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> I have no idea why anyone would expect him specifically to be able to do it while no one else could People said the exact same thing before Tesla and SpaceX.
by duck 4y ago
> I have no idea why anyone would expect him specifically to be able to do it while no one else could
People said the exact same thing before Tesla and SpaceX.
- pionar 4y agoThey also said the same thing when he said he would fix Flint's water supply and rescue those kids in Thailand, both of which he did not see through.
- qaq 4y agono way people who do things don't have 100% success rate what a surprise.
- diebeforei485 4y agoFlint's water supply is fixed.
- monetus 4y agoNot yet. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2022/04/13/flint-set-replace-remaining-lead-pipes-september-nrdc-says/7311799001/ https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/flint-water-...
- diebeforei485 4y agoFlint's population is over 400K. The crisis was over in 2019: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/23/flint-water-crisis-2020-post-coronavirus-america-445459 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/23/flint-wate...
- rtkwe 4y agoNo thanks to anything Elon did afaik. It was all the slow boring fix of state work.
- glenstein 4y agoRight, and that was the reason the point was raised. Whenever we achieve the grand unified theory of comment sections, it will include a formalized concept for this process of context loss as an explanation for where arguments come from. The deeper in you go, the more likely that the reason the point was raised will be lost. And crosstalk will arise between people carrying on the original point and those who experience the latest comment as its own starting point.
- diebeforei485 4y agoFirst result from a google search of "elon musk flint water" was https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/elon-musk-flint-michigan-water-b2011633.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/elon-musk-... Fact is the issue was largely already solved, even though the perception was that the water was still unsafe.
- beeboop 4y agoElon did exactly what he said he'd do about Thailand
- aaronbrethorst 4y agoAccuse people of pedophilia and send private investigators after them?
- beeboop 4y agoPeople like you make it exhausting any time Musk comes up in conversations online. Please keep your poor takes on Twitter where I can avoid you.
- aaronbrethorst 4y agoI feel the same way about Elon superfans, if it makes you feel any better.
- Aeolun 4y agoTo be fair, nobody wanted him to fix those issues. He’s also guaranteeing that the soldiers still alive in the Mariupol steel plant can communicate with their families, because of a swarm of Starlink satelites currently positioned above Ukraine. I dunno, I find the guy abrasive, but he does get results.
- textadventure 4y agoI think it would be fair to say that "fixing Twitter" would be more in line with Musk's actual experience (ie: running a tech company) than rescuing kids in Thailand or fixing water supplies.
- roguecoder 4y agoNone of the companies he's run have been tech companies, much less ad-revenue social media platforms: they are manufacturing companies with tech valuations. And the software from them is not good.
- textadventure 4y agoHis background is as a developer himself, and he co-founded x.com which was very much a tech company, which later merged into PayPal. Musk was CEO of PayPal for a few years until the company was bought by eBay.
- theturtletalks 4y agoYishan does a great job of explaining why social media is a different animal[0] and how when people try to fix one problem, they invariably create 3 more. It’s also unclear whether Elon would bring Jack back. 0. https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440 https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440
- NikolaNovak 4y agoThanks; that was insightful read. I try to be fairly... neutral, not objective (as I'm not inhuman) but aware of multiple sides, and this helped reinforce that perspective. (FWIW, if it'll save anybody else either eye strain or 5 min on Google, I ended up parsing it through Twitter Reader App to read end-to-end and print to PDF; not affiliated, never heard until 20min ago, no clue if it'll work for anybody else) https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1514938507407421440.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1514938507407421440.html
- acid__ 4y agoI think Yishan wrong, at least in the case of Reddit. > They would like you to stop squabbling over stupid shit and causing drama so that they can spend their time writing more features and having to adjudicate your stupid little fights. There is a community on Reddit that is currently at risk of being banned according to the admins. The community is a heavily moderated location to respectfully discuss controversial topics, one that is fairly insular and doesn’t advertise itself, and takes pride in respectful and nuanced discussion. They regularly have innocuous posts removed, while nearly all posts with truly dangerous ideas stay up — we can attribute that to one-off moderation errors, but repeated threats from the admins cannot be. The admin threats seem related to a specific issue which is not even in the top five most controversial things discussed on the subreddit. They’ve made it clear that any discussion on the topic is unacceptable, no matter how civil.
- MauranKilom 4y agoI'm curious which community you are talking about, although I understand that you had reasons for avoiding naming it.
- itsoktocry 4y ago>People said the exact same thing before Tesla and SpaceX. This is such a tiring rebuttal. Do you really believe Elon Musk is the best to lead any enterprise because of Tesla and SpaceX? I mean, they both produce great products, but aren't necessarily great places to work, nor do either have any measurable lifespan outside of the easiest money environment we've ever seen. That is to say, we don't really know how good these companies are...yet. One or the other, or both, could turn out to be investor capital burning machines. Which is to say, not great businesses. Twitter is already that.
