Thunderf00t has lost last of his marbles and remaining bits of credibility

[EEVblog]

I'm not familiar with this particular Yout00ber, but knowing Americans' mentality,

FYI, TF is not an American, he is british and lives in the Czech republic

[magic]

And watches American TV and rants about American elections and millionaires.
Might as well be an actual American, it's same thing.

Reality truly is a social construct
Don't believe Americans (or Canadians, same thing) telling you otherwise.


I hope it's clear now that by "American" I really mean a certain sort of mentality which currently dominates the US, not exactly physical location.

[tom66]

I'm not familiar with this particular Yout00ber, but knowing Americans' mentality,

FYI, TF is not an American, he is british and lives in the Czech republic

He formerly did live in the New York State area though, I think he worked for a university there for about a decade, so I expect that's where a lot of his opinions on the US come from.

[tszaboo]

There wasn't anything I would disagree with.

You heard one side of an argument, without bothering to research otherwise, of course you'd agree.
- Only unionized manufacturers were invited to the EV meeting. Whether you agree or disagree with that reasoning.
- 7.5 billion has not been "spent" its been allocated. The VW charging network was a bit of a disaster so they'd want safeguards in place preventing that from happening again.

Think about who benefits from keeping EV competition out and keeping workers non-unionized..

Right, so you can always find an excuse if you look hard enough.
Arguing about semantics also doesn't help either. It only means that they didn't misappropriate or steal the funds, they are just incompetent, and failed their goals completely. How is that any better?

[EEVblog]

I'm not familiar with this particular Yout00ber, but knowing Americans' mentality,

FYI, TF is not an American, he is british and lives in the Czech republic

He formerly did live in the New York State area though, I think he worked for a university there for about a decade, so I expect that's where a lot of his opinions on the US come from.

Ah, yes, he worked at Cornell until 2012.

[Psi]

I've often wondered if a big reason why Thunderf00t attacks everything SpaceX does is because SpaceX is a very "engineer" rich company and Thunderf00t's a scientist.
I can see Thunderf00t being far more in line with the NASA approach to development where scientists play a bigger role.
 
SpaceX tend to hire large teams of engineers and manage those engineers using managers who are former engineers etc..
There's a huge amount of "Screw it, we'll test it live and fix anything that breaks" instead of methodical scientific study.
It may just rub Thunderf00t the wrong way when a team of primarily engineers does awesome stuff.
I'm sure SpaceX are doing research as well, but it's very "engineer" rich.

[vk6zgo]

And how do you actually know that your understanding is correct?

Well, the same way you do about anything else? (Yes, that means that you could be mistaken ... but that does not mean that you have no clue.)

More than half of the country having opposite opinion should give you some hint it's not so white and black.

That doesn't follow logically? It is perfectly logically consistent for half of the country to be wrong and the other half to be right about something.

In the recent US elections, around 60% of the eligible population voted.
We have no idea of the opinions of the 40% who did not.

[EEVblog]

I've often wondered if a big reason why Thunderf00t attacks everything SpaceX does is because SpaceX is a very "engineer" rich company and Thunderf00t's a scientist.
I can see Thunderf00t being far more in line with the NASA approach to development where scientists play a bigger role.

Out of curiosity I did a search for his Elon videos, and the first one seems to have been 8 years ago about the Hyperloop.
So I suspect it was Hyperloop that made up his mind that Elon was *insert whatever issue here* and that was that.
First SpaceX video seems to have been the the earth-to-earth Starship (then called BFR) passenger transport 7 years ago, which was admittedly a really dumb impractical idea and deserved to be busted.
And I guess that has spilled over into everything Elon related.

[wraper]

^If they get it really instantly reusable with high reliability, it's not that dumb of an idea actually. They probably could do it with just Starship with no booster as they don't need it to reach orbital velocity. Also Thunderf00t said that Starlink will never happen (it did obviously) and that Starship will never work. Although its development is not finished yet, that prediction already sounds pretty dumb but Phil keeps doubling down.

[wraper]

BTW he blocked me for suggesting my own sarcastic option to his poll after his IFT-4 flight livestream.

[EEVblog]

Also Thunderf00t said that Starlink will never happen (it did obviously) and that Starship will never work.

To be fair I believe he said it would never be profitable and would ultimately go bankrupt. Verdict is still kind of out on that one, but it's looking very successful, so might end up being a bad call.

