Elon Musk on How to Build the Future
ycombinator.com
ycombinator.com
There's real irony there in it being an article about delivering value to society through making useful technology.
Ha, that's actually kind of impressive, in a really perverse sort of way.
I'm so glad Scribd is helping with the effort to carve the open web into a series of uncooperative fiefdoms.
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 punctuation and the beginning of the next paragraph to use a regex to auto-break the paragraphs.
Not pretty, but should be readable.
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.
Unfortunately the transcript is missing past a point. I haven't checked to see if that's the case in the original document.
edit - Looks like I should've refreshed the thread first: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12514873
You are surprised? Are you forgetting that Hacker News itself was, as of a few months ago, a horrible experience on mobile?
Sama> How should someone figure out how they should be useful?
Elon> Whatever this thing is you are trying to create.. What would be the utility delta compared to the current state of the art times how many people it would affect?
Ditto with Tesla's cars; they aren't a drop-in replacement for gasoline cars in all scenarios but I've heard more than one Tesla owner say that they will never buy a gas-powered car again. So obviously that implies greater utility for the person in question than any current gas-powered car.
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.
The good news is that batteries are getting about 8% more efficient every year (price per kwh) [2]. So 10 years from now batteries will be 1.08^10 = ~2.15x as efficient [3].
So when you replace them, they'll cost half as much for the same amount of energy storage (and probably half the space too). It's basically Moore's law for batteries except slower.
[1] https://www.tesla.com/powerwall
[2] https://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/26/ev-battery-costs-alread...
[3] or is it 1/(.92^10)? That would be 2.3x
My point was that his ideas are ones that have potential for huge amounts of change. Whether or not we will see that change is another matter.
This is enough, no?
The same with Space-X...
I'm pleased Elon gets this, but it's a chilling thought. We don't have to have MORE stuff, internets, communications etc. just because of Moore's Law, just because it's possible. We can also have progressively less because it's in someone's interest for it to be less.
Assuming that a 10% increase in productivity causes a 10% increase in the impact on people (either in quality or quantity), 10% of Mr. Musk's impact may be greater in absolute terms than 10% of Mr. Smith's.
One may debate whether 10% productivity = 10% impact, but if that increase is attributed back to you, there's no need to artificially manipulate the equation.
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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Let me make my point in a less obtuse way. Most people make decisions about their careers based on opportunity and maximising profit. No one becomes a footballer to make the world a better place. This would all be fine as long as the capitalist market rewarded choices that make the world a better place. Obviously it does not and it's not the fault of a footballer that we as a civilisation choose to channel our available resources their way and not towards frivolous play like space exploration.
If anyone ever figures out a way to make the free market choose the greater good they will win all the Nobel prizes forever (we won't need Nobel prizes after that).
> Drug dealers
Perhaps drug dealers (and their suppliers) can implement testing, QA and proper labeling.
I'm not totally sure about software patent lawyers. But, deep down, my gut says that if software patent law wasn't to crappy, perhaps the occupation would be perceived in a better light. Maybe they could push for reform from the inside?
On the whole, I think every industry can do some introspection on how they can affect more people for the betterment of society. It would do us all some good.
If anyone ever figures out a way to make the free market choose the greater good they will win all the Nobel prizes forever (we won't need Nobel prizes after that).
An hour spent watching a football game is an hour less committing crime or doing other unsavory acts.
But agreed - that person would win all the Nobel Peace prizes.
Not for the vast, vast majority of people watching football. Most people aren't engaging in crime or "unsavory acts" whenever they have to entertain themselves.
I think mass entertainment is definitely for the greater good, but not because it reduces crime in any appreciable fashion.
Not to mention the good social bits of being a fan of something and being able to bond with strangers over fandom.
But if you look at the worst offenders, you'll see that the professions that take the most profit normally also take the most power. And in yielding that power, they have a big share on the blame of making their negative utility profession lucrative.
Politics - which includes economics - is a much bigger challenge than AI.
We've completely transformed our understanding of science and technology, but our political and economic thinking would be recognisable to a Roman senator and a medieval banker.
Politics and economics are still waiting for a Copernican revolution. Our survival prospects as a species are limited until that revolution happens.
It doesn't generate its own pachinko balls, that's utterly orthogonal. Free market capitalism is what you DO with a population that has disposable income. You can't feed the bottom of it into the top, it doesn't even work that way.
It's not even optimal for reaching the highest developments of ideas and inventions, because local maximums will starve out the newer ideas that need to grow and become competitive. It does nothing about network effects and tends towards monopoly.
But it's a fantastic distribution mechanism for the wealth of existing populations: no overseer required! Within some known limitations it works very nicely.
NO wealth is ever created.
Even so, an individual can often choose to push for the greater good within the confines of free market forces.
A footballer can use their image to promote organizations that do good. A SaaS owner can help their customers become more secure and efficient. Lawyers can push for better oversight and reform.
Maybe we can't all be Elon, but we can all try to improve our surroundings.
Maybe I'm too young and naive, but I think it can be done.
Here's an example, Mozilla's Open Software Patent License, trying to do some reform from the inside: https://www.mozilla.org/about/policy/patents/
The people in marketing are the ones helping to bring the positive utility-delta stuff to light, so the utility delta actually happens.
But to address your argument: you missed the "opportunity" bit. If you're a well-off, well educated person you can choose to do whatever you feel like and I'm sure some people do without worrying about money (perhaps they have lots already). Most people will chose the best paying job that is available to them. Sorry, but reality is on my side on this one. Go visit a factory if you want to see if people want self-realisation or money to survive. Again: please remember the "opportunity" part. If you tell a factory worker he can earn 4$ an hour assembling landmines or 2$ an hour assembling asthma inhalers I will eat my hat if they don't go with the money (and I wouldn't blame them for this).
I didn't miss the opportunity bit. It seems your logic there is backwards: It's precisely if I can choose to do whatever I feel like that I have opportunity, and precisely those people you agree may have other goals than maximizing profit.
Sure, if you have no money and have an "opportunity" to flip burgers, most people would take that job even if they were vegans. That's survival, but I don't think that says much about what they would choose to do.
A better example I think is when people decide to go back to school because they've realized they only get shitty jobs without education. In that situation, they could choose to do whatever. Do most people find a list of best-paying jobs and pick the one at the top to decide what they should study? I think they do not.
Maybe not, but Messi increases the happiness delta a lot for many, many people. I think the world is a much better place with him as a footballer than an accountant or something.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossib...
Footballers do have a connection with their fans and it is their admiration that is sought far more than money. So they are very much in it to bring happiness to the world, to put on the show. I don't see them working for free though.
Yes
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?
No
Greatness isn't ONLY about being greater than others.
Just what the hell does anyone even mean by "make the world a better place"?!
I am willing to bet that if we held a forum to settle what a "better world" means, we'd have to adjourn it with no resolution. The questions of better world for whom, and on what terms, by what definition, what expense and, oh yeah, who pays the bill and why would never find one conclusion.
What you really mean to say is that Capitalist market rewarded choices does make the world a better place according to your definition of it. But don't lay claim to speak for the world when for many Capitalism market rewards are making the world a better place.
One has to remember that "a better world" is a very subjective thing.
This is why I distrust those that want to direct us toward a magical, "better world" and and do so by decrying voluntary exchanges between people as counter to their vision.
