I am personally hopeful for this technology. I know it will be able to improve the lives of loved ones who both need and want it. I am also afraid of a technology that can decide my thoughts one way or another...
That said, I'll take two.
https://www.parkinson.org/living-with-parkinsons/treatment/s...
If this tech could be made to work flawlessly, it would be the gate to all the SciFi cyborg stuff, including body enhancements, "telepathy", etc.
Also, as a "side effect", it would open a path to fully immersive VR, as in Matrix, Snow Crash, Neuromancer, etc - with all the upsides and downsides of those scenarios.
All that "just" from hooking up motor and sensor neurons. And then people would probably start and mess with neurons that are involved in cognitive functions and the consciousness.
If generative AI had potential for cultish behavior, I think that will pale in comparison to this stuff.
For those interested in their clinical trials:
It's possible a lot of the QOL improvements are from the circumstances of getting all that attention, or the hype circle they themselves found themselves in.
I also think people need to be open minded to the possibility Neuralink does offer promising benefits.
I'm just seeing a lot of people strongly for or against, and really I think the reasonable stance here is to remain optimistically pessimistic until further evidence.
Given that there are objective changes, it is not unreasonable to believe his claim that he is satisfied or has benefitted from them.
DBS, like you said, is rather course tech and actually quite old technology. Doctors still don't entirely know why it works, so the adjustment is often experimental. In fact prior to specialized MRI machines that they use during surgery now, the patients would remain awake during the placement (brain surgery) of the electrodes so that the surgeons would know when the placement was "correct" based on real-time assessment of their symptoms. Now they do it under MRI, but the point being it's far from an exact science.
Can't wait to see what the future holds as they improve on it. Hard to imagine a world where his symptoms are fully managed (PD is progressive degeneration, so his symptoms, even with DBS are gradually worsening with time), but it was also hard to imagine how DBS could overnight change his life in the ways it did.
That's not a fair take. This isn't "just a thing", this leads to massive financial gain by someone whose now a very influential power into people's lives from his involvement in politics and other circles of influence.
People can do good and bad at the same time, and if you're impacted by the bad things the person does, the good doesn't excuse it, and you'd want to stop them from doing more bad, it makes sense not to cheer on the good things they do that then fuels their effort into the bad things.
There can be disagreement on if they are doing bad, but to someone who believes so, it's a rational stance to not cheer on what can further fuel what they consider bad.
See: Yeonmi Park and the absurdity of her stories that are essentially a product of South Korea's day-time TV.
(North Korean refugees typically can't get work permits, some of the little work available is telling people how bad NK is. It is illegal to say anything good about NK in SK)
It's not like he's having to rate his level of happiness here, these are physical benefits
What are you talking about? Are you pretending to be upset at a mild question, on the behalf of the disabled? You should explain the active harm this causes, because your partisan celebrity worship is causing you to look goofy in front of strangers.
edit: I am very excited about brain-computer interfaces.
Many tech professionals work on projects that effect people's lives in very serious ways. But a lot of folk seem to feel a bit of meaninglessness in this career and the threshold of making a mistake isn't very high. If it's an off day, sloppy work yesterday can be fixed with another PR.
Building something that is meant to attach to someone's brain would be quite the burden to carry.
I explained the active harm in the very sentence you quoted.
>> he told me that a SWAT team showed up with AR-15s after someone gave a false tip to the local sheriff’s office that Arbaugh was in danger.
I'm not a big fan of Musk for a number of different reasons. I'm even less a fan of the cult of hatred that pops up whenever his name is mentioned.
I'd rather look like a goof (nothing wrong with being goofy or weird sometimes) than help spread hatred.
I also don't trust the current brand of tech billionaires to handle this stuff responsibly - if they aren't specifically aiming for those dystopian scenarios even.
Based on all of Musk's past behavior, he doesn't exactly strike me as a guy who would deeply care for the disabled or make it his life's mission to cure spinal cord injuries - or even to grant super powers with no strings attached to the average person.
But he does seem like the kind of person who obsesses about the "next stage of evolution of the human race"...
The potential of brain interface technology is truly incredible -- both for good and ill.
The objective measurements are about his enhanced abilities. He can do things he couldn't before.
But, the GP comment referred to "quality of life" which is innately difficult to measure objectively. It's possible that he was able to do those things but it caused him enough irritation to do them that he avoided using it (like CPAP often is for example), or that the things it enabled him to do weren't sufficient to warrant feeling improved. My father has limited mobility, but no interest in playing mario kart or adjusting an air filter, and there's very little in his home that he has or would want to be automated. Anything that could be my mom or another family member usually takes care of anyway, even if it's still something he could do himself as he's rather tech illiterate.
So, in this scenario, given my father's age, the risks involved in such a major surgery for his age, and his personal inclinations, the very same additional capabilities likely wouldn't be worthwhile in his opinion. Hence, the subjective experience of the objective changes are how you measure quality of life for this kind of operation.
Its a promising first sign, but that's all. I think you have unrealistic expectations if you expect rigorus science on the cost/benefit after just one experimental procedure. Stuff like this takes time.
The mere fact he didn't die from the procedure is probably a success in and of itself.
https://archive.ph/3H31i https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Dobelle
I'm not disagreeing that intelligence can be domain specific, but I'd be careful going to far with this. It is _not_ obviously the case that "anyone who can think critically leans towards the Democratic party", and putting that forward seems like an exceptionally dangerous bubble to build.
no before/after video, no third party report, there's nothing here but puffery... half the article goes on to promote robots
I guess people have always idolized the creeps of the world, though.
Same reason you ask the users of any product for feedback. Sure, you can objectively see that they were able to click the register button, still doesn’t guarantee they came out of that experience wanting to use the product.
Could be for saltiness over his politics. Could be for skepticism that he can deliver (robotaxi, Mars, etc). Could be for wariness that he'll turn it to shit like USDS, Twitter, and Tesla's finances.
In any case, just like the stock market, the fact he responded well does not guarantee someone else will.
What we need is more data, not a higher degree of confidence in this one point. An independent review would be nice to satisfy our curiosity, but it wouldn't add much to our understanding anyway.
My wife went through semi-expetimental therapy (at that time) for her MS. It was tough but ultimately a net benefit.
It all depends on what is at stake - I would consider Ozempic for some weight loss but prefer, for now, go for no sugar and moderate portions. This is not life changing for me so I indeed prefer people who will benefit way more from it to go first.
Pretty much. You could do something like that with non-invasive consumer-grade BCIs already though. What we really need to see is more distinct "keypresses" you can listen for. It's my understanding that something like "imagining pushing/pulling a heavy object" can be read clearly enough, while "twitching your left ear" gets lost in the noise.
It's a long way to go before we can replace the 400 keystrokes per minute, 104/105 distinct keys bandwidth of a keyboard.
- The people getting it are in very rough shape and even a tiny bit of improved ability to control their environment is a tremendous gift to them - Musk seems to be busy playing with his other toys - We're far to early in this tech's progress for enshitification to start
Much as I dislike Musk, for the sake of all the people with debilitating conditions that this could help, I wish him phenomenal success with this project.
OTOH, I don't trust him to manage this as a product in an ethical way. What's the DBI equivalent of locking you in a car to drown?
