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Top-level
@Gerego @brianstorms @rodhilton Afaik, SpaceX is the first company he actually founded, which actually achieved something noteworthy (although largely government sponsored, so no business success in a purely capitalist sense). Starlink is imo actually useful, as well for crisis regions (Iran, Ukraine) as in rural areas e.g. in Germany. Not saying it was Musks achievement, but this one company does not fit into the rest of the list. 27 comments
@daniel_bohrer @Gerego @brianstorms @rodhilton No, it did not become PayPal. x.com merged with Confinity because Musk liked their simple payment system. They merged to become PayPal, the payment system was already invented without Musk. inventing something and making it a billion dollar company requires two different kinds of genius.  @logorok @th0r5t3n @Gerego @brianstorms @rodhilton you mean making Twitter a 1 billion dollar company out of a 44 billion dollar company? definitively! 🤡 @daniel_bohrer But you are right. Losing 43 B and still owning more than all of us here combined is still an achievement @logorok @daniel_bohrer @th0r5t3n @Gerego @brianstorms @rodhilton Your can stop simping, he doesn't care about you. @logorok @daniel_bohrer @Gerego @brianstorms @rodhilton Yesno. He did successfully advertise himself, sold promised features he wasn't able to deliver, etc. It is a talent, but also a lack of moral and integrity, to an extent which *should* be prosecuted and punished. Also, success *always* requires a bit of luck. He definitely had a large portion of that. I wouldn't deny the marketing talent, though. @logorok @th0r5t3n @daniel_bohrer @Gerego @brianstorms @rodhilton @VATVSLPR @logorok @th0r5t3n @daniel_bohrer @Gerego @brianstorms @rodhilton Suspect he’s skilled at selling a vision, which attracts competent employees who want to successfully deliver that vision. But the anecdotes I’ve heard suggest his other employees succeed by carefully managing Musk out of their processes. A skill Twitter staff have seemingly yet to acquire…  @th0r5t3n @Gerego @brianstorms @rodhilton He may have "founded" in the sense of providing initial capital. He cannot have contributed anything to the engineering, although he always talks as if every feature of every rocket was his idea. @JorgeStolfi @Gerego @brianstorms @rodhilton He might have contributed to the initial "vision". He's got a lot of pipe-dreams, and like a broken clock is bound to be right twice a day, I could imagine the idea of a short-lived low-orbit sattelite-network for Internet to be one of the crazy ideas which turned out to be actually doable. I think it's clear from other toots I'm by no means a fanboy. Just trying to stay objective. @th0r5t3n @Gerego @brianstorms @rodhilton Starlink is certainly "doable", like Iridium was. The big question is whether it will be a profitable enterprise. Starlink is not a public company so we cannot tell what the market thinks about that... @JorgeStolfi @th0r5t3n @Gerego @brianstorms @rodhilton  @JorgeStolfi Also, he lied A LOT to get funding, like how the real purpose was magnanimously to provide third world internet. Yeah, no. This is a "Comcast sucks" competitor, he never intended to deploy this usefully anywhere unprofitable - he just knows what to say to get people to give him money. Same with the tunnels, he killed real and good public transit intiatives for a very stupid idea that basically became "subways, but private."  @reneestephen @JorgeStolfi @th0r5t3n @Gerego @rodhilton By all means, now document what telcos have done for years in terms of laying out careful PR promises of a rosy internet future for all, and receiving billions in taxpayer money for "rural high bandwidth" that's never been delivered, or the staggering amount of money Big Oil gets from taxpayers in terms of subsidies and abandoned well cleanup by the govt while Big Oil laughs all the way to the bank. Then there's the Pentagon... @brianstorms Sure? Governments being captured by wealthy companies in any form is bad. No argument there! Billionaires: bad. @reneestephen @JorgeStolfi @th0r5t3n @Gerego @rodhilton Paul McCartney: bad? @brianstorms Interesting you had to stick to just the entertainment industry to try to make your point! The vast majority of billionaires are *not* from this industry and are people whose names you do not know. But if you think Hollywood and record labels haven't done some deeply shitty things, I have a whole handful of overtime and safety labour laws in destination locations to sell you, and the names of people maimed or killed on sets as a chaser. @reneestephen @JorgeStolfi @th0r5t3n @Gerego @rodhilton Ok, have a nice day @brianstorms @reneestephen @JorgeStolfi @th0r5t3n @Gerego @rodhilton @Cleopatra Ooh that was a great watch, thank you! @brianstorms @JorgeStolfi @th0r5t3n @Gerego @rodhilton  @reneestephen @JorgeStolfi @th0r5t3n @Gerego @brianstorms @rodhilton Also Starlink has already largely ruined astronomy, and it's only going to get worse.  @th0r5t3n @Gerego @brianstorms @rodhilton Germany’s population density even in rural areas isn’t that low. Surely it would be far more efficient to force cellular operators to fill coverage holes. But satellite sounds fancier, so it’s easier to get investors that way. (See also, especially egregiously, The Boring Company and Hyperloop, vs. a goddamn metro. The latter isn’t sexy but makes much more sense.) @chucker @Gerego @brianstorms @rodhilton Our Government had decades to force telecommunication providers to provide DSL, optic fibre or decent mobile networks. They simply didn't. In rural areas of Brandenburg, I'd go for Starlink, in spite of the price, since all other options suck hard. @th0r5t3n and ironically governments also paid for Starlink, but don't even own the profits. @chucker @Gerego @brianstorms @rodhilton @reneestephen @chucker @Gerego @brianstorms @rodhilton "My" government (I'm German) didn't pay for it, they did afaik funnel money into German telcos for no return though... @th0r5t3n Mine either (Canada), but IMO failure to hold telcos responsible for their commitments and then not realizing the problem needed a different solution (nationalized community networks) is a very boomer failure everywhere...due I think to not really believing the internet was a real thing that was gonna truly matter to the future of industry let alone society as a utility. Just... "more interactive TV." |
Gregory's Server
@th0r5t3n @Gerego @brianstorms @rodhilton apparently he co-founded X.com, which later became PayPal