Elon Musk's epic bacon adventures

Eboue

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The revolutionary war was fought to make workers equal with managers and the us won and that's why there are no more managers and all workers live in harmony and get equal compensation
 

Revan

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Smartest guy on the planet. :lol:
Not in the sense of pure intelligence. That might be someone like Ed Witten, Terry Tao or Michael I. Jordan, but to me, Musk combines - unlike anyone other - intelligence, creativity, vision and so on.
 

Revan

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Yeah sure, the guy who co-founded Paypal, and is revolutionizing space travelling, cars, founded the coolest machine learning company in the world and is working on the first new version of travelling in more than a century is a total idiot. Indeed!
 

Revan

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Hes not revolutionizing anything. Hes a CEO who exploits workers and builds toys for rich people. Plus hes an epic win bacon guy. His sycophantic army is insuffurable.
Like the 40k new Tesla cars? Or the Hyperloop travelling? 'Toys for rich people', JFC.

He is a CEO who has had some brave moonshot ideas, which everyone thought will turn out to be bullshit and the company would go bankrupt, but it seems that it is going to work.

Intelligence is in different form of shapes, you don't need to be a prodigy in mathematics (though Musk is quite good at it too) to be a very smart man. Being a top innovator (in my opinion the topmost 'CEO' innovator of the last few decades) makes him a very smart man.
 

Raoul

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Like the 30k new Tesla cars? Or the Hyperloop travelling? 'Toys for rich people', JFC.

He is a CEO who has had some brave moonshot ideas, which everyone thought will turn out to be bullshit and the company would go bankrupt, but it seems that it is going to work.

Intelligence is in different form of shapes, you don't need to be a prodigy in mathematics (though Musk is quite good at it too) to be a very smart man. Being a top innovator (in my opinion the topmost 'CEO' innovator of the last few decades) makes him a very smart man.
Not sure if he's particularly intelligent in traditional terms, but he definitely has the innovation thing down.
 

Revan

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Not sure if he's particularly intelligent in traditional terms, but he definitely has the innovation thing down.
That is also what I am saying. Someone like Witten or Tao (or some chess prodigy) will surely score significantly higher in an IQ test, but that is hardly all that matters when it comes to intelligence.

The thing is that he has been innovating things in entirely different fields, unlike other successful CEOs like Page, Jobs or Bezos whom more or less have been just improving their first innovations. Musk has done Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, OpenAI and now with Hyperloop, all projects that are totally different to each other.

He is also cool (although the NVidia CEO Jenson Huang might be the coolest and most down to Earth person CEO I have ever met).
 

Eboue

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Like the 40k new Tesla cars? Or the Hyperloop travelling? 'Toys for rich people', JFC.

He is a CEO who has had some brave moonshot ideas, which everyone thought will turn out to be bullshit and the company would go bankrupt, but it seems that it is going to work.

Intelligence is in different form of shapes, you don't need to be a prodigy in mathematics (though Musk is quite good at it too) to be a very smart man. Being a top innovator (in my opinion the topmost 'CEO' innovator of the last few decades) makes him a very smart man.
Let's talk about hyperloop then. How is that in any way practical?
 

VeevaVee

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I liked him until he started going out with Grimes. Now I'm just pissed off that this guy is going out with this girl



 

Henrik Larsson

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As we danced at our wedding reception, Elon told me, "I am the alpha in this relationship."

https://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a5380/millionaire-starter-wife/


To be fair, I’m not really the guy that should ridicule his relationships, since I suck at them and might have displayed some really weird behaviour myself in my younger years. Still though, that sounds as weird as those guys who demand their women call them daddy.
 

Balljy

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He is a CEO who has had some brave moonshot ideas, which everyone thought will turn out to be bullshit and the company would go bankrupt, but it seems that it is going to work.
To be fair it is quite likely that Tesla will be bankrupt in a couple of years unless they suddenly work out how to make the model 3's. The latest news about them making only the more expensive ones due to the loss they would make on the lower ranges of the model don't sound great (with Musk even mentioning that selling the base model would destroy the company at the moment).