Older implants are notorious for having that issue - and while scarring doesn't appear to hurt the brain all that much, it sure does hurt the connectivity.
The usual "bed of nails" Utah array typically deteriorates massively within 6 months. Neuralink's very first human implant has lasted for what, a year and a half already? It had issues with dislodged electrodes, which must have hurt the interface quality, but it still remains usable. That's a damn good sign.
Brain surgery isn't exactly an industry where "move fast and break things" is an acceptable approach - especially when you are the patient. Considering Neuralink's historical record, going first sounds like a horrible idea to me.
That is basically the textbook definition of unethical medical practice, so unquestionably far over the line of acceptable practice that you would have to be willfully ignorant to defend it, and they think it would be exciting if it were not banned.
If you're just using it for weight loss and aren't diabetic, you have no increase in risk.
This is also why your weight loss should be monitored by a doctor.
Neuralink is currently running trials on quadriplegia - with people who have their motor cortex intact, but their spinal cords damaged. Cerebral palsy often involves damage to motor cortex. So wiring the implants into it might be of limited use. No one knows if it'll work, or how well.
Targeting premotor cortex? It's extremely promising, but no one knows how to do that yet. In medicine, that means "years, if not decades, of research and development", sadly.
There used to be less of that on HN, my theory is younger accounts that are more politically extreme/lefty are now here as the younger generation graduates school and posts more on HN.
There's some historical irony too since communism came out of highly educated academic elites and is responsible for an enormous amount of death and value destruction. Ideological driven academics that think they're better than everyone are particularly good at crafting insane ideologies someone outside of that insular community would not, then leveraging institutional and cultural power to force it on everyone else. The woke and gender ideologies share similar origins, same for DEI.
It's a political and ideological monoculture and it's a dangerous mixture of incredibly confidently smug and wrong.
Worth picking up Peter Thiel's first book which goes into this in some detail (he wrote it pretty young, observing the early start of this when he was at Stanford). It's wildly prescient and was from the mid 90s iirc.
This is aside from the harm it does to the rest of us to prevent experimentation by willing participants, such as barring human challenge trials to quickly test Covid vaccines.
This is an extremely uncharitable interpretation of what was said. First of all, it's really hard to get malpractice here, as consent is implied (unless you'd think he'd purposefully do a bad or sloppy job). You could say it's irresponsible, and that argument holds more water, but when folks are in these terrible situations (i.e. terminally ill, etc.), a strong argument could also be that it's morally impermissible to disallow them to partake in such experimental treatments.
In any case, it's an interesting moral conundrum, akin to abortion or euthanasia.
i would guess that these protections exist to cover a broader group including children or those who are in the care of others and aren't necessarily capable of making their own decisions about experimental treatment... to say nothing of other forms of coercion otherwise-capable adults may face when it comes to stuff like this.
it's tricky! and it doesn't seem like there's a one-size-fits-all approach that offers protection for those who need it.
The 20 years of US adventures in Iraq & Afghanistan led to many traumatic brain injury cases analyzed by modern medicine, and the chronic symptoms are worse than one might think.
I get your point but, there's a lot of foreign objects going in by the way of various pores and openings. Biological beings are surprisingly resilient & fragile at the same time.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/04/26/a-wider-ideo...
I'm very midwitted. 50% of the planet is below the mean after all..
A lot mediocre students I knew in school stayed on to do more school because they were not able to do something else. A lot of degrees and classes are frankly bullshit and this problem has gotten worse since the 60s - the details matter. Time wasted studying pseudo-intellectual nonsense doesn't imply someone has a better understanding of the world than someone else (often the opposite) - just that they wasted time getting indoctrinated in a particular culture (often subsidized by others if not the taxpayer).
What about the people doing interesting and useful things in society, building stuff, creating wealth - what these people think matters a lot more than someone that got a PHD on olfactory ethics. Not all education is equal.
Even then, the meta analysis matters less than the details of the actual underlying argument. Appeal to authority and experts is a poor substitute for rigorous good faith debate of the actual issues.
There's a reason William F. Buckley said he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people listed in the phone book than by the faculty members from Harvard.
"I am obliged to confess that I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University. Not, heaven knows, because I hold lightly the brainpower or knowledge or generosity or even the affability of the Harvard faculty: but because I greatly fear intellectual arrogance, and that is a distinguishing characteristic of the university which refuses to accept any common premise."
So it's not that I dispute the data that there's a lefty bias in universities (there obviously is), I dispute what that actually means.
Ok where is a paraplegic who's life has been fundamentally improved more then the Neuralink patient one by some of these other technologies that are "years" ahead?
Named after patient zero I am sure.
I don't want brain implants to be owned by the wealthy, as it currently exists. Elon Musk and PR team can fuck off.
It's a horrible comparison. Why do people keep making it? This isn't Lyft vs Uber. A better comparison to Tesla FSD would be blue cruise, super cruise, drive pilot, god's eye, and every other consumer level 2 ADAS.
The issue at hand isn't perceived bias in universities, it's voting tendencies of people who have higher education.
PS, this conversation is a waste of both of our times. I won't be continuing it. Because there is no good faith either side. I'm certainly not going to display any and I aver you aren't either, but you can judge for yourself.
Or who knows, maybe they actually just do have a PR department - plenty of stuff Musk has said has just been plain untrue, like when he promised that like his money was first in to Telsa, it would be "the last out" [1] (he has since sold billions in shares now).
Arguably they go hand in hand, take young people and immerse them in a political/ideological monoculture for four formative years and it's not surprising many come out saying the same things and voting the same way all of their professors did, there's a lack of viewpoint diversity. Most people are mimetic, exposure to the best arguments from an intellectually diverse curriculum would be great but that's not what universities (broadly) are today. It's very hard to think for yourself, even harder when immersed in a place where ideological conformity is rigidly enforced.
FWIW I thought your comment was in good faith, we just don't agree.
As for FSD, it leads by far for systems you can own, and while it is not as good as Waymo it is much cheaper and still rapidly improving. It is too early to say which approach will ultimately win.
I appreciate comments like yours that actually contribute to the debate. We need critical thinking and data. Not one-sided puff pieces out of context.
To me this metric shows that their cars are very high performing, and for most drivers they're probably the fastest accelerating cars they've ever driven. Tesla should probably default them to 'chill' mode and provide a warning about how fast the car is when you switch out of that mode.
The reason you might think twice about going first is for that exact reason, there are risks. Plenty of blind people would prefer to stay as they are than be left worse off to a greater degree after undergoing the implant.
If you instead think Tesla's promise is consumer cars, Tesla's valuation is roughly equal to the entire rest of the global auto industry, despite being only a tiny and declining fraction of global sales. The relevant competitors then are Toyota, VW, Ford, BYD, etc. etc. Objectively, as a consumer auto company Tesla seems to be stagnant and falling behind.
I guess they're also hyping vaporware humanoid robots; if you ask me a future where a significant proportion of all families on earth purchase a humanoid robot seems completely implausible. It's very Jetsons though. Maybe they'll start building flying cars too.
If 3 years ago the tech was available then how come the Neuralink patients never got that? I'm sure they'd be the first to sign up.
