Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? We've had to ask you this more than once before. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
Perhaps you don't owe $celebrity better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and post in the intended spirit, we'd appreciate it.
Someone has already evidently asked "I'll bite, How so?" and I gave them the link to the SEC settlement: [0] of the fraud charges which satisfies and effectively substantiates the claim a day before you commented.
Even when the parent commenter mentioned about Trevor saying "I can out Elon, Elon" I only said that he is right as Elon Musk is also a fraudster with the fraud charges he paid for after violating securities laws which is 100% true.
> The Securities and Exchange Commission announced today that Elon Musk, CEO and Chairman of Silicon Valley-based Tesla Inc., has agreed to settle the securities fraud charge brought by the SEC against him last week. The SEC also today charged Tesla with failing to have required disclosure controls and procedures relating to Musk’s tweets, a charge that Tesla has agreed to settle.
Essentially by agreeing to pay for the charges, he already told us he committed securities fraud without admitting it.
But this is basically due to Elons reckless tweeting. It’s quite different to faking the creation of an electric car like Trevor Milton.
Elon may be guilty of being an idiot and not thinking before he tweets, but he pushed forward electric cars and rocketry more than any other person currently living I would say.
> But this is basically due to Elons reckless tweeting. It’s quite different to faking the creation of an electric car like Trevor Milton.
Securities fraud is fraud.
What you said doesn't refute anything on both of them committing securities fraud, which still makes them both fraudsters. Elon Musk didn't file his intentions with the SEC about what he said and he knew it was a lie to investors.
> Elon may be guilty of being an idiot and not thinking before he tweets, but he pushed forward electric cars and rocketry more than any other person currently living I would say.
The is no amount of apologism to realize that he is a fraudster; that is even before mentioning the FSD Level 5 robo-taxi false promises.
Well he settled Securities Fraud charges, so it stands to reason there was likely securities fraud. He also had to step down as chairman, appoint 2 new independent directors, and appoint an independent board to oversee his public communications.
If you paid a drug smuggling fine and as part of the process admitted to smuggling drugs, I might be inclined to label you a drug smuggler as well.
It is often cheaper to pay the fine than to fight it. A settlement is positively not an indicator of guilt.
In the US, over 90% of cases settle. Do you really think that they are all guilty, or maybe some of them are railroaded by the system and coerced to plea?
Let me answer that for you. Lots of innocent people plead to charges that they probably could beat, but the system has been corrupted beyond any reasonable hope of a fair trial.
Sure he might be innocent, but it’s not likely. You really think the world’s richest man has no reasonable hope of a fair trial.
Most people plead because they are either guilty or because they can’t afford to compete with the resources of the prosecution. That’s not the case for Elon.
I am saying that no one has a decent chance of a fair trial.
People plead guilty all the time when they are innocent and can fight. They see that the system is rigged and bow out to limit its damage to their lives.
You think a man with unlimited resources can’t get a fair trial? There are serious structural problems with our legal system, but almost none of them apply to billionaires.
Elon can afford the best lawyers in the world, and unlimited expert witnesses to tell his side of the story. The prosecution has almost none of their usual advantages against a billionaire.
I wouldn't say he settle what I consider "securities fraud" even if that's the technical label, just like I wouldn't say someone that got a speeding ticket violated "federal interstate travel statues" by speeding on I5.
I remember that company from an FT article where they were forced to admit that they'd let their trucks roll down a gentle slope for promotional videos to give the impression that they could drive. Not surprised by this outcome, good if they get caught, albeit a bit late.
That's the true insanity here. Did they ever sell a truck? In the meanwhile those un-innovative legacy manufacturers have the first working protypes on the road. And where is the Tesla Semi again?
Nikola delivered its first "Nikola Tre" electric truck on December 17, 2021. It announced the start of serial production in March 2022, and delivered 48 trucks in Q2 2022.
According to the company, they remain on target to deliver 300-500 trucks by the end of 2022.
All they've basically done is decided to work with Iveco to electrify existing S-Way trucks.
"As part of the cooperation – which incidentally includes CNH Industrial’s two commercial vehicles and drive brands Iveco and FPT Industrial – it will take over Nikola’s electrical technology and infotainment system. The semi will also be given a design jointly developed by Nikola and Italdesign."
So badge engineering and electrifying existing vehickes, at a shockingly low volume, and based on fraud to hyoe all that justifies a 1 billion evaluation nowadys. Nice.
They announced a lot of things since the announcement in 2017 though. Let's not take Tesla's announcements as anything else than stunts for now, like, really.
