As a company press release, you claim funding has been provided there better be there, as a CEO with a tweet, you claim funding is available, any one can provide that letter. So he goes to his favourite bank manager and asks for a letter saying they would have (heh heh) provided funding and the SEC looks as stupid as fuck.
The only one who looks stupid here is you - no bank or fund manager in the world is going to just hand over a letter claiming they stand ready to fork over half a trillion dollars to buy out Tesla. It doesn't work that way.
As a last ditch super lame effort, they claim the letter is after the action, as a retort, yeah, we did a verbal and a handshake (100% legally binding in the eyes of the court).
As above - no reputable source of funds in the world is going to commit, or even claim to commit, half a trillion dollars in the face of an SEC investigation on a verbal and a handshake. It just doesn't work that way. That's a fast track to joining Elon in the dock.
Elon Musk lied - and now he's being called to account for it. Deal with it.
Maybe we don't need a Saturn V. If smaller rockets are much, much cheaper we can do multiple launches and assemble in-orbit.
Imagine moving from one house (or apartment) to another with nothing available to you but a subcompact. Now imagine doing so with a full moving truck... Do you see the difference?
Size and lift capacity makes things much easier - even on orbit assembly. (The larger the components you hook together, the lower the percentage of parasitic mass needed to hook them together.)
No, "proof of talks" wouldn't get him off the hook - because he didn't claim to have "been in talks". He made the very specific claim that funding was secured. Except... it wasn't. That is what got him in legal hot water.
Clearly, people invest in Tesla because they believe that, in the long run, they will increase sales enough to cover their losses. That is a prediction, not an accurate reflection of the present state of their finances.
So we need to be able to at least have permanent self-sustaining settlements in the most inhospitable places on Earth
Something that hasn't been accomplished at contemporary tech levels in at least a millenia. The task is so difficult, even at pre-industrial revolution tech levels, very few even tried.
And that's here on Earth where air and water are freely available and the most complex parts of a basic life support system was a heavy coat and an iron pot.
he SEC has to be very careful here because in punishing Musk for a 10% increase that hurt a few minority shorts, they could spark a 50%+ decrease that would be of far greater total monetary harm to the majority longs.
Whoa there hoss. The SEC isn't punishing him because he hurt a minority of shorts - they're punishing him because he broke SEC regulations.
And frankly, anyone in a long position who expects TSLA to remain at it's current value is dancing on a knife edge because it's current value is a nothing short of a bubble.
I'm not sure this is going to cause anything other than a bunch of insecure devices disappearing off store shelves in California specifically.
California is a huge segment of the US market - and not one that a seller can ignore and remain competitive.
Until you can force the white box vendors to properly secure their cheaply made and designed hardware, we're just not going to be able to make a dent in the problem.
The easiest way to do that is to make their buyers care about security specs. The easiest way to do that is to regulate the sale of such items. It isn't going to happen by sitting around making sophomoric (and ignorant) statements.
I never claimed that a phone camera could replace a DSLR - in fact I specifically pointed out that it could not.
For me, the reason for owning a real camera is not that I can't (in theory) take any given shot with a smartphone, but rather because it makes the difference between most of the shots working and most of the shots having to be retried several times.
If you have to reshoot most of the photos you attempt with a cell phone, then I don't know what to tell you - because I can't imagine a single situation in which this is the phone's fault. Either you're trying to take pictures the phone can't, or you don't know how to properly use and work within the limits of a phone camera. (Or possibly you need upgrade from whatever low end cell phone you're using.) It's a poor workman that blames the tool.
Note: I shoot natural light and candids routinely with my cell camera without any problems. I don't shoot portraits or sports at all.
You're obviously not a photographer... But as I am, I'll add my two cents:
A phone with a better than decent camera is a godsend. It's a camera I can always have with me. I can (and have) taken pictures of people with my phone that I'd have never been able to with my DSLR. (The DSLR stands out, with a phone I'm just another guy with his face buried in his phone.) Heck, I've taken random pictures of various interesting things that I would never have done before - because I wouldn't have had my DSLR in that situation.
As far as image quality goes... Only four kinds of people really sweat high image quality: Clueless amateurs. Advertisers & commercial photography. Fine art photographers. High end photographers who'll be printing at poster size or larger. Or, to put it another way - the genesis of a great photograph lies in the eye, the hand, and the brain of the photographer. Not in having l33t gear. I personally know a guy placing high (and occasionally winning!) in national and international competition with a Canon 10D... 6 megapixels, released in 2003.
