[HN Gopher] Nikola founder to be sentenced for federal fraud cha...
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Nikola founder to be sentenced for federal fraud charges
Author : geox
Score : 173 points
Date : 2023-12-18 17:38 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| happytiger wrote:
| I have a hard time feeling sorry for the guy. He lied through his
| teeth and did an old fashion pump and dump.
|
| Worth reading the complaint if you want to hear what he did:
|
| https://www.cohenmilstein.com/wp-content/uploads/site/2022.0...
| duskwuff wrote:
| The "NIKOLA ONE IN MOTION (rolling downhill)" video wasn't
| mentioned in this complaint, but it seems pretty indicative of
| the deceptive way this company communicated with the public:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/09/nikola-admits-prototype...
| kotaKat wrote:
| And from the Hindenburg report
| (https://hindenburgresearch.com/nikola/)
|
| "An investigator sent to the exact site used by Nikola for
| their video tested the hill in an SUV by parking the vehicle
| at the top, then rolling from neutral. He was able to hit a
| top speed of 56 mph and rolled for approximately 2.1 miles."
| sokoloff wrote:
| The pull quote in that article is fantastic.
|
| As part of _refuting_ the Hindenburg claims, Nikola said:
|
| "Nikola never stated its truck was driving under its own
| propulsion in the video."
| duskwuff wrote:
| "Well _technically_ we said... " is not a disclaimer a
| company should ever have to use about its own marketing
| materials.
| lazide wrote:
| If ever 'should' meant 'I wish', it would be here.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Isn't this just "Fake it until you make it"?
|
| I don't personally believe people should do this, but it is a
| mantra often thrown around.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And it basically is fraud. That fraud is easier to prove if
| the result is failong and not making it.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I guess so. But I've never thought this was the true spirit
| of that phrase. To me, fake it till you make it means to
| pretend you know what you are doing until you do.
| happytiger wrote:
| The "fake it till you make it" strategy is more about
| changing your behavior to project confidence when you don't
| feel you should have any or the social situation wouldn't
| necessarily support it.
|
| This is fundamentally lying to investors when you have a
| fiduciary responsibility beyond your own enrichment.
|
| This isn't some suggestion either, but law. Obviously we
| can debate the effectiveness of the law. But generally you
| are expected to "be square" in your dealings.
|
| https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fiduciary-
| responsibi...
| lazide wrote:
| There is solid precedent that it depends on what the
| definition of 'is' is. /s
| rtsil wrote:
| I take it prosecutors are far more lenient when you're
| faking a phone UI to always show a full signal or
| surreptitiously switch to a new phone before the previous
| one runs out of memory and needs a restart, rather than
| pretending a 20-ton killing machine can drive itself up a
| hill.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I think the most important differentiator is who gets
| fleeced. In the case of the phone, average Joes get
| stuffed. In Nikola's cases, rich people got stuffed.
|
| That's why this gets prosecuted fairly quickly, while
| corporations regularly committing fraud against consumers
| remain in business for decades.
| bsdpufferfish wrote:
| This is also why everyone has heard about Theranos.
| comfysocks wrote:
| Maybe it's an example of "fake it 'till you make it" that
| crossed the line into fraud?
|
| For example, when puffing up one's CV, one could probably
| get away with making an actual accomplishment seem more
| important than it is. However, if they were to make up the
| accomplishment whole-cloth, the that would cross a line.
| chris_va wrote:
| You have to appreciate the jokes in the complaint:
|
| _In short, the VectoIQ Board simply failed to look under the
| hood at Nikola--both figuratively and literally--completely
| abdicating their responsibilities to VectoIQ's stockholders._
| happytiger wrote:
| I know. Whoever wrote it was someone I'd like to buy a drink
| for. It's hilarious.
| bostonsre wrote:
| How much money did he manage to milk from the company? With
| that light four year prison sentence where he makes nothing,
| he'll probably still end up making more than us during his work
| + prison sentence if the penalty phase is just as light.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| It was so much that he bought the most expensive real estate
| in the entire state of Utah.
| https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/nikola-motor-chief-
| se...
|
| "2,670-acre Riverbend Ranch, which includes a 16,800-square-
| foot mansion along the Weber River"
| sokoloff wrote:
| The whole Nikola situation was fascinating to me at the time.
