But he's changing the world. So I give the guy wide latitude with my opinion. At least he's not yet another useless silicon valley billionaire. He is the least terrible billionaire industrialist IMHO.
This is a great place to meet in the middle between the cynics and fanboys.
I'd say Bill gates still retains that title.
Yes, he has done great things since he left. But he set the computer industry back decades with his predatory business tactics.
A big part of the reason why we have so many walled gardens now is because he started the trend. And we're lucky we have multiple walled gardens. If he had succeeded a little longer we'd still only have one big one.
So one became a humanitarian statesman? And the other became king of the patent trolls, the most feared man in the Valley? Or perhaps soon, humanitarian statesman and inquisitive chef? Image management is mazing.
This is condescending and not constructive. You should know better than to post like this on HN.
What I am disappointed by is how his fans react to criticism. There's healthy respect and there's unhealthy worship. When you have a bunch of people who will get really upset due to any criticism that is on the worship side of the coin. Any community with voting arrows (HN/Reddit) suppresses anything negative said (no matter how supportable/well constructed the criticism may be).
Plus these same fans love to attack competition who are also doing really cool stuff instead of supporting them (e.g. Orbital ATK, Faraday Future, NIKOLA ONE, et al). Using arguments that are often double standards or ignore Tesla/SpaceX's own history to make them work.