Other What's your take on the past decade?

Weird seeing all these young comments when I already feel old. Body already feels 60

 

Disagree.

So let's just set fire to it, yeah? You're aware that the problem was Musk applied for permission to test one type of engine, then tested a completely different type - setting fire to wilderness outside his permitted testing zone? Stand-up guy, that.

Strongly disagree. Unsworth said the billionaire playboy who'd turned up with a completely unusable "solution" to score some PR points could shove his useless "submarine" up his arse. Musk, being incredibly thin skinned, then told... 30.1 million people that Unsworth was a paedophile. Not because he had any proof, but because Musk is a complete dicknut. He then hired a PI to dig up dirt on Unsworth - a failure, 'cos he's not a paedo - while emailing a journalist "off the record" to say that he was a paedo and they should write a story about how many kids he's diddled (spoiler: none.)

Even after all that, Unsworth didn't sue him until Musk tripled-down on his claims by saying that he was obviously a dirty paedo 'cos otherwise he'd have sued Musk for calling him a dirty paedo. So he sued him. Didn't really have a choice. Then Musk proceeded to lie out of his arse about the whole thing. "It doesn't mean paedophile, it's just a saying in South Africa for 'creepy old man.'" (It's not.) "He's only suing me to get money." (You literally left him no choice.) "It was just banter, I wasn't accusing him of paedophilia." (You literally paid tens of thousands of dollars to a PI to "prove" he was a paedo while telling journos he diddles kids, you absolutely were.)

Strongly disagree. Here, take a look. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Starlink, which is to scale to tens of thousands of satellites, isn't Iridium.

That's before I even mention the whole nearly crashing into other satellites 'cos Musk's approach is "work fast and break things," the "things" in question usually belonging to other people.

Was having the "bulletproof windows" break after a couple of very gentle underarm lobs the intention? Is "standing out from the crowd" why the retail Tesla models are notorious for terrible fit and finish and the "autopilot" occasionally tries to kill the driver and sometimes succeeds - or tries to roast the driver's dog?

Shall we talk about "funding secured at $420?" How about how he self-styles as "Tesla founder," which he's not? I could go into the safety issues at his factories, if you like? His habit of stealing creatives' work then attacking them if they point out credit would be nice?

 

Like I said back when I was in the unusual position of defending Apple: I'll denigrate those who do bad and praise those who do good.

I'll happily strike that one from the record and chalk it up to my poor memory - I swear I read that he was operating outside the terms of the granted permit, but I can't DuckDuckGo anything to support that memory.

 

Wouldn't catch me defending ol' Jobsy - I was merely explaining why "$52,000 Mac Pro OMG" is a daft reaction to have and that Apple was actually charging a pretty fair rate for the machine. For a change.

Like I say: do good, get praise; do bad, get dragged. 's a pretty simple position I take, 'ere.

 

Did I say that? Pretty certain I didn't. I was dragging Musk - sorry, I'm not on first-name terms - for the bad he's done.

D'you want me to praise some of the good he's done? The water filtration stuff for Flint was good. His assistance in Puerto Rico was good, too. The solar company he acquired has done good, though I seem to recall a big thing in the news where businesses were asking for them to be removed from their roofs 'cos they had a tendency to set on fire. Still, solar (though not as much as nuclear) and electric vehicles (though maybe not Tesla-brand electric vehicles) are certainly the future, and he's doing plenty to push that forward. Ditto spaceflight, though I'm not so sure he's ever going to put a Cybertruck on Mars - nor that it'll do much good once it's there...

Has the good Elon has done outweighed the bad he's done? I'm not so sure. And I'm not talking "calling one guy a pedo" here, I'm talking about things like how he treats his workers. And the people in whose companies he invests. And other investors, for that matter.

EDIT:
Yeah, there we are: it was Walmart that had the problem with solar panels becoming barbecues. I remembered it being a big company.