|
| I shorted the shares and bought puts in the days to couple of
| months following the Hindenburg publication. I was surprised at
| how long the shares held up; they were still trading around
| $10/sh when I closed the last of my shorts at the end of 2021
| (~15 months after the publication which was never substantially
| refuted and never substantially in doubt as far as I could tell).
|
| I would have expected a much quicker and less orderly collapse of
| share prices and the absence of that made me question my
| understanding of the stock market entirely, specifically my
| previous belief that "all public information is quickly priced
| in." (That is still not entirely resolved for me.)
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Public information is quickly priced in, when it is decided
| that it is important. For when it's important, the market can
| stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, and all that.
| mdon wrote:
| I think this is similar to LTCM in the 90s, which reminded
| people of the depression era quote: "Markets can stay
| irrational longer than you can stay solvent"
| lofatdairy wrote:
| How so? I mean, you can argue that Russia defaulting was
| (arguably) irrational, but the market response to it was
| fairly textbook. I might be wrong, but even if they didn't
| get killed by margin calls, weren't the losses on their bad
| bets enough to wipe out any profits the company ever made?
| MVissers wrote:
| "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay
| solvent."
|
| Eventually- Markets go back to the mean, but predicting when is
| the hard part.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| "It's very lonely being the only correct investor on Wall
| Street"
| tony69 wrote:
| Part of the story is how passive index ETFs work.
| https://www.etf.com/stock/NKLA sort by # shares owned, you'll
| see the biggest owners of NKLA stock are ishares funds,
| vanguard etc. These funds buy based on market cap of the stock.
| Anyone with a retirement account that holds passive etfs (or
| things like target date retirement funds) is a stockholder in
| NKLA, a stock which no active fund manager would touch with a
| 10foot pole.
|
| As passive accounts for more than half of the total market
| funds/flows, blatant frauds that somehow manage to be included
| in these funds have an easier time surviving (and the larger
| the market cap, the more inflows their shares receive). In the
| 2021 stock mania there were other factors at play too.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Are these ETFs, target date retirement funds, etc. protected
| against class action lawsuits from shareholders who end up
| holding the bag due to the inclusion of fraudulent stocks
| like this? Obviously waivers are signed about how performance
| is never guaranteed, but that's a bit different from a need
| to timely exit positions in fraudulent companies.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The whole point of passive investing is to not pick winners
| and losers, to leave that part of the job to professional
| speculators (including, yes, short sellers). Because you
| aren't going to do any better than them on average, even if
| they do on occasion pick some duds (like Nikola).
| bsdpufferfish wrote:
| Imagine you invested in the index minus Nikola. This
| isn't improbable as several hours of due diligence would
| have raised concerns.
|
| This shows that the choice of stocks included in an index
| is not arbitrary. You don't get "better on average"
| automatically just by buying the 500 stocks on a list
| someone sold to you.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Sure, but I'm talking about when the professionals that
| you leave it to end up being negligent. _Picking a dud
| occasionally_ isn 't negligent, but I'm wondering if
| _continuing to hold something fraudulent longer than
| reasonably necessary to ingest damning evidence and dump
| it_ might be.
| peteradio wrote:
| SPACs are such an obvious joke on the stock system.
| dpflan wrote:
| This is quite fascinating. I hope you are able to provide
| more details on the machinations of these funds. I see the
| largest allocation is "Direxion Moonshot Innovators ETF" [1],
| [2].
|
| What money is flowing into this? Why is "Direxion Moonshot
| Innovators ETF" owned by anyone?
|
| For moments like this, I suspect this fund will liquidate its
| position? But I'm sure the market for NKLA shares is not that
| hot...
|
| [1] https://www.etf.com/stock/NKLA [2]
| https://www.direxion.com/product/moonshot-innovators-etf
| fsckboy wrote:
| >> _These funds buy based on market cap of the stock._
|
| > _I hope you are able to provide more details on the
| machinations of these funds._
|
| there are no machinations, it's mechanical, it's betting on
| expected value while diversifying risk/standard deviation.
| lazide wrote:
| Nope - even boring S&P 500 index funds have analysis at
| their heart. That qualifies those stocks for the S&P 500.
