Very hard for me to believe Musk didn’t overpay for Twitter. So whatever he saw, I don’t think was there. Hard to know completely for sure given it is private. But I strongly suspect that money definitely would be making him more in passive investments.
If the argument is that it was a stupid business decision, but he had other motives (clout, etc…), sure whatever.
A paper being peer reviewed is a good sign, but I feel like the signal is usually over interpreted.
Peer reviewed does not mean the findings of the paper are established fact or scientific consensus. It does not mean that the findings have been replicated by other scientists. It does not mean that the paper relied on a robust methodology, is free of basic statistical errors, or even free of logical fallacies.
Some of these limitations are due to the limitations of peer review itself. Others are just side effects of the way science works (for example, some ideas start as small, unimpressive experiments that are reported on in papers, and the strength of the findings is gradually developed over time). Obviously sometimes the prestige (or lack thereof) of the journal the paper is in decreases (or increases) some of these issues.
Anyway, peer review is a very noisy channel (IMHO).
> DoW balked at Anthropic's conditions so OAI's agreement must have made the "conditions" basically unenforceable.
I think it’s also possible DoW didn’t care about the conditions but just wanted some pretext to punish Anthropic because Dario isn’t a Trump boot licker like the rest of the SV CEOs.
I don’t know if it is “unstoppable” or a “force,” but nepotism is a natural behavior, selected for in humans by kin selection.
Likewise, I think public choice theory would probably argue that corruption is a predictable outcome in politics that has to be constantly guarded against.
So I guess the lesson is that ideas can turn into successful, profitable businesses even if there are a lot of legitimate criticisms of those ideas?
Or maybe it is that HN tends to correctly point out flaws in ideas, but maybe doesn’t also point out the good points of ideas, which can give readers an incorrect impression that those projects can’t succeed?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I suppose, but as for me, I would be very happy with myself if I had founded Dropbox, even if it isn’t a flawless business.
A government bailout of OpenAI would be a regressive redistribution of wealth to some of the least needy people in all of society, which is a horrendously poor use of government funds. But that has no bearing on the fact that calling high DRAM prices induced by high demand a “tax” stretches the meaning of the word beyond all recognition.
There are many horrible things in the world and we don’t need to label them all as a “tax.” If we use words in an imprecise way, it obfuscates the truth.
Please note that OpenAI Partners and suppliers (Oracle, CoreWeave, SoftBank-linked entities) have taken on significant debt to fund infrastructure for OpenAI - around ~$100 billion reported in late 2025 alone.
Projections show $14-20 billion in losses for OpenAI expected just in 2026.
The chances that someone is not going to ask for a debt write-off approaches zero as the years go. OpenAI already began testing the waters since late last year. Senator Warren has already raised alarms about potential indirect taxpayer exposure when the "AI bubble" bursts.
When that happens - and it is all but guaranteed to happen - it will amount to a horrendous tax, rendering everything you’ve said about 'imprecise words obfuscating the truth' complete hogwash.
I’m sympathetic, but I think this idea seems pretty clearly a political non-starter.
“Good news voters! You now have to pay for your email, search engines, and social media accounts.” Privacy and healthy digital habits are issues dear to my heart and issues that I think are gaining some modest traction, but they just can’t compete with a core pocketbook issues like making everything cost more. In the US, we just elected a guy that campaigned on, among other things, ending democracy, because (at least according to some political pundits) egg prices went up under Biden.
“But you pay that cost now, it’s just hidden!” I know, I know. But that doesn’t strike me as a politically winning argument. It’s like trying to explain to people that inflation is ok as long as if in adjusted terms wages outpace it; technically correct, but a political loser.
If the argument is that it was a stupid business decision, but he had other motives (clout, etc…), sure whatever.
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