I'm still a fan of what those companies are doing but Elon has destroyed my view of him with his own behavior and words. We should stop turning a blind eye to his labor practices. Likewise, we should give the engineers and other workers that are actually accomplishing these things more credit, vs pretending it's one lone genius. Tom Mueller in particular deserves far more credit.
We also need to hold him to account when Musk tries to ruin the lives of his employees who speak up about what goes on in his companies. He even tried to frame one of them as a mass shooter to police[1] in an effort to get them SWAT'd.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon...
It's happened so often, that we must assume it's their standard method of operation.
And whether that call was made by Musk himself or someone he instructed to ruin that persons life doesn't really make a difference. The fact is that Musk himself or one of his bullies lied to the police and they got away with it.
Does he? Can you name three cases?
> He (and his staff) have again and again attacked journalists, former employees, and anyone else who said anything bad about Tesla or Musk.
Again, can you name three cases where Musk went after a journalist or former employees, and we know, beyond reasonable doubt, that the victim was right - and not, in fact, lying through their teeth?
I ask because there is documented history of the reverse happening. Consider:
1. Top Gear did a hit piece on their first car, lying about its range (55 vs. 200 miles). This doesn't sound serious until you realize that, back then, people didn't believe in electric cars, mostly because of range worries. This kind of bullshit was arguably life-threatening not just to Tesla, but to the entire EV industry.
Anyway, Tesla sued for libel and lost[0]. Here's a kicker: they lost because the judge deemed Top Gear is an entertainment show and not documentary, therefore they're not obliged to be factually accurate.
2. The incident with Top Gear made Tesla install telemetry in the cars given out for test drives; this came in handy few years later, when John Broder from New York Times decided to publish a hit piece on Model S[1]. Tesla then released data from the logs, directly contradicting the story, and demonstrating that Broder put in extensive effort to fabricate the bad results he then reported on.
I can't blame them from being a bit sensitive after situations like these. For the past decade, there were, and still are, a lot of people standing to make boatloads of money from bringing Tesla and the EV market down.
--
[0] - https://www.wired.com/2012/02/tesla-vs-top-gear/
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/feb/14/tesla-pos...
It annoyed the hell out of them that after driving for few laps they have to wait for hours to charge the car to do few more laps.
Musk's ego simply couldn't swallow the fact that show which is being watched by 300 million people regularly slanted his baby. Luckily in this case, his enemy wasn't some lone expert diver but BBC with team of expensive lawyers, hence the result.
He’s chief engineer at spacex for starters.
He calls himself that, sure. Elon is a smart guy, and that's why I think he positions himself the way he does. He doesn't want to be Bill Gates, he wants to be perceived as a man of the people. A dudebro who happens to be rich. That's why he's smoking joints with Joe Rogan on camera and tweeting about WSB.
There is zero percent chance that Elon is actually doing any technical analysis or design for SpaceX.
He calls himself Chief Engineer for the same reason Trump claims to be a master-level deal maker. They're narcissists cultivating their respective cults of personality, and the legions of sycophants just lap this stuff up.
He's an engineer, and there's a bunch of engineers who worked with him who will attest to that.
He's not, and all those quotes from that reddit thread I know you're thinking of are very careful to dance around the point.
He's not an engineer.
It's full of quotes saying stuff like "he understands a lot about spaceflight and aerodynamics" and similar weasel statements.
In the US, going to school to become a Graduate Engineer does not make you a Professional Engineer.
~~He may be credited as chief engineer at SpaceX, but that doesn't mean he's meaningfully contributing to actual engineering efforts.~~ He's also credited as a founder of Tesla, despite not actually being involved in the founding of that company.
Whatever his history is with other people or whatever his personality flaws or weakness, he's the real deal.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
Nonsense! Engineer is an education, not a job title. It's no different than Musk calling himself Doctor. He either went to school for years to become an engineer or he isn't one.
In the UK the term is meaningless too, but CEng isn't. You don't become a Chartered Engineer until you've done the education but also have monitored professional practice experience.
