The price of diesel skyrocketing[1]. The producer price index, a leading indicator of inflation, doing the same[2]. Consumer sentiment cratering[3]. Real weekly earnings plunging[4].
These things aren't even normally the president's direct fault, but in this case it 1000% is.
So it's understandably why he's desperately jangling every set of keys he can get his hands on as the mid-term elections are happening. It can and will get dumber for this lame duck.
> Shadowy forces are behind every loss. Ironically, it's this attitude that undermines democracy.
I mean, this is South America we're talking about. It's not attitudes that undermine their democracy, it's very notoriously US-based three letter agencies.[1][2][3][4][5]
I dunno, I live in a neighborhood in LA without an HOA and it's great. Housing values have skyrocketed in the decade I've been here. There are a sprinkling of places that don't take great care of their yards: the bane of every Karen-filled HOA. This has done absolutely nothing to harm property values.
I would wager that the money residents might have paid for HOA fees have largely gone into their own home/yard improvements, and it shows. Adding an HOA in this place, and I think most places, would be a burden rather than a benefit.
To be fair though, the nicest neighborhoods in LA where the price floor is like 2 million are often HOA, old or new. Really the HOA doesn't do too much directly, but selects for the sort of people who don't care about an HOA fee along with the littany of other fees their lifestyle brings them, and that's enough to see home values and associated factors change dramatically from Hancock Park to parts adjacent only a couple hundred feet away.
There's probably a security aspect too with regular private security patrols in HOA areas that do enough to shoo away encampments from setting up. You don't have to look to hard to find encampments off vine north of melrose but you aren't going to find anything like that south of melrose in hancock park, thanks to the spend on private security, given it's the same LAPD in either case.
Ah, so it's a delusional belief not based on facts or reality.
>that's just a fact reported by HUD
Categorically false claim not made in your source. The linked article makes zero claims about HOAs being "very frequently involved in racial discrimination suits for violations of the Fair Housing Act."
So this is a completely obvious scam, right? I don't see anyone else calling this out and I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
The thing that they showed off isn't something that they could legally sell, it would basically be a bomb. Also, the battery pack that would go in the car would be so large that they couldn't do the stunts they showed in their drone vehicle.
Are we not calling an obvious stock pumping charade what it is out of some sense of politeness?
I feel like it's also crazy irresponsible to sell this deathtrap to the public, since it's pretty much guaranteed buyers will joyride this on public roads.
- The cold-gas only version will shotgun debris into onlookers, and possibly yeet anyone behind it.
- Active suction is very cool until a rock punches through your intakes.
- Lithium batteries and pressurised tanks in the same package, yippee!
Thank god it'll take them years to manufacture this thing.
It isn't being sold to the public. Of the three versions, the one that is "road ready" doesn't have the gimmicky thrusters. The one that is displayed is available by invite only, and even if you have a quarter of a million to reserve the racing model, you aren't likely to get a license plate for use on public roads.
They'll make a handful that a select few billionaires will get to keep in a hanger somewhere for bragging rights.
There's a reason we don't see a driver in these demos and they don't do anything beyond very choreographed stunts. There's no way a human can actually control those thrusters in a way that doesn't kill you. Unless you're a fighter pilot.
I agree with the first two points, but why do you think the thrusters have to be manually controlled? My expectation would be it'd just perform one of the pre-programmed tricks taking in the sensor data to adapt mid-way, the same way they do auto-landings in SpaceX (no one is controlling the landing booster manually, right?).
Explain what you mean please. First, this is not going on a public road anytime ever, so in an unlikely event this product will actually see the light of day, it’s very likely that anyone who attempts this will do it on mostly static controlled circuit/pad. I don’t know how they did the demo, but I don’t see it as something outside of the realm of reality to calculate ‘kickflip’ on the fly using whatever sensors they put in this thing.
I wouldn’t want to sit in it tho (and I’m guessing no one in the demographic this will be sold to would want this level of risk either).
> There's a reason we don't see a driver in these demos and they don't do anything beyond very choreographed stunts. There's no way a human can actually control those thrusters in a way that doesn't kill you. Unless you're a fighter pilot.
I'm not even sure if a fighter pilot could. The passenger compartment of the "Rocket" model is probably packed full of tanks and other equipment, to deliver total of a few seconds of flight time. Doing anything in the air would probably require such precise timing no person could do manually, and it probably can't even be done automatically outside very controlled conditions.
