Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

871–880 of 1001 posts

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

#871
post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His boss called someone "Newscum". Birds of a feather flock together.

For whatever reason, Newsom's gotten many colorful nicknames from his critics. It was one of the funnier parts of moving to California. At one point I maintained a list of any I heard but it appears to be lost. Newssolini, Gruesome Newsom, Any Twosome Newsom, Gavin Gruesome, Governor Gaslight...

The reason is because his critics have nothing substantial to criticize him about. Name-calling is an admission that you got nothing.

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

#872
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely hate how much CEOs acting like children / influencers has become the norm. Maybe they were always like this, and twitter has just given us a window into it, but I for one would wholeheartedly welcome a return to "respectability" norms for business and civic leaders.

I think the grass roots of the tech world has some portion of the blame here. The introduction of hoodies, flip-flops, open drama and bickering, and kicker into the office environment is not unrelated. And it’s not just CEOs, we’ve now got a senator who looks like the guy I bought pot from as a kid. I never thought I’d make this argument, but maybe at least appearing respectable increases the odds that you’ll actuall…

Not the tech world generally. Silicon valley culture specifically, but SV is hardly the entire tech world.

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

#873
post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Oh no, it's in great part due to his antics. Owning a Tesla used to be about a positive future, the transition to sustainability, and with great engineering and making it sexy. Now owning a Tesla seems to be about kneeling to Moloch, paying for plutocracy, gleefully cutting basic food aid for the world's poorest starving children, undermining democracy around the world, and yes even doing a fascist salute. So, you wa…

I'm actually shocked in such a media and marketing driven society that absolutely, nobody brings up the fact that the Tesla brand has been completely destroyed in the US and EU.

Companies simply do not survive this in the long run unless very specific inelastic demand (I'm thinking bp oil spill as the only example) exists, and even then BP wasn't as international or charged or so ... Nazi.

Tesla is musk. Musk is a Nazi. Musk was a progressive environmental future in the previous media construction.

That radical shift means no brand, no customers. How many people want to drive a car that basically has a swastika on it? 4% of the population?

On top of this, musks absent leadership since the model Y, in addition to Tesla's general problems getting new designs out the door, and his marketing ignorance in the good days, means Tesla has no badge diversification a luxury marque, no extensive model diversity for all the markets of the world, no cabin options for their extreme design, no trims and body style variations.

It's just the 3 and Y basically.

Tesla should have bought another car company to gain engineer, design, oem relationships, and manufacturing capacity.

Too late. Tesla is now a pump and dump scheme, musk wants his 60 billion that Delaware is holding up and then he'll sell off just like the board is doing now.

China will seize teskas assets on a whim from a trade war or a hot war with Taiwan.

The energy sector is not one I look forward to, Tesla doesn't have any advantage in battery packaging or battery technology("battery day" is now officially a dud), and lfp lmfp and sodium ion chemistries are far more suited to grid storage and home storage.

We all know AI driving at Q4 isnt happening under musk. It's a long slog and musk fires software teams too quickly, because he treats them like hardware. That's basically all the hype.

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

#874
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's large brand value, and then there's $300B brand value. Without a moat, it's hard to argue OpenAI's value is that high.

You can choose as an investor between: a) Coca-Cola (~$300B, profitable, stable, stock-listed, well-known addictive brand, accepted business model with steady growth) b) OpenAI (bleeding cash: $5B lost last year, tech that is not really novel anymore, weird corporate setup, competition that offers similar products). It's not that easy to support the idea that OpenAI will be the winner.

So invest all your money in Coca-Cola and maybe beat inflation by one or two percent.

Or you can gamble it all on a meme stock and maybe 100x your wealth.

Institutional investors are doing both.

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

#875

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Previously I would have said buying election results. But apparently the electoral college makes it surprisingly cheap. Musk buys twitter for 44 billion dollars and yet he only needed a quarter of a billion to buy the American government.