It's ok to express an opinion about Musk either way. You can not like him for all kinds of reasons. But he actually wrote video games as a kid growing up. He wrote code at his earliest startups and a lot of it.
You know as well as I do that when talking about building a submarine (and linking to SpaceX discussions) "Engineer" isn't meant as someone who made a video game back in the day. It has zero percentage to do with code.
With that said I'm also sure you know that Software Engineer isn't seen as a "real engineer" (and I'm in the same camp as you FYI). It is more like Medical Technician versus Doctor. In most countries you need a license besides an education to b a "real engineer" and Software Engineers cannot get one. The whole job title is a misnomer, just like Engineer in American English has become it seems, though some Board of Examiners still sue you if you try to call yourself an Engineer without a license[0].
I did not write a single word that was positive or negative about Elon Musk in the comment.
[0]https://eu.starnewsonline.com/story/news/2021/06/10/former-w...
But what you described is just being a CTO. That's an important job, but is still separate from being chief engineer.
From that Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
Where would we be right now if [pick any inventor] had listened when the experts said, "it won't work"?
An inventor's job is to have a big imagination. A successful inventor usually has enough of an engineering background to test their hypothesis and refine as needed. Most of them also know how to gather highly educated minds to help them.
Many successful inventors do not have deep academic backgrounds, because often those educational backgrounds tell them only what is impossible, not what is possible.
Musk definitely doesn't shy away from that part to his detrement (clearly he doesn't see it that way). But I'm firmly with the previous poster in that I like what Tesla/SpaceX are doing and attempting, but think Musk is a bit of a tool. The irony is not lost on me that sometimes a calmer figurehead might not have been able to lead to success a company like Tesla and/or SpaceX.
But that's like saying after a rugby game that the left wing deserved far more of the credit than the coach or captain, since they were the one who ran in the winning try.
The thing is that Musk makes things happen. Not in some lame and purely money driven field like crypto or ad tech - but genuinely moving the needle in combating climate change.
I feel I have to cut him some slack and laud his achievements, even though he comes across as a person you would involuntarily punch in the face for his hideous behaviour.
Aren't there legal systems to make sure that's being done right? Is "we" some labor inspectors?
If you want to give credit to engineers, where does it end? There are millions of engineers in the world doing important things. Crediting that many people will dilute the value of it all.
"We" can be past, current and future employees, who might not contact or work with labor inspectors out of reverence to "the mission" or Musk himself.
It came out later that the private investigator was scamming Elon Musk, and lied to him about finding damaging information. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/08/elon-musk...
Bizarrely, Unsworth's lawyer was L Lin Wood, famous for later apparently having a mental breakdown and supporting conspiracy theories accusing chief justice John Roberts of pedophilia and murder, and being asked to undergo a mental examination by the state bar of Georgia.
L Lin Wood's handling of the Unsworth trial was widely panned as incompetent. Unsworth is clearly a hero, and Musk inserting himself into that situation and permanently tainting Unsworth's name was unconscionable.
https://reason.com/2020/12/31/pro-trump-lawyer-tries-to-impl...
https://reason.com/2021/01/31/treating-lin-woods-wild-conspi...
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-defamation-win-mis...
My son was a big fan of Elon, the "cool rocket guy". But after his comments about Unsworth he asked me "Why did Elon say that stuff about the man who is a hero?" My son is a Thai boy living in Thailand, close the the same age as the boys who were rescued. Sadly I had to walk back the idea that Elon was a good role model.
I thought Unsworth should have sued Elon in Thailand. It wouldn't have meant much since Elon would never travel here again. But in Thailand defamation is a criminal offense that carries jail time. And since Unsworth is a national hero there's little doubt the court would have found in his favor and Elon would have had an outstanding arrest warrant. Again, wouldn't mean much unless Elon forgot about it and ended up traveling to or through a country that would arrest him on behalf of Thailand.
While Thailand is certainly within their rights to run their justice system how they want:
1) The punishment doesn't in any way fit the crime.
2) "He's such a hero" is a terrible reason to do something. Focusing on who the person being wronged was is a bad path to justice - it is better to focus on what the perpetrator did.
