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Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

ycombinator.com

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Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#411

Post by guftagu »

PieterH wrote: post #274
djcooley wrote: post #228

I have all the respect in the world for what Mr. Musk has accomplished, but it has come at an amazing cost to the people around him. He is worshiped from afar but reviled by many the closer you get to his inner circle. Go read "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future." The question I always ask myself with the people who move mountains is what cost did that progress come at? What would someone'…

Since the book is not free to read online, would you provide a tl;dr?

Check out Blinkist. They have a summary of that book.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#412

Post by pkinsky »

contingencies wrote: post #384
rpedela wrote: post #378

I would be far more interested in how to build a successful business. Everyone asks Elon about his big ideas, but how do you turn those big ideas into reality, specifically? I have never seen anyone ask him those questions. I thoroughly enjoyed the interview with Jessica Livingston because that was the primary topic. A missed opportunity in my opinion. I hope the rest of the interviews are more about the nuts and bol…

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?

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#413

Post by schwarrrtz »

tomcam wrote: post #409
schwarrrtz wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also, whoever / whatever transcribed this did a terrible job. 'accelerate the transmission to sustainable energy'...

Sounds like an excellent assignment for someone of your considerable skill. Have at it!

s/transmission/transition. if you've got an interview with Musk, the least you can do is proofread the article.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#414

Post by wonkaWonka »

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…

Oh, so much better. Thank you jesus!

In other communities, to circumvent asinine ploys at lock-in, someone would just brute force the pdf file with a burner facebook login, and repost it. But then, you'd still be stuck with a pdf.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#415

Post by [deleted] »

rpedela wrote: post #378

I would be far more interested in how to build a successful business. Everyone asks Elon about his big ideas, but how do you turn those big ideas into reality, specifically? I have never seen anyone ask him those questions. I thoroughly enjoyed the interview with Jessica Livingston because that was the primary topic. A missed opportunity in my opinion. I hope the rest of the interviews are more about the nuts and bol…

[deleted]

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#416

Post by schwarrrtz »

rpedela wrote: post #378

I would be far more interested in how to build a successful business. Everyone asks Elon about his big ideas, but how do you turn those big ideas into reality, specifically? I have never seen anyone ask him those questions. I thoroughly enjoyed the interview with Jessica Livingston because that was the primary topic. A missed opportunity in my opinion. I hope the rest of the interviews are more about the nuts and bol…

the biography by Vance covers the early Zip2 / X.com / PayPal stuff pretty well. would recommend.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#417

Post by WWKong »

jimbokun wrote: post #377
colin725 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure the net happiness from football was really raised by Messi or did he simply shift it to his county and teams he plays for? If you take away his great play doesn't it just make other players stick out more, and fans would derive happiness from other players?

He raises the net happiness. He does things no one else does and is a joy to watch. It's like saying if a great musician never lived people would just listen to different music. Sure, but there would be a certain joy and pleasure people never would have experienced, and never realized they were missing.

If they never realized they were missing something, then nothing was lost. Net happiness = same level.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#418

Post by Noos »

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 motorcycle, and trying to scale it ends up being clunky, heavy, and still more expensive than the bike you put it on.

When he actually improves humanity's lot instead of producing boutique goods for rich people, then maybe we'll see more praise.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#419

Post by dv_dt »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #320
dv_dt wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Tesla Powerwall, a home battery. https://www.tesla.com/powerwall

I don't think those are planned to ship until 2018.

"During the first quarter of 2016, Tesla delivered over 25 MWh of energy storage to customers on four continents. Over 2,500 Powerwalls and nearly 100 Powerpacks were delivered in North America, Asia, Europe, and Africa.[33]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Powerwall

I don't know if those were still pilot program devices or if they've hit some level of regular production. 2500 units is still a good start.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#420

Post by thr0waway1239 »

metaphorm wrote: post #270
piedradura wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add another multiplicative factor: the probability that you have success in what you are trying to achieve, if that probability is near zero you effort will be in vain.

you should read some Taleb on this subject. ignoring low probability outcomes is not a good risk/success model.

I ask as someone who is vaguely familiar with Taleb's ideas but didn't read the book:

That is a really fascinating point, especially considering this is literally a case where you are "betting your (future) life" on the low probability outcome event.

I mean, what is your hedge in that case? Does Taleb talk about that too?

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