Yes, that would help a whole lot.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankh-MorporkI read your comment as saying that most people choose a job based on maximising utility; one component of which is financial reward; and that top-class sports is one industry in which there is generally a consensus that "people are paid too much" - i.e. that there is a distortion; that perhaps their love of playing and the positives they contribute to society are already well priced in to their wages.
Also, it seems entirely reasonable to me that any market distortion implies an opportunity cost - that aggregate happiness; over time, would be greater; if we spent a little less on footballers and a little more on e.g. imho; carbon capture!
You even explicitly state that it would be extremely judgemental to blame individuals - i.e. footballers - for maximising their individual happiness at the expense of human society as a whole; and that instead this should be blamed on a market or political failure.
I certainly did not chose my profession from a profit motive and neither did most of the people I know. We did what we did because that is what we like or enjoy. Of course practical issues of making a living wage factors in.
I make a high salary now, but that is rather by accident. I just happened to be good in STEM subjects and enjoy math and programming. I didn't pursue it because it was an optimal economic decision.
I can fully relate to Elon Musk. When I try to pick a programming job e.g. I factor in many things such as salary, colleagues, location etc, but actually how useful the product seems is a major factor for me. I am generally willing to sacrifice salary to do something which I feel helps humanity more. E.g. I'd day a pay cut to develop a medical application over a horse betting application.
Of course money isn't irrelevant. If there is just too little money in medical software then I'd suck it up and sell my soul to betting, big oil or whatever ;-)
Translation: The change of something being useful, profitable, or beneficial multiplied by the potential target audience.
IMO - What a great measure to determine the scale ability of an idea.
I get a feeling that this phrase is going to be popular among Elon fanboys.
EDIT
Ask him about the early days at PayPal. What are the lessons he learned that he applied to Tesla and SpaceX? What worked for PayPal but not the other companies and why?
I think that's exactly what you're interested in.
Amusingly if you read chapter 1 of Founders at Work quite a big part of what worked at PayPal may have been firing Elon Musk. Max Levchin largely built PayPal tech wise using Unix and then it was merged with Musk's X.com and Musk became CEO and wanted to switch everything to Windows.
>Levchin: The three of us are pretty good friends now. At the time, already I had hated the guy's guts for forcing me to do Windows, and then, in the end, I was like,"You gotta go, man."My whole argument to him was, "We can't switch to Windows now. This fraud thing is most important to the company. You can't allow any additional changes. It's one of these things where you want to change one big thing at a time, and the fraud is a pretty big thing. So introducing a new platform or doing anything major—you just don't want to do it right now." That was sort of the trigger for a fairly substantial conflict that resulted in him leaving and Peter coming back and me taking over fraud.
I encourage you to read "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future." Musk talked about PayPal and the Windows switch in detail in Appendix 2:
“As for the technology change, that’s not really well understood. On the face of it, it doesn’t sound like it makes much sense for us to be writing our front-end code in Microsoft C++ instead of Linux. But the reason is that the programming tools for Microsoft and a PC are actually extremely powerful. They’re developed for the gaming industry. I mean, this is going to sound like heresy in a sort of Silicon Valley context, but you can program faster, you can get functionality faster in the PC C++ world. All of the games for the Xbox are written in Microsoft C++. The same goes for games on the PC. They’re incredibly sophisticated, hard things to do, and these great tools have been developed thanks to the gaming industry. There were more smart programmers in the gaming industry than anywhere else. I’m not sure the general public understands this. It was also 2000, and there were not the huge software libraries for Linux that you would find today. Microsoft had huge support libraries. So you could get a DLL that could do anything, but you couldn’t get—you couldn’t get Linux libraries that could do anything.
“Two of the guys that left PayPal went off to Blizzard and helped created World of Warcraft. When you look at the complexity of something like that living on PCs and Microsoft C++, it’s pretty incredible. It blows away any website.
“In retrospect, I should have delayed the brand transition, and I should have spent a lot more time with Max getting him comfortable on the technology. I mean, it was a little difficult because like the Linux system Max had created was called Max Code. So Max has had quite a strong affinity for Max Code. This was a bunch of libraries that Max and his friends had done. But it just made it quite hard to develop new features. And if you look at PayPal today, I mean, part of the reason they haven’t developed any new features is because it’s quite difficult to maintain the old system.
“Ultimately, I didn’t disagree with the board’s decision in the PayPal case, in the sense that with the information that the board had I would have made maybe the same decision. I probably would have, whereas in the case of Zip2 I would not have. I thought they just simply made a terrible decision based on information they had. I don’t think the X.com board made a terrible decision based on the information they had. But it did make me want to be careful about who invested in my companies in the future.
“I’ve thought about trying to get PayPal back. I’ve just been too strung out with other things. Almost no one understands how PayPal actually worked or why it took off when other payment systems before and after it didn’t. Most of the people at PayPal don’t understand this. The reason it worked was because the cost of transactions in PayPal was lower than any other system. And the reason the cost of transactions was lower is because we were able to do an increasing percentage of our transactions as ACH, or automated clearinghouse, electronic transactions, and most importantly, internal transactions. Internal transactions were essentially fraud-free and cost us nothing. An ACH transaction costs, I don’t know, like twenty cents or something. But it was slow, so that was the bad thing. It’s dependent on the bank’s batch processing time. And then the credit card transaction was fast, but expensive in terms of the credit card processing fees and very prone to fraud. That’s the problem Square is having now.
“Square is doing the wrong version of PayPal. The critical thing is to achieve internal transactions. ...
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's spouse, kids, friends, etc. say about the person?
Compared to them, Musk is taking a much harder, potentially more important cause.
let me know if you need me to break down other basic human instincts for you :-)
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 "noteworthy" or wind up in the Guinness Book of Records. (Note: I'm not in any way implying that's a bad thing, I'm simply stating it as likely true)
Others in this world maybe are not so good socially, or maybe do spend "too much" time at work, and do burn out those around them. They do, however, achieve greatness that genuinely moves the entire human race forward.
It just so happens that second kind of person is around one in a few hundred million, so there really aren't so many around.
If humanity moves on its way naturally then surely desperation of humans comes into the fold as well.
(The book is incredible, by the way. I've already read it twice, just like Derek Sivers. Recommend it highly.)
I suspect the causes are societal, from the constraints placed on our time and freedom to explore and become well rounded.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
Not saying Musk's accounts of the events are perfectly truthful either. Great book though!
If you're willing to risk possible long-term legal consequences, there are ... sources online: http://book4you.org/book/2544878/9841ce
(Though your call for a TL;DR is valid.)
It bothers a lot of people, personally I am fine with it and would make the same decision. I think it's a personality thing.
As a rationalization for why you yourself would not want to live that way, that's fair enough. Neither would I.
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.
Does it not concern you that tech has been stuck for 40 years? That space has been stuck for however many years? Despite all this hard work everywhere? I'd rather resolve those problems at the core than address the symptoms or possibly worsen them by betting everything on one person and hope they will bring us salvation.
I don't think you know what you're talking about here. Let me explain why 80 hours a week is a good thing.
At large, people lead lives of quiet struggle against forces they do not understand. They continue this because they are in a local minimum of daily energy expenditure, and like simulated anealling, you stay stuck unless you keep putting in more energy. Women return to husbands that beat them because that's their local minimum, even though they have the option of returning to the dating pool, moving out, creating a new social circle: These tasks are putting energy into their lives so that they might arrive at a new minimum with a value much lower than the previous minimum. You could say that they are better off for it, thanks to the energy put in.