So I hope the courts in Thailand would have found in Musk's favour.
Leaving aside that Thailand's defamation laws are largely a club to stop people criticising the government and not really intended for use against people like Musk.
Another funny thing about it is that the truth is not a defense. So even if Unsworth was a pedo and Musk could prove it, that would not be a defense against a defamation case. All that is needed is to show that the person making the defamatory remark intended to cause the victim to lose face.
Elon is a good role model, he's not perfect though. I'm not sure why so many people blindly put him on a pedestal assuming he should be superhuman - especially at the abnormal level of pressures and responsibility he has.
How is hiring a 3rd party to investigate the underlying libel not a good initial response? Especially if he could easily afford it.
I don't know about that putting on a pedestal thing. Musk is a brilliant guy, but has demonstrated that he has a pretty rotten character. IMO, a good role model for a kid really needs to have good quality of character above all else.
"L Lin Wood's handling of the Unsworth trial was widely panned as incompetent. Unsworth is clearly a hero, and Musk inserting himself into that situation and permanently tainting Unsworth's name was unconscionable."
Bizarre! I saw his suits when I went digging through the post-election hootenanny. Incompetent would be the gentlest way to describe them.
I mean, there are a bunch of people who either inherited a billion dollars or married into it, and, not being psychopaths, they just decided to spend that money doing good and have done with it. That seems pretty easily to be "less bad" than somebody like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, or Warren Buffett who set out to acquire wealth..
I guess if you've got a really out-there moral utility function maybe saving the eyesight of a million children or whatever counts for nothing while making a slightly better toaster oven is a 100% goal achieved, but outside that I can't see any way Musk could be the "least bad billionaire".
Actually I can see a case for a different weird utility function if we also had some billionaires who got wealthy from scientific discoveries or mathematical breakthroughs or philosophical insights. If Martin Hellman had earned $100M per year since the 1980s for licensing fees from DH kex he could be a billionaire and we could argue about whether that's an important thing to give to the world. Or if Judith Butler had become fabulously wealthy explaining to people that gender is a social construct, she'd be a billionaire and we could argue whether that was great. But in reality we do not pay philosophers or cryptographers billions of dollars, that sort of money goes to somebody like Musk or Bezos.
I miss the good old days when such accusations were extreme. Reporters would hesitate to say the word pedophile on air. Airing such an accusation would almost certainly trigger a serious defamation lawsuit. News outlets would instead talk of unspecified personal accusations. Now, thanks to a certain popular letter-based conspiracy theory, calling any public figure a "satan-worshipping pedophile" doesn't even raise eyebrows.
Is is "popular letter-based conspiracy" or "letter-based popular conspiracy"? I'm slipping on my royal order of adjectives.
Unsworth - who knew the cave system - said that Musk's idea was impractical and a PR stunt. Both of those claims are valid and came from a reliable source. During a crisis, there is no particular need to be polite to people getting in the way.
You can call each other names and fight.
Musk has gone beyond that and accused Vernon of being a pedophile and marrying child bride.
Maybe it was the heat of the moment. But then some days (or weeks) later he followed up with "I'd bet my signed dollar (that Vernon is a pedo)" (or something like that).
Musk intended to destroy Vernon with the pedophile accusation. There is no doubt of that. This is pre-meditated plan to destroy a person with the pedophile accusation.
For some reason, there's no outrage from tech companies though. People are still praising Musk as usual. I'm looking at you all the CEOs like Jack Dorsey and etc.
It is easy to see what is going on and that it isn't in good faith. Look a his breached commitments during the Flint water crisis (filter every home to below FDA levels), coronavius (produce ventilators), Peurto Rico huricane aftermath, and more. He as a common pattern with these kind of events.
And Vernon did not initiate the Twitter fight, he gave an interview and suggested Musk "stick his submarine where it hurts". Musk took to Twitter where he has millions of followers to strike back.
The tweets are deleted but somebody saved a screenshot: https://twitter.com/RickyReports/status/1018597245275557888?...
Electric cars wouldn't be anywhere near where they are today without him - whatever we may think of his personality, the advancements in tech and environmental impacts for generations to come are real.