The demo literally has it flying without a pilot controlling it. There's not going to be like 8 joysticks that a driver has to use at once to make it fly
No kidding. Musk is SIX YEARS late on delivering the previous version of the roadster, which has been superseded by today's announcement, promising its delivery in a few years, and everyone is just lappin' it up.
Well we could examine the history here, for instance when he bought Twitter that it would immediately collapse (now its more popular than ever and Bluesky is the one that's falling apart) and when the Cybertruck was announced there were lots of people saying it could never be made: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21602437
You forgot about how everyone was insisting the Hyperloop would never work and then it became the principal mode of transportation. Or how we couldn't possibly have a Mars colony in 2024. Or how twitter would never become the West's everything app. Etc.
Elon Musk causes incredible amounts of historical non-examination. There are now so many examples that it's actually difficult to list them all. My guess is that people just get very confused by the difference between late delivery and non-delivery.
> There are now so many examples that it's actually difficult to list them all.
Please, try.
Meanwhile: Hyperloop, Boring company, everything app, Mars colonies, FSD... Maybe he'll end up delivering on some of these (most probably partially, at best), but with Musk, overpromising and underdelivering in the norm. There's nothing to be confused about.
It’s crazy how many Cybertrucks I see in my hometown, and I don’t live in that big of a city. They are incredibly popular. This car will be incredibly popular to. Peoples are getting bent out of shape about the “thrust” and “rocket” variants, but who cares? Those will be few and far between. For rich collectors mostly. How about just the base model? It looks wild, I’m sure it will be fun as hell to drive. They are going to sell a ton of these things.
Maybe if you don't like driving? It's really a solid car. Much better than the WRX, which is quite good. Make sure you set steering to low assist. The performance models in general are serious machines. Top of class in their price range by a long shot.
Dude this is crazy, kind of embarrassing if I’ll be honest.
There is no universe in which I would compare any Tesla model to an M3 or WRX.
First of all we should consider that their direct competitor the Ioniq 5 N is a better performance car.
The M3 finishes Willow Springs faster than the Model 3, so we can’t even go by raw performance. In track conditions the battery thermals and stock tires on the Model 3 can’t keep up.
Comparing the emotions you’re going to get from a V8 gurgling and thrashing through gears compared to a silent EV motor is just not even in the same league. The Ioniq 5 N actually does something about that and reviewers are impressed. They directly state that it is more fun than Tesla performance models.
Then your other problem is that the Model 3 performance looks identical to your uber driver’s car. Someone dropping $60k on a performance car wants to feel special. The trim and upholstery options on the M3 alone are more exciting than the Model 3.
The Ioniq 5 N is really good too. Track mode is such a great tool on the 3 that it gives it a clear edge.
I own a v8 (4.6 modular, baby), and it's lovely. Different driving experience, much less performance. I don't want an EV that's trying to compete with that experience, I want a machine that's honest about what it is.
I don't care how my car looks. I spend the money on performance. Bang for buck, the performance model 3 is maximum smiles per hour.
Well I see no numbers saying how long it will fly. Perhaps it "hops", could easily see that happening with a burst of air below the car. (While standing still, accelerating the car upwards for 1 second with a burst of air)
My big question is, would anyone want one? It's an interesting life size hotwheels car but who would want one other than to show at a monster truck rally. The original Tesla Roadster was a masterpiece compared to this new one. Talk about missing the mark by a mile...
> The thing that they showed off isn't something that they could legally sell
The cybertruck is for sale and FSD is active in the US. The US lets automakers "self-certify" that they are safe. So although I don't think this thing should ever be sold, it may end of on US roads.
I suppose at least we can say there is a working car that seems to be able to actually do the things as advertised, which is more than one could ever say for e.g. the Moller Skycar.
Also let’s talk about the production of the video. It had all the signs of those magic videos you can find on YouTube where the trick is only a camera trick. Dark background, you never see the entirety of the audience, it’s all camera cuts. I’m sure it’s not fake per say but it’s super weird still.
I was #12 Tesla Roadster owner. I spoke across the country with my father. We drove from coast to coast in 2014 at a time when there was a lot of doubt. — I supported elons “mission” and now we know it’s a neo Nazi front of a company. This company and Elon has been a scam since he stole JB Straubel. How do I know? JB Straubel is my father.
> (or want to go to the island other than to have a party).
with the most notorious pedophile on earth?
> Virginia Giuffre alleged in a lawsuit that in the early 2000s, when she was 18, she participated in an orgy on the island with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and eight girls who "appeared to be under the age of 18" and did not speak English.