Distribution is part of innovation. Brain computer interfaces exist but those who would be willing to undergo the procedure to get them don't have that option, then an inefficiency exists in the market that can be filled by a competitor. Musk's companies play on the same field as everyone else, but they continue to win because operating efficiency, mind-share and tactics are all part of the game, and he is the best at winning it in many domains.
Edit: I understand the ethical considerations of such a nascent technology. I just feel that we live in a world where miracles exist that could help thousands of lives, but they move too slowly to help those lives. How long are paralyzed people waiting for a cheap way to have some more agency in the world? Is the only way to reach it being available sooner doing unscrupulous things that buck safety requirements?
We are discussing "normal people thoughts", not market sentiment.
Because other companies have ethics and follow the rules and best practices. They register their clinical trials with the NIH and they stop and ask questions if half the monkeys they test on end up dead.
Experiments and studies have shown that this might be due to the fact that the visual cortex will take over a similar role in blind people as it does for people with intact eye sight. The brain uses different sensory inputs in that case and the visual brain structure is not restored after eye sight recovery.
This is still an ongoing field of research of course, but so far congenital blindless seems to be incurable, regardless of whether the sensory apparatus could be restored or replaced. Note that this only means seeing like a non-blind person. Some limited visual perception is still possible, just not "normal" sight.
I say this as a big Elon skeptic. Technical superiority is only a small piece of the puzzle. But 10 years from now, I would be very surprised if the SOTA tech you mention has a fraction as many users as Neuralink.
I really don’t see anything that will cut through the narrative now.
For instance the model y had a fatality rate of 10.6 per billion vehicle miles 4x the average.
Its also seems unreasonable to suppose that they are poorly suited to survive a crash as this doesn't seem to be indicated.
A more logical conclusion is that a box with a giant flashing distracting tablet in the center which lies and says it can drive itself gets crashed more because people are functionally incapable of going from passenger to driver at random intervals with no notice.
I volunteer at a food pantry. There is one old lady who is sometimes rude in the line, shoving through saying "move it, I'm blind!!" She sometimes informs me that produce I hand her has black spots and she doesn't want it.
I believe she may actually be legally blind.
We allow compassionate testing of therapies that might allow you to live longer because the alternative is an ugly death.
Consent is never ever ever implied and you don't have to deliberately do a poor job to be liable.
Just not having good evidence of the therapy is liable to improve their lot and doing it anyway or failing to impart an accurate picture of the risks because you don't know enough to do so.
How can you possibly have informed consent without the same info that you hope to glean?
It was beyond the point of glasses being able to do anything useful for them just as they finished college.
"All the people I believe to be smart and trustworthy and nice say that Elon Musk is wrong to disagree with them."
Elon Musk does something smart.
"No, Elon Musk did not do something smart. That's because only smart people do smart things. If he were smart, he would agree with the people that I believe to be smart and trustworthy and nice. He must have cheated or lied or stole someone else's idea which also makes him not nice and not trustworthy. How can anyone support anything he does?"
"Oh look, someone on HN pointed out that Elon Musk did something smart. They must be not smart, not trustworthy and not nice just like all the other people who disagree with things the people I believe to be smart and trustworthy and nice support. Here's a downvote!"
I don't know if they're still sending poop emojis, but "public relations" is a term that encompasses more than "press relations", and "press relations" itself encompasses more than answering questions in email.
1. https://news.mit.edu/2011/vision-problem-0411
2. Shape recognition
3. Face recognition
They are doing so much damage to institutions and ultimately to people that their loss in 2028 will be damned near inevitable leaving them no course of action to stay out of prison other tha what they have already outlined which is to end democracy.
There is no substantial opposition from the Republicans singly or in groups. They are barely willing to verbally chastise him and none dare vote in a meaningful way that would impact his plans.
They were barely willing to admit he wasn't pres in 2021 when he was nothing.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/05/10/to-see-and-not...
Before Neuralink, there was no major investment into BCI tech as far as eye could see - because medicine is where innovation goes to die. We've gone from Utah arrays in 1990 to Utah arrays in 2020. All while computing and AI - the other key enablers of neural interfaces - advanced in leaps and bounds.
So sure maybe I miss out on his generous acts but honestly he does enough bad that I don’t particularly care about any good he does. He’s only doing it for himself anyway.
If you are a person who has shown traits of very low intelligence, any fact you state has to have concrete evidence, especially if its something that is not easily verifiable.
Meanwhile people who have generally shown themselves to be more intelligent can generally be trusted more from the start.
>t is _not_ obviously the case that "anyone who can think critically leans towards the Democratic party"
Yes it is. Conservatism comes from not being able to comprehend reality around you correctly. Anything rational in the conservative movement (like sensible gun rights) is already a part of modern liberal Democrats, while the rest of the stuff is just objectively and verifiably wrong.
And just for clarity, its not my side versus your side. The far left movements that lean towards hard socialism and abandonment of private property are also verifiably wrong. This is part of horseshoe effect in politics.
That act alone pretty much disqualifies you from being able to talk about intelligence in the first place.
In reality, the modern democrats are pretty much the exact center. Any sensible traditional right leaning policy like free market capitalism, gun ownership, and immigration enforcement is already part of the liberal Democratic platform.
The reason that what I said holds true should be self evident. One of the cornerstone of modern conservativism is small government and reduced government spending. Yet Trump is pretty much doing the exact opposite of this. So to to even begin talking about why conservatism is valid, you have a LONG bridge to cross of somehow proving that Trump objectively the better choice, which at this point would require exceptionally extraordinary evidence.
Another way of testing intelligence is basically to ask the question - what concrete evidence would it take for you to change your mind to the opposite view on a certain subject? For the question of what is better for society, Democrats and their policies vs Republicans and their policies, no conservative can provide a clear answer on what would it take for them to change their mind.
But 2 years ago, I've talked to an old school, rather wealthy guy, and he was explaining to me that he always invested conservatively but he wants to buy Tesla stock, because Musk said they started producing Optimus robots and next year they will have thousands of those in the factory and all Tesla factory workers could be fired.
Yep, Musk knows exactly what he's doing overhyping his companies. The stock is the product.
I don't think he's short of technical skill. I think he is a genius, and I think he's sincere in his desire to make humanity multiplanetary.
I recommend reading the biography to get the facts that aren't penetrating your bubble.
I think Musk is going kind of insane due to ketamine abuse, bipolar disorder, and/or whatever caused his father to go insane around his current age.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PaL38q9a4e8Bzsh3S/elon-musk-...
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2025/03/ketamine-...
(I admit I’m mocking your wording; in fact it has not plateaued. Just every update makes things slightly smoother in non-safety-critical ways.)
Because Tesla keeps claiming they'll have full autonomy "next year", year after year.
In 2016 Tesla claimed every Tesla car being produced had "the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver". That was a lie: https://web.archive.org/web/20161020091022/https://tesla.com...
By the end of 2020 there were supposed to be 1 million Tesla robotaxis on the road. That was also a lie: https://www.thedrive.com/news/38129/elon-musk-promised-1-mil...
Tesla sets its own benchmark and consistently fails to achieve it.