The dems outspent republicans by a billion or so, so 250M didn't do much. If it did, Kamala would've won by a lot. https://www.axios.com/2024/10/31/democrats-republicans-ad-sp... Way more billionaires supported Kamala vs. Trump (83 vs 52).

They spent it running ads and stuff, Musk went ahead against the taboo and legalnrestrictions against buying votes/voter registeration and did a million dollar a day lottery for registered republicans in a swing state.

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

#876

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that Musk is "White House Tech Support" can he actually ban him? Doesn't Ye(Kanye) have a first amendment right to be on twitter, since twitter is now run by a "government" official?

There is no first amendment right to be on Twitter (or any other privately owned service). That said, Musk doesn't actually care about free speech in general. He cares about his own free speech and the speech of those that agree with him.

> There is no first amendment right to be on Twitter (or any other privately owned service).

I agree with you on the "any other privately owned service". But since Musk is now a government official the head of "DOGE" and controls and might do some of his official communications through Twitter. Twitter might no longer fall into the privately owned service category any more.

Same goes for Truth Social. Since the president "owns it", it might not be "privately owned" anymore. At least as far as the first amendment might be concerned.

In general government officials can't block you from social media if their accounts are used in an official government capacity. It might follow that since now the government officials are running the social media that they are using in an official government capacity they must not be able to ban you from the entire platforms.

A case about truth social* went to court but was thrown out because when it reached the supreme court Trump was no longer president and the whole thing was moot. But now he is president again.

*correction: it was about him blocking people on his twitter account.

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

#877

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]

Here's an example of Elon Musk agreeing with a man who repeated an antisemitic belief that the Jewish community is inviting immigrants to further racism against the white population (also alluding to the Great Replacement theory - and if you want to claim that it isn't explicitly being stated, implicit nods are inherent to most political statements)[0].

Elon Musk also endorsed and spoke at an AfD event[1], which comprises members that are 7.5X more likely to participate in Holocaust denialism: believing that the Holocaust is Allied propaganda[2]. Multiple former leaders (including a co-founder) of the AfD describe the party as extremely far-right and authoritarian[3][4]. Elected members of the AfD have been found on a Facebook group sharing memes about baking Anne Frank in a pizza oven and insulting interracial couples[5]. Maybe you could claim that these are past events, but the frequency of these issues are alarming. Even so, we have a more recent example: in 2024, a leading member of the AfD was fined for using a slogan that was used by the Nazi military[6].

At best, you could call Elon Musk an absolutely bone-headed moron who has no idea who he chooses to support or where he chooses to attend. With Occam's razor it seems like he has embraced a lot of hateful ideology.

Oh, and also, it was a Nazi salute.

[0] https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1724908287471272299 [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2025/01/25/elon-musk... [2] https://www.kiwi-verlag.de/buch/meron-mendel-ueber-israel-re... [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20230604004557/https://www.tages... [4] https://www.fr.de/politik/lucke-verlaesst-seine-11155453.htm... [5] https://www.stuttgarter-nachrichten.de/inhalt.angst-vor-scha... [6] https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/14/german...

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

#879
Reminder: don’t trust third parties with your digital belongings. Not because they’re evil, but because they’re third parties. And third parties, by definition, are people who today are on your side and tomorrow will sell you to the highest bidder.

It happens in life, and it happens on the internet. Today, your digital life, files, photos, chats, etc, are on a server run by a company with a cute logo and a manifesto about privacy. Tomorrow, that company gets bought by a billionaire with lizard-like features, changes its terms and conditions, and your stuff ends up on a marketplace for five cents a bundle.

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

#880

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking about it, I consider it possible that pg is afraid of the Trump administration. He rightfully called David Sacks names for his actions in the Parker Conrad case. It might be subjective, but I believe that since the election, his language on his Twitter feed has changed significantly as well. I believe he wants no further conflict - the paypal mafia has too much power to harm him now.

pg has not moderated Hacker News, nor been operationally involved in YC, for over a decade.

[flagged]
Post reply on HN