According to wikipedia they sold 93 trucks yes. All recalled because a seat-belt issue (that's how I got '93'), but it seems they have some trucks on the road right now, whatever the quality (and unlike Tesla, btw)
Stock markets were broken, and probably still are to some degree. Just look at valuations of "tech" companies and it should be quite clear why the numbers are so big.
Far bigger frauds have happened. I'd argue Nikola's fraud was pretty minor in comparison to the likes of Madoff, Enron, or Theranos.
At least the only victims here were investors - many of whom probably realised or suspected that Milton was exaggerating the company's progress, but were happy to play along as long as it kept pumping the value of their investments.
Check Nikola spots like the subreddit, Twitter, Stocktwits. Lots of bag holders who are technically investors, but really just ordinary middle class people in deep losses from Nikola.
Still nothing close to the examples you gave but Theranos is as blatantly a con from the get go as Nikola.
I think the difference with Theranos is that most of us were genuinely surprised and shocked when it all started to unravel to the extent that it did.
With Nikola, there were plenty of skeptics right from the start. The only surprise what that it went on for as long as it did, and that the stock price kept going up even after much of their deception was exposed.
I remember when some FAANG buddies of mine were gloating about gains made of NKLA.
It reminded me no one gives a fuck if their money is made by corruption, fraud or unethical activity. The world is truly a "Fuck you, I've got mine" type of place. Never forget it, and never trust anyone.
I see the same story playing out in the Celsius network crap.
It really isn’t. I’m kind of fed up with people, who live at a time of unprecedented wealth freedom and opportunity, complaining how bad things are while the state of the world around them improves dramatically.
I was reading about poverty in the UK recently, the numbers are poor, but then I noticed that poverty is defined by a proportion of average wages. That means as wages go up, so does the poverty threshold. It turns out people in poverty in the UK now have double the spending power of those in the 1980s. I’m not saying poverty doesn’t exist, or that these people don’t need help. There are real issues of health, nutrition, opportunities and fairness. No question, but when someone compares poverty statistics over time, they’re not comparing the same things at all.
My wife is Chinese so I’ve seen the transformation there, where hundreds of millions of people have been elevated not just out of poverty, but into the urban middle class. Africa is undergoing a huge transformation. I’ve been lucky enough to do a lot of travelling going back to the 90s, so I’ve seen how much places have changed over the decades. It turns out individual economic and social freedoms, of property, labour, travel and association work. Give people opportunities and they build vibrant productive societies. I’ve watched them do it.
> It turns out people in poverty in the UK now have double the spending power of those in the 1980s.
Do they have double the access to affordable housing? Or to good-enough and cheap healthcare? (I know about the NHS, I also know that their waiting list has exceeded 7 million recently). Can they send their kids to schools good enough for those kids to be able to have a real chance in life later on?
Because, at the end, poverty is defined by the answers to those questions, it doesn't matter that lots of "poor" people can now purchase smartphones and flat TVs while Queen Victoria 150 years ago couldn't.
Most of those NHS waiting lists didn’t even exist back in the 80s. That’s another case where a “worse” statistic hides a massive underlying improvement. Were spending twice as much on health care now as a proportion of GDP, and our GDP has doubled in real terms.
I use the 80s as my reference because those are the days of my youth, when I became politically aware so it’s the benchmark I look back to.
I’ve looked for studies on access to education and outcomes for those in poverty over time and not come up with anything. Lots of studies how poverty affects education, but none so far on how that has changed. Anyone know?
America and Europe are much lower trust than they used to be. Can you leave a laptop unattended in busy Starbucks downtown in major cities? How much does "the honor system" still work everywhere in society?
Japan is now the benchmark for high trust societies, and they copied a lot from Germany (educational system, civil codes, uniforms, many loan words for things still a reminder) nearer its social peak to get there.
The results are manners, cleanliness, very safe, and almost no homeless.
So we know what could be in US and Europe is way more: at least at the level of Japan. I argue even above (if Japan copies the very-foreign Germans it means something was good about Germans).
People think things are getting worse, and that their friends and neighbours with different political views are their enemies, or outright traitors. They think these things because that’s what they are constantly being told in the media, on the left and right. Fear sells.
My mother is a good example, she’s a comfortably retired ex teacher who owns her own house, has a cottage in France and lives in an idyllic country village in rural Britain. Yet she lives in fear of immigrants and refugees coming to rape and steal, and socialists destroying everything good and right, because the Daily Mail is keeping her in a state of constant terror.