She puts in more energy, then she ends up closer to the global minimum.
This can be applied to society. If people are relaxed as they are today, they are probably in a local minimum and not the global minimum. But in some form, analogously, the wife beating continues, and we simply rationalize it like you have shown here, and we continue.
I am 22. I assume you're in your 30s/40s. We have no future, my friend, and it's thanks to collective 'shrugging it off' decade after decade since WW2. I won't accept that, and you should not either. You are making up silly excuses to protect yourself from the truth which is 'Wow, America really does need this man, and he truly is doing great things'.
Elon definitely is not a fluke like you imply. He is not the best eng but it is his relentless work ethic (read: no other timesink in his life at all) that puts him above the others. Have you ever worked more than 100hrs a week? I don't even think I've managed it once but Elon does it every week. To admire elon, you must first understand what that means.
You say he has only had one successful venture but before Paypal he sold his company Zip2 to Compaq for some 300M. Then he started x.com, which only later merged with Peter and max's company. Elons x.com brought more than 50% of the staff. This means that he was a huge component in Paypals success no way you cut it.
We have established that he is no fluke, now lets examine your criticisms of Tesla and SpaceX and why you should not have them at all. Tesla is not perfect but there is absolutely, 100%, no other way to have sustainable transport than electric cars. Even if Tesla used child labour with huge workplace accident rates, you should still support them, because no matter how you cut it, we will destroy our atmosphere permanently without huge electric car adoption. Nevermind all of the other parts of the power industry that are hugely polluting.
On to SpaceX. They are saving taxpayers millions of dollars every year by allowing governments to cut satellite launch costs by 4x over Boeing or Lockheed.
In short:
Elon is not a fluke and has super human work ethic Tesla is our one shot at everyone not dying en masse by the time I'm in 40s (head in the sand if it soothes you but thats the case) SpaceX saves millions of taxpayer dollars every year.
You should be advocating for international cooperation and government action, not a company that creates electric sports cars.
Government is like Thor's hammer. If you can wield it, you wield tremendous power.
Think of mega corps as Thor, wielding the hammer. This is how government works: A mega corp pays for politics to happen in a certain way, and thus change happens at huge scale through taxpayer money.
However, you may not wield the hammer if you are not Thor, because it's too heavy. Analogously, lobbying is too expensive for small players, and to be a politician advocating risky things without a huge payout is career suicide.
Advocating governmental change is a nice thought, but how government actually works is by having enough cash. Be a huge mega-corp and then paying lobbyists that pay people inside of government.
Or, you could simply grow a company and do your best to be completely independent of government while stile abiding by their rules and operating under fair laws. That's what Tesla is doing.
And we need your help, stranger, because time is running out super fast and there are millions out there making the same misjudgment that you have here, but some of them are a genuine threat to Tesla's fate.
It is a race against the clock to get everyone behind this guy.
He's not the only one playing the game so effectively at that level but to me, he exemplifies rational behavior.
I wish more entrepreneurs like Page or Bezos were in the public eye as much as Musk. I believe those traits are common to achieve your goals.
Yeah, there's a good bit of production involved, but it usually feels like when a buddy is showing you something really cool that he made.
SpaceX doesn't need Vince Offer.
As for Mr Musk's personal style, I found this interview quite captivating. All the more so for his lack of bluster and posturing.
Elon Musk never says rubbish like this which feels totally markety. When Elon Musk rants about something it feels more like a geek who is really excited about something, rather than slick market speak.
Maybe, that is how you market to geeks..Know your target audience and all that...Looks like it is working!
Notes:
Be useful, that's fine, no need to alter the world drastically.
Big Next shifts: AI & Genetic Modification (oh and a faster connection to our minds)
High probability of failure, not a problem. Tesla, Space X. Push the ball forward.
Democratization of AI is a best possible outcome (direct connection, we are the AI)
More specifically: if you make a minor improvement that affects a lot of people (improve video streaming) it is just as good as a major improvement that drastically affects a few people (curing an extremely rare disease). It's the area under the curve that matters. The best would obviously be a large effect over a large number of people, but minor improvements can be very useful.
As far as education, it's not something you can learn by yourself, it just isn't. Most of the methods in a biological wet lab are very far from standardized and need a great deal of troubleshooting. Most post-docs in a new lab spend a couple months just trying to get basic stuff working that they've done dozens of times before. It's hard. You need people around you with experience and perspective, and doctorate programs are likely the only place you're going to get that kind of training.
I think there are a lot of people that want to approach biology with a CS mindset, especially the people interested in synthetic biology, but that rarely bears fruit. It could get to that place eventually, but there's a lot of ground to cover. In that sense I agree with Elon that, despite the huge impact genetic engineering could have, it's not the next thing because we're not ready yet. There's still too much that's fundamental to biological problems that we simply don't understand, and solving things in one species usually doesn't translate very far across taxa.
Having had experience with syn bio in grad school and trying to reconcile the empirical (biology) and first principles (CS/math) approaches, I've been thinking a lot lately about how to streamline the troubleshooting process for picking up and optimizing wet lab methods. I'd love to chat - my email's in my profile.
Did that spring from a research lab or from a happyhour with mba types wanting to jump on "start-up" fortunes
Admittedly that's a bit of a generalization and I am sure there are a decent number of exceptions but consistent with my experience.
In other words, they're not Computer Scientists. They are Computer Programmers instead. (or maybe Computer System Engineers)
I agree that the asymmetry exists: there is a tremendous baseline of scientific knowledge and experience that is needed to make significant contributions to the field. I personally have worked with people with backgrounds in programming or CS on medical problems, and it has been frustrating because they lack what I would term "scientific common sense". I would personally prefer, and would be able to make more progress with, working with (for example) anyone who has completed a sequence of education sufficient for pre-med requirements and has some programming experience over a "full stack data engineer". Even if someone with a programming or CS background were inclined to pick up the textbooks and amass the baseline scientific knowledge (I'm sure they exist, although I haven't met them yet), they'd still lack the years of laboratory work and experience of applying this knowledge.
My original comment was apparently poorly worded because it was interpreted by the responders differently than I intended, but delightfully, it resulted in very thoughtful comments. I am very skeptical that one can make even small contributions to genetics without the experience of years of specialized work. There are ancillary problems that could be done by someone with a programming or CS background, e.g., a better LIMS system, or perhaps protocol management, but I don't see those tasks as leading to later making meaningful contributions to the field of genetics. The MD or PhD isn't required, but all the work done leading up to it is, and so as I see it those prepared to make the contributions are most likely going to have gotten the degree on the way.
Not much CS can help with right now - the most useful tools (mass fuzzy searches and molecular simulations) are already there.
ex. Counsyl (https://www.counsyl.com)
So, I think there must be a role for strong developers to partner with strong genetic researchers to make the best use of computers for research. That role might not exist now--you might have the opportunity to go create it. But it does seem sorely needed.
Researchers in our institute were amazed how easy it is to use e.g. google forms to gather data in a reasonable format. Once you get data in a reasonable format you can help them with transforming it/joining it with other sources/cleaning them up. ETLs and data integration are often completely foreign concepts to them.
And that's researchers, you might still start calling them quite computer-competent after you talk to the people in the clinic. All the research is for nothing if it's not brought to "bedside" to benefit the patients in a clinical setting, outside all trials. For that you need to make sure genomics pipelines are automated and reproducible and only clinically relevant information gets to the oncologists (or other doctors) deciding on treatment. This is still not quite there even in the best places.