- runarberg 4y agoIt is also perfectly feasible for a company to perform well despite their CEO not because of them.
- slig 4y ago> we don't really know how good these companies are...yet His company made rockets that fly backwards and park autonomously.
- kennywinker 4y agoSo did blue origin, and that was started a couple years before spacex. I suspect this is more the case of an idea that's time came, rather than any particular feat of genius or insight by a company founder. Once you have the computing power + speed, and the built-up engineering knowledge and tools, there's nothing stopping anyone with a half a billion in government funding from building something like that.
- zarzavat 4y agoTheir rocket only went up and down. Weather balloons do that too. Not the same as an orbital rocket.
- vimy 4y ago> In 1999, after watching the rocketry biopic film October Sky, Bezos discussed forming a space company with science-fiction author Neal Stephenson.[23][24] Blue Origin was founded in 2000 in Kent, Washington, and began developing both rocket propulsion systems and launch vehicles.[25] Since the founding, the company was quite secretive about its plans[26][27] and emerged from its "self-imposed silence" only after 2015.[25] .... As early as 2005, Bezos had discussed plans to create a vertical-takeoff and landing spaceship called New Shepard. Plans for New Shepard were initially kept quiet, but Blue Origin's website indicated Bezos' desire to, "lower the cost of spaceflight so that we humans can better continue exploring the solar system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin I had no idea. I always assumed he was inspired by SpaceX. October Sky is a great movie btw.
- hooande 4y agoPeople said the exact same thing before Hyperloop and his announcement that he was taking Tesla private
- JumpCrisscross 4y agoThe difference between his performance when his money is at stake versus otherwise may be salient.
- slg 4y agoI think there is a clear distinction between trying something new that no one has done before and trying something that many other people have attempted before and failed. For example, was Tesla a success because of some unique ingenuity by Musk? It seemed to me that his success was more the result of a commitment, both personally and financially, to building EVs that no one had previously had. Yes, that eventually led to success. But he didn't succeed were others tried and failed. He succeeded were the other auto manufacturers didn't even try because of their own bias towards the status quo. With Twitter he would need to succeed where every other social media platform has failed.
- FartyMcFarter 4y ago> It seemed to me that his success was more the result of a commitment, both personally and financially, to building EVs that no one had previously had. Not even that. Other people founded the company in 2003; he became Tesla's fourth CEO when they were about to launch the Roadster in 2008.
- wand3r 4y agoI don’t know why this is such a meme. According to elon basically him, jb and martin eberhard founded tesla which was a holding company that acquired AC propulsion and the basic IP. Regardless, of how you label it Elon created Tesla and there is no Tesla without elon. Do we say the Warren Buffet owes everything to the founder of the New Bedford based Jewelry company Berkshire Hathaway? Hate Musk all you want but IDK why people try and discredit him with stuff like this EDIT: Changed AP => AC
- FartyMcFarter 4y ago> According to elon basically him, jb and martin eberhard founded tesla which was a holding company that acquired AP propulsion (i think it was called) and the basic IP. That's not what the actual founders say though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eblPwXFb7TE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eblPwXFb7TE They say he was not a founder within the first minute of the video.
- hkt 4y agoIt seems weird to say that Musk did those things. Surely the army of engineers, the public subsidies, and the cash from his dad's emerald mines helped?
- btilly 4y agoAs soon as someone repeats the old canard about the cash from his dad's emerald mines, I know to disregard everything else that they have to say. First of all there are a lot of questions about whether that story is true. And even if it was, it isn't material to Elon's success: https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-musk-about-journalism?s=r https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-mus... Second, what makes Elon truly remarkable is what he accomplished AFTER he made < $200 million from selling PayPal. Most of which were impossible according to conventional wisdom in the industries that he accomplished them in. Anyone who fails to recognize that, has demonstrated a complete lack of comprehension.
- nicolas_t 4y agoThanks for this link, this and the quora post is the most balanced article I've read about this so far and is a breath of fresh air in the highly polarized coverage of the man.
- hkt 4y agoTurns out Musk's dad gave an interview and confirmed the emerald mine: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-dad-tells-bi-about-the-familys-casual-attitude-to-wealth-2018-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-dad-tells-bi-abou... Key quote: 'We had so much money we couldn't even close our safe' So, as soon as somebody cites a fact that is confirmed by an authoritative source that can be googled pretty trivially, you cease to take them seriously. Honestly, this is par for the course with Musk fans and it baffles me. As for Musk himself, um, I'll continue to go with "rich kid gets richer due to quantitative easing, some supposed business sense albeit not much actual evidence for it, and state subsidies for most of his businesses". It is also probably worth calling this part out too: an interview with Elon Musk is not "balanced coverage" of Elon Musk.
