161–170 of 276 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, gee. When you put it like that, Hitler existed, so really we can't fault anybody for anything short of orchestrating the genocide of 12 million people.
Musk engineered the deaths of 14 million people https://time.com/article/2026/05/15/usaid-shutdown-rise-glob...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because they lost and crumbled. They were unbelievably outmatched by Sam (a world-class manipulator) and Satya (the money behind OpenAI and himself a political genius.) They were outmaneuvered, panicked, and folded. Did they have to? No. But in the moment they thought they were on the precipice of nuking a deca-billion dollar company, their life’s greatest work, and a generational company. It’s hard to stand against…
Then they should have made the position clear to the public, or at the very least have some communication with the employees. It's not hard to say that they were against Sam for some particular reason, if they are firing him. At least if the reason is good that might have given them some credibility. And why did Ilya become Sam lover after 2 days?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious why you think that creating a for-profit subsidiary is objectionable, since it is extremely common for large nonprofits. A good example for this forum would be Mozilla, but many more were mentioned during the trial. Also curious what conflicts of interest you have in mind.
Just because other organizations do it doesn't make it not objectionable, and there have been many threads on HN criticizing Mozilla's structure along similar lines. In this case, my understanding is that e.g. Altman is on the nonprofit board and also makes big $$$ from the for-profit, which seems like a pretty big conflict of interest.
On Altman, the trial showed that Altman does not have any equity in the for-profit. He does have some indirect exposure through his investments in YC, since YC has a small position in OpenAI.
I remember when computer magazines were aimed at programmers and had code listings in them. Then there seemed to come a time when all they talked about was the IBM vs. Microsoft lawsuit. From then on they must have felt that they had discovered a formula, because all they ever yapped about after was insider baseball of computer companies. I find this sort of corp. vs. corp. coverage boring, sort of like techie realit…
I dunno man, there are two "tech" industry worlds and the one you and I -- hacker types -- think of as "tech" is not what the rest of the world means. They mean the other one, which has almost nothing to do with the actual technology and instead everything to do with the absolutely apeshit amount of money, power, influence and intrigue that the technology enabled. This was a very large apeshit $$ amount back in IBM v…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about stealing 12 million books of copyrighted human culture, at massive scale, and then enclosing the value created inside proprietary, investor-backed systems? Something wrong with that? What happens if you go tomorrow, downtown San Francisco, and leave a bookstore with one book without paying? "Behind every great fortune there is a crime" - Honoré de Balzac
> What about stealing 12 million books Who's missing the books? 12 million books is a rather large warehouse! I thought HN was in the "information wants to be free" camp...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about stealing 12 million books of copyrighted human culture, at massive scale, and then enclosing the value created inside proprietary, investor-backed systems? Something wrong with that? What happens if you go tomorrow, downtown San Francisco, and leave a bookstore with one book without paying? "Behind every great fortune there is a crime" - Honoré de Balzac
> enclosing the value created inside proprietary, investor-backed systems What do you think copyright does. Human culture is owned by humanity, not Disney or the New York Times.
Do you ask the same question about why we patent drugs?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about stealing 12 million books of copyrighted human culture, at massive scale, and then enclosing the value created inside proprietary, investor-backed systems? Something wrong with that? What happens if you go tomorrow, downtown San Francisco, and leave a bookstore with one book without paying? "Behind every great fortune there is a crime" - Honoré de Balzac
Won't somebody please think of the copyright holders!?
Totally makes sense /s
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about stealing 12 million books of copyrighted human culture, at massive scale, and then enclosing the value created inside proprietary, investor-backed systems? Something wrong with that? What happens if you go tomorrow, downtown San Francisco, and leave a bookstore with one book without paying? "Behind every great fortune there is a crime" - Honoré de Balzac
Even though the founders of OpenAI are not exactly someone you'd root for, comparisons to theft are silly. By that token it would be illegal to go into a library, read a book, and actually remember what was in it. Except in this case the reader is a robot. LLMs are such a fundamentally different thing that existing laws don't really make sense. Wait! Put the pitchfork down! I know, I know, stealing is stealing, and O…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn’t want. I have enough. Not everyone is wanting money. But it is not the point. The point is, when you take high moral ground and talk about bug problems to help humanity, and then your own diary exposes you as avaricious simpleton, the whole high moral ground crumbles. And you expose yourself as another grifter. That’s what happened to Brockman. Although smart people could see these qualities in altman, broc…
> The point is, when you take high moral ground and talk about bug problems to help humanity, and then your own diary exposes you as avaricious simpleton, the whole high moral ground crumbles. And you expose yourself as another grifter. Unfortunately, this is now 90% of this space and it is now full of grifters which was not the case in 2010. In the case of OpenAI, there were less grifters and they were dormant in 20…