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No Billionares at FOSDEM

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Re: No Billionares at FOSDEM

#101

Post by michaelt »

throw5959 wrote: post #72
wormlord wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All engineers and other professionals told him that landing rockets is bullshit Every company has some kind of mythology where someone says "you'll never make it in this town!". The reality is that uncrewed propulsive landing was technologically feasible since the soviets landed a rover on the moon. NASA propulsively landed a rover on Mars back in 2011. Like I said, listening to billionaires is probably interesting…

Sorry but no, this is absolutely not what happened. I am watching it closely ever since SpaceX was founded in 2002. There is an incredible gap between the tech demo you're speaking about, and actually landing a heavy orbital rocket, and then doing it 100 times in a row without a hiccup. Mars is completely off topic, as they didn't land the booster there. We had Space Shuttle before and it didn't say much about landin…

> There is an incredible gap between the tech demo you're speaking about,

Didn't Apollo 11 land on the moon using a rocket, then take off from the moon again, back in the 1960s?

Not exactly a tech demo. And the Apollo missions had the additional challenges of being crewed, and targeting an atmosphere and gravity they couldn't reproduce on earth for test purposes.

The SpaceX stuff is neat though, compared to the defence industry clowns they're competing with.

Re: No Billionares at FOSDEM

#102

Post by psadauskas »

Thorrez wrote: post #89
wormlord wrote: post #15

I don't know how someone could look at Dorsey/Musk/Bezos actions and still be interested in what they have to say. There's probably a lot to be learned from someone who worships money, assuming that your goal is to emulate them. However their lifestyle and ideology is inherently dangerous to workers and life on earth as we know it. So yeah I don't really care what they have to say beyond knowing how the enemy views t…

Elon Musk is concerned about climate change, and created Telsa to lead the migration to electric cars to help combat climate change. That seems like a positive impact to life on earth.

Musk declared in 2018 that climate change was the most significant threat humanity would face this century.

But then more recently, he's said that farming doesn't contribute. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1672793968587702272

He flies on his private jet all over the world, that alone contributing 100s of times more than the average household. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/elon-mus...

His social media platform is one of the largest spreaders of climate change misinformation.

He recently campaigned for and spent hundreds of millions to elect a guy who believes climate change is a hoax, which will likely delay any progress we could make by years. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-260-million-spendi...

His unelected, unofficial government department is targeting huge cuts to the EPA. https://www.eenews.net/articles/epa-in-elon-musks-crosshairs...

So maybe in the past he was concerned about climate change, but that appears to no longer be the case, or its further down on his list, below accumulating billions in wealth and amassing political power.

Re: No Billionares at FOSDEM

#103

Post by throw5959 »

michaelt wrote: post #101
throw5959 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but no, this is absolutely not what happened. I am watching it closely ever since SpaceX was founded in 2002. There is an incredible gap between the tech demo you're speaking about, and actually landing a heavy orbital rocket, and then doing it 100 times in a row without a hiccup. Mars is completely off topic, as they didn't land the booster there. We had Space Shuttle before and it didn't say much about landin…

> There is an incredible gap between the tech demo you're speaking about, Didn't Apollo 11 land on the moon using a rocket, then take off from the moon again, back in the 1960s? Not exactly a tech demo. And the Apollo missions had the additional challenges of being crewed, and targeting an atmosphere and gravity they couldn't reproduce on earth for test purposes. The SpaceX stuff is neat though, compared to the defen…

Apollo 11 had a three stage rocket and every stage was discarded. SpaceX is obviously not the first company to land something - but landing a rocket booster that just performed an orbital lift is the interesting and extremely hard thing to do. The payload can be entirely designed to land - but the booster has many other constraints (payload weight and its desired velocity and trajectory being some of them).

To do what Apollo 11 did without discarding the boosters you also need orbital refueling and probably rapid turnaround (or a huge inventory of boosters), which SpaceX plans to develop next. Awesome stuff.

Re: No Billionares at FOSDEM

#104

Post by Thorrez »

Aeolos wrote: post #93
Thorrez wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk is concerned about climate change, and created Telsa to lead the migration to electric cars to help combat climate change. That seems like a positive impact to life on earth.

> Elon Musk [...] created Tesla Elon Musk did not found Tesla, and most definitely did not did it for environmental reasons. "Tesla was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning as Tesla Motors." [1] "If, I don’t know, 50 to 100 years from now, we’re mostly sustainable. I think that’ll probably be okay. So it’s not like the house is on fire immediately. [...] "The risk is not as high as a lot o…

Thanks for the clarification about founding. But he joined as chair of the board when the company was less than 1 year old, and helped develop their first car.