Will my phone camera replace my DSLR? No. But then my socket wrenches can't be completely replaced by vise-grips either. Both cameras are tools, and each has it's place in my toolbox.
I think this is a "is the glass half full or half empty" situation
Neither - it's a "choice between full unvarnished truth or fanboi half truths and spin" situation.
I wouldn't believe a company of ~70 employees that they're going to Mars, but SpaceX seem to have the qualifications.
I could a couple of dozen dead aerospace companies that seemed to have all the qualifications for whatever it was they were trying to do. The problem isn't qualifications - it's money and SpaceX demonstrating the 95% of what it will take to go to Mars that they haven't yet demonstrated.
The flip side of that is how often has he actually been forced to give up? Like not on a particular timeline or event or scaling it back but abandon it altogether?
Half a dozen times when it comes to SpaceX alone. That is, multiple versions of the Falcon and Dragon have been tossed in the trash.
We know Musk wants to put people in space. We know Musk wants to go to Mars.
Both of these things are true - but the 'rest of the story' (as they say) is that his track record isn't one of doing what he wants, but what people will pay him to do. Without the Commercial Cargo contract, it's likely SpaceX wouldn't exist. Without the Commercial Crew contract, he almost certainly wouldn't be putting people into space. (And even then he's not "putting people into space" for his or their own independent purposes, he's a glorified bus driver for NASA.)
Doing 20 satellite launches at $60 million a year is a billion dollar revenue stream, so they got money too.
"A billion dollar revenue stream" sure sounds impressive - so long as you don't dwell too hard on the vast gaping difference between revenue and profit.
What planet do you live on or what reality do you live in? SpaceX themselves have announced that the first orbital tests won't be until 2020 ("or so").
Has SpaceX fanboi-ism reached the point where the company's own schedules are disregarded in favor of hallucinatory fantasies?
Sitting here in Wilmimgton and this storm is a BIG nothing burger.
I have friends in New Bern whose houses have a foot of water in them. I have a friend in Jacksonville who has likely lost his business because the building lost it's roof. I have friends on Oak Island whose houses are almost certainly heavily damaged...
These idiot goverent officials and news sources really need to stop with the hype. CNN is now Cat Null News.
Fuck you. There's enormous damage and the storm is nowhere near over. You got lucky, but you have to be abysmally stupid and self centered to believe that you represent everyone across a hundred miles of coast and a hundred miles inland.
Property without a known owner is not somehow excepted from being considered salvageable, actually it just means you get to keep the loot!
The fishing industry, considerably limited in what and how much it can catch (even in "unowned" waters) would be to differ.
So while I'm skeptical that governments would agree that that law applies here, if it did, lack of ownership would only make it easier. Not harder.
Maybe, maybe not. If you look at thinks like fishing quotas, the governments of the world are quite used to regulating who can grab things that lack ownership. You can also look to things like the establishment of EEZs and the partitioning of North Sea oil for further examples of establishing ownership from thin air.
It became a left/right thing when you put one of the Right's favorite ideas into play.
But if you don't think that what I suggest is part of the solution to the student loan and cost of education crisis, then you are just sticking your head in the sand.
0.o Nothing in the TFA said anything about student loans or the cost of education - they're entirely irrelevant to the question at hand. (Which is the cost of living in San Jose.) You literally have no fucking idea what you're talking about - but you sure can spout right wing nonsense.
Objects floating on the oceans are subject to international maritime law, but not to treaties regarding land-based mineral rights treaties, so it's salvage law that would apply - and anything afloat that's not actively crewed is fair game, where that's concerned.
Salvage law covers the relationships between salvors and owners of salvaged property, so it's not clear they would apply to an iceberg.
Objecting to nukes because of economics makes much more sense. They are far too expensive, and the cost is going up while the cost of solar, wind, and storage is falling.
In a world where the only metric of value is cost - that would be a reasonable statement. We don't live in such a world.
The Moon landings were over 40 years ago (the first one will celebrate 50 years, next year). It is unlikely that any of the staff, equipment or "know how" that contributed to those few missions still exists in Houston - or has any relevance now.
That makes sense, but only so long as you cling to the ludicrous notion that since all of that is gone... it's acceptable to start from a completely blank slate. A much less ludicrous notion is to take advantage of the existing infrastructure and experience pool of Shuttle and Station controllers - all of which is in Houston.