[wraper]

Also Thunderf00t said that Starlink will never happen (it did obviously) and that Starship will never work.

To be fair I believe he said it would never be profitable and would ultimately go bankrupt. Verdict is still kind of out on that one, but it's looking very successful, so might end up being a bad call.

It's already profitable. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/just-5-years-after-its-first-launch-the-starlink-constellation-is-profitable/
IIRC he first said it won't happen, then said it would be financially unsustainable. He moves goalposts all the time, the same happened with his Falcon 9 predictions.

[EEVblog]

This just popped up in my recommended videos. It's from a fan, someone who wants him to just go back to his old videos.

[Ranayna]

If you were to look at my fuller statement that was my actual point. Elon Musk would want the subsidies on EV's, to benefit him and Telsa financially.

Elon said many times he'd preferer no subsidies for anyone.

Subsidies are against Musk's interests. He has reached profitability on cars others are making a loss on. Subsidies would just help them catch up.

I might not be up to date, but for some time Tesla only made a profit because it could sell emission certificates to other car makers. What are these emission certificates but a form of subsidy? They are issued as an incentive to build more EVs and/or to build fewer ICE cars.

[Siwastaja]

I might not be up to date, but for some time Tesla only made a profit because it could sell emission certificates to other car makers.

AFAIK this was a long time ago but clearly it lives in the memories.

[nctnico]

I might not be up to date, but for some time Tesla only made a profit because it could sell emission certificates to other car makers.

AFAIK this was a long time ago but clearly it lives in the memories.

Emissions rights are still a major source of income for Tesla though:
https://carboncredits.com/tesla-hits-record-high-sales-from-carbon-credits-at-1-79b/
US$ 1.79 billion in 2023. This accounts for about 10% of the profit.

To be clear: these emission rights are bought by other car companies to allow them to sell... ICE cars  So (super simplified to the point it is likely wrong but it doesn't make it any less stupid) for every Tesla sold, also 1 ICE car is allowed to be sold.

[Siwastaja]

So (super simplified to the point it is likely wrong but it doesn't make it any less stupid) for every Tesla sold, also 1 ICE car is allowed to be sold.

Very interesting way to think and not completely stupid. You can of course also argue with the more classic way that this payment makes it more expensive to produce ICE cars and cheaper to produce EVs, offering incentive to transition into producing EVs. But your point is interesting because it can only work temporarily and requires ICE vehicles being manufactured, kind of chicken-and-egg incentive.

[coppercone2]

I saw the word mental and heard diariah within 5 seconds of playing the video and turned it off.

What happened to debating the facts instead of dissing style and personality like its a rap battle? The jerry springer show had more class 

[nctnico]

So (super simplified to the point it is likely wrong but it doesn't make it any less stupid) for every Tesla sold, also 1 ICE car is allowed to be sold.

Very interesting way to think and not completely stupid. You can of course also argue with the more classic way that this payment makes it more expensive to produce ICE cars and cheaper to produce EVs, offering incentive to transition into producing EVs. But your point is interesting because it can only work temporarily and requires ICE vehicles being manufactured, kind of chicken-and-egg incentive.

I see it differently. Based on fuel consumption for ICE cars which is still increasing, the emission trade system allows for keeping on selling inefficient ICE cars in markets (like the US en Europe) where price doesn't matter so much to people. The fines for not meeting CO2 emission quotas in the EU seem to be much more expensive compared to buying the emission rights. So to me it looks like the emission rights are allowing ICE car manufacturers to keep on doing what they always did instead of innovating. For sure the emission rights help Tesla to move forward but so do the CO2 emission quotas in the EU (and I think these quotas also exist in the US) which make inefficient ICE cars more expensive. IOW: there are two systems in place and it seems one is cancelling the other instead of amplifying.

[Zero999]

This just popped up in my recommended videos. It's from a fan, someone who wants him to just go back to his old videos.

I've only seen the odd Thunderf00t video and found that video interesting and a little sad.

If he's got TDS then is it because it stems from EDS?

I saw the word mental and heard diariah within 5 seconds of playing the video and turned it off.

What happened to debating the facts instead of dissing style and personality like its a rap battle? The jerry springer show had more class 

I get that, his use of language is a bit childish, the way he just swears for the sake of it is also silly, but he does make some good points, so it's worth sticking with.

[John B]

This just popped up in my recommended videos. It's from a fan, someone who wants him to just go back to his old videos.