|
| Daily rebalancing is mechanical, and the criteria is
| coarse- but a decision was made and analysis is done.
| lokar wrote:
| And the fund managers do have some small discretion to
| deviate from the index they track
| sillyinseattle wrote:
| > Anyone with a retirement account that holds passive etfs
|
| This is incorrect. Not all ETFs. These funds are sector
| focused (vehicles). A regular S&P500 ETF will not hold NKLA.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _These funds buy based on market cap of the stock._
|
| There might potentially be a problem if ETFs owned the entire
| market, but owning half the market cap still allows for
| market pricing of the other half. I don't see that you are
| pointing out a problem?
|
| The market put a price on NKLA, and you are simply claiming
| that you know better than the market (to hell with the wisdom
| of crowds); such beliefs are generally unfounded. One example
| does not tell a convincing story, do you have a portfolio of
| disbelief that you have tracked the performance of?
| nprateem wrote:
| > all public information is quickly priced in
|
| Yeah this theory is bollocks. Priced in by whom, Wall St or
| Redditors? This theory may have been relevant before retail
| investors were a large force, but now it's irrelevant. I mean,
| if it worked, you'd never have meme stocks.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| If you look at actual cases of "meme stocks", they happened
| because the meme factor could actually help the underlying
| business. GameStop was one famous example of that - if a meme
| makes the company more popular with the general public, that
| translates to better forecasts for business outcomes.
| nprateem wrote:
| Citation needed. If that were the case, meme stocks would
| have been embraced by Wall St instead of heavily shorted
| (IIRC BB & B was) because a pump and dump doesn't in fact
| materially improve the underlying business.
| fsckboy wrote:
| economic and finance theory is based on some clear
| assumptions. if those assumptions are violated, the
| theory predicts that the theory cannot predict.
|
| "meme stocks" attract a small amount of capital (, large
| only) to a small number of stocks whose price becomes
| inflated. Given the nature of memes, this will rarely
| happen to the whole market. If you owned a broad index
| fund, your portfolio would inflate along with the meme
| stocks, and it will deflate along with them later. If it
| turned out that GameStop was an actual runaway hit, you
| would participate in it. If it turned out it was just a
| fad, you participate in that also. There's no place in
| this story for broad index funds to be a bad idea.
| Investing directly in the meme stocks carries a huge
| amount of diversifiable risk, and the market rewards
| risk, but not diversifiable risk.
|
| I said "rarely" to the whole market above because one
| could consider the .com boom a whole market meme. But you
| would have been worse off if you stayed out of the market
| through that bubble.
| grotorea wrote:
| In defence of the efficient market theory, retail investors
| can be just the wisdom of the crowd. Meme stocks are a rare
| exception.
| bhasi wrote:
| > Hindenburg publication
|
| I have not been following the Nikola story, and the fact that
| the founder has now been convicted of fraud came as news to me.
| I also was not aware that Hindenburg had published anything on
| Nikola - reading that now:
| https://hindenburgresearch.com/nikola/
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Interesting -- I made quite a lot on NKLA selling put spreads.
| It was obvious that they were a fraud. But the market was
| _full_ of obvious frauds that didn 't collapse. GME and AMC had
| scared the short-sellers out of the market. Idiots were pouring
| money into NFTs. I just made a bet that NKLA wouldn't fall
| apart right away, and it paid off very well.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, in the end all the short sellers profited hugely from
| Gamestock, the hodld crowd was left holding the bag. That's
| what happenes if, as part of a pump and dump, you forget to
| dump.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _belief that "all public information is quickly priced in."_
|
| if you actually believed that all public information is quickly
| priced in, why did you short or buy puts? Did you have non-
| public information? Being bearish is expressing doubt that the
| information is priced in.
|
| What subsequently happened (nothing) is confirmation that the
| information was priced in, and should reinforce your stated
| belief.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Obviously, I believed that there was significant uncertainty
| around the validity of the Hindenburg information but my
| reading led me to a conclusion that Nikola was very likely
| not a viable company and certainly not a viable company at
| the existing market cap.