> I'm defending facts, there was no pedophilia, prove it.
Prove what exactly?
Epstein pled guilty in state court in June 2008 to procuring a minor for prostitution, and was subsequently registered as a sex offender. His conviction, the child victim, and his plea-deal scandal were all public record and nationally covered by the media in 2008. Prior to November 2012, the publicly available records linking "pedophile island" (as it was referred to by locals) to abuse of minors was multiple 2008–2009 lawsuits and the 2011 media coverage. Said media coverage was the UK press turning the case into an international story from February 2011, that included: photos of Andrew and Epstein in Central Park, the Mail on Sunday photo of Andrew with Roberts and Maxwell, details about Sarah Ferguson being paid to clear her debts, and Andrew stepping down as trade envoy in July 2011.
The facts we have currently are via this truncated DOJ release, because prior to that Elon lied about their relationship on several occasions:
- “he never toured SpaceX” (July 2020).
- “Epstein tried to get me to go to his island and I REFUSED” (Sept 2025)
And the facts are that Elon was asking the world's most notorious pedophile when he could visit the private island so he could attend his wildest party. This might be normal for you, but if I knew someone who was a convicted pedophile I wouldn't want to speak to them ever again, let alone begging to be invited to their wildest party on a remote private island.
"What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?"
"Do you have any parties planned? I've been working to the edge of sanity this year and so, once my kids head home after Christmas, I really want to hit the party scene in St Barts or elsewhere and let loose. The invitation is much appreciated, but a peaceful island experience is the opposite of what I'm looking for."
Nothing in this random series of text mentions anything about pedophilia except your labeling, try again. Or keep this living rent free in your head for who knows what reason.
Clearly answered in the first paragraph of my previous comment. But chronological email communications we have thus far released by the DOJ between Epstein and Musk is now a random series of texts?
Again, I do have to pose the question because I'm not sure if you are being willfully obtuse:
Would you willingly of your own volition repeatedly keep emailing a convicted child sex offender (a “Level 3 sex offender” in New York, which is the state’s highest classification), asking to visit their private island (where instances of underage rape were documented in the public domain) so you could attend one of their wildest parties?
If your answer is anything other than no, then there's not much more to say. Note that I did use your preferred phrasing too, even though clinically, pedophilia means a sexual attraction to children.
> Or keep this living rent free in your head for who knows what reason.
Why would this not bother you in the slightest? That's a better question.
Pedophilia means attraction to prepubescent children. Quibbling about whether Epstein and co. met the legal definition for being a convicted pedophile wouldn't be the hill I'd want to die on. All of your comments look insanely bad, but will look immeasurably worse in the future.
He spent 18 months in jail in 2008 for "soliciting prostitution from a minor". If you associated with him after that date, you were ok with hanging out with a pedophile.
I literally linked one in my first post - I'm clearly more familiar with them than you are.
> Also he wasn't notorious at the time.
you're right, it's not like the UK press had implicated Prince Andrew in 2011 which was international news, three years after Epstein's conviction for procuring a minor which was also international news.
> It kinda shows Elon was clueless about what the island was about.
In the released emails we have thus far, Musk was the first to bring up the concept of a party, on 25 November 2012. So no, that doesn't indicate at all that Musk was clueless about what the island was all about.
> Ah you're going to accuse me of defending pedophilia now?
Have you run this assertion past your friends and family, and your local police station? If not, please do so right now, and return here and tell us what happened.
They are intelligent and rational and understanding. They are also not obsessed with Epstein or his associates. If there were a ounce of actual pedophilia that would be completely different, there is not, so not much of a conversation.
In fact we agree that everyone throwing around this word does massive disjustice to actual pedophilia victims which is one of the worst things you could do.
So none of you believes that attracting, grooming, and having sex with minors is immoral, is (and should be) both against the law and causes you to be socially ostracized, and is generally known as pedophilia? That strains credulity.
> Everyone that went to the island is attracted to pre prepubescent children?
There's absolutely an argument to be made there but in this case it's a bit more specific.
Anyone that repeatedly emails the most notorious pedophile on earth, begging to be invited to the wildest party on their private island is absolutely a pedophile.
If you wanted another pretext to merge Tesla and SpaceX this would be a good way.
The existing tech fab plus this car maybe makes it harder to sue once the merger happens - but he will still be sued. “Look we’re making it rocket cars with AI of course we should be one company”
A bunch of the Model S production vehicles did ship with the capability. It was removed from later models. So that part absolutely shipped. Tons of cars on the road to this day still have the hardware in the car to support it.