That's creepy. Youtube recommended me the same video, basically at the same time, despite me not engaging with anything TF related in quite a while.

Does google fingerprint anything on the forums, and then can most likely match the same computer using youtube?

[Andy Chee]

That's creepy. Youtube recommended me the same video, basically at the same time, despite me not engaging with anything TF related in quite a while.

Does google fingerprint anything on the forums, and then can most likely match the same computer using youtube?

A fingerprint can be obtained from YouTube viewing patterns on YouTube website alone, no 3rd party site harvesting needed.

For example, one thousand viewers might watch electroboom, followed by styropyro.  If you decide to watch electroboom, there's a very good chance that styropyro will show up in your recommendations.

[coppice]

Also Thunderf00t said that Starlink will never happen (it did obviously) and that Starship will never work.

To be fair I believe he said it would never be profitable and would ultimately go bankrupt. Verdict is still kind of out on that one, but it's looking very successful, so might end up being a bad call.

This is one of those issues like Motorola's Iridium network in the 1990s. It provided phone calls quite well at any spot on Earth. However, other divisions of Motorola were ensuring GSM networks would be available almost everywhere, and roaming agreements were being put in place so you could call a GSM phone almost anywhere on Earth The bits where you couldn't didn't generate enough traffic to make the Iridium system viable. There are lots of people offering rural 5G ISP service in the UK now, with an antenna on the chimney stack, right next to the TV antenna. Maybe 5G will be another generation of starving out the satellite option.

[wraper]

Also Thunderf00t said that Starlink will never happen (it did obviously) and that Starship will never work.

To be fair I believe he said it would never be profitable and would ultimately go bankrupt. Verdict is still kind of out on that one, but it's looking very successful, so might end up being a bad call.

This is one of those issues like Motorola's Iridium network in the 1990s. It provided phone calls quite well at any spot on Earth. However, other divisions of Motorola were ensuring GSM networks would be available almost everywhere, and roaming agreements were being put in place so you could call a GSM phone almost anywhere on Earth The bits where you couldn't didn't generate enough traffic to make the Iridium system viable. There are lots of people offering rural 5G ISP service in the UK now, with an antenna on the chimney stack, right next to the TV antenna. Maybe 5G will be another generation of starving out the satellite option.

5G usually offers good speed only on high frequency channels like n78 close to a cell site. For wider coverage something like n28 (700Mhz) is used that offer much wider coverage, usually with narrow bandwidth like 10MHz, so for rural areas speed usually won't be that great. Also Starlink gen 3 satellites will offer much higher bandwidth with gigabit speeds. So the only major reason for getting 5G instead of Starlink will be a monthly cost as currently there is no price advantage even for 5G router over Starlink terminal as price is about the same.

[coppice]

Also Thunderf00t said that Starlink will never happen (it did obviously) and that Starship will never work.

To be fair I believe he said it would never be profitable and would ultimately go bankrupt. Verdict is still kind of out on that one, but it's looking very successful, so might end up being a bad call.

This is one of those issues like Motorola's Iridium network in the 1990s. It provided phone calls quite well at any spot on Earth. However, other divisions of Motorola were ensuring GSM networks would be available almost everywhere, and roaming agreements were being put in place so you could call a GSM phone almost anywhere on Earth The bits where you couldn't didn't generate enough traffic to make the Iridium system viable. There are lots of people offering rural 5G ISP service in the UK now, with an antenna on the chimney stack, right next to the TV antenna. Maybe 5G will be another generation of starving out the satellite option.

5G usually offers good speed only on high frequency channels like n78 close to a cell site. For wider coverage something like n28 (700Mhz) is used that offer much wider coverage, usually with narrow bandwidth like 10MHz, so for rural areas speed usually won't be that great.

The real problem with rural coverage around here (Yorkshire) is homes in dales. A rooftop antenna handles a lot of homes, but it doesn't take much of a valley to make things very expensive with substantial towers and planning permission. Those places are obviously cellular black holes. The thing is if 5G covers most people's needs, can the remainder finance a satellite network? Most people around here who are off the fibre to the home network, are not so far that the ISPs can't offer 200Mbps service with a 75% of rating guarantee (i.e. lower than 150Mbps to speedtest.net for other than a network fault situation gets you a refund). We are getting fibre to the home in two weeks, but the farmhouses not far beyond us won't.