I think most of the really world-changing stuff will just be hard work on relatively easy problems. It's hard to get excited about these (compared to the latest neural networks or distributed high performance systems) but they need to get done
Alternatively if you're a software engineer or a product designer, or many other roles, then you could join a company working on commercializing genetic medicine. They're are lots and those companies are definitely not just looking for people with PhDs.
Once in a place like that, you'd be able to chat further with people about your career direction.
For example, there is a yearly competition called iGEM, which is synthetic biology competition for undergrads. Some of the stuff they do with limited resources is quite impressive.
But the answer might be shorter.
He has always said the chances of SpaceX succeeding was very slim - but at what point(after any particular technical achievement) he realized the this might work out.
I am pretty sure there have multiple of this yahoo moments successively - that made him believe that SpaceX will be able to succeed.
This seems very similar to Steve Jobs who said he became CEO so that nobody could tell him what he could or couldn't work on. But like Elon Musk he seemed most interested in creating things and not really running the business.
I think this is a clue to successful business. If you got leaders like that you retain focus on good products rather than getting caught up in optimizing financials without a strong focus on actually building quality stuff people want or need.
"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 thought that the technologists were above such petty envy. We're here to improve humanity's lot, aren't we?
Startup industry is a great place to find tons of PR bullshit though, so I wonder if this isn't people projecting their own guilt...
Tesla has done a great job of dressing up a status symbol as an environmentally friendly choice. (Or vice versa.)
If you look at the poorer citizens in your country, you'll likely find no Teslas, and few electric cars in general.
Nobody I know here bought a petrol car last two years; one got a plug-in hybrid. Tesla is hardly a status symbol here, it attracts customers both from the middle and luxury segments. People who in the past would consider Audi A5 or Volvo X70 would go for Tesla. The economics for electric cars are simply much better.
A quick search also indicates that your gas is 25% more expensive than France or Britain, and more importantly that your electric car incentives are so absurd that your politicians are beginning to roll them back. No taxes, no tolls, no ferry charges, no parking fees, free use of bus lanes. Electric cars there are cheaper than equivalent gas powered cars, because the taxes are ~50% of the cost. Yeah, with incentives like that, I'd probably own an electric car, too. I'm not sure this counts as an electric car revolution so much as a government handout, though. If the government subsidized 50% of the price of Fords, you'd probably see their sales skyrocket but no one would really call that a revolution.
Tesla is definitely a status symbol, though. The fact that Audi drivers moved to Tesla didn't dispute that because Audi is also a status symbol. Volvo to a lesser extent.
Parking is not free, although some municipalities subsidize rebates for EV spots in select garages. Urban dwellers (majority of EV market) nearly never take ferries. Incentives were clearly temporary from the beginning, you are hardly breaking any news to me here. The price of car is not subsidized, a Tesla here costs more dollar-to-dollar than it does in California before rebates.
Sure there are (also temporary) import tax incentives, but it's about the only way a government can encourage adoption of clean tech in chicken and egg infrastructure situation. There has to be some upside for being the first guy in the town who can't fill at gas station. As soon as it gains momentum, the incentives will be rolled back. It is however already clear that EV adoption in Norway is a success.
Also you have to be really really broke to see an ordinary German sedan as a status symbol, certainly not anywhere in Western Europe.
I'm not sure I did pick a poor metric. Income in the Bay Area is pretty uneven. You see a lot of Teslas at the Google campus, but relatively few at Wal-Mart. Salaries at tech companies are six figure but minimum wage is just above $10/hr.
> Parking is not free, although some municipalities subsidize rebates for EV spots in select garages. Urban dwellers (majority of EV market) nearly never take ferries. Incentives were clearly temporary from the beginning, you are hardly breaking any news to me here.
The article I read indicated that they were, but maybe not. Obviously the tax exemption is the big factor.
> The price of car is not subsidized, a Tesla here costs more dollar-to-dollar than it does in California before rebates.
That's not a realistic claim if the government is waving taxes that would otherwise amount to half the total cost of the car.
It's not very interesting to compare the absolute Tesla cost there and in California. What's interesting to compare is the Tesla cost there vs California relative to other options. A Tesla Model S in California costs about as much as a BMW M3. It looks like in Norway the effective cost of a Model S is closer to a basic Model 3.
> Sure there are (also temporary) import tax incentives, but it's about the only way a government can encourage adoption of clean tech in chicken and egg infrastructure situation. There has to be some upside for being the first guy in the town who can't fill at gas station. As soon as it gains momentum, the incentives will be rolled back. It is however already clear that EV adoption in Norway is a success.
I'm not opposed to tax incentives. My point is just that the "revolution" here is being driven by massive government subsidies. A 50% subsidy will make almost anything a success.
> Also you have to be really really broke to see an ordinary German sedan as a status symbol, certainly not anywhere in Western Europe.
I think this says something about your financial situation that you think the only way to see an Audi as a status symbol is if you're "really broke". I don't know about Norway, but most cars sold in Europe are not Audis or BMWs. Fiat outsells BMW and Audi. So does GM. So does Ford. And Peugot. And Renault. Volkwagon beats Audi and BMW combined. BMW and Audi are not "ordinary German sedans". They are luxury cars purchased by a minority of the population. They are absolutely status symbols.
http://www.acea.be/statistics/tag/category/by-manufacturer-r...
Guess what, same here. An engineer at Statoil makes a lot more than a janitor. Minimum wage here is higher and there's a more elaborate safety net, still living at that end is very uncomfortable. Again I don't see any takeaway from this.
> That's not a realistic claim if the government is waving taxes that would otherwise amount to half the total cost of the car.
This is a realistic claim because the government does not subsidize a vehicle with own money as it is often presented here, but withholds extra taxation. No taxpayer money harmed. Tax discounts are not unprecedented, e.g. tax code here has elaborate cases for families with children, people with disabilities etc. Two people doing identical job can be paying very different amount of tax. Different categories of imported food can have taxes differing by magnitude, and so on.
> What's interesting to compare is the Tesla cost there vs California relative to other options.
I don't think anyone had illusions that Tesla isn't economic in Norway relative to other options. That's why people buy it and I mentioned it before.
The end result is people here drive tons of Teslas and other EVs, and the market has changed for good. When tax incentives removed, people will still drive them, as they are simply better rides overall with simpler maintenance routine.
I don't see in any way why has Tesla miscalculated the market as initially stated. I see tons of their cars on the roads every day, so it arrived here. It is hilarious my benign remark was treated as some classist rub.
> I don't know about Norway, but most cars sold in Europe are not Audis or BMWs.
Look, I'm not sure how it's in the States, but a BMW or Audi won't get you laid in Europe. Kids won't drop their candy and men won't think of your "status". Cabbies drive Merc E class here (not just in Norway). Pakistani immigrants drive German sedans. Everyone knows they are more expensive but not out of range of a middle income family on a financing - just a matter of your priorities. Porsche Cayenne is "luxury", Maibach is, but A5 and the likes, made in hundreds thousands each year is not. Tesla is cool in its own high tech way, but salon trim doesn't give a luxury vibe either.
Point being that poor people don't buy Teslas. That's why inequality of income in the Bay is relevant. Wealthy engineers are buying Teslas because they can afford it. Most of the population cannot. Your government subsidies make Teslas affordable to a larger chunk of the population, but wealth is still a significant factor. Subsidies just happen to be a bigger one.
