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Comment by coffeeblack | Hacker News Reader

Gates is buying a good name. He’s not really doing any good imo. Hop on a plane and look at what the foundation is actually doing in places where they are doing it. I have never seen anything useful. But it “sounds” really awesome to people back in the West.

Not sure about your hate on Musk though. Fighting climate change, preserving the only life in the universe that we know of, bringing connectivity to the most vulnerable and disadvantaged globally, among many other good things. Not sure what’s bad about that.

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If Musk stuck to fighting climate change and his Mars mission I'd be fine with him. But he doesn't. He uses his money to actively destroy people and their reputations just for the lolz, is a continuous source of noise rather than signal and is about equal parts destructive as he is creative. Given another couple of years like the last two I would not be surprised if he final tally ends up as a significant net negative for society.

For example? Who did he “destroy for the lolz”?

Remember the episode with the cavediver rescuing children from a flooded cave that musk called a pedophile and then refused to back down? That one for example.

You mean where he worked with the Thai government on a rescue plan, got attacked verbally by that dude, attacked back, and then the dude couldn’t take it? Yes, I remember that he apologized a day later, even though the other one started it.

Sure I know, because it’s the one thing bad that’s repeated and repeated about him, and he didn’t even start it. And he apologized.

Any example that is actually bad?

The guy as an expert in his domain publicly called musks idea out as unworkable. Is that any kind of reason to call him a pedophile? Is that the standard that we should hold one of the most powerful men in the world to? That’s behavior I’d not accept from my five year old.

And he apologized after substantial public backlash, not because he had a change of mind.

I'm not sure about destroy but attempt to destroy at the very least.

The guy that rescued the kids out of that cave in thailand(?), Yoel Roth, that twitter engineer that told him on twitter that he had his facts wrong... that's just a short list I'm sure that if I weren't posting this while eating breakfast I could cite more.

And another one about the cave dude. Please see my other reply for that case.

Regarding the Twitter guy: Yoel Roth was a different person. What was bad about how he treated Roth and the Twitter Android guy (I guess that’s who you actually were referring to)?

He selectively cited Roth’s academic work to make it appear as if Roth was supporting grooming and sexualization of children, despite the work doing none of that.

Roth had to flee their home due to threats to their safety.

Has Musk apologized yet?

https://gaynrd.com/if-yoel-roth-is-harmed-should-elon-musk-f...

Falsely implying other people are pedophiles or support pedophiles actions seems to be a recurring pattern in this context.

It was a direct quote from Roth’s dissertation, including context. Nobody “had to flee”.

Old Twitter had countless tweets containing images of violence against children. Under Musk it took only days to remove all of that.

Just one example:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon...

Separate the things that musk controls (Tesla, Space X, starlink, Solar City, etc) and musk the person (Forcing animal testing, calling rescue operators pedophiles, market manipulation, etc) and it’s easy not to like musk the person. Let’s also not pretend like he’s doing any of those ventures out of the goodness of his heart

that still doesn't help a ton. Solar City/Tesla has backed out of a huge number of deals for solar installs unless the client pays more than the signed contracts. the 'solar roof' was YEARS late and way overpriced.

For Tesla, we still don't have fully self driving cars, but its always coming in Q4 of this year. Products are announced WAY too soon. Its been years since the cybertruck and new roadster were announced and demoed, and still none exist. This isn't their first new model, they should understand how the building of factories work, etc.

I particularly liked the Tesla bot announcement, where it was clear they hadn't even thought about it until just before they announced it. There's also the Dojo which they hyped for years as something that will give them the cutting edge imminently and still AFAICT isn't doing anything yet, meanwhile a couple more generations of TPU have been designed and productionized en masse

> Hop on a plane and look at what the foundation is actually doing in places where they are doing it. I have never seen anything useful.

You're prasing this as if you've flown to Africa, examined something like an anti-malaria program, and decided it was useless for unstated reasons. Somehow I doubt you've done so.

Lived in Africa and all other continents with poverty for 20+ years.

Sure you did. Is your name Dean Browning?

I’m super conflicted on Musk. His stated aims are admirable, and I used to think very highly of him. He’s clearly a smart guy who’s executing on big things most people aren’t (or at least weren’t) even considering.

Sadly the way he goes about that is less than ideal. Tesla keep selling vapourware features and releasing things that are actively dangerous. Boring company was mostly a ploy to distract from high speed rail (which would reduce the need for cars). The Twitter takeover has been a debacle so far. SpaceX are about the only untainted venture here, and my understanding is they’re not run day to day by Musk, with staff spending inordinate amounts of effort to keep him happy and out of the way of the real work.

Tesla isn’t just about cars, it’s about making renewable energy useful.

Boring had little to do with Musk. It was an idea that seemed promising, and a Tesla manager volunteered to make it reality. Musk just provided some initial finding. It is completely unrelated to rail.

Not sure why you feel Twitter to be a “debacle”? I like diversity of though and open discourse. Also the scientific method is a good thing to save.

I'm not sure that we can really assume hyperloop is unrelated to rail

People have claimed musk told them its driven by his hatred for California's high-speed rail project [0]. That sounds like significant evidence that it is related to rail.

[0]. https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1167410460125097990?ref...

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