Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Europe is trying to leave Starlink behind

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 79 posts

Re: Europe is trying to leave Starlink behind

#51

Post by TrapLord_Rhodo »

pstuart wrote: post #40
TrapLord_Rhodo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then why does spacex have superior outputs?

> then why does spacex have superior outputs? * The dictate of fail fast and iterate quickly, along with simplification of mechanisms and ample compute power. * Not being mired in the bureaucracy of committees and government bodies to answer to Yes, being enabled by a billionaire with a dream made a huge difference. But that's not a guarantee, as there's been 3 such billionaires and only one SpaceX.

Or... incredibly long work hours and all of that just falls into place? Have you ever read any books about spaceX? His "surges" are what made spacex great.

Re: Europe is trying to leave Starlink behind

#52

Post by CamperBob2 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #16
kranke155 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Because Elon like many people is extremely smart on narrow fields, he is not generally smart (he can’t fight for example, which is a form of intelligence. He also struggles with being honest, demonstrating potentially low EQ). That’s not to say he’s dumb - it’s just that there is no one (!) who is generally smart - there is no generally applicable intelligence, experience always matters, and you always learn by…

He had little choice but to defect to Trump's side. If Harris had won, the damage due to supporting Trump would have been finite and likely fixable. However, a Trump victory would wreck essentially all of his companies if he'd gone all-in for Harris. They have massive dependencies on Federal government support. No way to hand-wave the Nazi salutes away with game theory, though. Those were just stupid. Safe to say tha…

It would be interesting to hear this refuted rather than simply downvoted, by the way. What are some alternative explanations?

Re: Europe is trying to leave Starlink behind

#53

Post by Zigurd »

TrapLord_Rhodo wrote: post #27
jltsiren wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood the fetishization of long working hours. If there is a job where you can meaningfully work 80+ hours a week, the same (and often better) results can be achieved with more employees working fewer hours. If the work can't be split like that, it's probably demanding enough that you can't sustain more than 20-30 productive hours a week in the long term. It's possible to mix reasonable hours of deman…

then why does spacex have superior outputs?

"Superior outputs" seems to have stagnated at Elon companies: From Falcon 9 to Starship, and from Model Y to Cybertruck, for example.

Re: Europe is trying to leave Starlink behind

#54

Post by mindslight »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #16
kranke155 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Because Elon like many people is extremely smart on narrow fields, he is not generally smart (he can’t fight for example, which is a form of intelligence. He also struggles with being honest, demonstrating potentially low EQ). That’s not to say he’s dumb - it’s just that there is no one (!) who is generally smart - there is no generally applicable intelligence, experience always matters, and you always learn by…

He had little choice but to defect to Trump's side. If Harris had won, the damage due to supporting Trump would have been finite and likely fixable. However, a Trump victory would wreck essentially all of his companies if he'd gone all-in for Harris. They have massive dependencies on Federal government support. No way to hand-wave the Nazi salutes away with game theory, though. Those were just stupid. Safe to say tha…

Stay out and distance yourself from either camp? You're absolving the agency of the richest person in the world. And I get that might hard when one has got a crippling social media addiction and can't help but run their mouth. But again, let's not absolve the agency of the richest person in the world.

Re: Europe is trying to leave Starlink behind

#55

Post by jltsiren »

TrapLord_Rhodo wrote: post #49
jltsiren wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And before 2001, Eutelsat was an intergovernmental organization. You can't get rid of legacy baggage just by rebranding yourself. You need to get rid of existing stakeholders, directors, and managers. And to discard the existing organizational structures and organizational culture. It's not possible to keep making good decisions indefinitely. Every organization eventually regresses towards mediocrity. Maybe incentive…

I don't really follow what you are arguing here. You starting with long hours is the same as hiring two times the amount of people, then you say that the european companies are all to old to innovate? There are plenty of european startups in the space race, they just can't compete... because europeans have a distain for "Fetishizing long work hours"

Those are two mostly unrelated discussions.

If you do demanding work, a full working week is 20-30 hours. Even 40 hours is too much and cannot be sustained in the long term. You can do more in the short term, but you'll eventually burn yourself out. Longer hours are only possible with routine and/or fake work that doesn't really make you more productive.

All organizations eventually stagnate, because humans have their own goals instead of being mindless cogs in the machine. SpaceX is still young enough that it may not be showing clear signs of stagnation, but it's hard to see that from the outside. Google is a few years older and clearly suffering from conflicting interests.

