Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sam Altman's knack for dodging bullets with a little help from bigshot friends

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 204 posts

Re: Sam Altman's knack for dodging bullets with a little help from bigshot friends

#191

Post by nvm0n2 »

darkwraithcov wrote: post #147
adventured wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not unfair in the case of Jobs & Woz. Wozniak represented a few years of Apple's earliest history. His contribution was similar to Paul Allen's contribution to Microsoft. Extraordinarily important in the first few years, and that was the end of that. The reality is, people broadly like Woz, and particularly among the HN crowd Steve Jobs is disliked; that's the explanation, it's purely emotional; so they want to…

What makes you think Musk is technical? I’ve seen tons of interviews and podcasts. He’s not as stupid as he comes across on Twitter, but he absolutely is not an engineer and couldn’t code his way out of a paper bag. He has an above average understanding of tech, but whenever seriously pressed —- rare because the media is absolutely terrified of pressing him and losing access —- he demonstrates a rudimentary understan…

You should read his biography. The idea Musk isn't technical will seem absurd after that.

Re: Sam Altman's knack for dodging bullets with a little help from bigshot friends

#192

Post by boucher »

dang wrote: post #173
boucher wrote: post #70

100+ upvotes in an hour and this story is falling off the front page already?

It set off the flamewar detector. We eventually turned that off. It was also downweighted as a follow-up [1] because there had been a similar profile article / megathread the day before: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38744021 - Dec 2023 (162 comments) In the absence of significant new information [2] people mostly just repeat what has already b…

I appreciate the response, thanks.

Re: Sam Altman's knack for dodging bullets with a little help from bigshot friends

#193

Post by stale2002 »

BeefDinnerPurge wrote: post #95
wslh wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Sam continues to have "luck" it is not survivorship bias. As I said before he is at the center of the stage.

Tell me you don't understand conditional probability without telling me you don't understand conditional probability. CEO of Reddit, how'd that go? Project Covalence, how'd that go? Andrew Yang? Our next president, right? 2018, The year Sam Altman became the governor of California, no? And of course: "I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israel Defense Forces, and a b…

The point being that a lot of people have connections, money, or whatever, but those people still don't end up with world changing successes.

Re: Sam Altman's knack for dodging bullets with a little help from bigshot friends

#194

Post by [deleted] »

sudosysgen wrote: post #187
Timber-6539 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> limited-profit arm. This is another one of those recent buzzwords that mean nothing. Like oil conglomerates making "green energy" donations and calling themselves low carbon emitters.

The point is that this was a subsidiary under the control of the non-profit. It was mostly there for tax reasons.

[deleted]

Re: Sam Altman's knack for dodging bullets with a little help from bigshot friends

#195

Post by pests »

wslh wrote: post #83
BeefDinnerPurge wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A combination of real drive and a tremendous amount of dumb luck. Never forget the dumb luck part though. Life isn't fair, ask Trevor Moore who wrote a song about that, oh wait, you can't, life isn't fair...

If Sam continues to have "luck" it is not survivorship bias. As I said before he is at the center of the stage.

Sorry, but someone lucky every single time in their life but still be wrong.

Just by probabilities alone it's happened hundreds of times. Probably the source for original prophet claims.

Re: Sam Altman's knack for dodging bullets with a little help from bigshot friends

#196

Post by Timber-6539 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #187
Timber-6539 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> limited-profit arm. This is another one of those recent buzzwords that mean nothing. Like oil conglomerates making "green energy" donations and calling themselves low carbon emitters.

The point is that this was a subsidiary under the control of the non-profit. It was mostly there for tax reasons.

My point is that the non-profit on OpenAI's operating model is just a tag. And the reasons for why this is the case is clear to anyone with 5 minutes of time to research about the company's self described "capped-profit" investment structure.

Re: Sam Altman's knack for dodging bullets with a little help from bigshot friends

#197

Post by darkwraithcov »

tim333 wrote: post #177
darkwraithcov wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think Musk is technical? I’ve seen tons of interviews and podcasts. He’s not as stupid as he comes across on Twitter, but he absolutely is not an engineer and couldn’t code his way out of a paper bag. He has an above average understanding of tech, but whenever seriously pressed —- rare because the media is absolutely terrified of pressing him and losing access —- he demonstrates a rudimentary understan…

>couldn’t code his way out of a paper bag He sold a game he programed at age 12, and wrote at least the initial code for zip2 which Compaq acquired for $307 million.