If you want to compare Waymo and Tesla FSD from a technology standpoint and claim superiority of one over the other you can't use simple values like interventions per mile. It says very little. The solutions were designed for different purposes under different constraints. That's what engineers do. If Waymo was attempting to make consumer viable self driving vehicles they would have made very different decisions and likewise for Tesla if their only goal was taxi. That should be obvious to any technologist.
I think you can support the technologies behind these companies and respect that someone on the spectrum may be struggling with trying to do what’s right for themselves and the people of Earth as a whole, but has just made a shitload of bad decisions. Many of us struggling with mental health of us can empathize, even if we fully and wholeheartedly disagree on many things.
I wonder if segregating bad drivers into a separate population affects those fatality statistics.
"So who do we think is close to Tesla with -- a general solution for self-driving? And we still don't even know really who would even be a distant second. So yes, it really seems like we're -- I mean, right now, I don't think you could see a second place with a telescope, at least we can't." [1]
That is a literal, direct, backward-looking statement about current capabilities comparing it to all existing systems. A backward-looking statement that is clearly and objectively false given their present day inability to safely deploy driverless vehicles which Waymo already achieved in 2022, let alone quantitative disengagement metrics demonstrating a level of capability between 10-100x worse than Waymo contemporaneously in 2022 [2] and inferior even to Waymo in 2015 [3]. A false statement made willingly and knowingly in official investor communications to maintain their stock price.
[1] https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2023/01/26/te...
[2] https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2023/02/17/2022-disen...
[3] https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2018/02/01/disengagem...
If Neuralink proceeds to a scenario where quadriplegic patients can get reliable (ie lifelong) control of their computers for less than $100k that will be a huge win for them for a cost that no one else was willing to pay.
To be clear, at that order of magnitude they might make back their investment, but it won’t be 10x or 100x, and the potential healthy-brain-connected-to-the-AI play is much less rooted in reality than Teslas all becoming taxis.
Worst case scenario is that Elon loses interest and pulls the plug and Mr Arbaugh loses continued tech support a la a google product. I think that’s the one question I wish the author had asked…
With Neuralink,
- Noland can control cursor of his computer - He can schedule calendar meetings - He can control his purifier, television, etc. - He can play games like mario kart
I could only find this demo on the internet where Noland plays chess - https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1ypJdkXjaLNGW
Is this the thing about California high-speed rail? I looked into that when it came up on HN the other day, and concluded that Musk had basically nothing to do with the failure of that project. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43299460
So -- Do you have actual solid evidence to defend this "kneecaping of public transit projects" claim? Or shall I assume that the rest of your claims are also liable to be based on half-truths and internet rumors?
Because from my POV there appears to be no end of BS floating around the internet about Musk: https://www.snopes.com/collections/musk-rumors-collection/
In any case, I'm not "defending" Musk in the sense of saying he's a good person. I'm just saying people should try to see him accurately. If you judge people negatively for giving you any information that challenges your worldview, I'd say you're basically admitting that your worldview isn't likely to be very accurate. You can persuade yourself of anything you like, if you're selective in the evidence you admit.
Then there's the pessimists, like me, wondering how long it'll take to Neuralink to turn their army of computer connected paraplegics into some Mechanical Turk-esque Grok clean up.
Thankfully Elon has already got that sorted for you! $12k, and if you sell your Tesla for a new one, you’ll have to buy it again! Doesn’t transfer with you (or the car for that matter, it just vanishes on title transfer).
This is entirely ridiculous. There is no and will be no universal device that just works, and does different things depending on just where in the brain you happen to stick it.
Electric cars have been sold since the 1800s (electric vehicles predate the 4-cycle internal combustion engine). Chrysler, Ford, GM, Honda and Toyota all had serial production of EVs in the 1990s or earlier. The land speed record holder in 1900 was an electric vehicle. Tesla wasn't first, they were relatively late, they just got it right in a number of ways.
Self driving? Maybe, but there is a lot of argument about whether a Tesla is self driving. Based on the fact that Tesla themselves require a human driver ready to intervene, it isn't a credible claim.
If you're building a cheap mass market self driving vehicle that has to work everywhere you'll make completely different design decisions than a geo restricted taxi. Would you care to acknowledge that simple fact? The amount of hypotheticals you'd have to go through to compare these technologies in superiority up to this point is extensive. Go ahead, do the thought experiment. It would be a lot more interesting than a blanket interventions per mile with zero context.
Otherwise it's a false equivalence dog pile in search of Internet points. We don't need repeating of exhaustingly well known qualities of Tesla's CEO. That's not interesting, the Internet is already overrun with that.
ffs, go talk to a real conservative sometime. If you lived their life, you would be them.
1. FSD on a new car is currently $8k [0]
2. FSD has been transferable on buying a new car for a while - there’s usually some kind of promo [1]
3. If you don’t transfer it to a new car, it does transfer with the car [2]
—-
0: https://www.tesla.com/model3/design#overview
1: https://www.tesla.com/support/fsd-transfer
2: I bought my car used and FSD stayed with the car, the default behavior unless you use a promo like [1]
The comment you were replying to was the kind of dismissal we want to avoid on HN, but we need you to avoid swipes like this on HN. The comment would been fine without that last line. Please try to observe the guidelines, especially these ones:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
It was $12K. And as you acknowledge, it was non-transferable until relatively recently.
Do you understand what you're saying? Too slowly in contrast to "move fast and break things" where "things" = "people"? In a thread about the risks of tesla killing pedestrians? This is classic supervillain logic.
That said, as someone who has undergone screening for a neurodegenerative disease (thankfully I tested negative), I'm fairly confident in saying that it's an awful thing to experience and any technology that can provide more autonomy is invaluable. When I had to confront the possibility that I might have MS or ALS, I literally said "Neuralink probably shouldn't have killed those monkeys but, fuck it, they're already dead so they better hurry up. I don't want to live like that."
I hope we can develop further treatments more ethically and in a way that doesn't result in dystopian brain adverts of course, but even this level of technology is miraculous.
You cannot compare using a technical metric a geofenced pre-mapped self driving technology and a general self driving technology. You can hate on their dishonest marketing all you like, but this is disingenuous.
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
Robotaxi has been in service a fraction of the time as Waymo has. And the "4000x" figure is absolutely ridiculous, I'd maybe believe 2x at best given I've seen LONG drives with Robotaxi and common FSD while Waymos get stuck / park badly around them. For both, the interventions are done remotely and I bet a lot of Waymo's ones especially are made "secretly". This while Waymo easier decides to do things like parking in middle of road instead of invoking an intervention, and has basically zero scaling prospects compared to Tesla, for which, every Tesla on the road becoming a robotaxi on the owner's command is not actually inconvincible for hw4+ cars in some years.
Neuralink "being 5x slower" sounds hardly believable in real life too, as I've seen their webgrid demo, ran it myself, and seen other people only get fractionally better scores than the person using neuralink with no limbic activity. And "5x faster" means little if the device is not practical, something Neuralink has seemingly put more effort to than others combined. Impracticability especially questions the quality of the data as its probably more "lab-like" while Neuralink patients can just navigate to benchmarks themselves on their own time and run them for fun, obivously with the utility of Neuralink.
Elon truly does lead Tesla and SpaceX, while being in a key role at Neuralink too. If you ever look at some of their demonstrations, he defers a lot to his employees for specific features/demonstrations. It is media's own issue that they hyperfocus on Elon, probably for keyword clicks.