Keep in mind that the space shuttle Challenger was lost in part due to congressional delegation pressure from Utah. Its Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) were manufactured in Utah which required the SRBs to be built in segments due to the maximum length of a rail car.
That's the theory that ill-educated idiots keep pushing... But the fact is that three of the four bidders on the SRB proposed segmented boosters.
It is possible to build the SRBs near the ocean thereby avoiding the complications of segmenting the SRBs.
Again, that's the theory pushed by ill-educated idiots. In reality, the tests of large monolithic boosters had decidedly mixed results - mostly attributed to the great (and unsolved) issues with mixing and casting such a large grain. The tests were cancelled after rough burning due to those issues severely damaged the nozzle. (That is, mixing and casting a single motor. Mixing and casting the matched pair the Shuttle required would have been even more problematic. Yet another reason for choosing segments.) Another issue is how to handle huge monolithic boosters... The test motors were all cast in place because nobody could figure out how to handle them without damaging the grain. Even with today's technology doing so would be a tall and expensive order.
Of course they are useful to non-pilots for training, real pilots train in simulators
Yes, (some) real pilots train in simulators. The article however is about video games - which are to those simulators like a skateboard is to a F1 racer. Still useful for some things, but not even remotely the same thing.
He said "funding is secured"...which is open to interpretation. Musk argues that it meant that he had serious discussions with investors
No, it's not open to interpretation - secured has a fairly specific meaning. (In this case, that funding is committed and available.) There is no reasonable way to extend "funding is secured" to mean "we don't actually have funding but we're in serious discussion" and still be speaking English.
I don't see how you punish a CEO for saying what he's going to do and then doing it.
0.o Punishing him for "doing what he said he was going to do"? What planet do you live on? Her on Earth he hasn't taken Tesla private, he hasn't even put it to a shareholder vote yet. And he can't do that because he hasn't filed the relevant paperwork yet... He's not being punished for "doing what he said he would do" (in fact, he hasn't been punished at all). He's being investigated for possibly saying something improper. (Words mean things, and "punished" and "investigated" are not synonyms.)
My guess is that all he has to do is produce one or more investors who say "yep, we're ready to put up X billion and we've been talking to him about this for awhile" and he is off scot-free, perhaps with an admonishment to be more careful in the future.
Only if he can demonstrate that such readiness existed prior to his tweet and covered the entire amount of the buyout. (That's what "funding is secured" means.)
Seriously, what is it with Musk's defenders? Their ability to create utter nonsense from thin air surpasses all belief.
In all likelihood, he will take Tesla private, and most likely under the terms he sketches out in his initial tweets.
Maybe... maybe not. "Going private" and "keeping existing shareholders" are mutually incompatible. He's going to have to come up with a pretty novel solution and get it past the regulators first, and that's going to be a very tall order.
But I really would like someone to explain to me how it can possibly cost 6.3 million dollars a year for such an incredibly simple function/technology.
The explanation is as simple as reading TFS:
"$6.3 million supporting fundamental measurement dissemination, including the shutdown of NIST radio stations in Colorado and Hawaii."
WWV is only one small part of the $6.3 million. The rest is probably metrology standards of various kinds, which is an even more frightening loss than WWV. In theory, WWV could eventually be replaced with 'net connectivity and local clocks... But primary reference standards? Those, by definition, have to come from a central source.
Where did I say that nobody does? I said that GP doesn't, and that's true. Perhaps you should learn to read before criticising anyone else's intelligence.
Accusing me of needing to learn to read when you completely failed to grasp my reply, that's very rich indeed.
Or just assumes it's linearly related to the number, and size & complexity play no part, as true geniuses like you do.
Indeed, size and complexity play a part. But numbers play a huge part as well - because they add size and complexity by their mere existence. This is something anyone educated on the problem understands. But trolls like you fail to grasp that, not only because you aren't educated - you aren't interested in being educated.
Slashdot Mirror
The only one who looks stupid here is you - no bank or fund manager in the world is going to just hand over a letter claiming they stand ready to fork over half a trillion dollars to buy out Tesla. It doesn't work that way.
As above - no reputable source of funds in the world is going to commit, or even claim to commit, half a trillion dollars in the face of an SEC investigation on a verbal and a handshake. It just doesn't work that way. That's a fast track to joining Elon in the dock.