The defenders come out of the woodwork at approximately the same moment the attackers do.
> The need for a certain portion of the internet to defend Musk at all times is absolutely weird.
is no weirder than the certain portion of the internet that needs to criticize Musk at all times. In fact, the people that feel the need to interject criticisms of Musk into conversations that aren't really about him clearly have Musk living rent-free in their heads to a greater degree than the defenders do.
Tesla did innovate, but frankly not as much as many people want to give them credit for. And a lot of the innovation happened before Musk even joined, at least when it comes to basic EV tech, not talking about AutoPilot or whatever.
Their real achievement was creating a market and interest. This new consumer and investor interest was also in large part to Musk throwing his ego around in public. A lot of other car makers had models in late stage development phases too, but didn't really see enough interest and a market need to bring those models forward to reach production. They were fat and happy, selling their fossil fuel models.
There were a number of years when a Tesla was the only good EV you could buy, and they forced the entire industry to take note and actually develop their own programs. (Fast forward to today, and it's sometimes pure comedy to see latecomers such as Mazda's first attempt being a complete "what?" with their first EV having under half the range of and being more expensive than a Model 3.)
Sure, someone else could eventually have gotten there, but Musk and Tesla were the ones who did it - and I believe with a rather significant margin of time.
There's a long list of things I don't like about personalities and design choices, but I feel it's ok to keep that separate from the above.
(I don't own an EV. Still saving and waiting for the right time to upgrade from a 10 year old Subaru Outback ICEV bought new then.)
No the entire system efficiency is whats hard and is why Tesla is way in front of the competition with regards to performance and range. Batteries have so far been a commodity - 18500 & 21700s, its only now that Tesla is starting to focus on that part of the system in reference to Battery Day.
https://www.vox.com/2018/7/18/17576302/elon-musk-thai-cave-r...
I did, and it's shocking how something only a few years away, and so publicly recorded, has been so muddled. There was this thai journalist I had been following on twitter to get all details on the whole situation, pity I forgot the account.
anyhoo, here is the cliffnotes version from my memory, apologies if I got something wrong, I'm not a journalist, can't be arsed to dig through the old tweets (but a more tech savvy person could probably do so easily, they are still there iirc):
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1- people on twitter start asking musk for help, and a thai telecommunication/satellite/something CEO contacts him for help, Musk's own employees personally asks him and volunteer to help, Musk decided to dive in.
2- First option they decided (and something everyone was tweeting at him) was to use his Boring tunnel Drills, he flew his boring tunnel team on the SpaceX jet to check, they realized ground was too unstable to drill, so that that option was closed, but the team was still there, with their geology sensing equipment and what not.
3- Iirc tesla gave some powerwalls to run the base camp somewhere in the timeline, but don't recall any other help for that musk company.
4- They are in discussion with the rescue team, the main issue is that the kids might be malnourish and not able to make the journey, you can't send wheelchairs and stretchers, so Musk's team is asked to make some alternatives
5- key point is that it was a two way collaborative process, Musk's team didn't unilaterally offer his "submarine", iirc, Musk shared emails from the rescue team leader to that affect.
6- the first product made was NOT the submarine. There is a video, where tesla or spacex suppliers (i.e a seperate company, but affiliated with one of musk's business) made this really cool rubber/plastic/something stretcher/wrap like item for free, that would help carry a weak child through the tunnel and float in the watery bits, but iirc it was not used because time was running out.
In the analogy, this was the wheel chair equivalent, since the child was supposed to hold himself together somewhat, and was an aid, the child would have to be submerged and breath from an oxygen tank, but the aid would help him bind to a rescuer and not sink or float away, not be too big a burden on the rescuer.
7-The Submarine was the a quicker and more urgent solution, and was for a child that was totally unconscious. This is the ambulance stretcher equivalent, where the child simply has no control. The idea was proposed by the spacex/boring tunnel team (they were the same company basically then) to quickly re-furbish and use an existing falcon tube.