It's not exactly the same as "so we should exploit the poor and desperate", but that is one of the pitches VCs like the most.
1. he created the capital he had
2. he is not the only person with capital
3. the opportunities he saw, no one else did
When someone wins the lottery 3 times in a row, it is no longer credible to call it "luck". He's simply a genius.
Everything doesn't have to be about Elon. Imagine you replaced him in 2015, but still approached autonomy through mass market level 2. How would you compare them? I think you might add just a few caveats about the constraints and environments they operate in.
The only way Elon makes money is through people voluntarily giving it to him in exchange for what he creates.
Being called a bot was unexpected, to put it mildly.
So does everyone else who tries to create new things. Edison had dumb ideas, too, like his mining ideas. The Wrights also had dumb ideas like their persistence with wing warping, and the canard stabilizer.
The sub thing didn't hurt anyone, it was an emergency so he didn't have much time to think about it, so really it's uncharitable to slam him for trying to help.
Do you think his rockets are dumb ideas, too? Starlink? Tesla?
For example demeaning work. Also much of slavery, indentured servitude in the past was chosen and fully reimbursed. Most classic lefties would say all work is exploitation under capitalism.
It's the idea of individualism mostly seen on the right wing and the modern/American democratic left that says that people make free and rational choices in an amoral economic model. When money sets the rules there is no exploitation. I think the reality isn't so black and white and people can make good and bad decisions.
So while I agree he probably wasn't exploited it doesn't mean that others in the same place doing the same things will not be.
And as for which state one wants to be in, this is a matter of personal choice. I know that I will commit suicide right after I get a diagnosis of, say, Alzheimer's (after cleaning up my stuff). If I went blind and had a reasonable chance to get back to sight, then I would also go for it, weighing the risks.
It all boils down to what someone perceives as "better"
Brave and/or incredibly desperate.
The subsidies were EV subsidies, which were available for all electric cars.
Nobody is forcing anybody to have the chip - my question was about the reasons behind not taking it for someone who is blind, as a matter of curiosity. It is obvious that everyone will react differently.
As I mentioned, my wife went for that and it was quite a ride initially. You do not want to be on the witnessing side of such treatments but I respect her choice despite the risks.
It’s all good, please just be mindful of this and think about how you can avoid your intended sentiment being lost next time you post this kind of comment.
And of course, all work is exploitation under capitalism (from a true lefty point of view) but I didn’t perceive the original comment as referring to that level of exploitation. Just saying that this isn’t the hill to die on if one wants a case for capitalist exploitation.
I do understand the dangers of others being exploited down the line but again, that wasn’t what OP was saying either.
Really, if this is exploitative it’s only an indictment of profit incentives in healthcare, which are abhorrent.
In general, I find the negativity in this whole thread very sad. If I were in the situation were I was looking forward for technology like this, and I'd read the comments here, they would make me very sad. Because in essence, I would learn that politics is more important to some SV people than actual progress.
Frankly, if Elon ended up creating a technology that helps people, I wouldn't care about his politics at all. I'd be damn grateful for someone investing in something that ended up helping me. But obviously, politics trumps empathy here, which is very very sad.
I am still a magnitude off regarding 100k for assistive technologies, but sufficiently large braille displays cost 10k$ to 15k$ in Europe. That is a plain display of 80!!! characters in a single line. No 1080p, mind you. This has been the case since I am alive. The costs are mostly driven by redistriibutors, who usually add around 70% when importing from the US. Do I feel exploited? No, I am glad the technology exists. And frankly, if you have any empathy left, you should as well.
As for the rest--your other posts implicitly assume that everyone else shares your choices and priorities--and if not then they aren't relevant. (BTW, there is strong evidence showing neither you nor anyone else knows what they would do after receiving such diagnoses.)
You can see my gloriously broken prototype at PrizeForge. Currently between iterations and still not quite viable enough to properly operate.
Sure, but when you eat sugar in several forms and overeat generally, you statistically get fatter. This works the other way round too. There are myriads of specific cases on the sides of the bell curve but the solution for the everyday Joe is to eat less, more healthily. Practicing sports helps too, but not so much (it is important for other health reasons)
> As for the rest--your other posts implicitly assume that everyone else shares your choices and priorities--and if not then they aren't relevant.
Wow, where do you get that from? The main point of asking questions here is not to be a troll and wait for internet fights but to get interesting insights from others. You may want to slow down with the pitchforks and such statements.
> (BTW, there is strong evidence showing neither you nor anyone else knows what they would do after receiving such diagnoses.)
Or not. You also have people who prepare for that in advance, with a clear decision path. I have, and have no doubts taht I will go for that having evidenced suffering in other people. Not everyone contacts a company such as Dignitas to make sure things are organized. Not everyone discusses with the funeral house details about their death at 45, not everyone has a "what to do when I die" booklet with key information (financial and how to de-smart the house :)). Not everyone gave a deeper thought about designing a kill-switch device that would poison them in case they are incapacitated.
Not everyone is like you so I would not be that fast in making such radical statements.
So, giving this job to Fortune500 companies is demonstratably not sustainable. A single higher up can terminate such projects with the wink of an eye.
I was more hopeful 20 years ago. Then I watched how all the good work on GNOME2 was basically trashed because of DBus transition, GTK3, and now Wayland. Fact is, hoping for the corporate world to do the work is no guarantee they will continue. And for "scratch your own itch"-philosophy to work, there are not enough disabled OSS devs. Maybe after WWIII there will be a surge in Open Source Accessibility.
I'm pretty sure he does, his actions in government and his lobbying were specifically so he made more money. He does love the tech, though I'm not as optimistic about his love of the ideals (but that might be the socialist in me talking).
I'm am wary about how brain implants could be abused further down the line, but for now it's not the main thing I'm looking at with Neuralink. It seems to be a positive change for the patient, and if costs can be reduced to make it affordable to the masses, it can be a great thing.a
Scratching our own itch works better when coordination means we can bundle together a whole lot of itch. There is no such thing as individual incentive to cooperate without a means of coordination. Anything else is just the volunteer's dilemma, and so only small itches get scratched.
Not everything can be handled using death by a thousand cuts. In the Rust in 2021 blog [1], the importance of depth versus breadth was pointed out. Depth comes from dedicated, full-time, paid work.
[1]: https://matklad.github.io/2020/09/12/rust-in-2021.html]
It’s just a pragmatic take on sustainability of innovation. If nobody—no person or government or non-profit—would find value in the future of the work, it merits questioning why do it versus something else.
And it worked! The animal subjects were exploited. This man was not.
The only way I can square this circle is with the hypothesis that everything a billionaire does must be exploitative of the poor. (Which holds about as much water as its balancing hypothesis on the far right about leftists being good for nothing more than whining.)
Is funding a high risk project the right allocation of $1.29B that supports a tiny fraction of humanity or would $1.29B be better spent on cancer research, addressing childhood food insecurities (free school lunches), etc?
Open is a red herring. Mandate documentation and bonding for long-term support. If the cheapest way to provide those are through an open-source platform, great. If not, that’s also fine. Patient outcomes outweigh ideological preferences.