>and most definitely did not did it for environmental reasons.

From that same link, he says one of the goals of Tesla is to make environmentalism cool:

> And so you get the solar power, mind that with batteries. So because obviously the sun doesn't shine at night and then you use that to charge the electric cars and you have a long-term sustainable solution.

> And, you know, that's what Tesla is trying to move things towards. And I think we've made a lot of progress in that regard. But when you look at our cars, like we don't believe that environmentalism, that caring about the environment should mean that you have to suffer.

> So we make sure that our cars are beautiful, that they drive well, that they're fast, they're, you know, sexy. I mean, they're cool.

Here he says the purpose for him working on electric cars is to transition people to sustainable transport: https://youtu.be/SNIaHc0Uggs?si=ELivf9xj2J3PS8Wi&t=304

Re: No Billionares at FOSDEM

#105

Post by bambax »

duxup wrote: post #67
bambax wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money in itself is a problem. People with that amount of wealth are separated from the rest of humanity (and most of the time go to great lengths to make sure they absolutely never cross path with ordinary humans). They don't have the same goals as everyone else, they don't face the same issues, they contribute to climate change in extreme proportions while escaping its most urgent consequences (for the time bein…

People with not as much wealth are more reasonable or something? I don't buy it. We're talking about a conference that apparently puts itself up for sale in a way ... that's the problem. The other stuff is a silly distraction. You're not solving anything with a personal wreath rule, conference is still for sale. Dude with slightly less wealth is going to just buy in...

> People with not as much wealth are more reasonable

Oh, no. But they have less power and less influence, and are more likely to fly commercial when they come talk to a conference, so have lower emissions. Also, I'm talking more in general: we should absolutely not listen to billionaires, even those few who, unlike Musk, haven't yet gone completely insane.

Re: No Billionares at FOSDEM

#107

Post by caeril »

psadauskas wrote: post #102
Thorrez wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk is concerned about climate change, and created Telsa to lead the migration to electric cars to help combat climate change. That seems like a positive impact to life on earth.

Musk declared in 2018 that climate change was the most significant threat humanity would face this century. But then more recently, he's said that farming doesn't contribute. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1672793968587702272 He flies on his private jet all over the world, that alone contributing 100s of times more than the average household. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/elon-mus... His social m…

[flagged]

Re: No Billionares at FOSDEM

#108

Post by rybosworld »

throw5959 wrote: post #85
wormlord wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He literally does do that. Top-level players of the game have called him out for it. They have tracked his time with an API. It is actually mathematically impossible to be at his level in POE-- you would have to be a top-tier player and play nonstop for 20+ hrs a day. People who like Musk aren't going to care that he is racist, they will argue about what actually constitutes as racism (erm pushes up glasses --actuall…

Where does he lie about a video game? Maybe he has someone boost his level. Did he say it's not true? Just doing that can have many reasons - maybe he likes a shiny number there, wants a bigger challenge, more fun because of higher level and more items or whatever. Just playing on an account that I didn't level up myself is not lying. I know that some competitive amateur players think it's the end of the world but no…

> Where does he lie about a video game?

He stated on Joe Rogan he was one of the best Diablo players in the world (top 20 or thereabouts). The only way to do that is to grind the game with long hours, because it gets exponentially more difficult to level up. I don't remember exactly how many hours of playtime he'd need to achieve the level he was at, but it was excessive. Something like 14+ hours a day.

Then he recently live streamed his Path of Exile 2 account. It was one of the highest leveled accounts in the world. Similar to Diablo, that's not possible without grinding the game for many hours. However, it was clear from the stream that Musk barely understood how to play the game. He was having trouble just finding things in the UI.

The point is: he paid someone (or multiple people) for a leveled up account. Then he publicly claimed to be one of the top players in the world.

It's both shocking and revealing that he's willing to put forth such a blatant lie, for something that matters so little (a video game).

Re: No Billionares at FOSDEM

#110

Post by Yizahi »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #74
throw5959 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but no, this is absolutely not what happened. I am watching it closely ever since SpaceX was founded in 2002. There is an incredible gap between the tech demo you're speaking about, and actually landing a heavy orbital rocket, and then doing it 100 times in a row without a hiccup. Mars is completely off topic, as they didn't land the booster there. We had Space Shuttle before and it didn't say much about landin…

I think it is? Like, this sounds like a pretty silly claim: > All engineers and other professionals told him that landing rockets is bullshit Where did you hear that?

Arianespace director literally laughed in public over that idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W676Kk9LSYw

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