Well, this is coming from a guy who apparently thinks the height of subversive humor is naming cars to spell SEX and sending people into fits of giggles that it's called the BFR. A frat house environment does not seem all that out of place in this context.
Isn't that just a part of having a personality? In the planning stages you give something a silly name and it kinda sticks, especially when it's the big boss who came up with the name.
Kinda like the "heart of gold" -- it tickles Elon.
There's nothing wrong with any of that, but you can't complain if your audience follows your lead. Not that Musk was complaining (to the best of my knowledge) but others on his behalf.
If I chair a board meeting wearing a clown nose, I can't complain when the members pull out squirt guns.
In the same way nerds got beat up because the jocks are just jealous of their brains?
There can be criticisms of a plan to send a few people to die in a metal box millions of miles away at incredible cost that do not require jealousy as a motivator.
This (almost) as accurately describes the Apollo program. Are you saying we should not have gone to the moon?
*There's criticism: "Maybe it would work better with Type A rather than Type B"
and there's _criticism_: "Thats stupid and you are stupid for thinking its not stupid"
Apollo was dangerous, expensive, and didn't accomplish anything that couldn't have been done more safely and cheaply with probes. It was cool as shit too, but I'm not going to pretend that 'cool' is a real basis for public policy.
Mr Musk is welcome to spend his money as he wants, of course.
And if someone would like to post those criticisms in an intelligent fashion, I would welcome them. I have nothing against contrary views, I only dislike contrary views presented purely for the sake of being contrary and with nothing interesting presented.
And yet there will be many capable people lining up for a suicide mission to Mars if that's what it comes to. Not just to be the first, but so that their potential sacrifice will change the future of humanity.
My lack of skills necessary as a programmer to help, and my health issues mean that I can't really do anything but cheer from the sidelines. There will be mistakes, but sometimes you have to jump into the river with both feet if you wish to cross.
Ask yourself what the real subtext is; what most people are going to think when they read "But actually almost all my time, like 80% of it, is spent on engineering and design".
Is the mental image that of Tony Stark, single-handedly designing rocket components in some kind of advanced cad/cam-ish lab, scoffing at staid business meetings he delegates, or is it of a guy talking to a bunch of engineers, and hearing presentations, picking favorites among a bunch of proposals, signing off on this or that?
You are supposed to think of the former (PR), whereas the latter is closer to the truth.
Yeah, I imagine the latter is closer to the truth. I doubt Elon is spending all his time in CAD software, but I'm pretty sure he talks to people who do and looks at their work, and can meaningfully comment / advise on it.
I've seen the type before. I've personally met one of the guys running Reaction Engines Limited (the Skylon company); I've been on a talk he had for physicists at Rutherfort Appleton Laboratories. He mostly talked big-picture things during the presentation; then on a Q&A session someone asked him about details about the engine, and the guy went into full physics professor mode, explaining the engineering tradeoffs they made in excruciating details.
This situation highlights the elephant in the room- People are not much interested in paying for online services, even one as large as FB. Their growth and DAU would suffer dramatically if they had to charge even a nominal fee for use. People will take it for free but it is not worth enough to most to pay even a small amount.
If you read Gawker apologia, you continually see the claim that this is going to stifle journalism. Some people aren't able to distinguish between writing a story about a sex tape and actually showing the sex tape, when the latter behavior is the crux on which this whole thing is based.
As far as gender goes, one only has to consider that if the rule is going to be "Public figure + sexual aspect to the person's persona (e.g. Hogan talking about sex on Stern) = unlimited right to broadcast sexual material", then no porn star ever has the right to private sex again. Since that is clearly unacceptable, the error must be with the proposed rule.
The social contract is such that people can reasonably be assumed to be ok with a minuscule increase in risk in order to get a dying person to the hospital.
You make him sound like someone who is filing frivolous lawsuits. The Hogan case involves an outrageous invasion of privacy of extremely dubious newsworthiness, nothing at all like, say, outing a lesbian congresswoman who supports traditional marriage legislation. He's not going through looking for possible gotchas; these cases are pretty clear cut.
He didn't file a frivolous lawsuit. He decided to not file a frivolous lawsuit, and instead to fund every viable lawsuit he could purely so he could bankrupt a media company that had covered him very unfavourably in the past. He'll probably keep doing it, if more such cases pop up.
He isn't on Hulk Hogan's side. He's on his side, and he won. Making this about the particulars of Hogan's case is deliberately eliding the fact that Thiel didn't give a shit about Hogan's case other than that it could bankrupt Gawker.
If in fact there are other viable cases, in the absence of Thiel the injustice would then be that Gawker can behave badly indefinitely because most of the victims will not pay the necessary amount to litigate.