I think it’s presumptuous to conclude from afar where someone’s affliction lies on a scale of suffering.
People should be free to do with their bodies what they choose. To describe and act on their subjective experience of themselves as they see fit, not as a third party deems they ought to.
Everyone with motor dysfunction should suffer so we can stick it to a racist man child? Who’s the villain in that narrative?
Of course, this creates a perverse situation where choosing humanitarian impact today over investment is always irrational, but this is the fundamental tension in charity vs investment, and aside from relying on governments and guilt, I'm not sure we have discovered a great model to solve it
Until subscription price is increased.
There’s a bunch of effects to consider 1) improving lives right now may well improve subsequent generations lives directly 2) your future project may have a higher failure rate than your current one 3) the problems you are trying to solve may no longer be relevant in the future 4) you could be very wrong about future population growth.
All of this boils down to: you should be risk-discounting future benefits just the same way as you do future cash flows.
In theory, yes. But other than maybe rare-disease research, I’m struggling to think of an example in medical research.
That said, if you need this, the security side of it is a secondary concern to the very immediate quality of life improvement.
Taking a good thing and fucking people over with it in every way possible is "regular business reasoning"
At a certain point it's smart to say "We have the technology to do something good, let's be extremely cautious about concerns over what's profitable and focus on doing what's right with it"
It's really hard for me to imagine that making more logistic sense than the current state of affairs - which is hiring armies of poor able-bodied people in developing countries.
"By using this implant I agree to the collection and sharing of analysis data with Neuralink and its trusted third parties".
[ ] Agree
[ ] Ask me later
I lack stereoscopic vision, due to eye surgery in infancy & wildly different focal lengths in each eye (one is very nearsighted, the other farsighted).
I can still see in 3D because my brain uses tricks like relative object size, shadows, and sometimes I move my head laterally so my farsighted eye gets different angles on an object (“faking” stereoscopic vision with one eye).
Nonetheless, catching a ball thrown straight at me is very difficult— I have to judge the size at which the circle is getting larger, and know the actual size of the ball. It often hits me in the hand and I try to grab it before it bounces away.
And I can never see those stereogram images where it looks like static unless you focus both eyes at some distance. I never see the world with both eyes simultaneously.
I once got glasses that corrected my vision “perfectly” but got major headaches and couldn’t wear them. Objects were in focus in both eyes, but were wildly different sizes!
I went to an ophthalmologist who basically told me they can correct my lenses but in my brain “the wiring is shot”.
I mostly work in front of a computer screen. I now use reading glasses so that when my nearsighted eye gets tired, I can put them on and continue working with my farsighted eye. These glasses have only a minor correction on the nearsighted eye so they don’t give me headaches.
Have you ever thought of "choosing slavery" for yourself and your children? No, because given a choice, nobody would choose to be a slave. The fact that people "choose" to be slaves is evidence that they had Hobson's choice. Probably because the wealthy and powerful arranged the system and laws to give people no choice because they wanted slaves.
> "When money sets the rules there is no exploitation
People didn't freely choose to migrate from their ancestral homeland, farming and hunting and grazing animals on common ground, to go and "find their fortune" in the slums and workhouses of the growing urban areas; the land was taken by force, the laws were set by the wealthy to kick the commoners off, to make wild grazing and hunting illegal, to shift the taxes away from land and onto trade, and the commoners were forced into it or "choose" starvation. William the 'Conqueror' in 1066 in Britain started it and set the model for the British colonies and British Empire which pushed it out around the world. From[1]:
"the Anglo-Saxon period as the system of law know as ‘folkland’, whereby land was held in allodial title by the group or regional community .. 1066-7 Norman invasion displaces Anglo-Saxon commons/land ownership model. William the Bastard declares that all land, animals and people in the country belong to him personally. .. We go from a country in which >90% of people owned land, to a country of landless serfs, themselves owned by foreign lords. .. The intended effect was precisely the result: the dispossession of the ‘common folk’ (i.e. anyone who wasn’t a Latin speaking Norman aristocrat) of their ancestral lands and rights."
"Commons Act 1236 allowed Lords to enclose common land .. Statutes of Westminster 1275/85/90 restrict subtenure/sale of parcels of land other than to the direct heirs of the landlord. These restrictions gave rise to .. the retention and control by the nobility of land, money, soldiers and servants via salaries, land sales and rent. In-effect, this was the start of modern wage-slavery"
"1536 to 1541 Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII, who privatises church lands (then 1/5th of the country). As these lands were often used by commoners, for grazing – this dispossesses people further from essential access to the land and generates yet more landless people who are wholly dependent upon the emerging model of selling their labour to survive i.e. wage-slavery. 1671 Game Act made it illegal to hunt wild animals, considered a common right since time immemorial. 1700-1850 Parliamentary Enclosures, now no longer held back by the sections of the Church, nor by the power of the (heavily indebted) nobility and Monarchy, land enclosures increase exponentially in both speed and size, and the new urban slums grew correspondingly"
"By 1700 half all arable lands are enclosed, and by 1815 nearly all farm land was enclosed; hunting, grazing, pannage, foraging, wood collection and gleaning rights, are all but lost. From 1750 to 1820 desperate poachers were ‘hanged en-mass’. 1800-1850 the Highland Clearances led to the displacement of up to 500,000 Highlanders and crofters, tens of thousands of which died in the early-mid 19th century, their settlements and economies replaced by Sheep. An esteemed member of the ‘British’ aristocracy noted: ‘It is time to make way for the grand-improvement of mutton over man.’. 1790-1830 a third of the rural population migrates to urban slums. Where they are put to work in early forms of factories, workhouses"
[1] https://tlio.org.uk/a-short-angry-history-of-land-in-britain...
Considering all the possible future implications of a Brain Computer Interface - both positive and negative - I would say Musk’s involvement is the least interesting part of this story.
That’s not even close to the worst case scenario. There are many worse outcomes than the product becoming inoperative, such as it malfunctioning in a way that significantly worsens the person’s quality of life, or its creator deliberately holding functionality hostage. Musk is known for being incredibly petty and thin skinned, I wonder how he’d react to Neuralink users doing or saying things he doesn‘t agree with.
I am genuinely glad this participant and presumably others have a new chance at quality of life, but it would be better if the one in control of the technology weren’t a private individual with such a history, and that the process to reach this milestone had been handled more responsibly and respectfully.
https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-pcrm-neuralink-monkey-...
But that last one is the kicker. AR never became mainstream. Unless a brain interface is faster and more intuitive than e.g. a physical keyboard, it will never become mainstream either.
Nobody gives a shit about the iNvEsToR rEtUrN on iNveStMeNt. This is a humanitarian project which should be owned by the people, not a select few billionaires or investors to license out and dangle yet another expense, subscription, or ad model.
The thing other people notice is after I’ve had a long day of screen time and am physically tired (long day, late night), and I’m out with friends, my farsighted eye does all the work and my nearsighted eye gets lazy and wanders. It’s got nothing to do and can take a break! I’ve heard many a good-natured joke about it over the years.
> It was, rather, the behavior of one mentally blind, or agnosic—able to see but not to decipher what he was seeing.
And while he does get better, it does end up with:
> But then, paradoxically, a release was given, in the form of a second and now final blindness—a blindness he received as a gift.
