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Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

reuters.com

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Re: Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

#811

Post by motorest »

fshr wrote: post #603
UltraSane wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla sales are collapsing globally partly due to Musk's mental breakdown and are not likely to recover much, especially since Tesla no longer really has a CEO.

To me it seems to have very little to do with his antics. Surely inflation, market saturation, and increased competition is more probable?

> To me it seems to have very little to do with his antics.

For your hypothesis to make sense, first you would have to establish that Musk's antics have no negative impact on Musk's public opinion or public image.

In the meantime, you've started to see a global wave of both Tesla stores and Tesla cars being vandalized in protest over Musk's public support for Nazism. In some cases such as Germany you even had public protests against the neonazi party that Musk supports and promotes.

So you establish the fact that throughout the world people started protesting Musk due to his public actions. Do you think this change in public sentiment brings with it a neutral impact on sales?

Re: Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

#812

Post by willmarch »

rvnx wrote: post #126
sschueller wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who in their right mind would put money into OpenAI with DeepSeek out there dumping its better models for free with no license restrictions? Anyone with enough hardware can run the model and run a competing service for less. Many companies currently using OpenAI are considering alternative cheaper and better options. The OpenAI moat has been filled in.

Absolutely, we can even make a parallel with UNIX: UNIX was revolutionary. Companies poured billions into proprietary UNIX versions: IBM's AIX, Sun's Solaris, HP-UX, SGI IRIX... Then in 1991, Linus Torvalds released Linux for free. What was the point of UNIX anymore then ? Unless OpenAI locks in customers with exclusive data, it risks becoming just another proprietary relic beaten by open alternatives.

You've got a point about UNIX and Linux, but let's not forget about Microsoft. Back in the day, even with free systems popping up, Microsoft became a tech giant with its pricey products. Similarly, OpenAI has the potential to be the Microsoft of AI. With its resources and smart partnerships, it could set the trend and stay ahead, even as open-source options grow.

Re: Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

#813

Post by harperawl »

lend000 wrote: post #642
alpha_squared wrote: post #102

It feels like Musk is single-handedly making a great case for why unlimited accumulation of wealth is a bad idea. It's pretty colorful language, but my mind immediately jumps to "financial terrorist". He's using his enormous amount of wealth and influence as a weapon to bludgeon anyone and anything in his way.

Genuine question: are people genuinely against the work being done by DOGE? I am frequenting both X and HN + other liberal leaning news sources, and it's like the people in the comments are living in different solar systems. I see a post on X with receipts showing millions of dollars of pretty obvious waste and/or corruption, many involving news outlet grants and subscriptions, including names, amounts, etc. Then I s…

> auditing government spending

Pretending like anything Elon Musk is doing is legitimate auditing is absurd. Do you recall when he/DOGE gutted NIH and research funding on a whim, and he didn't even know? (https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1888575713629925769)

> super-competent outsider

I'd disagree about him being particularly competent at anything other than venture capital, and auditing ≠ venture capital. Regardless, why would I trust the richest man in the world to decide what the citizens of the country need and/or want from the government?

Honestly, I can keep going if you'd like, but I think this is enough to demonstrate that Elon Musk should not have illegal access to the government through his immense wealth and power (if that was not already self-evident.)

Re: Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

#814

Post by jazzyjackson »

chrisco255 wrote: post #738
cyberax wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case anybody wants it. I can do a more detailed writeup about hacking into my Tesla, but I'm not particularly interested in that. In short, I bought an Tesla instrument cluster on eBay and dumped the NAND chips from it. They use plenty of GPL software there, including the Linux kernel itself.