|
| My surprise wasn't that that it took weeks to sort out (and
| for Nikola to issue comically terrible responses) but rather
| that, after making the judgment and investment, that it took
| well over a year to complete with no credible (to me)
| positive news from the company.
|
| Differences of opinion about the future are what makes a
| market. I'm puzzled at who was holding the opposing opinion
| and why...
|
| > What subsequently happened (nothing)
|
| I invite you to take a look at a 40 month (or just a 5 year)
| chart of $NKLA and decide if nothing happened to the shares.
| lazide wrote:
| Tether is transparently BS, but as long as the consensus is
| that it's worth pretending it's not, it will continue on
| regardless of the facts.
|
| It's rabbit holes all the way down.
| kevinskii wrote:
| Trevor Milton's infamous "html5 supercomputer" quote often gets
| shared in discussions about Nikola, and for good reason. It's one
| of my all-time favorite bullshit quotes:
|
| _" The entire infotainment system is a HTML 5 super computer,"
| Milton said. "That's the standard language for computer
| programmers around the world, so using it let's us build our own
| chips. And HTML 5 is very secure. Every component is linked on
| the data network, all speaking the same language. It's not a
| bunch of separate systems that somehow still manage to
| communicate."_ [1]
|
| [1] https://www.truckinginfo.com/330475/whats-behind-the-
| grille-...
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| It reads like something ChatGPT would come up with
| consumer451 wrote:
| I am not very familiar with this founder and his company, but
| how does a guy like this make it past any level of due
| diligence on the part of his investors?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| With a smile on their face and a billion dollar check in
| their pocket. Investors don't mind the bullshit if they're
| on the profiting side of it.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Man, I am a one-time failed founder and apparently I put
| way too much thought into it, as one of multiple
| failings.
|
| Meanwhile Adam Neumann gets a next go.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Early investors aren't trying to find valuable, profitable,
| or innovative companies that will make a lot of money.
| Their goal is to sell to someone else at a higher price
| sometime down the line. Therefore the actual reality of the
| business is not useful, and often purposely ignored if the
| story seems like it can pull in enough bag holders.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Do you think he would have gotten that far in today's
| interest rate environment? I mean, are investors paying
| more attention now, or does the bigger idiot theory still
| work?
| lazide wrote:
| It's about cashflow now, and that's a lot harder (but not
| impossible!) to BS around.
| twic wrote:
| A theory I've read on here is that VC returns come from a
| handful of hyper-successful firms, and the challenge is
| getting in on the deals in those firms at all, and the
| way you do that is by building a reputation as a
| visionary and generous investor by investing in ludicrous
| bullshit on founder-friendly terms. From this point of
| view, money given to Nikola isn't a bad investment, it's
| a marketing expense.
| pnw wrote:
| They did a SPAC in 2020 so his 'investors' were mostly the
| general public. Actual investors were pretty skeptical of
| them, e.g. Hindenburg shorted them extensively and called
| them a fraud.
| throwawayelon wrote:
| Another one you may not have heard is Elon Musk.. he's been
| delivering self driving cars since 2015
| consumer451 wrote:
| I am not a Musk fan at all, in fact I despise Musk 4.0,
| but what he accomplished prior to losing his mind is
| undeniable. He founded SpaceX, which absolutely
| accelerated our access to space by 20-40 years. Half of
| the satellites in orbit belong to SpaceX. SpaceX put more
| mass into orbit last year than all other _countries_
| combined.
|
| He accelerated the adoption of electric vehicles by at
| least ten years. If the worst of climate change
| predictions turn out to be true, this could make him one
| of the most beneficial humans of our time... that's
| assuming that his naive geopolitical angling doesn't kill
| us all, and that his brain implants don't turn us into
| corporate zombies.
|
| My point is, there is much about him to criticize, but he
| has delivered a lot in the past.
| tessierashpool wrote:
| _If the worst of climate change predictions turn out to
| be true, this could make him one of the most beneficial
| humans of our time..._
|
| Not really. Methane from cows causes more harm to the
| environment than cars do. If he had gotten the world to
| go vegan, that would have been doing the impossible. Musk
| made an idea fashionable and sold carbon credits.
| consumer451 wrote:
| I mean, Musk went the practical route. Make things that
| nearly everyone wants... fast cars that you can refuel at
| home for next to no cost.