> This is a realistic claim because the government does not subsidize a vehicle with own money as it is often presented here, but withholds extra taxation.
These two scenarios are effectively the same:
1. Car costs X and taxes are Y. Government waives Y in taxes.
2. Car costs X and taxes are Y. Government provides discount of Y against cost of car.
Whether the government waives taxes or literally helps you pay the car is irrelevant. The net effect on the government's finances (and the customer's finances) is the same.
Again, I'm not saying this is a bad thing. But it is absolutely a massive subsidy.
> The end result is people here drive tons of Teslas and other EVs, and the market has changed for good. When tax incentives removed, people will still drive them, as they are simply better rides overall with simpler maintenance routine.
Maybe. I bet if the incentives disappeared tomorrow a lot of people would stop buying them, especially if the price hasn't dropped on its own. Hopefully incentives like Norways are helping to push down cost permanently by increasing the volume, though.
> I don't see in any way why has Tesla miscalculated the market as initially stated. I see tons of their cars on the roads every day, so it arrived here. It is hilarious my benign remark was treated as some classist rub.
I don't think anyone actually asserted that Tesla had miscalculated the market, only that there hasn't been a revolution yet. Good for Norway for achieving a local one at least.
> Look, I'm not sure how it's in the States, but a BMW or Audi won't get you laid in Europe. Kids won't drop their candy and men won't think of your "status". Cabbies drive Merc E class here (not just in Norway). Pakistani immigrants drive German sedans. Everyone knows they are more expensive but not out of range of a middle income family on a financing - just a matter of your priorities. Porsche Cayenne is "luxury", Maibach is, but A5 and the likes, made in hundreds thousands each year is not. Tesla is cool in its own high tech way, but salon trim doesn't give a luxury vibe either.
Cars in general don't get you laid anywhere. That doesn't mean that they aren't status symbols. Most status symbols aren't actually out of reach of the average middle class family. Smart marketing is to price these things such that they are affordable but also a decent stretch. That keeps them reasonably exclusive while also providing access to a massive market of consumers. This is no different in the US. Middle class families can afford BMWs, but most of them don't.
You're welcome to think that expensive cars aren't status symbols if you like, though.
True, but here they wouldn't buy cars at all, just use bus. The income extremes don't matter as much if we stick to the cars that are actually on the roads. If we restrict to what lower vs higher middle class buys, calling that 'income inequality' in original sense of the problem is a joke. The gap is not huge and social mobility there is relatively easy (in Norway).
> The net effect on the government's finances (and the customer's finances) is the same.
There are other fiscal effects as well, even if not explicit in annual budgeting. E.g. my town is mostly surrounded by mountains and every winter it has an exhaust cushion over it. Which triggers crises among the asthmatics, so the municipality has to introduce date driving for prolonged periods. E.g. drive with odd number licence plate on odd days and even on even. This has both direct costs and productivity losses.
The whole idea to push for electric was to reduce externalized costs of car pollution on population and the nature. Mind you it's not the first such an effort: in the 1990s, the government here (and in some other countries) promoted diesels vs petrol cars for lower emissions. That is until they learned about particle emissions of diesels.
And how it was done? Correct, import tax rebates on diesel vehicles. Except you never ever hear anyone saying "diesel revolution has not arrived" or "diesel has to be subsidised by government to compete".
> You're welcome to think that expensive cars aren't status symbols if you like, though.
Maybe I misunderstand the concept then, point is these cars are bloody ordinary in Europe. When I singled out A5 I meant it's being bought by people who previously would consider different class vehicles, as Tesla was meant to compete with 7-seaters and top of the line sedans.
I can't locate the post presently, and don't know how trends have progressed. The statistic surprised me when I found it.
That was rather rude.
Ad money, like with all publishing. If they actually cared about providing useful content to people, they'd seek out those quieter ones and interview them too. Don't blame Elon for the market actors that want to earn money off his fanbase. Blame those market actors instead.
Thats not to say that any particular criticism is unjustified. Just that tearing down someone for its own sake is not good for anyone - rock throwers included.
Considering that housing is a pretty huge expense for the majority of people, it's a legitimate gripe.
I'm pretty sure in a zero-sum game (e.g. Our market reality), this is the opposite of true.
And let's not forget the millions of people who worked to generate wealth that could be transferred via, and taxed by, PayPal, accruing the fortune with which to start all these projects in the first place. If I didn't "know better" I'd be tempted to conclude that the luck of being in the right place at the right time with a good idea, is the main difference between Elon and the rest, or at least that any intrinsic differences are not as great as you might think. Heck I'm a "visionary" too, just add one billion dollars and tons of free time and see what I come up with! (Campaign coming soon to Kickstarter, LOL)
Man is at once animal and rational, and sometimes the rational side reacts against our own animalistic urge to designate an alpha ape and worship only that one ape. Many of us got into technology as a way of breaking down this same kind of bullshit hierarchy that you can find in so many other places & domains of human life. Technology was supposed to be the great equalizer. In some cases it has worked that way but in others it has only amplified the disequilibrium. It seems we can't escape our inner ape.
Therefore is it "technologists" to whom you should be appealing here for greater reverence? Maybe it's not your technological side, but your ape side, that wants to be more reverent.
Thread winner. There is little difference between a billionaire and anyone else except a billion dollars.
He could have invested his money, maybe funded some low-cost web startups, but instead he did what he thought was needed, financial risk being secondary. I think that's what makes him stand out.
I think he is so much of a nerd that it doesn't change him all that much. I like him better for that, but it's true he doesn't deserve the amount of credit he's given, simply because that's unrealistic.
But, if he CEASES to be 'that guy' and 'the visionary sole leader and innovator', it's less of an appealing story, and his businesses would suffer. He is surfing on a wave of attention which sustains the valuations of his companies, and using the valuation to invest in gigantic projects that may do a lot of good. Surf on, say I.
He does trigger conservative-minded people pretty hard, which I imagine is partly due to how Tesla got politicized during Obama's first term.
I don't know how serious you are about the billion dollars thing (or what exactly your point may be), but I'd bet a billion dollars you wouldn't be anywhere as effective as Elon is with that money. The idea that any two people are going to be equivalently effective given $X is silly. There are just as many orders of difference in effectiveness with money as there are in any other endeavor.
PayPal (really X.com) was founded based on: "17% of the world's economy is lost to the financial industry. Wtf, they are just numbers in a database, can't we do better?"
I dunno what the percent is now, or whether PayPal decreased it significantly (or increased it even), but the difference is Elon's ability to look at problems, reduce them to fundamentals, decide if they can be improved upon or not, then working toward moving reality in that direction.
So, if the 'PayPal tax' is unacceptable to you, the "visionary" thing to do would be, figure out what the root causes of that tax are, figure out why they are unnecessary and how much correcting them will move the needle. Any significant progress in this area would be worth well more than a billion dollars, and you'd have no problem raising that capital. Make it happen!
Elon like many great leaders before him is accomplish great things because he recognizes talent and allow talented people to do what they are good at. Too many talented people are held down by their leaders.
Of course if Elon was placed in Somalia he would have accomplished nothing. The talents and infrastructure he needs to do great things would not have been there. It is American society which has given him the opportunities he has exploited.
That's a pernicious assumption. Technologists are still human and are vulnerable to the same emotions and biases of the hoi polloi.