Ok, you seem to be implying that just the use of GPL software necessitates the open sourcing of anything you build on it or with it. If that were the case, then all of AWS would be open sourced and all of the server backends built on Ubuntu clusters would have to be open sourced. As far as I understand, its only "derivative" works that must be open sourced. Not merely building a software program or hardware device on…

Eh, if they were being compliant and merely building modules ontop of and called by BusyBox, they could get away with Mere Aggregation [0]*, but from a little looking around it looks like they were called out years ago for distributing modified BusyBox binaries without acknowledgement [1] and promised to work with the Software Conservancy to get in compliance. [2]

[0] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation

[1] https://lists.sfconservancy.org/pipermail/ccs-review/2018-Ma...

[2] https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2018/may/18/tesla-incomplete-...

*but I would argue (a judge would be the only one to say with certainty) that Tesla does not provide an infotainment application "alongside" a linux host to run it on, they deliver a single product to the end user of which Debian/BusyBox/whatever is a significant constituent.

(P.S. to cyberax: if you can demonstrate that Tesla is still shipping modified binaries as in [1] I think it would make a worthwhile update to the saga.)

Re: Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

#815

Post by motorest »

01jonny01 wrote: post #799
FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guy who talks like a nazi, supports nazi parties, boosts nazis on his social media platform does a nazi salute and you still doubt what he meant?

[flagged]

> 0 evidence to support these nonsense claims.

Either you've been living under a rock or you're trolling. In the very least, beyond the very public way he repeatedly did the Nazi salute and was very unapologetic about it, you can't ignore away how Musk went way out of his way to support a neoNazi party from Germany.

Re: Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

#817

Post by ben_w »

addandsubtract wrote: post #808
pjc50 wrote: post #772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European countries are quite capable of making their own judgement about a gesture, especially when it would be illegal in France and Germany. https://www.zeit.de/kultur/2025-01/elon-musk-hitler-salute-i...

German media has been extremely coy calling Elon out about it. You would think that they'd be all over this, but them phrasing it as questions and digging out the "roman salute" (that no one here has heard of before) has been an eye-opening experience.

Have they?

I mean, that was a link to a German newspaper and the headline is:

> A German Eye On Elon Musk's Hitler Salute (Yes, That's A Hitler Salute)

Re: Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

#818

Post by mppm »

I think a relevant bit of context for this move are the restructuring negotiations with Microsoft. Matt Levine has some excellent commentary on this [1][2], as usual. In short, due to their unusual "capped-profit" investment, Microsoft has first dibs on a very large chunk of hypothetical future profit. While the details are not public, a "low" valuation of 100B would imply that Microsoft is entitled to a controlling stake in the restructured for-profit, while a 1T valuation would proportionally imply a much smaller slice of the pie.

Presumably, Musk is trying to throw a wrench into these negotiations, by putting a valuation on the low end on the table, while Altman's "counteroffer" to buy Twitter for 9.74B sort of claims that this is too low by a factor of 5 to 10-ish.

1. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-10-21/who-ow...

2. https://archive.is/nHG3P

Re: Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

#819

Post by Tuth5rjrjit »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #774
rastignack wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think we need to lie or be disingenuous about this gesture, Elon is not known for his hate of Jewish people. I think this obviously fake take helps him. There is enough to criticize in his actions.

Obviously this is room for a flame war, but I don’t think the poster was being deliberately malicious, rather it is perfectly reasonable to interpret the gesture as a nazi salute. You may disagree that it was. We shouldn’t let that argument distract from the impact it has had on Tesla demand in Europe. For me personally it was the final straw and I won’t be buying one as I had hoped to. Along with other actions certa…

[flagged]

Re: Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

#820

Post by randomcarbloke »

dustingetz wrote: post #227
TrackerFF wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of it is tied up to a criminally overvalued Tesla stock though? Sure, Tesla could go to zero and he'd still be a fabulously wealthy man, but with how things are moving - It wouldn't surprise me that he's about the fall down the ranks. Let's see how much power he has once the "richest man in the world" aura fades away.

was looking for a musk margin call in 2023, no such luck, now he’s VP and markets are still fake

I would love to see a margin call on the tesla secured borrowing, he'd very publicly lose his marbles.
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