> CNBC reports that none of the Wall Street banks it contacted were aware of any transaction or had committed to funding a leveraged buyout of Tesla.

Does that prove anything though? Let's imagine a bank is working on this deal; why would they tell a reporter? It's common for companies to deny things to the press even when they're true.

It's Wall Street and there would be rumors if someone was shopping the largest LBO ever. It's not like there are a lot of places you can go for this service, Tesla isn't going to back out on the deal because it leaked your bank has met with Elon.

Would there be rumors though, when improper disclosure could potentially be illegal and bring down the SEC on your head?

Also, even if there are rumors, why would that necessarily logically go from bankers talking to each other to immediately blabbing to the press?

It's rare for word of mega deals like this to not leak out in some fashion, doubly so after it's already been tweeted about by the CEO. If they had seriously been shopping this deal it would have already been in the WSJ. Considering the letter mentioned no funding I am under the impression that this is more of an Elon solo project and less of a serious undertaking by the company.

> Let's imagine a bank is working on this deal; why would they tell a reporter?

There is a difference between not telling a reporter and denying it to a reporter.

So there's the real story. Who is this financer (or group) with ~40 billion in capital that is willing to bet long on Tesla? That's really interesting to me, if Musk is being truthful here.

Fidelity or Google comes to mind. I think at some point they were having discussions with Google but then the company overcame the difficult conditions so they halted the talks: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/21/google-al...

Just guessing.

That could be Softbank. They already have $200 billion in investment lined up.

And apparently they are to some extent disillusioned investing in internet companies.

Totally, totally random thought, but I figured I'd record it, even though it doesn't seem to make sense.

Bezos?

I highly doubt it. For starters his wealth isn't liquid enough. He would need to give up shareholder control of Amazon or take on huge debt with his control of Amazon as collateral.

What, timed with an announcement of a merger between Blue Origin and SpaceX? :)

I could be wrong, but I don't imagine Elon likes Bezos very much.

Google/Alphabet. Larry Page has stated that instead of giving away his billions to charity he would prefer to give it to someone like Musk that is trying to fix world scale problems.

You don't think it's remotely a concern that a new law in Japan wiped out 40,000 Airbnbs overnight?

The future looks good for their services revenue considering the current growth momentum and the 1.3 billion active Apple devices they can sell services to.

Also they have services at 9.2B vs consensus 8.4B, which is a fantastic beat and 31% growth YoY.

He says he plays every waking hour of the day unless he's "sleeping, driving, or taking a bath". I think he's wasting a bit more than just money.

Yeah, wasting his bath time, since he could be playing then, too.

> They just elected a Nazi in Illinois

If you're talking about Arthur Jones, you're being very misleading. He won the Republican primary, but it was unopposed, in a heavily democratic district, and he was already denounced by Illinois Republicans.

I don't know, but I imagine nobody else wanted to spend money, time, or risk their reputation on an election they have almost no chance to win.

Amazon has not operated at a loss since 2001. They've had positive free cash flow every year since then.

Apparently people (the investor class) are upset that a company has the audacity to the invest in itself rather than pay out dividends.

The absolute horror.

Most actual investors in Amazon were never upset by this. They bought with the full knowledge that Bezos was playing a long game.

They also fended off any sort of corporate raiders/vulture capitalists who could leverage a billion in debt, buy it out, take it private, then strip it of assets.

Growing tech companies have never really been expected to pump out dividends.

Microsoft didn't pay one until 2003, when it was 28 years old and sitting on $43 billion in cash (and then it declared an annual dividend totalling less than $1 billion).

It's pretty much the only Electron app I don't totally hate. I've grown to like it after using it at work.

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability.

The chapter about “religious debates” in particular was hilariously accurate, about how teams of people will argue about strongly held personal beliefs about things that can’t be proven.

Well having a discussion in comments can be productive if you’re learning new things. And there is a lot of good content here that many of us wouldn’t discover otherwise.

I imagine reading research or news posts on HN and commenting can be more productive than, say, reading reddit’s r/pics and commenting.

And yet probably 95%+ of the content will just be entertainment to us, not used productively.

Maybe for all of you fortunate to work in tech get professionally useful info here?

We can imagine lots of things but it doesn’t mean they’re true. You’re just moving the goalposts so that HN doesn’t fit into the “bad” category.