Elon Musk lied - and now he's being called to account for it. Deal with it.
Imagine moving from one house (or apartment) to another with nothing available to you but a subcompact. Now imagine doing so with a full moving truck... Do you see the difference?
Size and lift capacity makes things much easier - even on orbit assembly. (The larger the components you hook together, the lower the percentage of parasitic mass needed to hook them together.)
No, "proof of talks" wouldn't get him off the hook - because he didn't claim to have "been in talks". He made the very specific claim that funding was secured. Except... it wasn't. That is what got him in legal hot water.
My kingdom for mod points! This guy gets it.
Something that hasn't been accomplished at contemporary tech levels in at least a millenia. The task is so difficult, even at pre-industrial revolution tech levels, very few even tried.
And that's here on Earth where air and water are freely available and the most complex parts of a basic life support system was a heavy coat and an iron pot.
Whoa there hoss. The SEC isn't punishing him because he hurt a minority of shorts - they're punishing him because he broke SEC regulations.
And frankly, anyone in a long position who expects TSLA to remain at it's current value is dancing on a knife edge because it's current value is a nothing short of a bubble.
California is a huge segment of the US market - and not one that a seller can ignore and remain competitive.
The easiest way to do that is to make their buyers care about security specs. The easiest way to do that is to regulate the sale of such items. It isn't going to happen by sitting around making sophomoric (and ignorant) statements.
I never claimed that a phone camera could replace a DSLR - in fact I specifically pointed out that it could not.
If you have to reshoot most of the photos you attempt with a cell phone, then I don't know what to tell you - because I can't imagine a single situation in which this is the phone's fault. Either you're trying to take pictures the phone can't, or you don't know how to properly use and work within the limits of a phone camera. (Or possibly you need upgrade from whatever low end cell phone you're using.) It's a poor workman that blames the tool.
Note: I shoot natural light and candids routinely with my cell camera without any problems. I don't shoot portraits or sports at all.
I've seen the following more than once:
(Tweet about x)
Tweets you might have missed:
(The exact same dammed tweet!)
The problem isn't the "Tweets you might have missed" as much as the function is implemented so badly.
You're obviously not a photographer... But as I am, I'll add my two cents:
A phone with a better than decent camera is a godsend. It's a camera I can always have with me. I can (and have) taken pictures of people with my phone that I'd have never been able to with my DSLR. (The DSLR stands out, with a phone I'm just another guy with his face buried in his phone.) Heck, I've taken random pictures of various interesting things that I would never have done before - because I wouldn't have had my DSLR in that situation.
As far as image quality goes... Only four kinds of people really sweat high image quality: Clueless amateurs. Advertisers & commercial photography. Fine art photographers. High end photographers who'll be printing at poster size or larger. Or, to put it another way - the genesis of a great photograph lies in the eye, the hand, and the brain of the photographer. Not in having l33t gear. I personally know a guy placing high (and occasionally winning!) in national and international competition with a Canon 10D... 6 megapixels, released in 2003.
Will my phone camera replace my DSLR? No. But then my socket wrenches can't be completely replaced by vise-grips either. Both cameras are tools, and each has it's place in my toolbox.
Neither - it's a "choice between full unvarnished truth or fanboi half truths and spin" situation.
I could a couple of dozen dead aerospace companies that seemed to have all the qualifications for whatever it was they were trying to do. The problem isn't qualifications - it's money and SpaceX demonstrating the 95% of what it will take to go to Mars that they haven't yet demonstrated.
Half a dozen times when it comes to SpaceX alone. That is, multiple versions of the Falcon and Dragon have been tossed in the trash.
Both of these things are true - but the 'rest of the story' (as they say) is that his track record isn't one of doing what he wants, but what people will pay him to do. Without the Commercial Cargo contract, it's likely SpaceX wouldn't exist. Without the Commercial Crew contract, he almost certainly wouldn't be putting people into space. (And even then he's not "putting people into space" for his or their own independent purposes, he's a glorified bus driver for NASA.)
"A billion dollar revenue stream" sure sounds impressive - so long as you don't dwell too hard on the vast gaping difference between revenue and profit.
What planet do you live on or what reality do you live in? SpaceX themselves have announced that the first orbital tests won't be until 2020 ("or so").