|
| But I hear you about food. However, the sad joke is: we
| don't need vegan purity. If we could just convince
| everyone in wealthy countries to skip meat for only two
| days per week, then the we might actually hit 2C max temp
| increase. But everyone is all about paleo meat-only or
| vegan/vegetarian purity crap. We just needed some
| moderation, but that's not as sexy as being a vegan or a
| Hummer driver.
|
| We will pilot our extremes straight into the ground.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| I completely agree with you about 'vegan purity'.
|
| Making people abstain from meat completely will turn
| people into the meat-eating equivalent of alcoholics. I
| bring up the comparison because sobriety is contingent on
| a period of continued abstinence along with veganism or
| vegetarianism. You will be mocked if you called yourself
| vegan and ate meat a few times a month, as you would be
| mocked if you called yourself sober and drank a few times
| a month.
|
| Many people look at a lifetime of denying themselves a
| basic pleasure and rightly balk at the prospect and put
| it off to some distant 'later' or create a
| rationalization for why they don't need to do it. This
| wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem if we quit using
| absolutist terms like 'vegan' and instead came up with a
| way to make it a moral issue to acknowledge the problems
| associated with meat consumption without shaming those
| who limit it but do not abstain from it.
|
| Basically -- advocating that the solution is a 'vegan'
| one is probably not going to work, and if it does it will
| create (at least initially) a population of guilt-ridden
| people and an associated culture of shame. Let's think of
| a better way to do it.
| hef19898 wrote:
| All the scientifically relevant stuff would have gotten
| into space, Musk, SpaceX or not. All those Starlink
| satelites? I am still not convinced they provide any
| actual added value, besides giving SpaceX another product
| to raise funds against (Elon tried the same thing with
| FSD, which worked out less good so far).
|
| Also, we were well on our path to EVs, Tesla (not Musk
| himself alone) accelerated that. Ten years so is bold
| claim, and attributing that all to one single person is
| just nonesense.
|
| Edit: Tesla made shit tons of money by selling CO2
| credits to legacy car makers, so in reality Musk (rather
| Tesla, but that distinctions is difficult) had close to
| no positive impact on climate change and instead profited
| of others continue to polute. All Musk cares about is his
| image as being the tech-god savior of mankind, that and
| money.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > All those Starlink satelites? I am still not convinced
| they provide any actual added value
|
| Tell that to the Ukrainians. I'm told that they're big
| fans of Starlink as of late, I wonder why.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Oh, they work. Issue is, I know for a fact that there
| would have been alternative solutions for that. Or how do
| you think other militaries operate their communications?
| axus wrote:
| Buying space on commercial satellites and encrypting
| them. SpaceX and Starlink are cool because they're so
| much cheaper.
| brandonagr2 wrote:
| My car drove itself to work this morning, were you trying
| to be sarcastic?
| happytiger wrote:
| You clearly haven't raised money from investors with _that_
| question. /j
|
| Investors are _sheep_ and _follow their peers_. There are
| only a handful of mavericks in investment circles, and they
| generate the best and the worst returns.
|
| Consider that they all invested without _seeing the engine_
| or _looking under the hood_ of the demo vehicle. It's in
| the investor lawsuit -- they even poke fun at themselves
| about it.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Bingo. You see this in public shareholder calls all the
| time. Today, you can't find a tech company that doesn't
| say something like "We are integrating AI with LLM into
| our technology to blah". They don't say that because it's
| a meaningful or good product, they say that because
| investors give you a 10% stock bump just for saying
| "LLM".
|
| The same thing happened with crypto, machine learning,
| web 2.0, etc. Investors love a good buzzword and will
| reward a company handsomely for using them.
|
| Hell, that's like 90% of the reason FTX became as big as
| it was.
| rurp wrote:
| It was wild seeing companies have their biggest stock
| jump ever simply by talking about crypto magic beans on
| an earnings call.
| cogman10 wrote:
| My company just did a shareholder meeting. Of everything
| we described (and we had a KILLER year) basically the
| only questions that were asked revolved around our usage
| of LLMs. It didn't matter that we made a ton of money,
| new products, and happy customers. What mattered was how
| we are adding AI.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Well, please tell us, how are you adding AI?
