If he really is as busy as he purports to be, I’d think Christmas Day is one of the few occasions he has to spend extended quality time with family. 17 hours in a single day (on a boosted account, no less) sounds really sad.
> Shivon Zilis, who has worked with Mr. Musk at several of his companies and is known to be the mother of three of his children, posted a video last week of Mr. Musk playing Diablo. In the replies, she recounted a memory of when he gamed for 17 hours on Christmas Day in 2023.
> “He took breaks for family meals and Xmas presents but was too excited for sleep, which is how he made both time with the kiddos and a 17 hour AoZ push work that day,” she wrote, referring to a challenge in Diablo. “Was a joy to see him having so much fun with it!”
> I see people posting that Elon was at Auschwitz this time last year - therefore, his recent "gesture" is not antisemitic. I was there, too. Last year. With Elon. I am embarrassed that I have photos of this on my phone. My love, Gidon Lev, was the "special guest" of this photo-op event. We thought, at the time, that it would be good publicity. But I would not share the photo today. I chatted with Elon Musk. I spent hours with him and walked with him through Auschwitz. I stood with him, looking at the nauseating heaps of hair, luggage, and shoes flooded with violet light meant to preserve it.
Is Musk an antisemite? People, actually, it's worse - he doesn't care whatsoever. Elon, father of "little X" as he described his freezing cold son to me, literally does not care. He was unmoved by the experience. For Gidon, to be in the place where his father, Ernst, died on a death march - whether shot by the side of the road or having simply collapsed - was a huge deal. Elon did not care. He was about his press junket and his bodyguards. I was ten feet from him as he posed for the cameras of his entourage. He was utterly detached. He cared about how he looked. When he placed a wreath at Auschwitz and Gidon was overlooked, he walked away with the cameras whirring. This is Elon Musk. A sociopath, if ever there was one. To deduce, from this visit, that he is a friend of the Jews is desperately naive.
I wonder what HN's view is on the recent nazi salute of Elon ? All the relevant threads seem to become flagged very quickly. I think it would be a very interesting discussion, especially here.
Meaning no offense, it is quite naive to assume that the level of discussion about very controversial political topics on here will be any better than, say, on a random subreddit.
Sure, memes and one liners do not do well on Hacker News, but on the other hand, most "hackers" believe they are smarter and with better opinions than anybody else, which is often just a severe case of Dunning-Kruger. And the population of this site post Reddit fiasco is no different than Reddit anyway; how many Eternal Septembers have we gone through?
Your account has been created pre-COVID, so you must have witnessed that some topics should just be avoided for the sake of anybody's sanity, whether it's on HN or not.
In general, up/down vote systems just create echo chambers, not interesting and nuanced discussions.
I might be the stereotypical old man yelling at clouds, but I miss when this place was about startups, programming and Wozniak-tier hackers, not an Ars Technica with a Bay Area accent that attracts anybody calling themselves a "techie" to discuss the daily news.
I'm not sure it was that interesting though. This I found kind of interesting: Apparently his mum's parents were Hitler supporters and moved to South Africa from Canada as it was too liberal. Musk's dad talking about it: https://youtu.be/B6e1ES4MLD0?t=200
I find it interesting. I love SpaceX. I used to like Musk quite a bit. Now that he has shown us his true stripes, I find the man abhorrent. He is a disgrace and an embarrassment. He should probably be deported or jailed, he does not belong in a free and just country. I doubt very few of us would be tolerant of Nazis and Fascists, and indeed we should be completely intolerant of Musk.
As a community member I wholeheartedly disagree. Hacker News is one of the few places I can go and not be inundated with the political pocket sand nonsense. In fact, I think this entire post is probably off topic. With respect, please get your politics out of here.
From the community guidelines:
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic
I see your point of view, but I would argue that many hackers would find interest in the fact that an idolised tech magnate made such an extreme gesture.
In my (non American) point of view this transcends left vs right arguments, but this is exactly why I am curious what this community would have to say. It is an interesting topic, if only from an anthropological perspective.
Because it's a dumb thing to lie about. This guy is part of the U.S. government now, so it's important to know if he's lying to us. This is something relatively inconsequential, but if he lies about more important things, well, that's not something you want in a government official.
Also, I'm bad at video games, but I don't care about that because they're fun to play. When you get someone else to do it for you you're taking all the fun out of it. I learned when I was younger that cheating ruins the experience. So if you're all about winning, that shows a lot of naivety.
1) it's really weird. He's the richest man in the world, and he's spending his time by pretending to be good at video games? Humanly, it's just darkly fascinating.
2) an important part of his public persona is that he's supposed to be genuinely super smart and capable at everything. Many employees and other related figures have attested to him having preternatural abilities at rocket and car engineering.
If he is willing to make under the table payments and shamelessly pass off other people's work as his own for such an insignificant feat as being good at video games, what does that say about his involvement with actually important things? The parallel is very easy to draw.
> Many employees and other related figures have attested to him having preternatural abilities at rocket and car engineering.
Do you have examples of this? In the past, I've looked for accounts of people who've worked with Musk praising his technical (not product, not sales/marketing) skillset, and I have been unable to find any firsthand accounts. Such an account would somewhat change my assessment of Musk.
> Many employees and other related figures have attested to him having preternatural abilities at rocket and car engineering.
I mean, one assumes that this is in the same sense that Kim Jong Un happens to be the world’s leading expert on whatever the factory he happens to be visiting does.
