161–170 of 192 posts
The media obsession with Sam Altman reminds me of the old dutch saying 'high trees capture a lot of wind' (hoge bomen vangen veel wind) I suppose that's why many HNWI individuals consciously stay below the radar.
The problem is when your wealth is inseparable from your celebrity. Altman is the face of AI. If he kept his foot out of his mouth he wouldn't be rich.
The media obsession with Sam Altman reminds me of the old dutch saying 'high trees capture a lot of wind' (hoge bomen vangen veel wind) I suppose that's why many HNWI individuals consciously stay below the radar.
The problem is when your wealth is inseparable from your celebrity. Altman is the face of AI. If he kept his foot out of his mouth he wouldn't be rich.
I only skimmed through the beginning but I am not sure what the news is. Looks like they mostly/only? pulled it from some filings that I am sure was being put together by third party agents.
> I am not sure what the news is The news is that lying on those filings is a federal crime and can lead to jail time (for normal people who are actually subject to law).
This is really dumb, and I'm not even a fan of sama, I think he's a snake. Sam Altman was CEO and President. The fact he was not Chairman is not material. There's a thousand different explanations how that misstatement could have occurred. Maybe someone wrote that up, and sama didn't review every single line, and other people just assumed it was right. But it's not material. Being being the CEO and President of YC is…
As I read the statement in the article, he didn't claim he was the chairman of Y Combinator at the time he was actually President. He claimed was the chairman at the time of the filing, 2021: "Mr. Altman is an entrepreneurial and thought leader with a proven track record of growth investing within the technology industry. He is also the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, a leading AI research and deployment company, and t…
1. Intent to deceive, so it can't just be that the statement is false but that it was intentionally false as opposed to what is likely a mistake made by a third party. As was noted elsewhere, Sam was positioned to be Chairman of Y Combinator after stepping down as President, but that never happened. It's entirely possible that whoever wrote this did not become aware of that change in circumstances.
2. Reliance and harm. The false statement must be something that was or can be relied upon by potential investors that could cause them harm. It's possible an investor can rely on this fact but it would be very hard to demonstrate harm from it.
3. Materiality. The statement must be significant in that the information could sway a potential investor towards the investment. I'd say misstating credentials is material and so this element does count.
Taken altogether however, this does seem like a whole lot of nothing.
This is really dumb, and I'm not even a fan of sama, I think he's a snake. Sam Altman was CEO and President. The fact he was not Chairman is not material. There's a thousand different explanations how that misstatement could have occurred. Maybe someone wrote that up, and sama didn't review every single line, and other people just assumed it was right. But it's not material. Being being the CEO and President of YC is…
> But it's not material. the corporation President, VP, Secretary, Treasurer, and Board of Directors and Chairman are legally defined titles, they are material titles, they imply fiduciary duty, loyalty, etc. (CEO isn't really a thing, it was made up to point out whether the President or Chairman wielded the ultimate power in situations where the largest shareholder might be more active than passive)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I read the statement in the article, he didn't claim he was the chairman of Y Combinator at the time he was actually President. He claimed was the chairman at the time of the filing, 2021: "Mr. Altman is an entrepreneurial and thought leader with a proven track record of growth investing within the technology industry. He is also the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, a leading AI research and deployment company, and t…
Lying is a very difficult burden to prove and requires meeting several criteria: 1. Intent to deceive, so it can't just be that the statement is false but that it was intentionally false as opposed to what is likely a mistake made by a third party. As was noted elsewhere, Sam was positioned to be Chairman of Y Combinator after stepping down as President, but that never happened. It's entirely possible that whoever wr…
This is a just a misstatement. There's plenty of valid things to critique sama on, but this isn't one of them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey Dang, I appreciate the transparency and general policy in such situations. As well as undowning the story Do you think there will ever be in band signaling of when (or perhaps even why) a post was artificially depressed by moderation? Particularly aimed at cases where people are already using tools like https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=40710417 on posts like this where more people have already seen the…
Yeah, as much as the transparency is very much appreciated here, "yes, a mod totally did try to subtly bury this story exactly as you predicted and despite our official mod policies" sounds pretty bad, even if you undid it. Some visible "[Moderator Downvoting]" warning would help earn trust that mods are not in fact doing this to YC-related stories.
The intention was to downweight it enough that it wouldn't be near the top of the front page but not so much that it would leave the front page. That's the same thing I would have done, btw.
It looks like what happened was that more user flags came in and that, together with the moderation downweight, moved the story off the front page. Eventually we noticed this and restored it to the lower part of the front page, which is the standard practice for stories of this kind, which we'd never allow to be on HN's front page if they were about anybody else. (Though, as someone pointed out to me, this story wasn't negative about YC.)