[paulryanrogers]

Second and third hand accounts are nice. Even better when they come from folks no longer financially dependent on Elon's good graces.

But I was hoping to see some of his source code for Zip2, some CAD he'd done himself, or even a video of him solving some intractable problem in one of these rooms full of stumped geniuses.

[Natsu]

So this guy has founded multiple successful engineering-heavy companies, did not receive any actual financial support past 18 (despite inflated myths of an "emerald mine"), is attested by multiple skilled engineers, and has given videos where he talks in depth about engineering, but we're still looking for new & different kinds of evidence that he has skills?

Are we testing whether he knows anything at this point, or whether he's a literal Tony Stark? This thread started with discussion of whether he's any kind of engineer at all now we're looking for "rooms full of stumped geniuses" as if this was something every random engineer experienced.

[paulryanrogers]

Didn't see any links to talks by Musk. Perhaps you can share some?

Look I can go read Gates' code, so I have some direct evidence of whether his reputation as an engineer is worth the paper it's written on. The story for Musk is much less direct. Still, I'm open to studying the evidence of Musk's engineering chops.

[Natsu]

A video that someone changed their perception was discussed here, earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35917912&p=2#35919980

The actual video it mentions is here: https://youtu.be/YAtLTLiqNwg?t=1100