My observation over the last few years has been a steady decline in the quality of comments on HN, and a steady increase in the number of Debbie Downer comments.
No matter what someone is doing - there will always, always be a comment about how whatever they are trying to achieve is stupid and they should instead be doing x, y, z.
It's a shame, really.
To be fair, pretty much all of his companies rely on government subsidies. He's basically built his businesses around it.
Disclosure: I work at SpaceX as a technician so I may be biased.
- GM - $3.58 Billion in subsidies
- Ford - $2.52 Billion in subsidies
- Fiat Chrysler Automobiles — $2.06 Billion in subsidies
Took 10 seconds of Googling to find that.
Plus Tesla is actually innovating on a massive scale and pulling the world into a more sustainable, quieter future. I too hate subsidies but as long as the US Governemnt is going to keep up corporate welfare it may as well be towards the actual innovators building a better future than the laggards trying their best to maintain the status quo so they can extract maximum profits.
People are just much more likely to comment if they hate something than if they love something. Also if they disagree with something than if they agree. Comments in any online forum are not a uniform sampling of the views of the readers.
HN's saving grace is that many of the articles linked to are on subjects that are just obscure enough to avoid being overwhelmed by "this sucks/this rules" sorts of bikeshedding comments. Also most of the topics are complicated or obscure enough as to make them difficult targets for kneejerk nitpickery.
When he actually improves humanity's lot instead of producing boutique goods for rich people, then maybe we'll see more praise.
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?
It'll be a while before his electric cars can really compete with cheap cars, but I'm sure he'll get there. He's making good progress.
Probably the same way Ferrari is, no point to make wide acceptance of that brand.
There's a lot of R&D going into this, and it's just easier to bootstrap a car company out of nothing while building expensive, high-margin luxury cars than when building competitive mass market cars. The mass market will come, but before it gets to that, costs have to go down more, and infrastructure for electric cars has to become ubiquitous.
If there's a ton of work done at the various checkpoints, the pace is slow but maybe the length of the line isn't very far?
Last year, Tesla sold 50,000 cars. It would take the Delta plant roughly a month to make that many. GM has ~15 equivalent plants worldwide.
I love Tesla and am glad to see the NUMMI plant up and running again, but even their most ambitious sales plans for the next 10 years pale in comparison to business as usual for the major manufacturers.
edit
Curiosity got the better of me, so I looked up the 2015 sales figures for those 3 vehicles from that one plant. Acadia: 96,393; Traverse: 119,945; Enclave: 62,081. So roughly 280,000 SUVs produced at the one assembly plant last year without much fanfare.
[1] http://ww.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyI...
The Delta plant employs ~4,000 employees so you get about 70 cars/employee/year.
If NUMMI was making 310k vehicles per year with 4,700 employees according to Wiki, that would be about 66 cars/employee/year -- which is much closer than I expected.
Last year Tesla turned out 50,000 vehicles and they currently have ~6,000 employees in Fremont -- or about 8 cars/employee/year.
Obviously an unfair comparison since Tesla is ramping production and NUMMI / Delta are both final assembly plants and Tesla is doing a lot of stamping and component production in Fremont but interesting nonetheless.
Also a bit of an outdated mental model. Had the privilege of touring the tesla factory recently... one neat tidbit that stuck with me is the host described "the line" more like a river with many tributaries joining in all along the watershed.
So if you wanted to have a non-softball engineering discussion about "the line", you would ask questions like which tributaries are the bottlenecks, how much parallelism is there, are improvements marginal or do you wholesale upgrade entire sublines at once, what's the caching strategy, etc.
> So it's not that I think that the risk is that the AI would develop a will of its own right off the bat. I think the concern is that someone may use it in a way that is bad. Or even if they weren't going to use it in a way that's bad but somebody could take it from them and use it in a way that's bad, that, I think, is quite a big danger. So I think we must have democratization of AI technology to make it widely available. And that's the reason that obviously you, me, and the rest of the team created OpenAI was to help spread out AI technology so it doesn't get concentrated in the hands of a few.
According to this, the answer to "How to Build the Future" is "make the story big, and get free money from government".
Note: I have not fact-checked it or anything. Just find it interesting and relevant, so don't expect me to argue about it, and don't flag me as a troll.
SpaceX is providing the US government with cargo supply services at a fraction of the cost of previous alternatives and that's "free money from the government"?
Read all about it: http://www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-releases-cots-final-report
Zero hedge isn't always right, but they do provide alternative view points rarely seen elsewhere.
At Tesla his time is spent "almost entirely with the engineering team, working on improving the Falcon 9 and our Dragon spacecraft and developing the Mars Colonial architecture."
At Tesla he is "in the design studio, take up a half a day a week, dealing with aesthetics and look-and-feel things. And then most of the rest of the week is just going through engineering of the car itself as well as engineering of the factory."
He spends "basically half a day at OpenAI most weeks"
After working and consulting with labs while building/hacking software/hardware for neural interfaces and seeing where the field is now, I have very little hope. Too much bureaucracy, and too much (darpa) money going after red queens races (lets not even get started at all the private/nih money flowing into some labs funding even more technologically incompetent PI's) at least in neuroimaging, and companies lining up to get MIT postdocs to peddle their latest and greatest toys.
I even had to find someone willing to write my grant and go through the submission process for an abstract (not even the full proposal) for DARPA-BAA-16-33, because despite calling for "BTO seeks unconventional approaches that are outside the mainstream, challenge assumptions, and have the potential to radically change established practice, lead to extraordinary outcomes, and create entirely new fields.", apparently an email submission is just not ok despite having co authored in this area and currently designing BCI related hardware and software in the open in my free time compared to a lot of newly minted assoc. profs struggling to get their matlab scripts (that someone else probably wrote years ago) to run on cluster their uni just spend 10's of millions on again this year expanding, forget understanding how any of the machines from which data is collected (and can barely analyze themselves) actually work…
Yeah… semonga berhasil ;)
I think most people on this forum would be interested in how such can be related to gaming, but I know researchers that who be interested in cheaper/as or more accurate mapping (think "realtime" volumetric [mni-brain like] relative powermaps calc'd from beamforming/dsp on n-electrode arrays along the scalp at x sampling rates, and canceling out influences in the impedances due to rotational moments in the head [prob using gyros/3-axis accelerometers] and potential moisture build up along the scalp) for as much a 2-3 hours of scan time on a fmri/meg now, as well as being able to collect more data outside of the "lab" (and other brain states as well).
I'm not sure of the specifics, but this comes across as very entitled and narcissistic, but I assume that's most likely a case of misinterpretation of your point . That said, if they have a submission process, expect to go through it. It's entirely possibly they get a ton of useless submissions and inquiries through email, and part of their process is to ignore those. If an applicant can't be bothered to go through the initial steps to get onto the short list for consideration, why should they think that's a good candidate to be throwing money at, regardless of their resume?
That's a fair question. I'd like to ask a question in response: if an applicant has worked under/helped/seen those who could be bothered the jump through the hoops to get on the short of consideration and then funded, walked away because someone threw money at them to work on financial/trading software (thus enabling and "freed" to pursued related research work in more detail in their spare time), why shouldn't they throw money at such candidate despite considering how far throwing more of the same into neuroimaging research has gotten us thus far?
