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Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

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Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#11

Post by exsomet »

reissbaker wrote: post #5
Conscat wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas allows SpaceX to illegally disrupt 5 endangered wildlife reserves, ignore rocket launch regulations, and illegally block roads, so perhaps that is some of the appeal. Last year the Texas government decided they can do basically whatever they feel like without any checks to their authority in other regards, so if Greg Abbott is personally telling billionaires he will protect their interests, I honestly believe h…

What do you mean by "illegally"? If the government allows SpaceX to block roads, then... SpaceX blocking roads is legal. What other definition of "legal road closure" is there?

The basic premise of your post seems to be that the government has unrestricted power and cannot do (or allow to be done by proxy) anything illegal, but that isn’t true.

There’s several hundred years of legal history of state and federal governments being taken to court and made to stop or undo actions deemed to violate the law.

Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#12

Post by nsriv »

reissbaker wrote: post #5
Conscat wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas allows SpaceX to illegally disrupt 5 endangered wildlife reserves, ignore rocket launch regulations, and illegally block roads, so perhaps that is some of the appeal. Last year the Texas government decided they can do basically whatever they feel like without any checks to their authority in other regards, so if Greg Abbott is personally telling billionaires he will protect their interests, I honestly believe h…

What do you mean by "illegally"? If the government allows SpaceX to block roads, then... SpaceX blocking roads is legal. What other definition of "legal road closure" is there?

I see a lot of this sentiment around from tech people, and the underlying assumption is usually "if the government does it, it must be legal" and that is a really dangerous deductive baseline to operate from, regardless of your politics.

Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#13

Post by m_ke »

I can't imagine what it's like at Meta right now, with the CEO publicly stating that they're firing the bottom 5% of performers and then a week later stating that the LLMs that his researchers / engineers are working on will soon be able to replace them.

Zuck needs Yann LeCun and other senior researchers at Meta a lot more than they need him. If they were to quit there would be a line out the door to hand them as much money as they want to start a competing open research lab. I bet a ton of top researchers from other labs would be happy to join too, since from what I've heard from friends they're all miserable from dealing with incompetent management.

On current trajectory one of Sam Altman / Zuck / Elon will end up having full control over the frontier models that are trained on their huge new clusters. All 3 of them are unaccountable to anyone.

Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#14

Post by GoatInGrey »

9283409232 wrote: post #3

A lot of SV companies keep moving or talking about moving to Texas but is Texas really that billionaire friendly? Reuters says it is "perceived by some.." but is it?

It's more about the business environment.

California has, sadly, gotten increasingly punitive on business activity beyond the remit of what one would consider "standard". Such as legally mandating the sexual, ethnic, and gender composition of boards (e.g. SB 826 and AB 979), conditioning permits on companies committing to community benefit agreements that go beyond the direct impacts of the business (e.g. funding art non-profits), increased regulatory scrutiny on companies following activities outside of California that the government disagrees with, and other such things.

Individually, they're manageable burdens, but cumulatively it can get to a point where a business struggles to effectively operate as a market entity nationwide. Particularly for companies that are controversial.

Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#15

Post by burnte »

reissbaker wrote: post #5
Conscat wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas allows SpaceX to illegally disrupt 5 endangered wildlife reserves, ignore rocket launch regulations, and illegally block roads, so perhaps that is some of the appeal. Last year the Texas government decided they can do basically whatever they feel like without any checks to their authority in other regards, so if Greg Abbott is personally telling billionaires he will protect their interests, I honestly believe h…

What do you mean by "illegally"? If the government allows SpaceX to block roads, then... SpaceX blocking roads is legal. What other definition of "legal road closure" is there?

Just because a law is unenforced (selectively or not) doesn't mean the actions that law describes are suddenly legal. Texas is not enforcing laws with respect to SpaceX and others, but the laws are still on the books, usually to enable selective enforcement against undesirable entities.

Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#16

Post by zimpenfish »

bpodgursky wrote: post #8
Conscat wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas allows SpaceX to illegally disrupt 5 endangered wildlife reserves, ignore rocket launch regulations, and illegally block roads, so perhaps that is some of the appeal. Last year the Texas government decided they can do basically whatever they feel like without any checks to their authority in other regards, so if Greg Abbott is personally telling billionaires he will protect their interests, I honestly believe h…

Dude have a sense of perspective. It's like 20 acres arguably degraded. Louisiana melts that much coastline into the Gulf of [Whatever] every ~hour~[1]. In exchange for being the world leader in spaceflight. There aren't like, vast stretches of unprotected coastline they can pick from. It's ALL either protected or densely populated. If you want ANY spaceflight, you have to give somewhere, and this is essentially the…

> Louisiana melts that much coastline (20 acres) into the Gulf of [Whatever] every hour.

From [0], "The coast here loses a football field of land every 90 minutes." An American football field is about 111% of an acre[1] which means, unless there's been a radical spike since 2021, you're off by ~19.2 acres or ~17.3 football fields an hour (if my calculation hasn't gone wrong.)

[0] https://earth.org/data_visualization/louisiana-shrinking-coa...

[1] https://huffsports.com/football/how-many-football-fields-in-...

Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#17

Post by renewiltord »

m_ke wrote: post #13

I can't imagine what it's like at Meta right now, with the CEO publicly stating that they're firing the bottom 5% of performers and then a week later stating that the LLMs that his researchers / engineers are working on will soon be able to replace them. Zuck needs Yann LeCun and other senior researchers at Meta a lot more than they need him. If they were to quit there would be a line out the door to hand them as muc…

[flagged]

Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#18

Post by dannyisaphantom »

Seems like there is a multi-industry push to move into Texas; came across a video the other day of Matthew McConaughey & Woody Harrelson (and other big name actors) reprising their True Detective role calling for the Texas legislature to increase incentives that bring Hollywood productions over to Texas.

[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/matthew...

[2] https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/matthew-mcconaughey-woody-h...

Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#19

Post by renewiltord »

Conscat wrote: post #4
9283409232 wrote: post #3

A lot of SV companies keep moving or talking about moving to Texas but is Texas really that billionaire friendly? Reuters says it is "perceived by some.." but is it?

Texas allows SpaceX to illegally disrupt 5 endangered wildlife reserves, ignore rocket launch regulations, and illegally block roads, so perhaps that is some of the appeal. Last year the Texas government decided they can do basically whatever they feel like without any checks to their authority in other regards, so if Greg Abbott is personally telling billionaires he will protect their interests, I honestly believe h…

[flagged]

Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#20

Post by bpodgursky »

zimpenfish wrote: post #16
bpodgursky wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude have a sense of perspective. It's like 20 acres arguably degraded. Louisiana melts that much coastline into the Gulf of [Whatever] every ~hour~[1]. In exchange for being the world leader in spaceflight. There aren't like, vast stretches of unprotected coastline they can pick from. It's ALL either protected or densely populated. If you want ANY spaceflight, you have to give somewhere, and this is essentially the…

> Louisiana melts that much coastline (20 acres) into the Gulf of [Whatever] every hour. From [0], "The coast here loses a football field of land every 90 minutes." An American football field is about 111% of an acre[1] which means, unless there's been a radical spike since 2021, you're off by ~19.2 acres or ~17.3 football fields an hour (if my calculation hasn't gone wrong.) [0] https://earth.org/data_visualization/…

OK. Sure. Louisiana melts that much coastline into the Gulf every day.

I don't think this changes my thesis.

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