Elon Musk on How to Build the Future • Hacker News Board

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#431

Post by AstralStorm » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 7:14 AM UTC

MPSimmons wrote: post #317

_RPM wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People that worship another person generally aren't well informed. For example, people look at Elon Musk like he's a pop culture icon -- I see people talking about him on my news feed all the time, yet these people aren't even technical. It's just a way for someone to identify to some type of group. Oh look what Elon's doing, he's so great. My reaction is, why are you sharing press articles about this person? Does it…

Are you accusing Elon Musk of being the thinking man's Kim Kardashian?

There were a few like him before, but none as successful or as rich. Previously, we had: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, that president of GM. And more.

Compared to them, Musk is taking a much harder, potentially more important cause.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#432

Post by sheer_horror » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 7:18 AM UTC

thomaskcr wrote: post #257

gist wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He is a walking PR campaign. Why do we barely know any of the higher level engineers at Space X or Tesla? Remind me a great deal of what existed with Steve Jobs. Another example is Jeff Bezos with Amazon. Not saying that in tech circles some of their execs and/or engineers are not well known but certainly not people that your Aunt would have heard about. Also I guess Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook (although Sheryl Sa…

I have literally never heard Elon mention another person who already worked at the company. I can find plenty of times he was announcing a key hire, like when they brought in Peter Hochholdinger. Every new feature, product, etc is announced by Musk. Which like you said is similar to Apple. I think similar to Jobs, Elon is at least significantly involved in a lot of details - and I think similar to Jobs he feels that…

In most all Tesla product unveilings, Elon will make a directed thank-you to the 'Tesla Team'.

The blog posts are mostly made by the Tesla Team.

In the gigafactory unveiling, some speeches in Norway and the Netherlands, and other press events, a top engineer JT speaks alongside him. He brought his chief designer on stage at the gigafactory unveiling, as well as another engineer aside from JT.

Companies like this need a BDFL. It's crucial that Elon stays in complete control to ensure focus, not to flounder it.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#433

Post by AstralStorm » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 7:24 AM UTC

bbgm wrote: post #107

ChuckMcM wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider computational biology. There are lots of problems which hinge on understanding the impact of genetics on populations and variations in genetics and that effect. As there are already sources of genetic data sets and infrastructure to generate those data sets, genetic research becomes more of a data science problem than a medical problem.

This is the part I somewhat disagree. I've seen lots of strong computational biologists make the leap into generic data science, but I've seen way too many CS/data science types struggle. They take the data at face value, not recognizing the fact that biological data has flaws. A sound understanding of biology/chemistry helps a lot with identifying those flaws and generally with designing experiments/research. Admitt…

That is mostly because those "types" as you call them didn't take math courses or slept through them, or don't use the math tools in everyday work - because it's not needed.

In other words, they're not Computer Scientists. They are Computer Programmers instead. (or maybe Computer System Engineers)

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#434

Post by techmicrobiz » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 7:40 AM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #374

sneak wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, kudos to Scribd for perhaps the maximum LOC codebase for "how to make plain text completely fucking unusable". There's real irony there in it being an article about delivering value to society through making useful technology.

OK, I was able to clean it up into plain text and post it to Pastebin: http://pastebin.com/vcEe9KWP Used the $$ selector in Chrome to find Scribd's .ff0 elements, copied them into SublimeText, did some regex work to clean out the tags (a span element for every line? with absolute positioning? Really Scribd?), and then exploited the fact that paragraphs got jammed together with no whitespace between the last punctuati…

Thanks for this. Plain text is so much easier!

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#435

Post by unboxed_type » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 7:48 AM UTC

Thanks alot for sharing this!

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#436

Post by contingencies » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 8:00 AM UTC

pkinsky wrote: post #412

contingencies wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it PayPal essentially helped an established incumbent monopoly (US credit card companies) with issues at the time maintain and extend its global relevance, lock down domination of cross-border consumer payments, meaningfully extend US intelligence sector surveillance, and continue to fuck the little guy. Only Europe and China are building a resistance now, 15 years later. That you have 5 or 10 rich peop…

When you say resistance, you mean 'implementing a locally controlled version of the problematic US-controlled system they're resisting', right?

That would be the cynical (and probably realistic) interpretation, however because both the European (most of Europe, nearby countries) and Chinese network (nodes across much of the world, particularly Asia) are relatively internationally distributed (and thereby subject to multiple bureaucracies) they are somewhat less prone to centralized interference/monitoring. Further, neither region has as bad a record as the US in using financial systems for aggressive political gain.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#437

Post by icelancer » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 8:01 AM UTC

sheer_horror wrote: post #429

projektir wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about that, Musk has that effect on some of the best people, and his effect, due to his status, is very strong. I'm actually highly concerned about Musk's overall effect on society, specifically due to the kind of people he'll have that effect on.

I don't understand why you would be concerned and not elated by his effect on society. Tech has been stuck for 40 years in most major industries, and in a time when it seems impossible to overcome the entrenched incumbents of those industries, here comes a person who shows us that it is in fact possible. Now people have hope that our future will be decided not by frail, unmoving conglomerates, but instead by nimble a…

Because Musk is not perfect. What makes him great is also what makes him terrible. And people seem to want to ignore the first part and focus on the second part around here.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#438

Post by entwife » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 8:03 AM UTC

Bakary wrote: post #402

gameshot911 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world is a better place when our desires are attained.

Desires are almost bottomless though

If only there was a way, a vehicle so to speak, for liberating ourselves from the suffering of our desires.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#439

Post by jakub_h » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 8:13 AM UTC

Noos wrote: post #418

kstenerud wrote: post #105

It always saddens me when I see a slew of Debbie Downer comments from the HN crowd. "Yes, he ushered in the electric car revolution, but the production carbon footprint is still huge!" "Yes, he's building rockets, but he took a bunch of government money!" "Yes, he's paving the way to Mars, but what has he done for world hunger?" And it not just with Musk, but really with anyone who has been successful. I would have t…

To be fair though, Tesla cars are an expensive luxury brand and have no real revolutionary potential at the moment. The revolution is to make affordable electric cars and the infrastructure to build them, and there are serious doubts about how much Tesla can scale to that. It's similar to electric bicycles, in that there are some masterfully engineered, high tech ones out there...at the cost of a decent used motorcyc…

> Tesla cars are an expensive luxury brand and have no real revolutionary potential at the moment. The revolution is to make affordable electric cars and the infrastructure to build them

So...their plan being to bootstrap the large-scale manufacturing of affordable vehicles with a smaller number of more expensive sales, you're saying that Tesla simultaneously is and isn't revolutionary at the same time?

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#440

Post by Allvitende » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 8:26 AM UTC

unusximmortalis wrote: post #273

grecy wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I understand and agree with the point you're making, I think it's also important to acknowledge we're all different, we're all good at different things and we all eventually fulfill some purpose. Some of us are great at spending time with our wives and taking the kids to soccer practice. We fill our lives with family and friends, and get immense joy from that. We're so busy, likely, we'll never do anything "not…

I believe the humanity moves on its way naturally anyway, those trying desperately to move mountains are simply wasting their lives here on Earth. A balanced way is a key to everything.

Humanity moves on its way naturally because it is made up of individuals. If none of those individuals did anything useful or never "moved mountains", humanity would never move forward or progress.