- emkoemko 4y agohe said boring tunnel fair would be 1$.. would have pods driving at over 150mph.. would have a elevator from road level down to these "tunnels" would give away bricks to people building affordable homes, all i seen about that was they sold bricks for 200$... boring company would make tunnels faster then anyone else..
- vimy 4y ago> boring company would make tunnels faster then anyone else.. That part is true. Their custom tunnel machines dig twice as fast as other machines.
- gamblor956 4y agoNo, it doesn't. Boring Co's tunnel machines are just customized versions of existing machines. At best they are slightly faster than they base machines, and only in specific soil conditions. However, as demonstrated by the Hawthorn and Vegas tunnels, the Boring Co machines are, in practice/in the real world, no faster than the non-customized machines, while at the same time yielding significantly lower quality tunnels (referring to the concrete shell built to protect the excavated portion of the tunnel). And here's the crazy thing: if Elon had actually done his research, he would have known that the "automated digger" Boring Co plans to build already exists. They're just really expensive, because digging machines are built to-spec for each project based on soil conditions. These existing machines can be powered by multiple sources, though generally they aren't electrified due to the demands on the local power grid. In a nutshell, you'd have to build a dedicated substation to handle the electricity draw; the only reason Boring Co's tunnel machines don't is because they dig small utility-sized tunnels rather than large transit-sized tunnels.
- vimy 4y ago> Prufrock is a next generation Tunnel Boring Machine designed to construct mega-infrastructure projects in a matter of weeks instead of years, and at a fraction of the cost. The current iteration of Prufrock, called Prufrock-2, is designed to mine at up to 1 mile/week, meaning a tunnel the length of the Las Vegas strip (approximately 4 miles) can be completed in a month. Prufrock-3 is designed to be even faster, with the medium term goal of 1/10 human walking speed, or 7 miles/day. https://www.boringcompany.com/seriescround https://www.boringcompany.com/seriescround Isn't that faster than existing machines?
- HWR_14 4y agoThere are no government subsidies to mine for Twitter.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> There are no government subsidies to mine for Twitter. Control of media is the drill for mining for government subsidies, not the oil field.
- HWR_14 4y agoTrue. I suppose he's stretched a little thin to continue chasing subsidies and needs them to come to him now.
- zelon88 4y agoWhy does he have to be such a pedantic and cringy person while doing it though? Bezos runs a successful business, is just as predatory, but doesn't try to fight Vladimir Putin. Or brag about throwing shade at Bill Gates. Or sleep on people's couch. The guy can't afford a hotel?
- jimkleiber 4y ago> Or sleep on people's couch. The guy can't afford a hotel? I question whether he actually sleeps on their couches. He may sleep in their spare bedrooms, or spare master bedrooms, or spare houses. But possibly he's sleeping on couches—I guess I imagine it's more likely part of his business model, which mostly appears to me to be raising capital exceedingly well, getting other people to pay for his ventures. It's a hard sell to get investors to say, "Hey, I'm going to use all your money on these mansions." Much easier to say, "All the money you invest, I will spend on making you profits." In a way, his main model seems to be similar to nonprofit fundraising and in nonprofits, funders seem to hate if the people running the show look to be too wealthy, as it may appear to be a waste of funds. But I could be off on this, just the vibe I get.
- mgfist 4y ago
- sam0x17 4y agoThose were greenfield developments, however
- gamblor956 4y ago??? Toyota made green cars a thing before Tesla. And Chevy and Nissan made EVs. Without the Prius and the EV1, there wouldn't have been a market for Tesla. SpaceX launches rockets into space. 7 countries and 3 private companies were doing that for decades before SpaceX. SpaceX just does it cheaper. And note that SpaceX's research is almost entirely funded by government sources, and is largely just a continuation of reusable rocket research begun by NASA in the 1970s (which ended when their budget was cut by the Reagan administration).
- lutorm 4y ago_Everything_ is evolutionary, if you think hard enough. But I think you're discounting the step between "reusable rocket research by NASA in the 70s" and actually building a production system. "SpaceX's research is almost entirely funded by government sources" I don't believe this is true. Do you have sources for this claim? The USG has purchased services from SpaceX, the income from which SpaceX has then used to develop reusability. But that's not the same thing as "the USG funding SpaceX's reusability development." In fact, the government missions initially specifically disallowed using reused boosters or Dragons.