Personally, jumping through arbitrary/superficial hoops is not a game I want to play (plenty of others are good at that, and I wish them all the best, darpa's latest and greatest ways at dealing with signal 2 noise issue is their problem, and anyone should feel free to point that out), I'm having much more fun playing my own game from my fancy apt all the away across the world, while still working with those don't want to waste my time (and mine there's). Luckly for others and folks like me, darpa aren't the only folks interested, and money isn't the only "limited" resource of consideration.
Because they don't see that candidate. Your indication that your email was sufficient implies a few underlying assumptions which may or may not be true: a) They have enough staff to actively monitor this mailbox for submissions, b) there aren't too many useless submissions that make it unlikely the staff will be able to find the useful ones, c) that even if the staff exists, it doesn't require some bureaucratic hurdle to be met so it can be allocated to this use, d) that the staff assigned to monitoring this source is capable of assessing your accomplishments and how they relate to the grant in question.
Since there is a grant process, I think it's likely that whatever resources they do have are allocated towards assessing entries that come in through that process. There's probably more than enough work to be done in that department, such that monitoring mailboxes for the odd useful non-conformant applicant is not a priority. Even so, I assume if the stars aligned and someone happened to see the email, and knew the applicant was uniquely qualified or had time to research the person, then it's likely it might be followed up on (depending on how much interest that person had in this particular grant or field).
The important thing to consider in this is that none of these scenarios have anything to do with how qualified the applicant is. Taking issue with them not persuing you in this process when I think it's likely your application may have never even seen human eyes seems an odd response to me. The little information I have to go on makes it sound like you did the equivalent of applying for an engineering position at Apple by walking into the nearest Apple store and dropping off your resume. I'd expect about the same level of success with that. Sure, the store manager might pass it on, or know someone who is interested, but really, that's not their job or responsibility.
>The important thing to consider in this is that none of these scenarios have anything to do with how qualified the applicant is.
I know this, which is why I kinda of have no faith in these kinds of initiatives (the kinds Elon is inadvertently/or not parading over) since most of effort involved goes into being seen, the people behind the "process" could care less of after such funds have been allocated as to what becomes of them. I've seen enough people do work behinds the scenes (and how far south/delayed projects go after they leave), actually making things happen for those who do go through the "process" in labs/orgs to not really care too deeply about getting through this hurdle that's ultimately meaningless in the scope of the work.
Things are moving forward overall, just a bit slowly than they have to (although I've made more related useful for stuff for others in less time after not working in labs directly anymore).
>The little information I have to go on makes it sound like you did the equivalent of applying for an engineering position at Apple by walking into the nearest Apple store and dropping off your resume.
I've talked about similar issues before on HN (with others also in similar positions with their work in research <-> industry) in more depth with more links and such, so its not really worth going into here.
Check an archive of this thread, a lot of negative comments got removed.
- He used Tesla stock to secure loans he used to purchase his stake in Solar City, the decision to purchase Solar City is at least in part driven by the fact that Elon Musk IS Tesla, without him at the helm it would be a problem and if he got margin called it would affect Tesla since he would lose a significant amount of his shares. There is no Tesla boardmember/major shareholder that doesn't have a conflict of interest for this issue.
- His companies buy each other's bonds, they're basically just moving money around and building a larger house of cards - if one company goes down at this point I really don't see how it wouldn't have significant reprecussions for the others. This is especially problematic when it comes to Space X which is privately owned and its deep connection to his public companies.
- It seems that if I took a big pile of money in my yard and lit it on fire, Elon would probably want to compete there (and do it better than me). All of his companies are very capital intensive and he is very leveraged at this point and has a lot of people tied to his fate - him not being focused on any one business makes this a bigger problem.
And here's my biggest Elon problem:
- He is a walking PR campaign. Why do we barely know any of the higher level engineers at Space X or Tesla? He is splitting his time between multiple companies, I find it impossible to believe he is involved in every engineering breakthrough at all of these companies and yet I have honestly never once heard him give credit to any of his management or engineering team.
That last one is the worst for me. I don't think he's a great person and it's annoying seeing everyone fawning over him like he's Elon Kardashian for tech people. The fact an almost universal complaint at his companies is that people are undercompensated and overworked further reinforces my personal opinion he doesn't value the work of other people.
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 Sandberg is fairly well known). Another is the "Google Guys" but you don't hear much about them lately probably because the PR has been tamped down. But early on it was every magazine cover and apparently from what I heard later Sergey wasn't even anywhere near as important as Larry was.
This happens also with VC firms. One partner (in a small firm like AVC) is the big cheese, the others you barely hear about.
That said this is not unusual in business or for that matter team sports or even entertainment. For many reason including some people simply want to be behind the scenes.
Google isn't a good example in my opinion though, generally people besides the CEO announce their products, i.e. Google Maps was announced by Bret Taylor. Look at the history of Google and Microsoft and you will see tons of "xxx announces/introduces yyy". Tesla's entire history is "Elon Musk announces ..." (after teasing on Twitter for 5 months to keep the stock price up).
I don't think everything is bad about him. I think the thing he is amazing at is setting the vision for his companies - which is really valuable. It really seems like everyone understands the mission and where things are going and he's very clear about it. So I think he has good qualities, I just think he's also narcissistic, financially impulsive and unfocused.
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.
Yes, people on the internet will be negative. No, that doesn't mean you should respond to them.
Here's an example of a negative comment that (rightly) hasn't been downvoted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12509856
Here's an example of a negative comment that (rightly) has been downvoted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12508752
If sama is talking about negativity in general, then it would be a very sad thing to complain about people being negative. Because negativity is important, especially in discussions, especially for the reasons you touched upon. But I assume he knows better than to complain about people disagreeing.
I think he's just complaining about the number of people this topic has attracted that have come here simply to vent. And I agree, it's kind of a pain, but within a couple hours they get sorted out of the discussion. It's great that it's possible to say what they say on HN. And I just don't think it's worth complaining about, especially as someone involved in the production of the linked story. That's just feeding the trolls.
When it comes to jealousy people ignore abilities and focus on luck.
Woah that hit home. I wish I could run a business without businessy things. How do you find the right people?! I'm a really good tech guy and designer. I can whip up anything, I've just never found the right person to sell it and deal with other humans.
To me the future is welcomed with a guarded mentality, in that for all the benifits purported to follow it, but the reality is that as we progress technologically we are going to create a new wealth schism in the people of the world the blowback of that will come back one day and bite us. If we can push the future and lessen income inequality and increase the wealth, not of investors, but average people, that is the way forward.
- inequality
- workaholism of upper classes skewing culture
- degredidation of biodiversity worldwide
If we move to Mars let's make this planet a temple. 50% earth surface no humans or something.
Pretty sure Elon is a creature from outside of our simulation who has injected himself into our reality to teach us how to play the game better.
However, the value of his company is already based on the premise of self driving cars.
Self driving cars will cause a pretty massive shift in the world. I'm all for it & really think that most people suck at driving. However...
I have a hard time following his advice of getting AI right while is plan is to profit immensely from AI.
Maybe his moral compass is telling him that AI will cause problems, but better to have a seat at the table once the oncoming deluge hits.
Anyways. The AI we must be careful with is "strong AI", that is, human level in all or most intellectual endeavours.
The AI he will profit with is "weak AI", or the current and foreseeable AI technology. We don't need to be careful with that one, but not as much. It is industrial-equipment level of careful.
Strong AI needs nuclear ICBM levels of careful, maybe even more.
