Comment by kevinskii
2 years ago
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-...
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.
Yet GM still gave them millions
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.
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Mary led and that mattered.
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.
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I literally bought puts immediately.
Reality - If you were an investor and saw this your check book would bug out.
LOL soooo good. The principles never get old!!
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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/
Sounds like he was bang on right?
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...
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
That wasn't wrong in 2000, just bad timing.
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.
I mean, circa 2000 where was the BS?
Back Street's back, all right!
everywhere
Oh my god. The audacity to say that.. to even think of saying that bs!!!
https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-tesla-cars-being-produced-now...
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
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.
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And the other hapf of Nikolas name is sellingg that as the latest shit in order to save a buck on levers and buttons.
They do this because it works.
Until sometimes it doesn't.
Oh, there is always SoftBank to the rescue.
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.
Not even ChatGPT could hallucinate this.
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.
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.
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Makes me think that reality is truly leaking in some way. That's something a worse model of LLM's would create.
that's something Roy and Moss would have written for Jen
It sounds like something Elon Musk would say.
Except it's missing a 2-5 year timeline that will never come to fruition.
It reads like something ChatGPT would come up with
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...
I like how it adds in a positive environmental impact completely out of its ass, just like a real Marketer!
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ChatGPT is all about replies that are believable. If there is real data,cool. But if not, also cool.
Just like people!
This is substantially worse than anything ChatGPT would come up with.
Edit: never mind: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38686399
It’s like a math proof lol.
Validated peak tech. We have created an unlimited bullshit generator.
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?
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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Another one you may not have heard is Elon Musk.. he's been delivering self driving cars since 2015
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Yet more proof that we could replace CEOs with ChatGPT and lose nothing.
Trevor Milton is to CEOs what Billy Mitchell is to pro gamers
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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.
maybe this is why ChatGPT outputs some of the things it outputs
garbage in, garbage out