Nobody cares for people like me, but the consequences of the actions of this guy may now impact life of millions. Questionning his sanity, ethics, sense of priorities is always a matter of public interest. I don't know if HN is the place for that though.
Sheer curiosity. Good engineers and other technical people are often curious about how things fail. Elon Musk serves as one of the more interesting case studies in "How long can he possibly keep this up?!" since the late Howard Hughes.
Hughes's downward spiral occurred before most of us were old enough to watch it happen, so Musk is our next best chance.
This is very important, but it would be nice to get ELON, and Emperor Kim Dong Kong, to play a few rounds of golf in Florida, you know to make sure the Emperor does not have too much advantage playing on his own course in Peonyang, welll that is if ELON has any time off from the ultra MMA circuit cage fights,beating up the other social media owners,
strait up all money to money, uh, moneo a moneo, ah, whatever right!
Readit News
> Shivon Zilis, who has worked with Mr. Musk at several of his companies and is known to be the mother of three of his children, posted a video last week of Mr. Musk playing Diablo. In the replies, she recounted a memory of when he gamed for 17 hours on Christmas Day in 2023.
> “He took breaks for family meals and Xmas presents but was too excited for sleep, which is how he made both time with the kiddos and a 17 hour AoZ push work that day,” she wrote, referring to a challenge in Diablo. “Was a joy to see him having so much fun with it!”
> I see people posting that Elon was at Auschwitz this time last year - therefore, his recent "gesture" is not antisemitic. I was there, too. Last year. With Elon. I am embarrassed that I have photos of this on my phone. My love, Gidon Lev, was the "special guest" of this photo-op event. We thought, at the time, that it would be good publicity. But I would not share the photo today. I chatted with Elon Musk. I spent hours with him and walked with him through Auschwitz. I stood with him, looking at the nauseating heaps of hair, luggage, and shoes flooded with violet light meant to preserve it. Is Musk an antisemite? People, actually, it's worse - he doesn't care whatsoever. Elon, father of "little X" as he described his freezing cold son to me, literally does not care. He was unmoved by the experience. For Gidon, to be in the place where his father, Ernst, died on a death march - whether shot by the side of the road or having simply collapsed - was a huge deal. Elon did not care. He was about his press junket and his bodyguards. I was ten feet from him as he posed for the cameras of his entourage. He was utterly detached. He cared about how he looked. When he placed a wreath at Auschwitz and Gidon was overlooked, he walked away with the cameras whirring. This is Elon Musk. A sociopath, if ever there was one. To deduce, from this visit, that he is a friend of the Jews is desperately naive.
I wonder what HN's view is on the recent nazi salute of Elon ? All the relevant threads seem to become flagged very quickly. I think it would be a very interesting discussion, especially here.
Sure, memes and one liners do not do well on Hacker News, but on the other hand, most "hackers" believe they are smarter and with better opinions than anybody else, which is often just a severe case of Dunning-Kruger. And the population of this site post Reddit fiasco is no different than Reddit anyway; how many Eternal Septembers have we gone through?
Your account has been created pre-COVID, so you must have witnessed that some topics should just be avoided for the sake of anybody's sanity, whether it's on HN or not.
In general, up/down vote systems just create echo chambers, not interesting and nuanced discussions.
I might be the stereotypical old man yelling at clouds, but I miss when this place was about startups, programming and Wozniak-tier hackers, not an Ars Technica with a Bay Area accent that attracts anybody calling themselves a "techie" to discuss the daily news.
300+ comments here for your entertainment
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42772995
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42773778
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42774621
I'm not sure it was that interesting though. This I found kind of interesting: Apparently his mum's parents were Hitler supporters and moved to South Africa from Canada as it was too liberal. Musk's dad talking about it: https://youtu.be/B6e1ES4MLD0?t=200
From the community guidelines:
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic
In my (non American) point of view this transcends left vs right arguments, but this is exactly why I am curious what this community would have to say. It is an interesting topic, if only from an anthropological perspective.
Musk performing fascist salutes at a political rally is an interesting new phenomenon: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/20/trump-elo...
Like it or not, this is what's happening to the tech industry. So much of the tech sector is now precisely about politics and power.
You can't run away from it. You can't ignore it. And, if you're in the tech industry, you're responsible for it.
It's always best to see things as they are.
Also, I'm bad at video games, but I don't care about that because they're fun to play. When you get someone else to do it for you you're taking all the fun out of it. I learned when I was younger that cheating ruins the experience. So if you're all about winning, that shows a lot of naivety.
2) an important part of his public persona is that he's supposed to be genuinely super smart and capable at everything. Many employees and other related figures have attested to him having preternatural abilities at rocket and car engineering.
If he is willing to make under the table payments and shamelessly pass off other people's work as his own for such an insignificant feat as being good at video games, what does that say about his involvement with actually important things? The parallel is very easy to draw.
Do you have examples of this? In the past, I've looked for accounts of people who've worked with Musk praising his technical (not product, not sales/marketing) skillset, and I have been unable to find any firsthand accounts. Such an account would somewhat change my assessment of Musk.
All I know about video games is people play them 24/7. It was completely obvious to me he wasn't going to invest his time in something so stupid.
The idea the world's richest man who is trying to amass political power could be this delusional is deeply disturbing.
I mean, one assumes that this is in the same sense that Kim Jong Un happens to be the world’s leading expert on whatever the factory he happens to be visiting does.
Hughes's downward spiral occurred before most of us were old enough to watch it happen, so Musk is our next best chance.