Cf: https://web.archive.org/web/20240111185639/https://www.newyo... (older version does not trigger the paywall or at least can disable it while it's loading).
this is why it's worthless without a third party review of conditions
Do you have a source for this?
As far as I understand, the bonus package represents a large part of revenue of all Teslas sold since the beginning.
> is something a lot of people are understandably sympathetic to.
Does he also need to pay back stocks when he does a nazi salute, thus tarnishing the brand's image and stock value?
And he is an attention whore who will go after people who are dismissing his ideas. The cave guys in Thailand had to waste precious time thinking about his submarine. If Musk had really been willing to help, he would have done testing in quiet and published things only when it was clear that it worked. But he is an attention whore because he knows it's good for business.
Same for DOGE. They could have done their work in quiet and with deliberation. Instead they fired quickly some random people whose work they didn't understand or like.
I think you're confused on two sort-of-related things: one is the $56B package agreed to and approved in 2018 that a judge decided to revoke, for that he's suing.
The other one is the relatively recent (July/August) $29B package that was created by two indipendent board advisors to give him a "salary" (he did not participate or vote on the creation of this package), since apparently he received nothing from Tesla for the past 6-7 years. This comes as a result of him expressing that if he wants more control over the company, or he's going to build things (AI, robotics) outside of it. Part of the deal is that he's to forfeit this if the ruling on the 2018 package is in his favor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lawsuits_involving_Tes...
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/04/tesla-hands-29b-comp-packa...
Calling many of these therapies "compassionate" is a bit of a stretch after you learn about their side effects...
> Unsworth had mocked Musk’s submarine in an interview with CNN, deeming it a “PR stunt” and saying Musk should “stick his submarine where it hurts”.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/dec/05/elon-musk...
He said a lot more than that, and none of it nice. He definitely threw the first punch in this exchange
His amazing track record with success means his ideas merit more attention than your ideas or mine.
> The cave guys in Thailand had to waste precious time
insulting Musk on CNN. They didn't have to do that. They could have simply said "no thank you, we'll handle it".
> But he is an attention whore because he knows it's good for business.
Yes, offering his company's considerable engineering talent and resources for free is pure evil. Sheesh.
> Instead they fired quickly
They didn't have the people to evaluate tens of thousands of individuals, nor did they have several years to do it in. The way they proceeded was the only practical way. It's the way all organizations above a certain size cut costs when hemorrhaging cash.
Also this https://www.project2025.observer/en
So please understand that when you claim that these things are false, it is absolutely ok for people to assume you are mentally ill. Because you chose to live in a world inside your head instead of actual reality.
I recently watched an episode where there was a bit about "Don't date robots" and it had me absolutely rolling, but also hit pretty close to home in 2025
In other words, he doesn't do it out of malice. These are the rules of the game.
Random thing to be concerned about, and also very fringe evidence of "probably".
> The democrat's failure on immigration broadly (both at the border and on policy) is also something driving people away from them.
Immigration was never an issue - unemployment was at a record low especially after Covid, and crime was on its way down. Democrats had a bill that targeted immigration reform, which included provision for more funding to CBP and most importantly immigration hearings so that we can actually separate the people who are illegal versus people who are truly under refugee status and shown that they are willing to work and contribute. Trump told the Republicans to veto the bill because the immigration issue would make him look good in elections. You fell for it.
>Compare the extreme competence/political capability of someone like Elon Musk
You mean the guy that funded a candidate, that within 4 months told him to fuck off while passing the BBB that removed a major source of funding for his company? You mean the guy that bet Sam Harris 1mil after saying US wouldn't see more than 35k cases of Covid, only to reneg on the bet and block Sam?
Good one chief.
>The left has pushed identity based culture issues around DEI and gender ideology that have had serious negative effects up to and including surgical operations on children due to gender affirming care
A) Don't lump democrtats with the left. B) Surgical operations on children for gender affirmg care is a non issue, the number of these is incredibly small (and no, the argument Democrats would have increase this doesn't fly). As for DEI, you have to prove with numbers that this was harming American companies and institutions, in terms of economic impact or other factors.
>Also when it comes to guns, I live in California - the democrats are hardly the gun friendly party.
State politics =/= government politics. States have their right to enforce additional laws. Thats in the Constitution.
And again, above all, even if Im completely wrong on all of this, you still have a convicted felon who tried to coup the government, whos name was on the Epstein list with evidence of him being at parties, with Project 2025 thats halfway complete, who does dictator shit every single week. It would take an extraordinary amount of evidence to prove that Kamala was the worst choice.
Part of me really hopes that republicans win in 2026 and 2028, because as bad as things are now, they can get much much worse. Because people like you need to really suffer in daily lives to ever understand that Republican policies can lead to lives where you are concerned about being able to feed your kids instead of having the privilege to worry about tiny issues like DEI.
Agreeing to data collection and sharing of your brain activity while concerning for it's own reasons, is not the same as forcing them to complete Mechanical Turk like tasks.
At the time of the original pay package award (3/21/2018), with primary performance conditions being the growth of Tesla market cap (making money for Tesla shareholders), Tesla had a market cap of $53.5B.
At the time the lawsuit against Musk set aside that pay package in January 2024, Tesla's market cap had expanded under Musk's leadership to around $600B.
$600B - $55B = $545 billion in market cap increase (making money for shareholders), which dwarfs both the $29B he agreed to take as well as the larger amount he would have been due under the 2018 agreement.
The amount of self-censoring I've ramped up to to keep anything useful from amoral VC's though does appear to prove your point though.
Sometimes I'll play one of his songs to a friend, and gush a bit on how good Alpert played. My friends would invariably look at me in puzzlement. They simply didn't know enough about the trumpet to see the skill and virtuoso genius in his playing.
I've never heard another trumpet player play the instrument that well.
Apparently, many people listen.
I could also say that the neuroscientists I follow don't seem particularly impressed with the research coming out of Neuralink (unlike the rocket people who are all impressed with SpaceX), and also the man himself seems to be using his wealth and sales skills to try to radically shift the Overton Window in several countries including both where I live now and where I grew up, so less benefit than the headline suggests for a higher cost than letting a man-child be a man-child.
https://realestate.usnews.com/real-estate/articles/the-guide...
Millions crossed the border illegally under Biden, that was reduced to near zero after the election, no bullshit bill required. The bill was vetoed because it was bad policy, the new bill got the ICE funding without the concessions. The immigration is having negative effects, but they're primarily experienced by the poor in areas that have to live near them, deal with crime, and can't afford to live elsewhere - you're likely insulated from it. This is true generally for the luxury beliefs held by the left, they don't experience their failures, those that do don't vote for them.
"Project 2025" policy suggestions include a lot of things I (and others) think are good.
State is different than federal, but democrats are hardly good on this at the federal level either and every blue state where they have power is worse on this issue.
Refusing to recognize the trans nonsense doesn't take ownership of how much that issue is pushed by the democrats. It's poisoned the brand and alienates all but the hardest line lefty progressives. That ideology has lead to real harm - it should be trivial to come out against that, same with the ignorant mainstream democrat jew hatred.
The DEI stuff is a deep rot - anti-west and in directly conflict with American values about equality and individualism. The public hates it.
