this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
1006 points (97.3% liked)
Technology
63774 readers
5844 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Elon has always been a terrible person, but he was once focused on things that society actually needed, like electrifying transportation to avoid climate collapse.
He seems to have gone sharply downhill into total insanity by taking ketamine while locking himself in a rightwing echo chamber. It’s the perfect storm of dissociating from reality.
probably his upbringing. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/26/elon-musk-peter-thiel-apartheid-south-africa
some may turn out ok, but many people with shitty parents turn out shitty as adults.
Plenty of people have shitty parents and turn out fine. That’s no excuse at all.
The problem with Elon is he's been provably an idiot for the past 25 years.
The first thing I ever heard about Musky is that back in 2000-ish he wanted PayPal to take their infra, throw out all the Linux/BSD in use, and move everything to Windows NT.
Anyone who was even remotely IT adjacent in that era can come along and tell you how utterly moronic that idea is.
Anytime I've ever heard him blather on about some stupid shit that doesn't exist except in his delusions or talk about, well, ANYTHING technical or specialized all I was ever able to think of is that he got lucky that Thiel didn't drain all of his blood and leave his corpse in a ditch.
From a musk pov it's 100% logical. Money.
Why? Win2k was quite stable. Stable enough to use it in warships.
Linux/Bsd is not free. When you use it in your company you want pro support. That support comes free with windows enterprise licenses. So the cost difference there is almost non existent. And, MS being M$, they would've sweetened the deal. A lot. Just think of the marketing worth of this deal for MS.
And lastly: Who is cheaper? A good linux admin or a windows guy?
So 90% of the stability at 50% of the cost. That's not a bad deal.
Potential ketamine addiction aside, he's just gravitated toward where he sees more money and unfluence for himself. He wanted the prestige of being a leader in tech, so he used his influence and money to build SpaceX. Then he bullied his way into the ownership of Tesla, desperately wanting to appear as a genius to libertarian and liberal minds alike, but he's never been any less of an authoritarian. When Trump rose to power the first time, he sat and watched and along with the rest of the Silicon Valley Moguls, he began to move himself into positions of influence with populist politicians, borrowing the evangelical right's playbooks and throwing himself into the spotlight no matter the reason. He pivoted off his falsified image as some kind of American self-starter into MAGA rhetoric.
Musk doesn't have lofty ideals or any real focus on the betterment of society. I don't think he ever did. He just wanted to be a real life Tony Stark and command the influence that came with it. Now he doesn't need to, because he's got Trump in his back pocket and is mostly untouchable by any normal means.
I'll never stop laughing when Tony Stark treats Musk as a nobody.
Iron Man II, "Yeah. Later. Blown. Off. Bet Musk is still proud of that cameo.
“I think that’s a good idea.”
“You do? Then we’ll make it work.”
Sick burn