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

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

#911

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USAID was audited by an (actual) independent (actual) auditor in November of 2024. They recommended a review of leases and to tighten up their employee expense reporting requirements. You have no reason to believe Elon is either competent, nor independent, nor well-intentioned on any of this. No, no one is against “a more efficient government.” Obviously. No one is “pro-fraud.” Obviously. Please post specific example…

This is what I saw most recently: [0]. Whether or not it could be vaguely considered to be congressionally authorized (the executive branch has leeway in the execution of said laws) is more or less irrelevant to whether it's wasteful and/or fraudulent, but it looks like those examples were not documented in law anyway. I imagine it will be thousands and thousands of examples of "small time corruption" with a few mill…

If only there were professionals we could pay to go into an organization and find waste, fraud, and abuse so we wouldn't have to rely on people like @ricwe123 on X.

Ah, yes, there are. They're called auditors. They audited USAID 4 months ago.

The entire US government spent only $7.7MM on Politico over the last 12 months. Oooo spooky stuff, if only there was a way to see what for! Turns out there is. You can scroll down and see the shocking revelation that the US government paid a news publication for subscriptions to a news publication!

Similar to how if you work in the energy industry, for example, a smart employer would pay for energy trade publications so you can do your job better.

https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/fa0cefae-7cfb-881d-29c...

In fact you can drill down all the way to individual line items. Here's the 49 subscriptions to Politico Pro that HHS, an organization with 83,500 employees, purchased. Looks suuuuper abusive... /s

https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_75F40120P00453_75...

> to deny that Elon is competent

Please show evidence of Elon being a competent public sector financial auditor. Or are we to believe that competence is just arbitrarily cross-applicable?

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

#912

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the book, the comparison goes from amusing to unsettling, if not all the way to scary. Among other parallels, Drax ingratiates himself with England's leadership ("Your Majesty, may I have the temerity...") and cheats at games despite obviously not needing the money or fame.

I'm actually started to wonder if Elon is actually deeply mentally ill, high functioning, and living in a completely delusional reality. He's clearly trying to live out things he's seen in novels. If you haven't yet read up on where his name came from, check this out. He was named after the main character of a book written by a Nazi rocket scientist. It's almost too weird to believe, but it is indeed true: https://yo…

Wikipedia says his great-grandfather’s name was also Elon. Compelling as the other theory is, this seems much more plausible as the reason for his name.

> Their first child, Elon Reeve Musk, was born in 1971, named after Maye's grandfather J. Elon Haldeman, with the name Reeve after her maternal grandmother's maiden name.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musk_family

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

#913

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[flagged]

If pre-Musk twitter was in the hands of censorship, what is it now? By all accounts it is a bot-infested echo chamber for his own bizarre obsessions where dissent is quickly stamped out.

Whoever flagged my other comment: you have committed a crime.

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

#914
Trump put Elon on stage at rallies over and over, letting all of America know if you vote for Trump, he will hire Elon to run DOGE. They were as open about this as a campaign can possibly be. Then, America overwhelmingly voted to have exactly that. Period. End of story. Cry about it any way you want but this is what the people voted for, this is what the people want. Get over yourself. No one cares about your opinion but you. The people have spoken. Deal with it.

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

#915

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I think the burden of proof should be on ML people to explain why that shouldn't be my goal. Every person in that industry has stated that the technology is going to displace 30% of jobs within the decade. Why should anybody support something which is certain to absolutely destroy society while simultaneously having no positive payoff?

So it's not really LLMs you want to see fail, it's the businesses people are building around them. I can sympathize with that for sure but to me it seems obvious that there's many potentially beneficial applications of the technology that don't involve taking jobs.

Right, though I don't see much distinction given that the cost of training the models is so high. The existence of the technology is equivalent to the existence of these businesses, is it not?

Suppose the technology advances no further than it is today, and I'll even grant up to an order of magnitude improvement. I'm not interested in speculating over so-called AGI though. What would you point to as an overwhelmingly positive justification of its existence? I won't argue against it. I'm just curious.

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

#916
post #194

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Reading the other comments in this Twitter thread it seems like it's gotten much worse than in the years before. It's seems so much more political and radicalized now.

> It's seems so much more political and radicalized now. It's more politicized.. now ? More politicized than when literal politicians and three letter agencies were determining what should and shouldn't trend? How can anyone say that?

[deleted]

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

#917
post #452

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I listen to Cohen on his podcast and on YT. He was once Trump's right hand man, they were buddies for 15+ years. Even he says Trump will cast Elon aside when he is no longer useful. I know a lot of people don't like Cohen. I have my own friends I've had for 15+ years and I know them well, just as much as Cohen knows Trump, so I feel there might be some validity to his thoughts.

By my measure, Cohen is the only person from Trump world who has redeemed himself. He’s still a slimey hot head, but he sees Trump for what he is, and he’s committed himself to making things right. Of course he’s trying to profit as much as possible, but he serves as an example that even the biggest sycophants can make it out of the cult.

He's probably protected in the sense that he knows stuff Trump doesn't want public.

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

#918

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.

I wish I could get paid $50bn to have a mental breakdown.

I remember when we thought we could just pay Trump 1-2 billion to go away. That would've been a good deal and is cheap in retrospect. And maybe Biden should have pardoned him immediately to kick the can down the road on SCOTUS deciding to allow Presidential immunity.. It probably would've happened anyway but it would've given the project2025 and Thiel libertarians less time to organize.

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

#919

[flagged]

I wonder that as well. I'm pretty sure there's manual manipulation involved sometimes.

I'm actually completely fine with internal manual manipulation, bc I trust the HN crew.

I'm concerned that what we're observing is a result of external manipulation at the behest of self-interested parties.

Here's evidence of this concern: https://hnrankings.info/43004889/

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

#920

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> congressionally approved You say that like it’s a good thing…

Following the constitutionally designed balance of powers is a good thing, even when some line items appear in the budget which I personally disagree with. This is what’s known as “compromise,” or otherwise “being a fucking adult.”

Yeah it's called pork.
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