|
| I say this only one-quarter sarcastically, I would
| genuinely like to know. The only real appilcations that I
| have seen so far are devs "learning" new languages.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Ha.
|
| Part of our software has a data ingestion and
| normalization process that can be somewhat costly.
| Basically, on a near per client basis we get data that
| needs to be transformed into our data model. We are
| currently investigating into using LLMs to setup our
| normalization DSL (or at least fill it out as best it can
| before a human signs off on it).
|
| There's also an investigation going on to allow a client
| to ask an LLM about there data. I'm not sure how well
| that one will pan out.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| I'm feeling the "we need to adopt AI because it's the hot
| new thing/investors want to hear it" pressure at work
| nonstop, including some annoying mandatory trainings on
| it. My brother in Christ, I'm still trying to get my
| teammates to use git and package management, AI is going
| to have to wait a little bit.
| verdverm wrote:
| maybe this is why ChatGPT outputs some of the things it
| outputs
|
| garbage in, garbage out
| kibwen wrote:
| Yet more proof that we could replace CEOs with ChatGPT and
| lose nothing.
| Centigonal wrote:
| Trevor Milton is to CEOs what Billy Mitchell is to pro
| gamers
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Billy Mitchell is a liar and a cheater, but he actually
| is really good at Donkey Kong. He has a publicly verified
| (in front of a crowd) score over 900,000. Much like how
| Lance Armstrong is both an excellent cyclist _and_ a
| doped up cheater.
|
| Billy is definitely an awful human being in other regards
| than just his cheating though, at least from what I've
| been able to tell.
| dmboyd wrote:
| This is sort of unfair because I'm sure this must've been
| part of the training set. But hilarious nonetheless. https://
| chat.openai.com/share/6a1fdfb4-9228-480f-961e-fa2c4b...
| peteradio wrote:
| I like how it adds in a positive environmental impact
| completely out of its ass, just like a real Marketer!
| asveikau wrote:
| Might be because the prompt is about an electric vehicle,
| buyers of which would be interested in environmental
| impact.
| lazide wrote:
| ChatGPT is all about replies that are believable. If there
| is real data,cool. But if not, also cool.
|
| Just like people!
| wk_end wrote:
| This is substantially _worse_ than anything ChatGPT would
| come up with.
|
| Edit: never mind:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38686399
| happytiger wrote:
| It's like a math proof lol.
|
| Validated peak tech. We have created an unlimited bullshit
| generator.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Honestly, it doesn't - I can't imagine ChatGPT producing
| _this_ density of blatant bullshit, not without a specialized
| prompt forcing it to. Bad as it is, ChatGPT by default still
| has some statistically average dignity.
| ravenstine wrote:
| If I was already an investor and saw that, my eyes would bug
| out so fast that they'd leave my skull and achieve orbital
| escape velocity. That quote is peak Dilbert boss.
| spacecadet wrote:
| LOL soooo good. The principles never get old!!
| gxyt6gfy5t wrote:
| Yet GM still gave them millions
| peterfirefly wrote:
| Mary led and that mattered.
| cvhashim04 wrote:
| Netflix has a couple series, a "Dictator's playbook" and
| "Mafia boss' playbook".
|
| What they really need to do is make one for tech scroungers
| and frauds like SBF, Holmes, Newman, Nikola founder, etc.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why stop there? These are the obvious scams, but let's
| look deeper. Let's look at how "legit" companies are
| screwing their users by using all of their personal data
| and convincing the public that everything is perfectly
| normal
| FractalParadigm wrote:
| Given GM's commitment to actively removing the most popular
| and asked-for feature in the automotive world from their
| own infotainment systems, I'm not even surprised. This is a
| company that has proven before and continues to prove that
| they simply don't give a fuck about technology, they've
| realized they can keep throwing gimmicks or buzzwords at
| consumers and maintain just enough mind-share to stay
| relevant. It's no shock to me that a company with that sort
| of culture willingly bought into the same kind of flashy
| demos and mosaics of buzzwords that they themselves take
| part in.
| 4death4 wrote:
| I literally bought puts immediately.