I find these numbers a bit weak. Your life is not a flat basket of goods, it's more of a graph (pyramid would say maslow) and today it's hard to get a flat but easy to get Gbps link on your flagship smartphone, but it doesn't make your life great in the end.
I'm fed up with people saying, "it was much worse $x years ago, so stop moaning".
I'll bet you aren't struggling to feed your family, heat your home or pay your rent in this period of "unprecedented wealth freedom and opportunity" for the UK.
That's right I'm not. Not anymore an I know some people are. You've already read my comment where I say there are real problems in our society. There's more to do. But progress is possible and is happening, things aren't constantly getting worse, it is possible to address a lot of these issues.
Now is't the best time to be saying this, we're in for a tough winter, but modern western liberal society is the most powerful engine for making the world better humanity has ever had.
That's certainly true, and as a result there are always things getting worse somewhere, and that's always more newsworthy than things getting better anywhere.
This is a common rhetoric by [neo]liberals like Bill Gates, Pinker (both friends with Epstein too…), Peterson, Bari Weiss. Pinker has at least one book wholly focused on this rhetoric. The problem is, this stuff could have been said 20, 50, or 150 years ago. Always can say “look at all the progress, why are people complaining about stuff”. And this is what has happened historically. People want to keep the status quo. Not rock anything.
If we all thought this way, then gay people will never get to the point of being treated like any other person instead of having more difficult lives in many places still. Can substitute gay people for all sorts like trans people or black people/minorities in some circumstances.
Dissatisfaction is the spur toward progress, but the point is there is progress. It's complaining that things are always getting worse, or even that progress isn't possible and things are always getting worse that winds me up. Maybe being in my 50s gives me a different view of it than those much younger.
I still don’t understand how what you wrote is different than what some people said 50 or 150 years ago. We now know from hindsight, the people who were doing your rhetoric in the past in enough circumstances where they wanted the status quo to remain as their life is going well enough. IE civil rights, suffrage, slavery, and so on.
The person who you responded to didn’t say things are always getting worse. They implied progress isn’t possible, but it was specifically about money. It’s not even about progress in general. Which were your issues.
I do agree the commenter was far too negative and being black and white. Especially for something as general as making money.
I wonder if age is the main reason. I know people more radical than me who are past 50. My principles personally have only been more reinforced since I was in HS. Which is 15+ years ago. World and politic views makes sense to me as the biggest reason for how both of us see this. Just my hunch, not saying you’re wrong.
Lol, so FSD is already working or is it still crashing left and right? But according to Musk it is solved problem since 2016 and you can buy it. This is not optimism, this is outright lying to sell something what does not exist. Also called fraud.
Vegas Loop — How is it for cheap? Did you see the costs? The costs weren’t for what the tunnel is outputting right now. Even with more Teslas, the tunnel hourly output is too little to hit the contract milestones Boring Co set with Vegas. It is a massive failure and seems like a con or fraud to just get Tesla more mindshare.
Also. Who’s paying the drivers? That’s a lot of drivers driving all day. This was never part of the deal as it was supposed to be automated. So whoever is paying the drivers is not doing anything for cheap.
Musk knew at the time fsd was nowhere close to working every time he asserted that buying a tesla was a great investment that would make money for you as an autonomous taxi. Blatant fraud, no question about it.
FSD doesn't work until it does. How does anyone have "full knowledge" that they won't be able to deliver? One breakthrough and you're done.
Tesla is taking the money people are paying them for FSD and using it to... build an FSD system. They are hiring top talent, developing new ML architectures, developing new training hardware, developing new inference hardware, and overall just spending more money on the problem than any other company.
Having a hard time understanding how spending people's money on the thing you say you're spending it on is "fraud".
> How does anyone have "full knowledge" that they won't be able to deliver?
By talking to experts? Or even people just vaguely familiar with the field. It was obvious at the time that it would take far far longer than most driverless car companies and the press were saying.
Frankly you don't even need any engineering knowledge to see that. Just go for a drive. There are countless situations that basically require human-level intelligence and nobody would have believed Musk saying he was a year away from that.
No worries. I regularly drop old accounts because I don't like the fact that in HN you can't delete comments. That's really bad for privacy. So, I regularly changing accounts to prevent anyone from building a long profile from public history.
So yeah, the fact that I made a negative comment about Elon Musk and the fact that my account is new are totally unrelated.
Then Musk with his "Paint it black" Autopilot/FSD video should be in jail for fraud as well. What is the difference here? Both products weren't nowhere near where marketing was trying to show.