SpaceX is looking a huge success though already basically monopolizing an industry and pricing out competition where there are huge profits to be made long term and he definitely isn't scared to take a few risks to push things on.

He definitely deserves credit for trying things most people wouldn't even consider and getting success out of some of them.
 

rotherham_red

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The revolutionary war was fought to make workers equal with managers and the us won and that's why there are no more managers and all workers live in harmony and get equal compensation
What an utter thunder cnut of a man...
 

Man of Leisure

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Don't know much about the man other than he's the CEO of Tesla and wants to go to space. But his tweets the other day about the brake issues on Teslas sorta reminded me of Trump. Tweet first, think later.
 

Revan

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To be fair it is quite likely that Tesla will be bankrupt in a couple of years unless they suddenly work out how to make the model 3's. The latest news about them making only the more expensive ones due to the loss they would make on the lower ranges of the model don't sound great (with Musk even mentioning that selling the base model would destroy the company at the moment).
I have been hearing this for the last 8 years, it is not going to happen. Also, someone quite high in one of the most expensive brand of cars, told me that according to him, Tesla will essentially kill the competition and is the future of cars. Take it with a pinch of salt from a guy in the internet.
 

Massive Spanner

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I have been hearing this for the last 8 years, it is not going to happen. Also, someone quite high in one of the most expensive brand of cars, told me that according to him, Tesla will essentially kill the competition and is the future of cars. Take it with a pinch of salt from a guy in the internet.
Toyota, Nissan and VW are already releasing electric cars that have the range and price of Tesla's model 3 before Tesla can even get their Model 3 into a sustainable number of production units. And they were way behind. These are some of the world's biggest companies Tesla are competing with, they won't kill them, not a chance.

However, I'll say one thing for Musk, he always said his goal with Tesla wasn't to take over the car industry but to get the other manufacturers to actually go electric and make it the present instead of the future and he is definitely helping achieve that, but it likely won't be through his own company.
 

The Firestarter

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I have been hearing this for the last 8 years, it is not going to happen. Also, someone quite high in one of the most expensive brand of cars, told me that according to him, Tesla will essentially kill the competition and is the future of cars. Take it with a pinch of salt from a guy in the internet.
Unless your guy is an oracle this kind of predictions are impossible to make at this stage. In fact , it is the other way round that is more probable. The difference between this and other market disruptions is that this one requires immense production know-how and base, in order to actually be commercially viable. The other auto manufacturers will either purchase or develop in house the battery technology, and provide a cheaper alternative.
 

Henrik Larsson

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I have been hearing this for the last 8 years, it is not going to happen. Also, someone quite high in one of the most expensive brand of cars, told me that according to him, Tesla will essentially kill the competition and is the future of cars. Take it with a pinch of salt from a guy in the internet.
This is really interesting and probably a justifies a discussion in a seperate thread. When I look at what VAG is doing in China and the future potential there, combined with the billions they are putting in the developments of electric vehicles and the infrastructure they already have in place I would say no chance. And VAG isn't their only competition, same goes for the other giants.

When I read EU reports expecting 50% less cars on the roads in twenty years and at least half of them autonomous I think maybe. But so far the fact that Tesla has not gone bankrupt seems a lot more impressive than the actual cars they've built (though I guess in theory their vehicles are pretty spectacular).
 

Man of Leisure

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@Revan Guy at my work got a Model 3. The car that was supposed to be $35,000 ended up costing him closer to $59,000 with all the add-ons. He'll be eligible for a $7,500 tax credit, but still. I thought the car itself looked nice enough, but is it worth paying $25k more than originally advertised? I know others who are still on the wait list for the $35k model and are hoping to get theirs by the end of the year. Elon Musk himself has said that if they sold the $35,000 cars now, they'd be out of business.
"With production, 1st you need achieve target rate & then smooth out flow to achieve target cost," he wrote. "Shipping min cost Model 3 right away wd cause Tesla to lose money & die. Need 3 to 6 months after 5k/wk to ship $35k Tesla & live."
 

Relfy

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What is this guys background exactly? It seems to me at least that he has just appeared over the past few years and is now in the news every week, whether it be Tesla or going into space. How did he acquire this status, and is he really this news worthy to be reading about him every few days?
 