| nradov wrote:
| That's a good one. But in terms of sheer cluelessness, hubris,
| and word salad incoherency I still prefer this quote from Jeff
| Davis, co-founder of Razorfish. They were valued at $4B in
| 2000.
|
| "I think this definitely is not a fad, what's occurring right
| now. This is absolutely real; this is a revolution; we're
| packing rifles; and this is going to be something that's going
| to change the course of the way the world is functioning. We've
| asked our clients to recontextualize their business. We've
| recontextualized what it is to be a services business. We
| radically transform businesses to invent and reinvent them."
|
| Their actual business? Building web sites for other companies.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-dot-com-kids/
| auggierose wrote:
| Sounds like he was bang on right?
| wnevets wrote:
| That wasn't wrong in 2000, just bad timing.
| figassis wrote:
| I mean, circa 2000 where was the BS?
| tessierashpool wrote:
| everywhere
| happytiger wrote:
| I mean, sure, but didn't every single one of those clients
| have to adjust everything because of the rise of digital?
|
| "Just a website" was common criticism and still is.
|
| Great quote though. Those were heady days.
| notahacker wrote:
| So not unlike the elevator pitch for most of the "LLM for
| $industry" pitches floating around then :-)
|
| Wonder how many of them will still exist as brands in 24
| years' time...
| cvhashim04 wrote:
| None, but they'll sell and exit with a few mil like bandits
| in the near future while you and I toil at our 9 to 5 :P
| 77pt77 wrote:
| They do this because it works.
|
| Until _sometimes_ it doesn 't.
| alternative_a wrote:
| Oh, there is always SoftBank to the rescue.
| henry2023 wrote:
| Not even ChatGPT could hallucinate this.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| That sounds like a challenge!
|
| > ChatGPT CEO: Our company has spearheaded the development of
| Quantum Neural Cloud Computing, a revolutionary paradigm in
| the realm of artificial intelligence and data processing.
| We've seamlessly integrated quantum computing principles with
| neural network architectures, creating an unparalleled
| synergy that redefines the boundaries of computational
| capabilities.
| kirrent wrote:
| Despite being on shaky ground due to local minima, barren
| plateaus, classical simulability, and more, variational
| quantum computing is definitely a real field. ChatGPT can't
| even hallucinate properly.
| ssss11 wrote:
| Oh my god. The audacity to say that.. to even think of saying
| that bs!!!
| ssss11 wrote:
| Also this snippet: "The truck uses voice-activated controls
| rather than pushing buttons and reaching for various controls
| to help maintain a driver's focus on the driving task. "
|
| ...is bound to never have problems haha /s
| hef19898 wrote:
| And the other hapf of Nikolas name is sellingg that as the
| latest shit in order to save a buck on levers and buttons.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Because nothing does more to increase driver focus than
| getting in a heated argument with a machine. My rental car
| last month, towards the end of a long drive in a snowstorm,
| told me it was "time to take a break" and displayed a
| coffee cup on the dash where the speedometer used to be. I
| swear if it wasn't a rental car I would have put my fist
| through that screen.
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| I was driving a new company vehicle recently and while
| I'm cruising at highway speeds, it would pop up a warning
| that my washer fluid was low. Not sure when the optimal
| time to tell me is, but I can almost guarantee telling me
| at 60 mph is below optimal.
| joegibbs wrote:
| I don't think a single one of those sentences makes any sense
| at all, except for HTML5 being very secure, which is trivially
| obvious since it's not even a programming language.
| paxys wrote:
| I wonder if any of the ringleaders of the SPAC boom and bust will
| ever face charges. Close to a thousand companies took the SPAC
| route to go public between 2019-2022, with 613 in 2021 alone. As
| of early 2023 the average returns for SPAC investors are -62%
| (https://yalejreg.com/bulletin/was-the-spac-crash-
| predictable...). Meanwhile the financiers and founders/VCs/other
| insiders made off with billions, all without the pesky SEC
| getting in the way.
| dvt wrote:
| > I wonder if any of the ringleaders of the SPAC boom and bust
| will ever face charges.
|
| Charges for _what_? SPACs are essentially a legal (operative
| word) pump-and-dump. We need legislation to fix this. But a lot
| of government insiders made off with millions as well, so is
| there incentive there?