Re: Europe is trying to leave Starlink behind

#56

Post by CamperBob2 »

mindslight wrote: post #54
CamperBob2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He had little choice but to defect to Trump's side. If Harris had won, the damage due to supporting Trump would have been finite and likely fixable. However, a Trump victory would wreck essentially all of his companies if he'd gone all-in for Harris. They have massive dependencies on Federal government support. No way to hand-wave the Nazi salutes away with game theory, though. Those were just stupid. Safe to say tha…

Stay out and distance yourself from either camp? You're absolving the agency of the richest person in the world. And I get that might hard when one has got a crippling social media addiction and can't help but run their mouth. But again, let's not absolve the agency of the richest person in the world.

Traditionally that's what most public-facing CEOs and other business leaders have done, keeping their politics to themselves in order to avoid needlessly alienating customers and to maintain business continuity as administrations come and go.

That won't work with Trump. Not if you built your businesses on sectors that he is targeting, ranging from EVs to space exploration and research. Musk had to pick a side. Neutrality was never an option.

Few if any of us, regardless of wealth, have any real "agency" with Trump in office. There's nothing he can't fuck up and no one he can't fuck over. This is not an attempt at justification or absolution, just a simple statement of fact.

Re: Europe is trying to leave Starlink behind

#57

Post by mindslight »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #56
mindslight wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stay out and distance yourself from either camp? You're absolving the agency of the richest person in the world. And I get that might hard when one has got a crippling social media addiction and can't help but run their mouth. But again, let's not absolve the agency of the richest person in the world.

Traditionally that's what most public-facing CEOs and other business leaders have done, keeping their politics to themselves in order to avoid needlessly alienating customers and to maintain business continuity as administrations come and go. That won't work with Trump. Not if you built your businesses on sectors that he is targeting, ranging from EVs to space exploration and research. Musk had to pick a side. Neutra…

Your whole argument rests on excluding the middle, which could have been tepid support instead of appearing on stage to throw Nazi salutes, giving out money to voters signing fake Orwellian pledges about "supporting" the Constitution, and threatening to primary non-maggot congressional candidates. You've essentially set up a Roko's Basilisk, based around one small hateful man rather than superintelligence.

Re: Europe is trying to leave Starlink behind

#58

Post by kranke155 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #52
CamperBob2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He had little choice but to defect to Trump's side. If Harris had won, the damage due to supporting Trump would have been finite and likely fixable. However, a Trump victory would wreck essentially all of his companies if he'd gone all-in for Harris. They have massive dependencies on Federal government support. No way to hand-wave the Nazi salutes away with game theory, though. Those were just stupid. Safe to say tha…

It would be interesting to hear this refuted rather than simply downvoted, by the way. What are some alternative explanations?

What do you mean? He’s obviously got a point? Even Steve Bannon thinks so. He says Elon was just ahead of the curve.

How much of Elon’s conversion was genuine vs mercenary is impossible to know, but it’s likely.

Re: Europe is trying to leave Starlink behind

#59

Post by antifa »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #56
mindslight wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stay out and distance yourself from either camp? You're absolving the agency of the richest person in the world. And I get that might hard when one has got a crippling social media addiction and can't help but run their mouth. But again, let's not absolve the agency of the richest person in the world.

Traditionally that's what most public-facing CEOs and other business leaders have done, keeping their politics to themselves in order to avoid needlessly alienating customers and to maintain business continuity as administrations come and go. That won't work with Trump. Not if you built your businesses on sectors that he is targeting, ranging from EVs to space exploration and research. Musk had to pick a side. Neutra…

It would probably have worked just fine if the richest/biggest CEOs didn't jump to be first in line to appease Trump?

Re: Europe is trying to leave Starlink behind

#60

Post by matthewdgreen »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #16
kranke155 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Because Elon like many people is extremely smart on narrow fields, he is not generally smart (he can’t fight for example, which is a form of intelligence. He also struggles with being honest, demonstrating potentially low EQ). That’s not to say he’s dumb - it’s just that there is no one (!) who is generally smart - there is no generally applicable intelligence, experience always matters, and you always learn by…

He had little choice but to defect to Trump's side. If Harris had won, the damage due to supporting Trump would have been finite and likely fixable. However, a Trump victory would wreck essentially all of his companies if he'd gone all-in for Harris. They have massive dependencies on Federal government support. No way to hand-wave the Nazi salutes away with game theory, though. Those were just stupid. Safe to say tha…

Jeff Bezos seems to have made a few minor genuflections in Trump's direction and is otherwise unaffected (except for the wreckage Trump's tariffs are likely inflicting on Amazon.) No, Musk's decision was a choice. And now he's stuck with that choice. There is almost certainly no way that things "just go back to normal" with a future Democratic administration.
Post reply on HN