But AI without a real purpose but that can think and feel the way we do? I see no reason why anyone would put that in charge of ICBMs.
So the future of better interfaces (with your brain) Elon is talking about might be also much better for our health.
EDIT: Figured it out. Probably June or July as he mentions OpenAI was 6 months old and it was founded in December 2015.
Slow down Elon... slow down..
1. Are the any laws of physics that stop us from creating AI ? Answer is No. Nature already built it so its possible.
2. Is it possible to improve AI significantly ? Yes, because if we can build AI, AI can build better AI.
3. How soon can it happen? Since the trend is exponential. It can happen within 100 years.
4. Is it good idea to start worrying about it now? Sure why not.
Of course, the demos (http://104.131.78.120) fail all the time because they haven't done the work to feed in the whole internet and handle proper names and stuff.
> How soon can it happen? Since the trend is exponential. It can happen within 100 years.
Some people think "well, it's likely to happen within 100 years -> it's up to us to be prepared".
Other people think "well, it's unlikely to happen within 10 years -> it's not worth it to begin to prepare".
I don't even know if one of those is wrong!
"Do you think people who want to be useful should get a PhD?" "Umm... Mostly not."
"Sometimes it [technology] gets worse... In '69 we were able to go to the moon.. Then the space shuttle could only take people to LEO, then the space shuttle retired... That trends to zero. People think technology automatically gets better every year but it actually doesn't, it gets better if smart people work like crazy to make it better... By itself if people don't work on it technology will decline. We look at Rome and how they were able to build these incredible roadways and aqueducts and indoor plumbing, and they forgot how to do all of those things.
Entropy is not on your side."
"I know a lot of people think I must spend a lot of time doing media and business-y things... But 80% of my time is spent on engineering and design."
"A very long time ago you took me on a tour of SpaceX. And the most impressive thing was that you knew every detail of the rocket and every pieces of engineering that went into it and I don't think many people get that about you."
"What really matters is the machine that builds the machine, the factory. That is at least 2 orders of magnitude harder than the vehicle itself."
"What really matters is the machine that builds the machine, the factory. That is at least 2 orders of magnitude harder than the vehicle itself."
My request to YC is to publish transcripts like this as text.
https://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:24682936...
It's available on SoundCloud.
Here's a link to the transcript in RTF, and we will definitely note it for future posts: https://goo.gl/kaMMwv
Thanks for noting my request, and consider just including the text in the body of the page. It will blow people's minds.
And definitely noted!
What's indeed against plain text in the body? It's more easy, it will always be readable. And what about accessibility? Or archiving the content?
Why can't this just be good old HTML than a scribd walled garden? A horrible interface with ads shoved on your face.
Nothing?
They get massive consumer surpluses.
They get cars, fridges, air travel, tv, entertainment, healthcare - better, faster, cheaper (except the later).
Anyone who is able to hold a job and have an income in the Western World sees their material lives improve radically.
It is a lie to say 'the capitalists win'. Consumers get far more of the surpluses than any other group.
Uh... that's not really a CEO's job though.
I just wish more middle management at my company knew how the product worked.
I haven't spent much time in a corporate environment, mostly in a workshop making structural steel, so it's not at all clear to me who the CxO layer does.
As another comment suggested their roles seem to be mostly decorative. Do these roles actually make decisions, or just sign off on them?
Basically, it's like this:
If your subordinates come to you and are like, "This is absolutely the right thing to do," then you'll 95% of the time sign off on it. If you find that that's not true, it's probably time to fire your subordinates, they apparently aren't doing a good job.
If subordinate A comes to you and says, "We should do X," and subordinate B comes to you and says, "We should do mutually exclusive thing Y," then you may need to decide between them.
CEOs should also ideally have a strategic sense and say things like, "Guys, I want us to look at doing something like thing Z. Research it and tell me your conclusions," when everyone else thought that there was no decision to be made at all -- just keep chugging along.
In that role, maybe they make lots of decisions, maybe they write things like "Part Deux", or maybe they stand around an scream a lot. Whatever works; probably a little of all of the above, and a good CEO knows when to use which approach.
At some level they may also report to a board, who helps them, or replaces them, all based on their execution success. And at another level, they report to shareholders who do the same.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015...
Better that, than privatizing things: that's a recipe for bad answers and a untimely demise due to market forces. Maybe I don't want AI, electric cars, and space travel to die because some hedge fund needed immediate profits the very next quarter.
#1: We clearly have the resources to publicly invest in innovative technologies like electric cars, AI and space travel. So why must these investments go directly into the hands of a few individuals to make all the final decisions (and who have bad habits of not paying their workers btw)? Why can't we make these investments through democratically accountable teams, perhaps via some academic mechanism?
#2: When you make a risky investment as an individual in a startup, you expect to get a commensurate return on that investment if the startup becomes successful in the marketplace. Why don't the collective investments of the public in Musk's ventures come back to citizens in a kind of public dividend?
#2: Got me there with colonizing Mars: that will be rich-only. However, proliferation of electric cars combined with breakthroughs in energy storage combined with local solar power can end up as a VERY big public dividend: effectively, it becomes possible to invest in technology that drastically reduces the self-sustaining costs and carbon footprint of the individual. Combine that with growing your own food and you're your own little generation ship: it's a drastic change from traditional labor/capital society, because you can set up your little 'life capsule' and then spend your days doing whatever, perhaps working on OpenAI :)
And if it's good enough for Elon it's good enough for everybody else: imagine if not just megacorporations but ordinary citizens were subsidized to convert to this battery-pack-based, solar-powered energy consumption model. We could use plain human self-interest to drive widespread adoption of tech that would reduce the catastrophic swerve into a far more chaotic and destructive global climate.
I'd call that a public dividend, worldwide.
The Federal tax credits for plug-in cars, for example, are available to all automakers (or more accurately, the customers of all automakers). You could start an electric car company today and your customers would be eligible for the credit. Nissan Motor Co. is the #1 beneficiary of the tax credits to date.
All automakers were eligible for the DOE's ATVM loan program. Tesla received (and paid back) about $500 million under the auspices of the program. Ford received $5.9 billion and Nissan received $1.4 billion. Neither Ford nor Nissan have paid back the loan.
The Federal government bailed out GM and Chrysler to the tune of about $20 billion.
We've spent trillions of dollars to secure our interests in the middle east, which keeps oil supplies stable to the benefit of ICE automakers.
People always complain about government subsidies when there are articles about Elon Musk, but it is hardly ever even-handed.
To me, one wrong problem is anything that perpetuates the automobile/road system as is. I think the whole thing needs to be completely rebuilt.
To me the enormity of our problems from a sustainability standpoint are so great that anything but a massive mobilization and shift in our way of life is arranging deck chairs on the titanic.
I think that religion was a science of mobilizing public opinion, and I think science has replaced it, and has yet to do as good a job, and has yet to recognize that fact.
I think the right problem is how to manage mass social/cultural change in a very brief period of time.
I'll say again, Elon is doing a fantastic job within the paradigm of our current industrialized cultural norms, which says that we can keep on with business as usual and make some adjustments to our systems ... but I think it's not enough by an order of magnitude, and so that's why I think minds like Elon's should be working on manufacturing a social/cultural reality that prepares us for a huge change in lifestyle.
To me that's a problem of social engineering, same as religion, and same as building a company, and Elon excels at it.
However none of what I say makes sense if you've been stuffed with all the typical narratives and have not developed your imagination or your sense of history.