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It’s easy to be pessimistic about Musk timelines/ big tech but I am thrilled that ambitious, real world, hard projects are happening in the US again.
by ianm218 1mo ago
It’s easy to be pessimistic about Musk timelines/ big tech but I am thrilled that ambitious, real world, hard projects are happening in the US again.
- adamtaylor_13 1mo agoYou're being down-voted (and so shall I) but I think you're right. Despite all the animosity towards him, Musk is doing things that are economically meaningful for our nation. We'll need a few more of "him" to dig us out of this situation I reckon, but overall I still hope it's possible. (Anyone asking antagonistic questions can go ahead and save their fingers, I won't respond to the petty comments.)
- zoomaboom 1mo agoGolden Dome might be "economically meaningful" but it will also lead to WWIII so, no thank you.
- ericmay 1mo agoNo it won't. Separately other countries don't get to dictate our internal policies or whether we decide to build any sort of missile defense system. If we're going to be nuked over it, then oh well they'll get nuked too. Never can we live as hostages to wanna-be dictators and tyrants (Xi Jingping, Vladimir Putin, IRGC, &c.) and if they want to blow the whole world up then so be it but acquiescing to their bullying is simply not an option. If you think it's an option, then we should issue our own nuclear threats and take them hostage instead.
- potatototoo99 1mo agoIs your cognitive dissonance that strong that you don't see that if all major countries follow that line of thought all have to have their own golden domes and invite WW3?
- AnimalMuppet 1mo agoHow does everyone having golden dome invite WWIII? We can't shoot missiles at them, so therefore let's go start a war with them? What sense does that make? And if we do, how are we going to fight them? By shooting missiles at them?
- zoomaboom 1mo agoIt's an offensive first strike system
- AnimalMuppet 1mo agoA missile defense system is an offensive first strike system? How do you figure that?
- zoomaboom 1mo agoThat's literally what T*ump said about it. Also the heritage is the DARPA FALCON project.
- ericmay 1mo agoI don’t think that’s an appropriate use of the term ‘cognitive dissonance’, but suffice to say, no, if the US develops the Golden Dome as currently described there is no danger of all major countries also developing the same technology and then starting World War III.
- Gud 1mo agoHe was, until he took a chainsaw to things he didn’t understand. I was a huge believer in Elon musk. I invested and made a lot of money in Tesla before Model S had even entered serial production. Now? Fuck you Elon, go Peter Beck…
- nyc_data_geek1 1mo ago[flagged]
- watutalkinbout 1mo agoMusk is a marketing genius.
- guywithahat 1mo ago[flagged]
- nrmitchi 1mo ago*financial engineering
- krsw 1mo agoHe doesn't build anything. Everything he's done has been acquisitions that he tries to astroturf as founding.
- fatal94 1mo agoThis sums up my and many others timeline of his understanding of engineering diciplines: https://mastodon.social/@rodhilton/109572674700288958 https://mastodon.social/@rodhilton/109572674700288958
- hparadiz 1mo agoPosts like this is why HN is made fun of now in circles where real engineering happens. In reality you would not be able to follow what he's talking about because it would be well over your head.
- rurp 1mo agoFew Americans have done more than musk to destroy state capacity and to enable corruption on a massive scale, all while enriching himself to an unprecedented degree. That's great for him and his cronies that he has gotten so wealthy doing it, but he's been a huge net-negative to most humans. I get that rockets are cool and a lot of people in the tech bubble think that starlink is the greatest thing ever, but most people don't care about that nearly as much as they care about seeing their children die from preventable diseases he cut the funding for or getting violently ill because he drove thousands of food inspectors and researchers out of a job. Handling the enormous federal debt that he continues to play a part in worsening is going to very painful in the long run.
- throwaway894345 1mo agoLol why is this downvoted? There is no dispute that he spent hundreds of millions of dollars to elect Trump and seat himself in government while his companies are financially dependent on government programs and contracts. This is an obvious conflict of interest, and also completely on par with all of the other corruption we're seeing from this administration.
- ryandrake 1mo agoExactly. I actually laughed out loud at OP's comment. Elon Musk has never done anything to benefit the broader "us." The idea that "we" need people like Musk to "dig us out of this situation" --a situation that rich men like Musk put us into in the first place-- is absolutely ridiculous. Billionaires don't "dig" anything except the foundations for things that are going to make them even more money.
- consensus1 1mo agoSo where is the guy who is respectful to the government and compliant with regulations that is out there building millions of EVs, rockets, and massive satellite constellations? If he existed I could respect your argument. But in reality the only guy who seems to be able to build a modern mass manufacturing company in the US is the trillionaire who runs roughshod over all forms of government oversight that gets in his way. That should tell you something about where the problem lies here. Elon Musk isn't the problem, he is the symptom. The problem is that it is basically required to be ruthless and corrupt to get anything done in this country at the scale, price, and timeline needed to be commercially viable. The solution is less regulation and bureaucracy, not more.
- btmiller 1mo agoDiscounting challenges to your beliefs by burying your head in the sand is certainly a choice.
- miltonlost 1mo ago[flagged]
- throwaway894345 1mo ago> economically meaningful for our nation 3,000 short term jobs doesn't put a dent in the thousands of jobs he has cut, not to mention the losses to our economy due to the tariffs, immigration policy, and deficit spending that he caused. > We'll need a few more of "him" to dig us out of this situation I reckon I'm of the impression that you can't corrupt your way out of corruption.
