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Yep, kids on the way; had to sell his home and move in on the couch of another silicone valley investor to finish the first rocket launch that landed his first contracts. Said he was days away from being negative. This is an amazing read <EDIT harmless joke out> https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future/dp/006230125X
False. Read up on Elon. He may not be bending the metal to build the rockets, or assembling the batteries that go into Teslas (what CEO does?), but he knows a great deal about the engineering behind all their products.
If you haven't already, I highly recommend you read this.
Jobs, OTOH, had no background in computer science or engineering and never claimed to. His thing was design, which he (obviously) did really well.
>He was in the right place at the right time
Incorrect, read the book on him written by Ashlee Vance and you will understand that it was not just so.
> As this report notes, in 1980, these three sectors [healthcare, housing and education] accounted for 25% of total national spending — today, they account for more than 36%. They also account for most of the total measured inflation over this period. And without inflation in these sectors, real annual productivity — defined as GDP per capita growth — would have been an estimated 3.9% instead of 1.7%
In other words, it's three sectors that were resistant to containerization and Amazonification which are damaging the economy. Everything else got cheaper in real terms because the shipping and handling costs went way down.
The economists at the Fed interpreted this cost reduction of everything else as "inflation is low" because of how inflation is calculated, and ran low interest rates for far longer than they should have, plus QE on top of that.
This had the effect of raising the actual rate of inflation, causing what we perceive as "cost disease" in the sectors that didn't benefit from the colossal decline in shipping and handling costs. It's closing the barn door after the horse has left (and running danger of inverting the yield curve) to raise rates now; which might actually make things worse.
I'll read the rest of it after my workday, but the fact that the summary alone singles out those sectors as a drag on the economy suggests it might actually be on to something.
My overall view is that he's an increadible, but deeply flawed, person.
He's simultaneously transforming the transportation, space exploration, and energy sectors all at once. He's already accomplished multiple things in aeronautics and transportation areas that nobody else had done before. I honestly think he's possibly the most important person alive, and we're really lucky to have him.
But... he's probably a narcissist, and at least appears to be an asshole.
Like many people who are increadible workers, he demands incredible amounts from the people around him. Often enough that he hurts them. If you read his biography it's replete with stories of Elon hurting people close to him because he doesn't seem to understand how they see the world. His ex-wife, Justine, wrote a really sad article about their divorce back in 2010. This doesn't excuse anything, but his biography strongly suggests he was abused as a child by his father.
He seems to share a lot of traits, both positive and negative, with some of the most successful people in history. It's possible to be that driven that something inside of you needs to be broken, or that you demand so much of yourself that you despise mediocrity in others.
It's outlined in his biography (which is a good read on the details of all these events).
The job was really dangerous and required working in a boiler room and insane temperatures and squeezing between small spaces.
For all the driving examples- people should realize that you are making two comparisons. Your own driving, and everyone elses. The sample groups are disproportionate. It’s why we always believe we are better.
Sure I made a bad decision, but that was one, today, I’ve seen everyone else make hundreds of bad decisions in the same drive! Sure im the good one!
A good read for everyone would be “traffic”
Also generally studying driving patterns and behaviors. Everyone falls victim to most of the complaints they have, they just hold other people to a higher standard than themselves.
There's quite a few details you're missing. There's also nuance with mergers and acquisitions. They're not the same.
I read this book a few years back, which was really interesting.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KVI76ZS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_9FFT0N90169W1V3VGEKK
All the cofounders put a lot of work into getting it off the ground - that includes musk.
It's not like PayPal was a successful business before the merger.
There's a great book called The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
You can download it free here it's a really fascinating read about how influential shipping conatiner ships have been.
There is a book about this era and the history of the Interstate system called Big Roads. My gandpa worked on the overpasses on I-94 in North Dakota back in the 50's. Fascinating story to read. We could never build this system again.
The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways
by Amazon.com Services LLC
Learn more: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004X7TM14/ref=cm\_sw\_em\_r\_mt\_dp\_XTCXRGH8DP0CVJYDGZQQ
I 2nd the Seismic Design Review by Hiner. Didn't do the classes either, just studied the book and did practice problems. Passed first time and I'm in geotech.