> "Republican policies can lead to lives where you are concerned about being able to feed your kids"
This is retarded. The likely Mayor of NY is running on government run grocery stores - famously known for their scarcity and failure. Harris ran on price controls for groceries and Elizabeth Warren embarrassingly tried to defend this. Democratic economic policy has lead to enormous waste and failure. SF, LA, etc. lots of examples of bad policy and bad outcomes. Mediocrity driven by decision making that focused on identity over competence. The inflation experienced under Biden was extreme and driven by their bad policy decisions. The level of Biden making any decisions at all is unclear given his capacity, a lot of it was probably his unelected staff.
Then there's also the political violence and celebration of it. Luigi Mangione, Trump assassination attempts, "Free Palestine" execution of two jews in DC etc. The stars like AOC hold open contempt for capitalism and this is mainstream in the party.
If you can't appreciate what Musk has achieved that again says more about you. Nobody is perfect. I'd much rather see people trying hard to earnestly solve problems than what we saw with the Biden/Harris campaign. Tesla and SpaceX are amazing. Even the smaller projects like Neuralink described in this post are getting important results.
You've aligned yourself with a losing coalition - there's a reason the republicans have expanded their tent while the democrats have reduced theirs to a smaller and smaller out of touch ideological extreme.
I don't excuse Trump's behavior on 1/6, but a choice is forced between two options and I (and the majority of the voting public) thought Harris was worse, this again should be pretty damning of how bad the problem is on the democrat's side. It's why he had a decisive democratic electoral victory including the popular vote. There are good reasons for this, you dismiss them at your own peril.
Typical communist attitude.
I was one of those shareholders who voted FOR that pay package with power of six figures worth of stock. He didn't "sue the shareholders"
Shareholders are strongly on Elon's side here, as they have always have been. The only reason there is a lawsuit is because some bent judge is trying to take the shareholder's power away from them and not grant the pay package. Absolute corruption.
see, I can make up stupid shit too.
People really claiming Elon is somehow a hinderance to the thing he created from scratch and where almost all shareholders are on his side is just hilarious...
Absolutely the issue is overeating, but you don't safely achieve good energy balance or even a calorie deficit by cutting out all forms of sugar.
You could increase your fat intake and still stay the same weight.
It's okay to reduce your sugar intake, or intake of simple sugars but removing sugar altogether isn't the right way to go.
I'm curious -- if you held a stereogram at the right distance, could you see the 3D image? Or is it also like me, only one eye at a time?
Also, no people of the class we're alluding to would found SpaceX knowing its very likely going to fail and will be an absolute waste of money and potentially risk their whole luxurious welfare.
Or do that twice, with Tesla having teetered as badly too. With him sleeping on the couches in the plants. And not just during crises, as he seemingly visits his operations every week if you see how much he makes good use of his jet.
He's an alien compared to the lot.
Glad you finally had the balls to say this. Dunno why you had to type all that up. Next time, just say you would rather have a dictator in charge who you align with ideologically, and that the most important thing to you.
The “dictator” framing also reveals your own unfalsifiable assumption - that Trump is inherently authoritarian regardless of policy outcomes or democratic processes. It’s the kind of tribal reasoning that makes genuine political discourse nearly impossible.
Pretty much proves my point about ideological capture better than any argument could.
So much for your “critical thinking”.
Same judge who forced him to overpay for Twitter.
I find it rather sad that the work of so many talented engineers is simply dismissed because they'd rather talk about that clown. You'd think HN could at least separate the two. There's a whole lot of people here working for a billionaire shit head.
I realized I overeat, mostly because I stay at the table longer with family and friends (hey, I am French! :)) and I eat too much before I realize that I am full. Or even realize I am full but what the heck, this nicely looking petit four is inviting.
So I decided to follow the JEFH approach (Just Eat Fucking Half). I did not change a lot in what I eat but mistly how much. I do not drink any sodas (we are trained in France since kindergarden to only drink water at meals) and getting rid of the sweet parts was not that of an effort. I removed most of the unhealthy stuff, though I was not eating much of that anyway (all kind of sausage and hams we have here, and heavily processed food).
I also do some sport, but not to lose weight.
I lost 16 kg effortlessly, and now need more effort to lose 15 more - this is going to be significantly more difficult. The main blockage is my lazyness and lack of self-control (and possibly some ilness I have but that would be too easy to put everything on that).
I have everything to succeed: a healthy eating country, money for any kind of food I need, a very high quality enterprise restaurant where I eat healthy food (and cheap), a place where I can easily practice sports.
So yes, I do not follow a strictly scientific method, but rather some common sense and reasonable self restrain. Ah, I also have a wife that I am afraid of and who watches with a stern eye what I am eating.
>Wow, where do you get that from?
I mean, right off the bat, you started with "If you are blind it cannot be worse" which is a pretty big assumption that being blind is so horrible and makes your life so worthless, that risking your life to reverse it seems like the obvious choice.
But in my case I don’t think even that would work. Elaborating further on the ophthalmologist’s words (and as another poster here noted), the neuroplasticity required to develop stereoscopic vision is just not there past some age. No amount of lens trickery will join the left-right circuits in the cortex.
> How do you feel about being blind and paralyzed?
To what I replied
> How do you feel about not having THE sense that defines your whole life?
→ this meant "how would you fel if you lost THE sense that defines your life, such as loding your sight when you are an artist" (for example). The idea is that what is a disaster depends on people (this is what I meant in This is a matter of personal choice and weighing risks vs your life as it is.).
In other words - losing a sense can be so devastating that you can risk much more for the (large, tiny, incalculable?) risjk of losing even more. Everyone is free to decide.
Hope this is more clear now
There are other risks of course, which I addressed in the comments (basically, it is for an individual to decide whether they want to accept risks, also in the case where the risks are not quantifiable)
That's the deal we voted for and Tesla grew 2000%. Very pleased with the outcome and would vote for any pay package at any company that was similarly structured.
Some engineers have become so corrupted by the culture of lying of Tesla that they're willing to lie about things that there's no need to lie about, like quarter mile times of the Cybertruck:
https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/tesla-cybertruck-beast-vs...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J3H8--CQRE
The lead engineer on the Cybertruck sadly tried to defend the lie, while admitting that they never even ran that quarter mile:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45062614
Tesla engineers will be best off moving to another company.
Tesla provably weren't "first to market" as I pointed out. Anyone could have bought an EV in 1900, more than a full century before Tesla existed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Vehicle_Company).
Anyone could have bought one in the 1990s too.
Tesla was not first to market in any way. They became so popular that they have come to define the market in many people's minds, but there were mass market electric vehicles before Tesla made them. The Nissan Leaf was available for years before the Model S. Nissan had the first lithium battery vehicles in the 1990s.
I don't know why you are trying to martyr yourself on this hill. Being first to market rarely matters, despite what tech circles believe. The iPod, iPhone, Facebook, and Tesla were all followers in their respective markets, but have since become defining products.
At this point, even if we - for some reason - accept that Tesla was first to market with the Roadster, it isn't proving to be a lasting advantage. BYD is selling more electric cars than them starting last year, a trend that has gone into hyperdrive this year as Tesla sales go negative for the 2nd year in a row while BYD continues to dominate.