Maybe he did... What we know for sure is that he settled with the SEC and that a court ruled recently that there was nothing concrete and that it was inaccurate to say so.
"No reasonable jury could find that Mr. Musk did not act recklessly given his clear knowledge of the discussions."
"There had been no discussion about what the purchase price would be for a share of stock. Nor had there been any discussion about what percentage of the company the PIF would own or the total amount of money the PIF would contribute."
What we don't know yet is how much damages he will be told to pay.
> Except he actually did consider it and negotiated with investors. How is it fraught when you investigate a business opportunity?
Even if what said was 'truthful', he would have filed is intentions with the SEC to begin with but didn't. Actions speak louder than words and he still hasn't done anything to take Tesla private after paying for the charges.
> So many salty shorts itt.
Shorted what? Yeah I shorted NKLA [0], and told everyone to do so in the open and laughed all the way to the bank.
>Trevor Milton lied to Nikola’s investors — over and over and over again. That’s fraud, plain and simple,
>He faced up to 25 years in prison if convicted on all four counts.
If he would have taken large subsidies, like Musk did, it would've been much harder to jail him. Then he could let his imagination go - promise investors that they will make 100% return on investment per year ("buy Tesla for $30,000 and you make that or more per year renting it as a robotaxi"), promise superfast underground tunnels and deliver insecure tunnel with no ventilation/safety exists, with cars moving at 40 mpg, promise solar roofs, and many other things with absolutely no liability at all.
> Hindenburg said the truck was “towed to the top of a hill on a remote stretch of road and simply filmed it rolling down the hill.” It was then used in a video, which Nikola said was created by a third party, in which the truck appeared to be driving on its own propulsion on flat roads.
It's all relative. How much is hype or marketing, and how much is just dishonesty? I think it depends on the field. I mean even the term "AI" is fraudulent whenever it's used, really. But investors who actually do the most basic diligence in their research know the shot. Filming a truck rolling down a hill is pretty dishonest though. I mean trucks aren't a 'concept' they're a real thing already.
He had used NASA's money to buy his solar company's bonds with his space company. He had to bail them out with the separate car company or who would pay back NASA?
I don't find it dishonest, rather brilliant he found a hill the truck rolled down from. The whole ordeal was the weakest chain of the whole lawsuit - most of the time the tech showed is not 100% working. The truck showed would not be on sale anyways, but obviously whatever would leave a factory. Musk showed houses that did not even have real solar panels even thought he told people in their faces these are solar panels. Seriously, the only reason Musk is not facing 25 years prison is because he is too rich to jail. With enough runaway, this could have been Milton or Holmes.
What is "brilliant" about faking a car moving with the intent of misleading your investors, who are redirecting to you vast amounts of wealth from more deserving companies that would make society a better place?
You're stealing from companies that create economic acceleration to create economic friction.
If we keep rewarding scammers with this notion that they're doing anything remotely of value, we end up with a society of Roger Stone and Trump types who are really good at seeking out and winning negative sum games.
It was a prototype! Musk sold his cybertruck on unbreakable windows and that turned out to be deception too. How about $30,000 investment in robo taxi and ROI of 100% per year (even Madoff wasn't giving that good returns). I mean most stuff Musk every push is or was scam. Milton never had a chance to finish his project (hello Feds) but the company is doing fine and they will eventually release their truck.
Again -- matter of how much runaway you had and how fast you become too rich to jail. I'm sure his father wealth (owning multiple emerald mines) helped too.
> You're stealing from companies that create economic acceleration to create economic friction.
At the margins, there's going to be some truth to this, but the kind of financier who is wowed by this kind of demo isn't skilled at telling what innovations are deserving.
> If we keep rewarding scammers with this notion that they're doing anything remotely of value, we end up with a society of Roger Stone and Trump types who are really good at seeking out and winning negative sum games.
I'd really drain a lot of money from the class of financiers as a whole and move it to households and non-financial industry. If we'd responded to 2008 with widespread haircuts on bad lenders and nationalisation of failing banks, instead of bailouts for banks and inflating the financial system via QE, we would have moved int this direction.
Musk is not a good example of the entrepreneur, but he's not in the same class as Stone, who kind of mobilised the Oath Keepers as his private heavies, or Trump, who depends on intimidation and personal dominance to run his business affairs.
So many inconsistencies across interviews. Repeatedly saying "It's not a pusher", "I can out Elon, Elon", "We are vertically integrated" bla bla.