Hacker News: whamlastxmas

New comment by whamlastxmas in "Starship V3"

whamlastxmas — Thu, 14 May 2026 20:04:51 +0000

"claims that are false" is such a broad statement and applies to basically 99% of business leaders, and probably 100% of anyone who's a household name. Elon gets that reputation 50x worse than, say, Larry Ellison, but only because when Elon says "revenues are up 12.5%" and it's actually 12.4%, there are 800 headlines the next day that he's lying and misleading investors and the SEC should investigate.

in the long term, elon has a very good track record for attempting to follow through with his stated intentions. sometimes things change, or he changes his mind, which is his right as much as it is anyone's. that doesn't mean "false claim".

"The thing he had success with were things that were known to be good ideas, reusable rockets, electric cars and space based LEO communications."

This is so outrageously not what history reflects. Elon started an electric car company when the entire industry very strongly believed both, individually (car and electric cars), are absolutely stupid, terrible ideas. And Elon did both at the same time anyway.

If you asked Hacker News 15 years ago if starting a rocket company was a "good idea" and a "good way to make a trillion dollars", you'd be hazed ruthlessly. Everyone in the establishment aerospace community said it was impossible or absolutely divorced from reality.

Elon, more than anyone alive, has been way ahead of the curve on good ideas when everyone else thinks they're idiotic. online payment processing, electric cars, reusable rockets

New comment by whamlastxmas in "Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid"

whamlastxmas — Thu, 14 May 2026 19:58:20 +0000

It's not about "just raise prices", it's about some industries (e.g. upstart restaurants) that already have massive failure rates and have hyper competition. Even airlines don't make money on flights, and instead only on selling credits cards or other perks.

If your operating costs are some percentage higher for accepting cash versus the coffee shop across the street that doesn't, you're more likely to fail.

New comment by whamlastxmas in "Starship V3"

whamlastxmas — Wed, 13 May 2026 16:34:58 +0000

it's an appeal to net worth and the argument that you don't become the richest person on the planet by being a massive idiot that everyone likes to paint him out as. he's problematic and sucks but he's not an idiot (in business)

New comment by whamlastxmas in "Starship V3"

whamlastxmas — Wed, 13 May 2026 15:40:34 +0000

That's a lot of alleged failure for one of the richest people in history. Maybe you should go start a car company and launch company and show us how it's done

New comment by whamlastxmas in "Starship V3"

whamlastxmas — Wed, 13 May 2026 15:36:20 +0000

What's the evidence? Tell us with real data why it's so stupid

New comment by whamlastxmas in "Higher usage limits for Claude and a compute deal with SpaceX"

whamlastxmas — Thu, 07 May 2026 15:28:00 +0000

I would say ruling over people without their consent is blatantly morally wrong, yes. In the same way anything non consensual is wrong

New comment by whamlastxmas in "Higher usage limits for Claude and a compute deal with SpaceX"

whamlastxmas — Thu, 07 May 2026 15:24:20 +0000

The idea they're shutting down xAI is outrageously dumb and to me just sounds like FUD before the IPO

New comment by whamlastxmas in "Higher usage limits for Claude and a compute deal with SpaceX"

whamlastxmas — Thu, 07 May 2026 15:19:19 +0000

Agreed there is a huge effort to smear as much as possible. Between parent comment being very highly voted and Wikipedia page being militantly updated and seeing these tired, wrong talking points everywhere, it's pretty obvious

New comment by whamlastxmas in "GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay"

whamlastxmas — Mon, 04 May 2026 15:18:34 +0000

The TLDR for people who don't intuitively understand why: existing shareholders are diluting their stake in the company by issuing new shares and getting money for those new shares. It's simply selling part of the company. Not profit.

New comment by whamlastxmas in "Cursor Camp"

whamlastxmas — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 15:10:31 +0000

Firefox has years long outstanding bugs in regards to capturing cursor movements. It's really frustrating as someone who has spent years developing Babylon and three.js games and apps and uses FF as my primary browser. It basically makes Firefox completely unusable if you're relying on capturing cursors.

New comment by whamlastxmas in "Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war"

whamlastxmas — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 03:20:10 +0000

Lmao at pure facts getting downvoted

New comment by whamlastxmas in "US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification"

whamlastxmas — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 15:32:30 +0000

And net tax payers are funded by exploiting the labor of lower tax payers

New comment by whamlastxmas in "Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit"

whamlastxmas — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:28:07 +0000

TFA feels like a thinly veiled excuse to shit on Elon, I closed it the second I saw his name. It's not surprising he doesn't know what he's talking about

New comment by whamlastxmas in "Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?"

whamlastxmas — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 14:42:22 +0000

What's the evidence that Annie is rich?

New comment by whamlastxmas in "Are We Idiocracy Yet?"

whamlastxmas — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 13:49:37 +0000

I really love the way you communicated this and wish HN posters could more routinely invite curious conversations like this. Which isn't to say I'm perfect at it either

New comment by whamlastxmas in "Are We Idiocracy Yet?"

whamlastxmas — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 13:40:32 +0000

If the side you follow says the science community is political and biased, then "just look at the literature" isn't going to help. It's like telling an atheist they'd believe in Jesus if they'd just read the bible.

We are lied to constantly by people who influence our lives. You can't even go to the grocery store without being lied to - being told breakfast cereals are healthy, that low fat options will make you less fat, shrinkflation, misleading unit pricing. It's no wonder people are so distrusting

Even if you're a democrat you still have to admit that democrats lie, a ton, and it's super obvious. Maybe if our leadership in general, on both sides, was capable of being decent humans then we'd be able to build trust and stop doing dumb shit as a civilization

New comment by whamlastxmas in "France pulls last gold held in US"

whamlastxmas — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 15:25:50 +0000

If you bought your house for $500k 20 years ago, sold it today for a million, then bought it again tomorrow for a million, would you describe that to your friends as having just made $500k? Like yes in the most pedantic technical accounting way it's a gain. In spirit I would call this an unrealized gain

New comment by whamlastxmas in "Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset"

whamlastxmas — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 17:47:34 +0000

Since the advent of the internet, and in fact conversation any in format, people have not overly cared about facts. This isn't a new phenomenon

New comment by whamlastxmas in "Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset"

whamlastxmas — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 17:46:11 +0000

People have been claiming HN is turning into Reddit for over a decade to the point it's in the guidelines to not make the comparison

New comment by whamlastxmas in "Oracle slashes 30k jobs"

whamlastxmas — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 21:37:49 +0000

Socialzied medicine works well in many countries where it's 100% government controlled and socialism is much more cultural accepted. The problem isn't government involvement, it's the AMERICAN government involvement, which is largely controlled by billionaires and rich donors (i.e. capitalism)

Also software can be reproduced without cost. I cannot get back surgery without a lot of physical time and labor and resources.

I think you're rage baiting at this point so I'm done.