Elon Musk's determination | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk's determination

dcurt.is

131 pointsmattrichardson37 comments

Is there some kind of voting ring for all of the blog posts in this style? How is this lame-o piece at #2 on the front page? It seems that the posts with this theme have been on the front page a whole lot lately.

/tinfoil hat

It happens with almost every one of his posts.

Frankly, I have no idea who he is, and I tend to respect opinions more if they're based in real experiences rather than observation (not to say I don't respect well-argued opinions from observation, it's just relative). It's a mystery to dig into who he is, too, and the best I've been able to find is this:

http://www.dustincurtis.com/about.html

Which just says, vaguely, that he's a neuroscience student who "put his degree on hold". Anybody know who this guy is, and why his opinion is this important to HN and 35,000 Twitter followers? Honestly, I'm just curious. Is this guy some kind of valley culture icon? I've noticed the same trend of all of his posts hitting the front page of HN.

[Since you're in this thread, now: Dustin, a quick "who I am" page which isn't a million pixels wide and describes more about yourself and your goals would go a long way toward credibility. Unless you're a pseudonym, and I respect that (look at my username), but your about page leads me to believe otherwise.]

The first time I heard of him was when he redesigned the American Airlines website. http://www.dustincurtis.com/dear_american_airlines.html He's a good designer and I tend to read what he says because svbtle is just so nice to look at. I suspect that 99% of my decision of whether or not to read something has to do with how easy it is to read it.

I honestly have no idea. I don't do anything to promote Svbtle articles on HN.

I don't think this post is worthy of Hacker News, so I haven't voted for it.

(Eek, sorry to call your post lame-o. No offense intended! It's just.. well, you know what I mean. It's a quote from another page and link. But, yes, I see your point.

Again, no diss intended! Sorry!)

It is lame-o, and you can say that to his face. It's this comment[1] and other distilled thoughts from the thread, essentially, in blog post form and resubmitted to HN. "Accomplished" just became "determined". PageRank at work, here, folks.

[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4024347

It's not even a blog post. It's just a quotation I wanted to share.

What does PageRank have to do with HN articles?

Also, people write whatever the hell they want on their own site. That's the point. They can't stop people from submitting links here, wanted or not.

In theory, if enough people don't like it, it'll be flagged off.

Dude, you gotta show some backbone - you started to apologize as soon as Dustin replied on your comment. If you think the post is lame, say it out loud, nothing embarrassing if you have your own opinion, and as far as I see, you didn't insult anyone.

I have noticed a lot of your stuff on HN, but it don't bother me as I do enjoy reading it. Thanks.

Bah. Hacker News is not some sacred vault. It is a news aggregator for gods sake. And I am glad to have seen this short, sweet blog post. So I voted for it, in the hopes that others see it and enjoy it too :)

Please, you don't have to apologize:

The quote is great and relevant right now, with the last acomplishment of Elon Musk and his crew that is extraordinarily remarkable.

And I think that the determination line of thought is very appreciated here in HN and consistent with your own work.

http://www.paulgraham.com/determination.html

http://www.dustincurtis.com/press_on.html

Thanks for sharing.

I also don't think this is because of new users or anything. This post is ranked 1 on http://news.ycombinator.com/classic, which supposedly only hosts links upvoted by users who joined HN in the first year.

I liked it. Sometimes you don't have to say much to make great point. Sometimes the scope of an interesting thing sparks great discussion. I up-voted it with the expectation that the HN discussion on this was going to be informative, but not yet.

I guess the post got upvoted as a proxy for the admiration HNers have for Elon Musk :)

This is a clip from a 60 Minutes interview. The amount of passion and determination in this clip, is absolutely breathtaking. http://youtu.be/H3u0IIQj6FY?t=11m13s

Does anyone else somehow get the idea that Elon Musk never gets tired?

He doesn't have time to be tired. He's making electric cars and spaceships.

Don't forget that he's also trying to power things with the sun!

A future built by Musk, quite frankly, sounds awesome.

Elon Musk doesn't get tired. Fatigue gets elonmusked.

The fact that he chokes up and finds it difficult that Neil Armstrong has testified against his work makes him so human and makes me respect him so much more.

I really hope he gets an apology from Neil Armstrong and other critics if (when) SpaceX actually delivers on its promises. It must be very tough to even have your heroes root against you, and like you say it shows a lot about what you stand for.

The sad reality is that Neil Armstrong will probably die before SpaceX does anything seriously significant, if it does. He's 81 now.

SpaceX Dragon becoming the only US means of successfully delivering cargo to the ISS and moving the US away from dependence on Russia was not seriously significant?

With that kind of determination, he has a great shot at getting into YC.

You're joking; right?

I certainly am.

Maybe for the YCS01 batch

As in, Y-Combinator Space? :).

I think he might even have a shot at getting a scholarship.

I don't know. Maybe. But he doesn't seem nearly agile enough. He seems to be hellbent on a single goal: get to space on the cheap. I don't think he's ever going to be able to pivot away from that.

"The master isn't the one who knows all there is to know about a subject, but the one who has made a commitment to practice and improve his knowledge of the art every single day from here on."

I respectfully disagree. A master is someone with a deep understanding of a sector but who believes always continues to learn.

Being interested in an industry, starting a company, and thinking that you can then learn about it is a fools game.

Truly an amazing person, living and building on many dreams. I wish I could help.

http://www.spacex.com/careers.php

I made basically the same point yesterday, and used the same interview quote from Elon Musk, in a Google Plus post.

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