And they did build one pilot station that did the battery swaps and did some swaps with real owners cars, but drivers didn't like the idea so they abandoned it.
And yes to my point, I said Tesla product, namely something that is sold to customers as is. So yeah it's relevant.
> A bunch of the Model S production vehicles did ship with the capability.
Which serial numbers? I see no evidence of any customer shipments with this capability. Happy to be corrected with factual evidence, though.
> I said Tesla product, namely something that is sold to customers as is.
That’s not what the word “product” means. It’s not limited to products shipped to end users. Components used only in service stations, dealers, or for their own internal use that are produced by them are also products. Quite literally anything that comes out the output side of a production process is a product.
He actually says in the video that it might not be legal to operate but they could still sell you one. Anything is legal off-road on your own private property.
FAA jurisdiction over the airspace is not the same as a rule prohibiting every form of powered lift-off within it. There's a lot of grey area in FAA regs - for instance you can land a plane on your lawn in class E (if you could manage it).
I think it’s real, the “invite only” version could probably do the kickflip over the semis, but would probably completely exhaust the tanks and require special equipment to refill or take hours with an onboard pump. And the flip is certainly a scripted stunt, not something you’d actually be able to do live. The math doesn’t seem to be completely unreasonable as a one off demo
They said there is a compressor to re-pressurize the tanks while driving. It made it sound like a power-up in a video game. You can't use it all the time, but if you wait for it to charge up, use it as many times as you want.
I think the bigger issue with be making it street legal. Kickflipping over traffic, and refusing visibility for everyone to 0 in the process, can't be good.
I wouldn't be surprised if the presented "invite-only" variant will mostly be aimed at Saudi investors, and they will get an invite if they invest a billion into the company.
This would even be a sensible choice for Tesla, because it will put that car in a garage far away from public scrutiny...
(thinking just about all the debris damage-potential of those thrusters here, not even any potential quality issues)
When I searched for Tesla on YouTube at the start of the event, the first live event returned was this, an AI generated Tesla presentation with Elon telling users to send bitcoin and he'll send you back double as a promotional event like an X Money thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5EDp2rEbFA. The QR code went to this site: https://roadster.tv. I reported it to YouTube.
China has had flying cars since 2023 so I don't see how this is a scam. The flying mechanism is unique for the Roadster so that's still to be seen how it would perform out in public.
I mean, Tesla demoed, promised, and took reservation money for a roadster reboot that _also_ didn't contain any technology China didn't have in 2017, and at this point they still haven't delivered on that and it feels safe to call it a scam.
Just because the technology is technically feasible doesn't mean that a specific company is not scamming you when they promise it.
And Tesla already has enough of a history of fake promises (your tesla will be a self-driving robotaxi earning money while you sleep within a few years, FSD will take you across the country while you sleep by next year, humanoid robots, the new roadster is taking reservations now and will deliver soon, regulation is the only thing holding up FSD, etc etc).
To be fair the main reason why FSD hasn't been a wide spread thing is mostly due to local regulations. The technology exists and performs fairly well. FSD is allowed in pretty much all the same cities Waymo is allowed to operate so we can see from this that its a regulatory issue not a technological one.
XPeng has been spruiking flying cars (really just giant quadcopters) for a while now, but while they exist and can fly, they're more of a publicity stunt. For example, while you can buy the X2 in Australia, you can't legally fly it.
I mean it looks cool but considering they haven't produced any of the other Roadster models in any meaningful quantity, and have repeatedly come up short on much more reasonable product offerings... Idk I have just the slightest doubt about a flying electric car hitting the market any time soon. Hasn't it been nearly a decade since the promise of a software update that would turn your Tesla into a self-driving taxi that can earn money while you're not using it?
> My question (probably not original) is this: which biological neural network was not trained on copyrighted material from other artists? Which guitarist never listened to classic rock bands? Which painter never looked at Monet? Nearly all successful artists publicly recognize the influence of prior art on their development and style (and the rest are lying).
Those successful artists accessed their training data through legitimate means (please hold your 'well actually' replies about some artist using bittorrent here and there). They didn't all pirate, on a historic, industrial scale, every scrap of creative work that they saw in their lives. That's the key distinction.
Absolutely. It was a straight-up smash and grab operation, and everyone knows it.