- Noaidi 1mo agoThere is a reason Musk is so rich. He got most of his funding from taxpayers: https://www.moneytalksnews.com/slideshows/billion-and-counting-times-musk-benefited-from-your-tax-dollars/ https://www.moneytalksnews.com/slideshows/billion-and-counti... It is not him, SpaceX is a government funded project yet he keeps all the money. You should be outraged.
- vlovich123 1mo agoThere's a lot to criticize, but this argument seems extremely misleading to me. The government wants to put things into space. SpaceX says "this is how much we're willing to take to do so" and bids on the government contract to do so. Notably, this is drastically cheaper launch pricing than the Space Shuttle and whatever other venues NASA had. These weren't R&D grants which are more arguable.
- Noaidi 1mo agoWe the people owned the space shuttle after we paid to have it built. Do "we the people" own any of those spacex rockets?
- vlovich123 1mo agoThe government spent drastically more money on the space shuttle (which is widely acknowledged as a mistake of a design) than what the private industry ended up delivering. It’s rent vs build and I’m not so sure the government benefits so much from owning space shuttles. But arguing that the government purchasing launch volume is the same as them buying the R&D for the shuttles is not a logical coherent and consistent position. For what it’s worth a common refrain I’ve heard from people who hold your position is that government patents are also the property of the people. So not only does the government spend a lot on R&D, in such a model it’s incapable of monetizing this R&D as a way to recoup those expenses.
- Rover222 1mo ago[flagged]
- archagon 1mo agoIronically, this is the most Reddit-brained kind of comment imaginable.
- ineedaj0b 1mo agoEveryone who’s someone has moved to Twitter (or bluesky), even PG does not comment here like he used to. Reddit is dead, the investors know this, their only income source is selling data to AI companies, and discord ate the “build your own community” lunch. Talk with someone from a lab and they’ll tell you weighing Reddit data too highly results in more “hallucinations” so even their product is bad.. All the high signal commenters left Reddit, and they’re leaving here slowly too.
- Rover222 1mo agonope
- micromacrofoot 1mo agoIf it wasn't consolidated largely to a singular "him" we could be doing more of these, see: FDR's New Deal By this method the money largely comes from the government and is captured into private interests, literally hollowing out the government tax base for corporate power
- archagon 1mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- stackghost 1mo ago[flagged]
- cesarvarela 1mo agoI wish he kept a lower profile. His public behavior risks overshadowing the work SpaceX is doing, work that could benefit humanity in ways we can’t yet fully anticipate. I wish we had more Elons pushing us toward a "future that looks like the future," as he said.
- sixothree 1mo agoIf we just don't talk about the blatant racism, the nazi salute, or that rampage about removing brown people from jobs they didn't deserve, it might stop being such a huge problem. Sure buddy.
- tasspeed 1mo agowe need more nazis?
- jrflowers 1mo agoI love that people see a website about one of musk’s ideas and go “wow this is real and happening” in the year of our lord 2026
- xboxnolifes 1mo agoOf all of Musk's ventures, SpaceX seems to actually do things and not just say they do things.
- gulfofamerica 1mo ago[dead]
- mcculley 1mo agoMore of Musk's ventures need a Gwynne Shotwell. Imagine what Tesla could do with a full-time adult at the helm.
- testing22321 1mo agoThese comments are so strange, because you’re demonstrating how far your head is in the sand, willfully. Of course Musk talks big. He is almost always late. Lots of things have never happened, or have not yet worked (but they’re still trying) At the same time he has monumental successes that nobody, ever, has achieved. Worlds safest car (multiple times) worlds highest selling car (model y), car of the year, massive factories building at a speed and quality that made Toyotas CEO say they’re in trouble and have a lot to improve. The whole supercharger network that smashes every other one. World’s first reusable rocket, done it 300 times now. Only two others have done it once. By far, by far more launches than every country and company in the world put together. Starship coming along. To say that he never does anything is a very, very strange set of blinders to view the world through
- jjulius 1mo ago>At the same time he has monumental successes that nobody, ever, has achieved. "Nobody ever" doesn't really feel accurate here. >Worlds safest car (multiple times)... According to which body? Tesla's interpretation of NHTSA data? Some other organization? Did other cars prior to Tesla's inception obtain this title "multiple times"? >... worlds highest selling car (model y)... In 2023, the Y peaked at ~1.22 million. In 1923, the Model T sold ~2.09 million. >... car of the year... Numerous bodies label things "car of the year", and many cars were named that before and after Teslas were produced.
- mrcwinn 1mo agoHeck. Yeah. I'm with you. This is GOOD. Social media is unhealthy. You know what else is unhealthy? Hacker News' constant bashing of every. single. thing. ever.
- tcmart14 1mo agoBut its also hard not to be. I'm not a fan of Musk and it doesn't even have to do with Musk himself as its a common theme I see among a lot of the big tech companies or really any company doing a big project in my neck of the woods. An hour north east of me, there has been big on going data center projects for 10+ years. Sounds good right? I got a lot of family and friends in the trades. But I can almost set my watch to it. When work ramps up, its always good pay and 15 years of guaranteed work until suddenly its not. 8 months go by, suddenly everything is paused and all those contractors are out of work for a year and a half until things start up again. Then its rinse and repeat.
- thegrim33 1mo ago"I almost sold a car today, but if I did, sure it would have been some income, but who knows when the next time I would sell another car would be? Why bother? It's rinse and repeat"