Has SpaceX fanboi-ism reached the point where the company's own schedules are disregarded in favor of hallucinatory fantasies?
I have friends in New Bern whose houses have a foot of water in them. I have a friend in Jacksonville who has likely lost his business because the building lost it's roof. I have friends on Oak Island whose houses are almost certainly heavily damaged...
Fuck you. There's enormous damage and the storm is nowhere near over. You got lucky, but you have to be abysmally stupid and self centered to believe that you represent everyone across a hundred miles of coast and a hundred miles inland.
The fishing industry, considerably limited in what and how much it can catch (even in "unowned" waters) would be to differ.
Maybe, maybe not. If you look at thinks like fishing quotas, the governments of the world are quite used to regulating who can grab things that lack ownership. You can also look to things like the establishment of EEZs and the partitioning of North Sea oil for further examples of establishing ownership from thin air.
It became a left/right thing when you put one of the Right's favorite ideas into play.
0.o Nothing in the TFA said anything about student loans or the cost of education - they're entirely irrelevant to the question at hand. (Which is the cost of living in San Jose.) You literally have no fucking idea what you're talking about - but you sure can spout right wing nonsense.
Salvage law covers the relationships between salvors and owners of salvaged property, so it's not clear they would apply to an iceberg.
Ah yes, the slogan of the right wing: "You peasants don't deserve an education at the university you desire".
In a world where the only metric of value is cost - that would be a reasonable statement. We don't live in such a world.
That makes sense, but only so long as you cling to the ludicrous notion that since all of that is gone... it's acceptable to start from a completely blank slate. A much less ludicrous notion is to take advantage of the existing infrastructure and experience pool of Shuttle and Station controllers - all of which is in Houston.
That's the theory that ill-educated idiots keep pushing... But the fact is that three of the four bidders on the SRB proposed segmented boosters.
Again, that's the theory pushed by ill-educated idiots. In reality, the tests of large monolithic boosters had decidedly mixed results - mostly attributed to the great (and unsolved) issues with mixing and casting such a large grain. The tests were cancelled after rough burning due to those issues severely damaged the nozzle. (That is, mixing and casting a single motor. Mixing and casting the matched pair the Shuttle required would have been even more problematic. Yet another reason for choosing segments.) Another issue is how to handle huge monolithic boosters... The test motors were all cast in place because nobody could figure out how to handle them without damaging the grain. Even with today's technology doing so would be a tall and expensive order.
Yes, (some) real pilots train in simulators. The article however is about video games - which are to those simulators like a skateboard is to a F1 racer. Still useful for some things, but not even remotely the same thing.
No, it's not open to interpretation - secured has a fairly specific meaning. (In this case, that funding is committed and available.) There is no reasonable way to extend "funding is secured" to mean "we don't actually have funding but we're in serious discussion" and still be speaking English.
0.o Punishing him for "doing what he said he was going to do"? What planet do you live on? Her on Earth he hasn't taken Tesla private, he hasn't even put it to a shareholder vote yet. And he can't do that because he hasn't filed the relevant paperwork yet... He's not being punished for "doing what he said he would do" (in fact, he hasn't been punished at all). He's being investigated for possibly saying something improper. (Words mean things, and "punished" and "investigated" are not synonyms.)
Only if he can demonstrate that such readiness existed prior to his tweet and covered the entire amount of the buyout. (That's what "funding is secured" means.)
Seriously, what is it with Musk's defenders? Their ability to create utter nonsense from thin air surpasses all belief.
Maybe... maybe not. "Going private" and "keeping existing shareholders" are mutually incompatible. He's going to have to come up with a pretty novel solution and get it past the regulators first, and that's going to be a very tall order.
The explanation is as simple as reading TFS:
"$6.3 million supporting fundamental measurement dissemination, including the shutdown of NIST radio stations in Colorado and Hawaii."
WWV is only one small part of the $6.3 million. The rest is probably metrology standards of various kinds, which is an even more frightening loss than WWV. In theory, WWV could eventually be replaced with 'net connectivity and local clocks... But primary reference standards? Those, by definition, have to come from a central source.
Accusing me of needing to learn to read when you completely failed to grasp my reply, that's very rich indeed.
Indeed, size and complexity play a part. But numbers play a huge part as well - because they add size and complexity by their mere existence. This is something anyone educated on the problem understands. But trolls like you fail to grasp that, not only because you aren't educated - you aren't interested in being educated.