Here is a quick reminder, the Tunnel was essentially like the Letter M, and there was tight points and lower water points, The "submarine" was NOT meant for the tighter points, and only for the lower and longer water-logged bits, where the child could not be presumed to even breath from an oxygen tank.
The idea was to ONLY use the submarine (hence the name) in some of the longer bits, where the child was to be locked in with the necessary oxygen, and then removed once again, especially during the tight bits, where the submarine wouldn't, as many internet sleuths pointed out, fit.
this was tool of absolute desperation, and this why the rescue team had been in contact with musk's team, time was running out and they feared the children wouldn't be able to move on their on. Luckily it wasn't needed, but there was a genuine fear.
8- But then the rescue happened, and the submarine was not used, since things were not that bad as feared, but still, it was anything goes till that point. Things start to unravel after that, since because the item was not used, people thought the item was useless.
9-vernon said some unkind things about musks's submarine (not sure if warranted), musk flips his cool and says some REALLY bad things about vernon (totally not warranted), some shyster gets involved and fools musk into thinking vernon was an actually pedo (dude can land rockets, but he was not so smart on the conman front) the lawsuit happens, musk wins because insulting people is not a crime in the US, and so here we are.
-----
E&OE
I think people forget that behind the rescue operation were actual people, not named musk or vernon.
first of all were the actual thai kids, whose sitaution was getting precarious day by dat. Secondly were the rescuers, who were worried about the rescue and were looking at any and all who could help. then there were the people working in musk's team.
One of the people was a thai spacex employee for example, and this was personal to him, and he was responsible for getting musk involved, iirc. the submarine idea was not musk's, but his spacex employees, and all he did was give them a blank cheque in using company resources.
yes musk was a an absolute cnut in insulting vernon that way, and in no way justifies his crass remarks, but behind him flipping his cap, was him being insulted on behalf of not just himself but his employees and his suppliers, who had volunteered for free, and were not deserving of vernon's unkind remarks(though again, simply not comparable to musks's remarks, he should just have shut the fcuk up)
Life moves on, those spacex/tesla/boring company employees and suppliers have moved on, heck even vernon and musk have moved on after the lawsuit, but we are all still stuck here in this strange world of half truths and misinformation.
I think the real victims of this whole musk-vernon fiasco has been the capacity for silicon valley nerds to volunteer their skills, I doubt those spacex/boring tunnel employees/suppliers would ever venture to volunteer on such a scale again, much easier to keep quiet and work the beaten path, at soup kitchens or some "approved" setup like UN etc, much safer options to give back.
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Here are all of elon's tweet's during the time period:
(23-Jun-2018 to 11-Jul-2018)
https://twitter.com/search?q=(from%3Aelonmusk)%20until%3A201...
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here is the email between elon and richard stanton, the rescue lead: where richard seems to urged elon to continue the work on the mini sub
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016684366083190785
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unless I am mistaken, this is thai billionaire guy:
@JamesWorldSpace
https://twitter.com/search?q=(from%3Ajamesworldspace)%20unti...
you can check his account for details I guess
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this is the inflatable raft that I was thinking of, made by the suppliers
https://lostcoastoutpost.com/2018/jul/7/elon-musks-plane-was...
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I think this is the thai journalist i was following back then
https://twitter.com/search?q=(from%3Athanr)%20until%3A2018-0...
It doesn't have to be pro or anti musk, you just have to look at the facts
____
I was just on Twitter DM (magic of technology, you can just talk to a rando person a thousand mile away now!) with the Thai journalist (@thanr) who had been reporting on site on behalf of the BBC or some other press, and he told me there are so many other facts not publicly know, like the scope of the cooperation between Musk, The State Dept, The American Embassy in Thailand and the Thai government. I've requested him to perhaps write some article or a book or something to detail those.
it's understandable if not knowing those not easily google-able facts were perhaps the cause of the confusion. But not doing a simple tweet search? The man is a prolific tweeter, why not just... go read what he said, and make your opinion on that? Good, Bad whatever, but atleast you should be fully informed.
neither Musk nor Vernon come clean out of this mess, but atleast there is some clarity to be gained.