As for regular PE, I got the Lindeberg Civil Engineering Reference Manual just so I didn't have to bring every college text book. Great for the breadth portion of the national exam. Brought my college geotech books for the afternoon depth portion.
PPI PE Civil Reference Manual, 16th Edition – Comprehensive Reference Manual for the NCEES PE Civil Exam https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1591265703/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_8MRKB182QE9XA945PVEF
Edit: typos
I wholeheartedly agree with everything after your first paragraph. Tho indeed depending where you moved from, I can see where your view is coming from.
This book is a great read for anyone.
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0307397734/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fabc_YR-ZFbWMZBAKV?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
There's at least one whole chapter, with studies cited about proper way to merge and what gives the highest throughput. Goes in to many other topics as well.
His own biography
“While Musk had exceled as a self-taught coder, his skills weren’t nearly as polished as those of the new hires. They took one look at Zip2’s code and began rewriting the vast majority of the software. Musk bristled at some of their changes, but the computer scientists needed just a fraction of the lines of code that Musk used to get their jobs done. They had a knack for dividing software projects into chunks that could be altered and refined whereas Musk fell into the classic self-taught coder trap of writing what developers call hairballs—big, monolithic hunks of code that could go berserk for mysterious reasons.”
From his own biography.
“”While Musk had exceled as a self-taught coder, his skills weren’t nearly as polished as those of the new hires. They took one look at Zip2’s code and began rewriting the vast majority of the software. Musk bristled at some of their changes, but the computer scientists needed just a fraction of the lines of code that Musk used to get their jobs done. They had a knack for dividing software projects into chunks that could be altered and refined whereas Musk fell into the classic self-taught coder trap of writing what developers call hairballs—big, monolithic hunks of code that could go berserk for mysterious reasons.””
LOL. Wasn't thinking that but that analogy works here too!
It was in reference to Elon Musk being known notoriously to be a bad programmer. "Spaghetti code" in dev-speak means unstructured and difficult-to-maintain code.
From his biography:
>
While Musk had exceled as a self-taught coder, his skills weren’t nearly as polished as those of the new hires. They took one look at Zip2’s code and began rewriting the vast majority of the software. Musk bristled at some of their changes, but the computer scientists needed just a fraction of the lines of code that Musk used to get their jobs done. They had a knack for dividing software projects into chunks that could be altered and refined whereas Musk fell into the classic self-taught coder trap of writing what developers call hairballs—big, monolithic hunks of code that could go berserk for mysterious reasons.
​
Think of reading a text book or novel that has no paragraphs, chapters, subject titles, spacing, references, or punctuation. It'd be a giant block of solid text that's near impossible to read or find the typos in.
His father who owns a share of an emerald mine in Sough Africa, gave he and his brother $25k for their first company, Zip2, which they sold.
He left apartheid South Africa for Canada because he didn't want to participate in the mandatory service.
His biography has a good set of details on his early days.
Elon isn’t known to be good at efficient programming. From his own biography.
>While Musk had exceled as a self-taught coder, his skills weren’t nearly as polished as those of the new hires. They took one look at Zip2’s code and began rewriting the vast majority of the software. Musk bristled at some of their changes, but the computer scientists needed just a fraction of the lines of code that Musk used to get their jobs done. They had a knack for dividing software projects into chunks that could be altered and refined whereas Musk fell into the classic self-taught coder trap of writing what developers call hairballs—big, monolithic hunks of code that could go berserk for mysterious reasons.
Highly recommend this bio: https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future/dp/006230125X?ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=abf8a3e1-9d07-4541-bbf4-63c8425e19bd
It was written before alot of the recent craziness surrounding him and without his coordination so it's not just jerking him off. Goes really in depth into the inner workings and functionality of how he ran these companies simultaneously, how he leveraged them against each other, the level of competence needed to understand the technical and business sides of every technology. Goes into detail of the early stages of Tesla - yes he didn't start it from scratch, but it was BASICALLY from scratch - anything that you take from almost no valuation to multi billion is impressive...you don't have to be the original founder of something, it's just smart to start with some sort of bones rather than absolutely nothing... Also shows you how involved he is in the operations and the technical aspects of SpaceX - especially in the beginning as well. He's a physicist/programmer by trade who turned into a business mogul by necessity.
