Steve Wozniak: ‘I don’t believe anything Elon Musk or Tesla says’ | Hacker News Reader

Steve Wozniak: ‘I don’t believe anything Elon Musk or Tesla says’

siliconbeat.com

51 pointsmudil41 comments

Clickbait - here's the original sourced article - http://www.siliconbeat.com/2018/01/29/steve-wozniak-dont-bel...

TLDR: He likes the car (2 of them), but not the hype.

I think

Elon's a funny animal. Most hype artists are full of shit and never deliver anything. Elon is full of shit but then ends up actually delivering something rather amazing-- but maybe not quite as amazing as promised and never as quickly.

In /r/spacex they joke about "Elon time." Take "Elon years" and triple them.

Of course this is typical for engineers and Elon is an engineer. I do it too. "Oh this will just take a few weeks" == months later...

> In /r/spacex they joke about "Elon time." Take "Elon years" and double them.

There used to be a Valve time.

"Duke Nukem Taking Forever" holds a sweet spot in my heart.

> Most hype artists are full of shit and never deliver anything. Elon is full of shit but then ends up actually delivering something rather amazing--

Ergo, by your own logic, Elon is not full of shit.

>> Most hype artists are full of shit and never deliver anything. Elon is full of shit but then ends up actually delivering something rather amazing--

>> Ergo, by your own logic, Elon is not full of shit.

The way I read what he wrote, he/she's saying Elon is a hype artist that is (full_of_shit && delivers_something) as opposed to being a hype artist that is (full_of_shit && !delivers_something) .

Okay. I kind of wish I hadn't replied in the first place but thanks for giving me an alternate reading of it :/

No, read it again: Most bullshit artists deliver nothing. Others deliver something, but not what they promised.

Yes, but they were arguing that Musk delivers what he promised although not necessarily when he promised. In that case all engineers being eternally optimistic are bullshit artists to a fault (which nobody would say they are). Anyway, it's a stupid quibble but given what Musk has achieved it's kind of irritating.

> Of course this is typical for engineers and Elon is an engineer.

He's not! This was discussed in the article comments and according to Wikipedia he have a BS in physics and another in economics. He started a PhD but quickly stopped.

I know a lot of people in Silicon Valley who are called engineers and only have a physics background. They aren't certified professional engineers in the disciplines that have licensing, like civil engineers, but they're still engineers.

Used to be, a large segment of Silicon Valley 'engineers' were trained in music. Some weird overlap that worked early on, at least until the market got flooded with trained software types.

He is. He's been performing as an Engineer for a decade. Which makes him one. Regardless of his early certification/degree.

He manages engineers, and he would seem to be quite effective at it (a rarity!), but being a highly technical manager isn’t the same as performing engineering work. Do you have a specific example in mind?

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-elon-musk-schedules-a-typ...

That link doesn’t address my question. It says he works at SpaceX and he works at Tesla, not the nature of the work.

Still not an HN quality article IMO, seems light on content and borderline gossipy.

The only interesting part was his experience with the self-driving features and comparisons to BMW/Audi, but regardless he still continues to use it, so it must not be that bad.

OK, we've changed the URL to that from https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/29/steve-wozniak-i-dont-....

Since this is more of a celebrity gossip piece than one that gratifies intellectual curiosity, users correctly flagged it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

As a Tesla skeptic myself, I'm surprised at the visibility this "article" is getting. It reads like something you'd see in a celebrity gossip rag. "You won't BELIEVE what Steve Wozniak just said about Elon!" There are far better articles making a bear case against Tesla, and it's unfortunate that this is the one picking up clicks.

Elon Musk is a very popular figure on sites like reddit that "like" technology and science but have very little understanding of it. Every week he says something that either shows what a "down to earth" guy he is, some doomsday prophecy, or announces some pipe dream technology that will never be worked on, and the masses start reposting his every word.

He (or rather his PR team) is very good at creating that "image" and keeping himself popular on reddit, but he's terrible at the thing an enterpreneur is supposed to excel at - generating profits.

r/futurology

(blech!)

an enterpreneur is supposed to excel at

Honest question, but isn't the whole point (or one of the points) that he doesn't care too much about generating profits for shareholders etc (which I'd applaud - why does everything always have to be held up in the light of economy first?) but rather wants to create products no matter what (even if they are delivered way too late)? At least, that is the image which seems to be created. From heresay.

Doesn't help much that he also sucks at delivering results.

> but he's terrible at the thing an enterpreneur is supposed to excel at - generating profits.

I think that is a very narrow definition. Elon as of today is worth 20.7b (Forbes), between you, me and the internet I think he's doing pretty well as an entrepreneur. A better fit IMO would be 'value'.

Profits are what you chase if you are a CEO after quarterly returns and job security. See Amazon [1].

[1]: https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/031414/amazon-ne...

Is he really worth that, or is it just stock options he owns? Those can very quickly be reduced to near zero, as Elizabeth Holmes infamously demonstrated.

I'm by no means saying Elon is untouchable, but theres a slight different between the useful technology that SpaceX and Tesla produce, and the not-so-useful technology that Theranos had.

It’s a tad extreme to compare Theranos and Holmes with Musk and either company. SpaceX is possibly profitable with clear delivering results. There’s no comparison there. Even if one of his companies goes belly up, it won’t be a Theranos and Holmes like situation.

Given the large number of startup people who read and write on Hacker News, I'm always surprised to see comments like this. You can create an extremely valuable company without running a profit, and many highly-profitable companies that exist today lost money when they were young.

It's odd how little skepticism any of Musk's claims are met with. I can't imagine the situation would be the same for anyone else. (Not to say he hasn't had many impressive accomplishments, but people seem to want to believe anything Musk says so much that they stop thinking critically).

Not sure why this is getting upvoted. Does people actually upvote the "article" or just the title on HN?

What's the difference between the two?

The title says ‘I don’t believe anything Elon Musk or Tesla says’.

The article says ‘I don’t believe anything Elon Musk or Tesla says but I already have 2 Teslas and I'll probably buy the next one’.

Why do statements like this from Wozniak get any press? Steve Wozniak was a brilliant innovator early in the PC revolution days, but he hasn't been influential in the industry for many decades now.

Once you get past the article fluff to what Woz actually said, it's usually pretty interesting. I prefer interesting content to statements from influential people.

With respect to Woz, it seems he increasingly spouts these contrarian opinions simply to remain relevant. His contributions to discourse are sniping at large organizations from the outside.

His quote may be hyperbolic, but the article says he lost confidence after the conflict with their LIDAR provider. Which isn't an unreasonable view. Tesla may crack level 5 autonomous driving with their current hardware, but their solution requires also cracking problems in computer vision. An impediment none of the major competitors have.

You're referring to the radar provider? Tesla doesn't use LIDAR except on a few test vehicles occasionally spotted near HQ.

This is just a puff piece. He's not saying anything.

Hype is fine but I don't how Tesla is legally getting away with selling it and not delivering on its vaporware (full self driving)

I am sure he ordered the flamethrower anyway.

Maybe he has trust issues since his story with Steve Jobs :|

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