Have you looked at that game and the code? Its garbage. https://blastar-1984.appspot.com/

I knew guys in the 90s in high school who were writing exploits and cracking major software. For a layperson who isn’t a dev and didn’t run in those circles, it might seem impressive for a kid, but not for any of the kids I knew. Any kid with a basic understanding of programming could copy the code from a computer magazine line by line and edit it slightly . And just because he wrote it at 12 doesn’t mean he has actual coding skills as an adult, he has even said so himself he is not a “hardcore coder”. Considering there are kids like Mike Wimmer who were taking uni level robotics courses at 12, Elon is incredibly mediocre in comparison and only a simp would believe he was some kind of prodigy.

After all, we are talking about a guy who asked his engineers to print out code to show him to prove how productive they were, and who could not explain Twitter’s craaaaazy stack without telling off an actual dev. Who the F thinks the more lines of code you write the more productive you are? How deeply embarrassing.

Re: Sam Altman's knack for dodging bullets with a little help from bigshot friends

#198

Post by darkwraithcov »

nvm0n2 wrote: post #191
darkwraithcov wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think Musk is technical? I’ve seen tons of interviews and podcasts. He’s not as stupid as he comes across on Twitter, but he absolutely is not an engineer and couldn’t code his way out of a paper bag. He has an above average understanding of tech, but whenever seriously pressed —- rare because the media is absolutely terrified of pressing him and losing access —- he demonstrates a rudimentary understan…

You should read his biography. The idea Musk isn't technical will seem absurd after that.

He’s as technical as a middle manager with an MBA at a tech company might be, but barely impressive otherwise. Compare that to someone like Zuckerberg, who I cannot stand, it’s laughable in comparison. He doesn’t have any advanced degrees and hasn’t designed anything without help from actual, world class engineers and devs. No doubt he knows PR and hires really talented people. He went to school for business, and his physics degree is total BS, also you realize that official biographies are sanctioned by the subject and are made to paint him as an adult, his business acumen, etc in the best possible light?

Re: Sam Altman's knack for dodging bullets with a little help from bigshot friends

#199

Post by darkwraithcov »

dbuser99 wrote: post #183
darkwraithcov wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think Musk is technical? I’ve seen tons of interviews and podcasts. He’s not as stupid as he comes across on Twitter, but he absolutely is not an engineer and couldn’t code his way out of a paper bag. He has an above average understanding of tech, but whenever seriously pressed —- rare because the media is absolutely terrified of pressing him and losing access —- he demonstrates a rudimentary understan…

That’s wildly inaccurate. Musk regularly displays a much higher level of tech skills compared to most CEOs, with the exception of a few, like maybe Jensen. You may not like musk, but musks way above someone like altman in technical skills

I’m not impressed. You know who is impressive? Wozniak, you can’t tell me those guys are even remotely in the same league. Even Jobs and Gates were/are accomplished designers and programmers, Elon is a joke compared to them.

Calling Twitter a “crazy stack” is hilariously laughable, serious junior dev energy, that at the very least he should be able to describe to another dev a) whats crazy about it b) what it looks like from top to bottom without insulting people for asking.

Re: Sam Altman's knack for dodging bullets with a little help from bigshot friends

#200

Post by darkwraithcov »

fakedang wrote: post #185
tim333 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>couldn’t code his way out of a paper bag He sold a game he programed at age 12, and wrote at least the initial code for zip2 which Compaq acquired for $307 million.

Exactly. People here think knowing how to code is spinning up 5 k8s clusters and running an ELK stack from scratch, when in reality, it can be much less. Musk was an intermediate level coder from his time, which, mind you, was a time where terms like Agile, code hygiene, etc, were non-existent. Most code critics of Musk today criticize his poor coding skills due to him unable to migrate his skills from that era to to…

He didn’t even know what git was, a technology that is how old now? How cringe.

We are talking about a guy who didn’t understand how to run a python script that the doge guy sent him.

Who among us WASNT writing crappy little programs in BASIC back then, a language aimed at children and microcomputing amateurs? If he had written a 2.5d raycasting game at 12 in C++, i would be impressed.

Post reply on HN