It's important to frame these discussions in human terms. "Intellectual property" is a human invention and the rights associated with it are the results of negotiations between concerned parties. There was no negotiation with the training of the models, though. So no transaction happened, one group is profiting handsomely and whole classes of society which involuntarily had their labor taken are now being harmed.
There's no need to get it twisted, it's frankly quite black and white. The only question is how we'll ensure that the economics are corrected going forward to prevent further harm.
The goal is power. Having 30 million of personal wealth is enough to retire in luxury and travel the world. They could all have this much right now. That's not what these types of people want.
Having 30 billion gives you the power to order legions of people around, buy and sell politicians, flood ad markets during elections, all with your couch cushion money. That's what motivates these types.
That reminds me of a different thesis on power as it relates to LLMs [0], and why rich investors might may be extra-interested in deploying them, as distinct from other kinds of AI:
> The fact that a theory-free AI might demand far more cash to accomplish a task (even a "solved" one like playing chess) than an expert would charge is beside the point. Billionaires have money, they don't have expertise. Theory-free inference is a bid to substitute one for the other: the beauty and terror of being able to manipulate the world without studying or understanding it is that it can be done with money alone. No experts needed.
> In a world in thrall to financial power, expertise is the only substantial form of power that can reliably contest the power of wealth. Moreover, expertise is the foundation of other forms of power, such as labor power, which is what we call it when experts band together to combat financial power.
> This is why AI bosses are so violently allergic to the idea of hybridizing AI with symbolic systems that operate on models of the world. These models of the world must be constructed by experts, and the power of expertise cannot be reliably commanded by the power of wealth.
Why does it always have to be some ulterior motive? Every. single. time. Anything a high-position person does - make a statement, post a blog, start a company, make a business decision... -, the reaction of the keyboard warriors is that it must be motivated by money, or power, or some need for destruction, and that anything that leaves their mouth is a poisonous lie.
I think this is a terrible property of humans, this hyper-skepticism, and that it has nothing to do with logic, nor deduction, nor reality.
Dario Amodei is a real person who has a family, a life, a profession. He worked hard to graduate from biophysics, he worked on ai for decades. He's very much a nerd. In interviews, he's very transparent. he left openai because of safety concerns, and everything he does and all his messaging EVER since is motivated by AI safety. His ultimate motivations are probably very messy and broad, some morally worse and some morally better, just like in all other humans.
You are going to stand here and, without flinching, without a single bit of shame, reduce him and others to wanting to "order legions of people around, buy and sell politicians, flood ad markets during elections" and "that's what motivates these people"?
Sorry but where did you leave your sense of nuance? What allows you to say this so confidently? Where is any proof?
This is simply absurd. Absolutely absurd, reductionist, and childish.
> I think this is a terrible property of humans, this hyper-skepticism, and that it has nothing to do with logic, nor deduction, nor reality.
You're not wrong, but it's balanced out by this other terrible property of humans, which is hyper-credulity.
> Dario Amodei is a real person who has a family, a life, a profession.
I never said power was all he cares about, but in general I believe you are what you do. Amodeo could drop it all right now, today and spend the rest of his life with his family, or nose deep in the research project he's the most passionate about. He's not doing that, instead he's spending the remaining irreplaceable moments of his life pursuing the accumulation of power.
> Amodeo could drop it all right now, today and spend the rest of his life with his family, or nose deep in the research project he's the most passionate about. He's not doing that, instead he's spending the remaining irreplaceable moments of his life pursuing the accumulation of power.
Again you go with this simplistic and reductionist view. This is an either-or fallacy.
I don't want to pursue this discussion any further, sorry. No offense to you. It just makes me too emotionally invested for some reason.
It's a feature of every species that evolves. You can't evolve if you're striving to outcompete your offspring. You quickly game out that not having offspring is the winning chess move there. Now you're not having offspring, and thus you're not evolving. Then the environment changes and you, being unable to adapt in any way, go extinct.
Cheating senescence is kind of the ultimate adaptation. If we can crack this then I'd expect designing other artificial adaptations to be quite tractable in the future.
The price of diesel skyrocketing[1]. The producer price index, a leading indicator of inflation, doing the same[2]. Consumer sentiment cratering[3]. Real weekly earnings plunging[4].
These things aren't even normally the president's direct fault, but in this case it 1000% is.
So it's understandably why he's desperately jangling every set of keys he can get his hands on as the mid-term elections are happening. It can and will get dumber for this lame duck.
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GASDESW
[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PPIACO
[3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UMCSENT
[4] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=20eS1
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