That's the view from a country on the trailing edge. In Shenzhen, or Seoul, or Tskuba, or Tapei you'll find enthusiasm for technology.
The US can't even make a smartphone any more. Or electrical distribution equipment. Or telephone central offices. Or TV sets. Next to go, cars.
(Chrysler just exited the car business. Minivans only now.)
The US writes most of the software that powers those devices. It also designs the hardware. It also runs the data centers and backend infrastructure and software required to make those phones useful, like GPS satellites and AWS/Azure. It produces most of the content that people watch on their TVs and much of what they play on their video game systems. The U.S. is a leader in robotics, robotic surgery equipment, self driving, electric cars, space technology, agricultural technology, etc.
Chrysler is owned by a French/Dutch company named Stellantis (it was owned by the German Daimler previously). That brand also controls Dodge, Jeep, Ram, etc. so while Chrysler cars and the Chrysler brand have been on a decades long decline, it's hardly an indication of an American exit from car manufacturing. The US is a leader in electic cars, trucks, SUVs, heavy equipment, etc. And even many foreign brands own factories in the U.S. that produce cars here.
> "The US writes most of the software that powers those devices."
For the moment. Have you noticed how many of those people building that software are immigrants? Most of the FAANGs and other significant tech companies have development centers worldwide and it's vastly easier to pack up and move a software development office elsewhere than it is to move a factory and all its equipment.
Do you have a source for the US being a "leader" within trucks, SUVs and heavy equipment? Doesn't match my experience as someone not from the US who sees mostly brands not from the US.
If you want to track the death of the cultural vision of Silicon Valley -- the belief that some people, at least, can rise above petty human squabbling and competition and are legitimately working to better humanity -- look no further than this thread. Every top comment is a skeptical one. "This is clearly a great PR move, but has no teeth." "How do you enforce this guarantee?" Etc.
These are reasonable questions, but as Shaw said, all progress comes from unreasonable men. I cannot help but be fundamentally depressed as I read these comments. In my view, Elon Musk has, moreso than any other human except maybe Bill Gates, given every absolute inch of human effort and genius to fight to solve the world's biggest problems. And all we have for him, after benefiting freely from the fruit of his labor, is skepticism. We want more. It's not enough. It's never enough.
Yes, Tesla Motors is a company operating in a media-hyped 2014 America. I know some of you are butthurt that he engages in the same "dishonest" PR tactics that other companies do. GET THE FUCK OVER IT. The end product he's producing will save humanity. That all of America has not rallied behind Musk and Tesla as the most important movement and achievement in the last 100 years of human history absolutely blows my mind.
Not only do we not recognize his goals or his achievements, we actively try and bring him down and shit on his accomplishments. "Well, they invented a pretty cool electric motor, sure, but they were kind of dishonest in that one press release that one time."
Go fuck yourself.
I want to say "I'm done with Hacker News", but we know that's not true. I'm supremely disappointed in all of you. Godspeed, Musk. I thought this was a great announcement, and I'm behind you 100%. I just hope you can finish your work before our shitty, myopic, destructive society tears you down. Here's to faith.
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Elon Musk may have changed for the worse since then, but nowhere near as much and as fast as our "shitty, myopic, destructive society", and in particular the Internet commentariat.
Definitely not me. I was a huge Musk fan back in 2014. These days I'm less thrilled with his new focus on politics, but Tesla and SpaceX are more than just Musk and we're far better off having them. If not for these companies, we'd probably still be convinced by legacy auto that EVs weren't practical and nobody wanted them, and by legacy aerospace that reusable rockets were a bad idea and only large government-run projects could get to orbit.
And that's just the beginning. Between Starship and FSD, the impact of these two companies could end up far greater than what we've seen so far. It'd be a shame to miss out on the sci-fi wonder of it all just due to the CEO's personality and politics.
In as much as I enjoy the discussions on this website (hence still visiting often...), I find there to be a few weirdly almost anti-factual positions.
Elon hatred being one. The launch of the Model S as a mass market vehicle was _magical_. Like holy shit levels of wow, you can drive this thing across the US and then Europe with a charging network and it _works_ and it scales. Every EV on the market today owes its' existence to that success against the odds.