Pexbo

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What is this guys background exactly? It seems to me at least that he has just appeared over the past few years and is now in the news every week, whether it be Tesla or going into space. How did he acquire this status, and is he really this news worthy to be reading about him every few days?
Is your google broken?
 

Abizzz

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What is this guys background exactly? It seems to me at least that he has just appeared over the past few years and is now in the news every week, whether it be Tesla or going into space. How did he acquire this status, and is he really this news worthy to be reading about him every few days?
-Paypal
-Even if i'm very critical of him a lot of the time the stuff about him is a lot more newsworthy than 90% of the other stuff on the news.
 

Revan

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Unless your guy is an oracle this kind of predictions are impossible to make at this stage. In fact , it is the other way round that is more probable. The difference between this and other market disruptions is that this one requires immense production know-how and base, in order to actually be commercially viable. The other auto manufacturers will either purchase or develop in house the battery technology, and provide a cheaper alternative.
His point was more like Tesla have started earlier so are ahead of the competitors, in addition to they are making more batteries than the rest of car compankes combined, so they can scale their production unlike others.

Same can be said about autonomous driving. I chatted once with Tesla's head of research and he was proud to say that they have the biggest army of robots 'he called Tesla cars robots' and so more data than any other company which inevitably makes them have a better product.
 

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They've got the technical thing down. You still need someone who is audacious enough to operationalize the weird projects that Musk has taken on.
SpaceX is a case in point, he was seen as a bit of a fringe nutter for wanting to take that on in the early days by the business community.

He also does have a lot of technical knowledge and is very involved with the engineering side.
 

Revan

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SpaceX is a case in point, he was seen as a bit of a fringe nutter for wanting to take that on in the early days by the business community.

He also does have a lot of technical knowledge and is very involved with the engineering side.
He can code, is essentially living nowadays in Tesla's factory, and at the early days of OpenAI, many of the workers were directly reporting to him. Which means that he has strong technical background.

And as you said, both SpaceX and Tesla were essentially seen as 'it won't work' when he started them.
 

Snowjoe

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I mean it’s a nice idea but I’m not sure the general public are in any way equipped to be judging what’s true or not. Trip advisor is bad enough.

He’s gone a bit trumpy on the media
 

Abizzz

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I mean it’s a nice idea but I’m not sure the general public are in any way equipped to be judging what’s true or not. Trip advisor is bad enough.

He’s gone a bit trumpy on the media
Can't see this going well either. Regular folks just aren't going to care enough to vote on random articles they read and special interest groups will be out in force voting in their interest. Just like twitter/facebook it will amplify the voice of those with the most time on their hands...
 

The Firestarter

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His point was more like Tesla have started earlier so are ahead of the competitors, in addition to they are making more batteries than the rest of car compankes combined, so they can scale their production unlike others.

Same can be said about autonomous driving. I chatted once with Tesla's head of research and he was proud to say that they have the biggest army of robots 'he called Tesla cars robots' and so more data than any other company which inevitably makes them have a better product.
Currently the Audi auto pilot system is the best in the business. This is not a true self driving car as is neither the Tesla auto pilot.

As far as the battery technology , yes they started early, however this is not the Manhattan project and the others will eventually catch up. The problem for Tesla is that they don't have several million regular cars to sell each year and pay the salaries.
 

PedroMendez

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Yeah sure, the guy who co-founded Paypal, and is revolutionizing space travelling, cars, founded the coolest machine learning company in the world and is working on the first new version of travelling in more than a century is a total idiot. Indeed!
I don't think few people seriously doubt that he is extremly intelligent (in the traditional sense) and good at many things. Its an entirely different thing to putting him on a special pedestal like you do. Musk has created a larger-than-live public persona, that overstates his significance.
He was ahead of the curve in regards to potential of the internet and earned his fortune with it. Similar might be true with SpaceX, so its too early to comprehend its significance. Nothing about Tesla or Hyperloop is revolutionary. What Silva posted is entirely correct: Without massive government subsidies these companies wouldn't exist. His products are for upper-middle class liberal minded people and he needs their support to lobby for public funds (+he needs their money as well).