He's gone off the deep end a bit recently - but he's on another level than 99.999% of the population - so it's just funny when I hear normal folks try to talk about something they couldn't even begin to comprehend (myself included).
I think a couple decades.
The Box is a history of the development of containerization. Once the container ship was developed, Manhattan docks were not a good place for them to unload; all that shipping moved over to New Jersey/Port Elizabeth. There's also a secondary effect of containerization, in that you no longer needed to have factories next to the docks, so a lot of New York City light/medium manufacturing also relocated elsewhere, leaving the waterfront essentially desolate. This would have been in the 1960s.
That was a trend during the early days of the Interstate Highway System. It was discovered to be more problematic than anything.
I read an interesting book about this a few years ago, called The Big Roads, that talks about this. Very interesting read.
Soupir. Ok. Je te propose de lire. J'ai pas l'impression que c'est l'activité préférée de l'électeur conservateur moyen toutefois, mais essaye: https://www.amazon.ca/Confessions-Recovering-Civil-Engineer-Transportation/dp/1119699290/ref=asc_df_1119699290/?tag=googleshopc0c-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=459616255919&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16696851648254931926&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9000386&hvtargid=pla-1187958944116&psc=1
​
Ça explique POURQUOI les propositions de Duhaime en lien avec les automobiles sont absolument totalement indiscutablement IMBÉCILES.
>As I’ve written in my book, Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California—even though he had no plans to build it.
https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-california-high-spee-1849402460
Book they are discussing: https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future/dp/006230125X
For anyone interested in this topic (which should be most of the people on this sub), The Box is a fascinating history of the cargo container, and really shows how and why our global economy has been shaped with the shipping we have. The TL;DR is bulk commodities transfer in the homogeneous "shipping container" makes it possible to grow the supply chain economies of scale.
Some 80% of products shipped in cargo containers are "intermediate" products, going from one manufacturing facility to another. Only 20% are finished retail goods heading to shelves!
https://smile.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-Economy/dp/0691170819
People wonder why Elon is so hell-bent on acquiring Twitter. He told us during the shareholder meeting that it would advance his plans by 3 years.
This is consistent with what is known about how he calculates things:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KVI76ZS/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Page 188:
"Sometimes he [Elon] wouldn't let you buy a part for $2,000 because he expected you to find it cheaper or invent something cheaper. Other times, he wouldn't flinch at renting a plane for $90,000 to get something to Kwaj [Island] because it saved an entire workday, so it was worth it. He would place this urgency that he expected the revenue in 10 years to be 10 million dollars a day, and that every day we were slower to achieve our goals was a day of missing out on that money." - Kevin Brogan, early SpaceX Employee
Dude. There’s probably only recreational paths here, the German suburbs are all quite walkable. These are not because the only pleasurable way to walk, without the cars going 65 kph, is by taking back roads. Also, I’m basing my argument on the data presented in Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town by Charles L. Marohn Jr..
The US suburbs need actual bike infrastructure otherwise you have to deal with walking over 30 minutes down a main stroad without any walking paths.
You're the one without a clue. The reason they died out is because they were deliberately killed off because it was more profitable for banks, the oil and auto industries not because they weren't effective.
If you don't want to believe me, maybe some civil engineers telling you how car-centric transportation sucks ass and needs to change will help.
They are the futon of Civil Engineering, Chuck Marohn Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town.
Here's a link to the 2nd edition which is $17 cheaper for some reason
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691170819/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_i_B6KYD8CQQYKRG9ACE97G
One of my favorite books is The Box. Its about the fascinating history of the shipping container. Prior to the container, goods were loaded into the hulls of ships and lashed down by hand. You can imagine how inefficient that was, but getting the entire industry to agree on a container standard was no small feat. Not to mention the unions and governments that had to buy into it.