Elon Musk

I can see a few of Tesla's ideas being legit gamechangers but trying to buck 100 years of auto manufacturing practices in the name of "disruption" is so incredibly stupid that only a galaxy brain like Elon Musk could've come up with it

plus they definitely seem to be committing some sort of obvious accounting fraud. their "profitable" Q3 made no sense whatsoever.

yeah theres no way they havent done a ton of illegal shit in a number of areas

Elon Musk, 99% of what I heard about him is that he wants to build all these hypothetical super-fast hyperloop tunnels or some bullshit. Tunnels to baseball stadiums, to space, to Chicago, to stranded Thai boy scouts. But all he's done is made luxury electric cars, which are like so fucking what? As soon as other car companies start mass-producing much more affordable and equally reliable and efficient electric cars, even more than they are now, in a couple of years, Teslas will be about as radical as Bentleys or some other luxury brand.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, December 11, 2018 10:46 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this sometimes good thread will forever be sunk by self-owning posts such as this one

afaict all the EV nerds who are not musk fans by the jaguar now?

like he doesn't even have the luxury market

also looking forward to alleged public "rides" on the hawthorne test boring co thing next week.

Trying to figure out how I self owned. Is it because what I reduced his accomplishments to (spurring others to make electric cars?) can be construed a big deal? Like he's some electric car martyr who paved (har) the way for others?

Anyway, let me know when I can take a Tesla train cross country in an hour or whatever and, if any of us are alive then, I'll concede his genius.

I did hear someone talking on NPR this morning about how limited discussion of self-driving vehicles has been (to sort of change the subject). The most novel idea he offered was a self-driving ambulance with a host of automated diagnostic tools that you could call to your house in an emergency. Stuff like that. But nothing about tunnels, so I assume it was not Musk talking.

you have taken a very "skeptical asshole" posture toward something and then you offered "99% of what (you) heard about" it in a paragraph that was part joking sure but also, I have to assume, a good summary of what you actually know about it.

all he's done is made luxury electric cars, which are like so fucking what?

SpaceX seems like an interesting company with several very impressive engineering feats to its credit. tbh, I doubt that Elon Musk has had much, if any, direct input on how these were achieved. At most he sets lofty objectives and his employees do the real work.

they mostly buy scrapped Russian rockets iirc

I'll take Virgin Galactic over SpaceX tbh if only because Branson seems like slightly less of an asshole

lol no

um

guys they can both just be assholes ok its not an unpopularity contest

so true

I bring up Branson in part to demonstrate that Musk didn't have any uniquely genius ideas, he had p much the same ideas other billionaires had

also VIRGIN GALACTIC just sounds cooler than SpaceX come on

(cues up XTC's "Another Satellite")

maybe if your a galactic virgin lol faced

heh

damn

coincidentally ive been antagonized by horrible nerds on twitter for the last couple days cause i said going to space is dumb and childish

Hah

It is tho

Musk yet to do anything as evil as suing the nhs iirc

attempting to undermine public transpo projects in the pursuit of selling lousy cars is pretty bad

That it is

full disclosure: I didn't know about the NHS thing

wait is Musk Sir Miles Axlerod or The Underminer. pick a movie.

wtf r u talking about

attempting to undermine public transpo projects in the pursuit of selling lousy cars is pretty bad

― lag∞n, Wednesday, 12 December 2018 10:06 AM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But in the best traditions of the auto Indy which is about the only thing he hasn’t learnt from carmakers.

I guess my point, as such, was that the only thing he's really *achieved* has been his line of fancy cars. Everything else has been sort of a pipe dream work in progress that seems more talk than payoff, as of yet. That is to say, I understand that Space x is a thing, but I don't understand what that thing is. To privatize space travel?

mostly

(I'm in favor of space travel+research fwiw)

lol you guys are such haters.

Space x’s number one thing is to earn money by putting things into orbit.

If he wants to build rockets, that's cool, but it really does seem most directly a guy with money does things for other people with money project, unless one factors in the abstract potential benefits of future space travel. I agree that space travel and research is mostly a good thing, but I'm not sure how good it is in the hands of a select few with the money to do it. For example, who owns the fruit of research financed by Space X?

Which is to say, at the rate we're going Elon Musk will mostly be known as the guy that owns the moon.

afaik they aren't financing any research, so not to worry!

space travel and research is childish and dumb actually

no more so than sports

you use the garbage we throw into orbit every day. spacex puts more garbage that you use into orbit more cheaply than everyone else by reusing the rockets, which they manage to land back on earth after launch.

sports is way better than space travel

spacex might still be a shit business model. new forbes article about that today. nba is a good business model. not paying college players probably the best business model.

sports is way better than space travel

them's fightin words

also stupid words

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cLOBHEON20

them's fightin words

also stupid words

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, December 11, 2018 6:36 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wow try growing up then get back to me

typed out a semi-drunk rant about sports vs Musk but then decided it was just easier to use the FP

sports is way better than space travel

for mere earthbound clods like us, sure. but sports are also childish and dumb. I mean that in a good way

sports and space travel are both run by tech billionaires

however, steph curry does not believe we've landed on the moon

sports has athletes who can dunk space travel has what some smelly nerds