amazon did during the peak of the Dotcom bubble, or how Uber loses $3B on $3.5B in revenue, while admitting their "growth product" sucks, and it goes up 10%+, or how companies like Virgin Galactic can lose $60MM on $250k in revenue!

If you ask me, stocks are going up because the entire global finance system faces tremendous uncertainty, with every country printing money as fast as they can, trying no to collapse into depression. There is literally no alternative to US stocks.

Markets think into the future, not the present

How far into the future, then? Over a long enough time span everything goes to zero. Are there no future consequences to record levels of unemployment? Everyone just goes back to work in the fall like nothing happened?

I'm not sure why the WSJ isn't a "proper source".

The paywall I hit on this article could be one reason.

So you do the obvious thing: buy radio ads in city A and search ads in city B, then compare sales.

The issue isn't whether search ads are better than radio ads. The issue (as illustrated in the article) is how many of those customers would have been customers anyway.

You might be counting your dollars and missing out on the fact that those would have been your dollars without advertising.

Take an audience of X people. Divide them in two. Show ads to your test group, don't show to control. Watch your business grow and gauge the lift between the two audiences.

How are you measuring the group you don't show ads to?

This is exactly the sort of experiment that the economists in this article (both independent and from Facebook) did, and measured substantial selection effects.

The fact that there are businesses built on businesses built on businesses that are, essentially, allowing people to compete for tiny ad space on specific keywords demonstrates that there is too much hype and obscurity in the space.

How are Tesla more innovative than other companies ?

People always seem to compare Tesla technology of tomorrow with what its competitors are doing right now. That's why Volvo "only" has level 3 self-driving, while Tesla has a fleet of robotaxis that are earning you money on its ride-sharing app while you sleep.

I joke, but a large portion of the Tesla fan base has no clue what is going on in the autonomous driving or auto manufacturer world outside of Tesla. Tesla has been a big innovator, but they aren't leaders in everything....not even close.

I'm not sure announcing products with no capacity to manufacture them should be considered "innovation".

Tesla is the auto giant leaving behind all the legacy manufacturers while also branching into energy products

Tesla has sub-1% market share in the global auto market and rapidly declining energy product deployment (they deployed 4x more MW 4 years ago than the did last year). Let's not pretend Tesla has taken over anything yet.

They have laptops that cost just as much, if not more, than a Macbook. And every one of them has some glaring issue.

You can go to many laptop review sites and find that Apple are not dominating every category. What do you know that they don't?

Tech in general has been raided by finance douches.

My observation is that many "old-school" tech people weren't replaced by finance people, but became them. Silicon Valley today is Wall Street of the 80s. VC Twitter is a meme. The common folk are waking up to this, thankfully.

The governments of the west need to be capable, but still protect the privacy of their people - that isn't an easy problem

You're right, it's a hard problem. And until these companies or institutions can prove that they are doing this, why should we trust them?

who haven’t even tried to read about the protocol they’re working on.

The companies will collect and store the tracking data, and the government will, one way or another, have access to it. What is so difficult to understand about that?

"It will only be used for good" is laughably naive, as history had demonstrated repeatedly.

If you care about these issues then you're the type of person that should be involved in solving it

Protesting and making your opinions known is way to help solve the problem.