A second one that comes to mind is the continuous bias against cryptocurrency with the refrain usually being that "it's not useful" or something. Exactly backwards - all of the scams and craziness and shitcoins etc are occuring precisely because it is useful, it's an absolute game changer to have a digital asset and despite even the maximalists worrying about things like 50% attacks or bugs we're 16 years on from bitcoin.pdf and it's STILL HERE.
There are plenty of others, it's sometimes very difficult for me to fathom why the site seems to take irrational stances seemingly randomly.
You do realize the Tesla "patent pledge" [1] is one of the most unfair, unethical, and downright despicable legal contracts to ever attempt to cynically claim the moral high ground?
To conform to it you must not have:
"asserted, helped others assert or had a financial stake in any assertion of (i) any patent or other intellectual property right against Tesla or (ii) any patent right against a third party for its use of technologies relating to electric vehicles or related equipment;"
In case you do not understand, Tesla is stating that for Tesla to not assert patent rights, you must not assert patent and copyright and trademark rights against Tesla as seen by the inclusion of "or any other intellectual property right" beyond the statement of just "any patent...right". This is a exclusive and intentional carveout for Tesla in particular as explicitly identified in (i). All other parties are governed by (ii) which only states you must not assert applicable patent, and only patent, rights against non-Tesla parties.
They then make double plus sure that it is clear that Tesla is uniquely allowed to assert their copyright and trademark rights against you as seen by the third clause:
"marketed or sold any knock-off product (e.g., a product created by imitating or copying the design or appearance of a Tesla product or which suggests an association with or endorsement by Tesla) or provided any material assistance to another party doing so."
To gain access to Tesla patents, you must give Tesla access to your patents, copyrights, and trademarks. The sheer audacity to call that a "patent pledge" is astounding. No person with even a cursory knowledge of law and contracts, as required for any business executive, could mistake it. As such, it can only be a deliberate and intentional deception in a attempt to launder credibility by aping the name. It is truly unfortunate that it seems to work on people such as yourself.
What's unethical there? No one is required to agree to those terms. They can just do without the Tesla patents, or negotiate their own licensing agreement.
Why do you think cars are leaving the US? Tesla is a fully American manufacturer with some of the most US sourced components, GM/Ford aren't moving their cash cows out of the country anytime soon. and the Japanese and Germans are expanding their presence in the US. You cited a long declining brand that has had an agism problem. Thats your best evidence? I guess you can make the argument that there are too many brands in the car industry but the car manufacturing sector in the US is still quite strong.
Early cell phone manufacturing was more automated than it is now. The "brick" type phones (Nokia, etc.) were a stack of boards with cutouts for the thick components. The whole stack was squeezed together and sometimes riveted. So the internals were well-supported and very tough.
That kind of assembly could be totally automated. Pick and place to make the boards, stack and rivet to put it together.
Modern phones have little pieces and wires all over the place.[1] You'd think these things would be designed for automated assembly, but they're not.
I immigrated to Asia around a decade ago and the relative optimism for technology and the future in general is one of the things that struck me as well.
I mean, if you look for pessimism you'll find examples of that too -- but in broad strokes I would also describe the average perception as 'enthusiastic'. It's something I've have a hard time explaining to my North American colleagues.
It feels like we are instead bifurcating instead of regressing to a mean. The rich are getting richer and moving to one side together as a group, while the middle class and poor are merging the other way into their own "barely hanging on class", distributed around a point far on the other side.
The average going up doesn't mean it's a tide that raises all boats.
By what definition? It's certainly possible that some kind of societal bell curve or other distribution can just keep getting wider without meaningful movement of the relative positions of individuals. I don't understand why you assume the most likely behavior is regression to the mean. Especially on short terms that seems weird to assume
Punching down is clealrly a sign of things regressing. The Cantillon effect is what separates the rich and those aren't. Trickle down economics doesn't work. Imagine telling those barely middle and poor Americans you're still doing better than Thais or South Africans. It doesn't help.
The US can't even make a smartphone any more. Or electrical distribution equipment. Or telephone central offices. Or TV sets. Next to go, cars. (Chrysler just exited the car business. Minivans only now.)