| paxys wrote:
| SPACs as a concept may be legal but there's a very large gray
| area around how individual ones were implemented/sold. There
| are already dozens of SPAC lawsuits making their way through
| various courts, and I don't think a larger federal-level
| investigation by the SEC or DoJ can just be written off as
| "SPACs are legal". IPOs are legal as well, but if a single
| investment bank was promising companies that it would use
| every trick in the book to pump and dump their worthless
| shares on retail investors, and did so hundreds of times, you
| can be pretty sure the feds would come down on them hard.
| Zigurd wrote:
| This is the key insight. You don't have to commit a gross
| violation, like using a patently illegal structure. But if
| all these SPAC offerings failed in a similar way, with the
| same parties repeatedly profiting from the same kinds of
| duff deals, with the same kinds of bag holders being sold
| the same line, there is a good chance they all skirted the
| law in similar ways.
| chollida1 wrote:
| What specific charges do you think they are guilty of? Chamath
| Palihapitiya would be the main culprit of dumping garbage on
| people that anyone would know of and I can't really find
| anything he'd be guilty of.
|
| You're allowed to be a cheerleader for your company.
|
| You're allowed to bring a business combination to the market
| and let people make up their mind if they want to be a part of
| it or get their money back from the SPAC.
|
| You're allowed to sell your shares when your lock up ends
|
| You're allowed to do this multiple times if people will
| continue to fund you.
|
| His SPAC companes are a whose who of failed companies.
|
| - Virgin Galactic Holdings
|
| - OpenDoor Technologies
|
| - Clover Health
|
| - SoFi Technologies
|
| and one failed SPAC Social Capital Hedosophia IV
|
| Maybe Chamath would have been better off creating a hedge fund
| that only went short
| minwcnt5 wrote:
| I wouldn't call SoFi a failed company (yet). They're still at
| roughly 10B valuation, same as what they IPOed at. That's
| actually pretty remarkable in this economy for a company
| that's still in pre-profit growth mode.
|
| OpenDoor isn't that bad either, they're down 60% from IPO,
| but a real estate company being able to retain that much
| value with the massive hike in interest rates also seems
| pretty good (competitors have done much worse, e.g. Compass
| and Redfin).
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > that's still in pre-profit growth mode.
|
| SoFi started operations in early 2011.
|
| How long are they planning to be in "pre-profit growth
| mode"?
| throwawaysugar wrote:
| > You're allowed to be a cheerleader for your company.
|
| You're not really allowed to knowingly cheer for a company
| you know to be 100% vaporware. That's fraud.
| lazide wrote:
| A surprising number of very smart people become incredibly
| dumb on the stand if/when it blows up. Being too dumb to
| understand it couldn't actually work is a defense. Part of
| why it's usually so important for them to not have anyone
| telling them so in writing inside their companies.
| Grazester wrote:
| Nikola seems to have a working semi now ready for production.
|
| https://youtu.be/LUA7Il252Ng?si=XqpeFw9-qpfPo2Tk
| Invictus0 wrote:
| I laughed so hard reading Hindenburg's report on Nikola. Absolute
| clown show; still can't believe they rolled that truck down the
| hill. I made 25 thousand dollars shorting the stock after the
| report came out.
| asylteltine wrote:
| Did he defraud rich/famous people? Seems to be the only way
| people get in trouble these days.
| syspec wrote:
| How does a SPAC become a publicly traded company? What's the
| process that allows it to become listed on a reputable exchange
| "without any real assets other than cash"?
| drexlspivey wrote:
| Same as every other company, you file some papers with the SEC
| and make a stock offering
| taimurkazmi wrote:
| Good. Straight up lied about an entire company
| hallqv wrote:
| Whoever is dumb enough to invest in a company that hasn't even
| bothered to come up with their own company name, but just copied
| the name of the current most hyped competitor in their category,
| deserves to lose their money.
| Jagerbizzle wrote:
| Not really disagreeing with your insight, but on the flip side
| of this, I bought the stock precisely because of the ticker
| name (when it changed from VTIQ to NKLA) and sold it shortly
| thereafter for a significant upside.
| sidcool wrote:
| He just got 4 years. He'll retire rich.
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