Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42137533

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41980184

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Epigraph: Wherever in the universe one happens to find them, an old battlefield, a forgotten glade, buried deep in the rubble of a dead and beam-ravaged world, the graves of Strange Company are often marked such: “Strangers to the Universe, Brothers to the End.”

Nick Cole:

Log Keeper's Note: Aftermath. In those dark years of the long crossing between the world we'd cut loose of the bad contract on, and the repair facility on Hardrock, the Strange Company slept and the galaxy caught fire as we dreamed for twenty-five years of sublight. The old order of the Monarchs, mighty yet petty gods determined to burn worlds and take humanity with them down into the deep dark graves of empire, began its final collapse. Worlds fell into shadowy chaos, overrun by the cackle of automatic weapons carried by the Simia Legions, while ring stations at Oberon and Circe burned like fiery jewels. Into this madness and maelstrom rode the Strange Company.

(That’s a slightly abridged excerpt from the second audiobook of the duology, Voodoo Warfare. I call them audiobooks rather than novels because in print form they are merely quite good but very derivative examples of their genre, but as narrated by Christopher Ryan Grant, they are among the most epic and inspiring stories I have ever heard come alive.)

https://hackaday.com/2016/10/01/arduino-vs-arduino-arduino-w...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41693694

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41677277

Points: 4

# Comments: 2

Obviously Elon is mostly doing this suit as a way to benefit Grok AI but honestly I don’t mind that; competitors are supposed to keep each other in check, and this is a good and proper way for companies to provide checks & balances to each others’ power and it’s one reason why monopolies are bad is the absence of competitor-enforced accountability.

Lawsuit: https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-revives-lawsuit...

    https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-revives-lawsuit-against-sam-altman-openai-nyt-reports-2024-08-05/

This claim he made was likely helpful in ensuring the OpenAI team’s willingness to bring him back after he was temporarily ousted by the board last year for alleged governance issues. (Basically: “don’t worry about me guys, I’m in this for the mission, not personal enrichment”)

Since his claim likely helped him get re-hired, he can’t claim it was immaterial.

I really hope someone from the SEC scrutinizes him someday. The Singularity is too important to let it be run by someone with questionable ethics.

It is not a throwaway snarky comment, it is an explanation by Yishan and Sam of how they hijacked control of a team away from Condé Nast using a similar playbook as Sam is using in recent years + now to seize control of OpenAI.

This is not about celebrities and I have zero interest in celebrity news. This is about ensuring legal and transparent governance of the nonprofit OpenAI which is among the most likely teams in the world to initiate the Singularity and thus either uplift or obliterate humanity. There aren’t any higher stakes than this.

It would be very wonderful if you could please check the data to see if there are some users who consistently flag content about Sam Altman but don’t really flag other stuff very much. Please.

While we’re on the topic of a small clique of users flagging content about Sam Altman, the fact that I’m one of the accounts who consistently posts things exposing his personality and his past has led to my posts being flagged so many times that my account is in a hellban/shadowban status where any posts I make are automatically flagged by default now but do not appear flagged when logged in as me. This doesn’t affect my comments, just my posts. I understand that I’ve had other posts flagged that weren’t about Sam Altman and that I’ve been a borderline annoying user for some time and I apologize for this.

But if you look at the chronological history of my account, you will see that the hellban/shadowban did not start until I started posting things about Sam Altman. I would deeply appreciate if you could please request a review of this status to clear this status from my account because I believe it was deliberately caused by a small group of pro-Sam users flagging things I posted, and amounts to a form of social ostracism.

I appreciate your help and you’re a good man in a crappy situation. None of this is your fault and I’m just trying to raise awareness so that we don’t end up with a potentially greed-motivated, emotionally abusive man at the helm of the Singularity. (Many people who have worked with him have said these things about him.)

Thank you for everything you do for our community and we appreciate you.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41657001#41657014

This was a violation of Yishan’s fiduciary duty to Condé Nast. It’s illegal.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41657014

The fact that these two things which both benefit Sam happened simultaneously (the story dropping from the front page and the explanatory comment dropping from the top of the comments) is suggestive of collusive downvoting/flagging and once again I want to state that I have screenshots showing this playing out minute by minute and I am happy to collaborate with journalists or regulators.

There's a reason that informed consent is required for medical procedures, even lifesaving ones.

    Informed consent is the process in which a health care provider educates a patient about the risks, benefits, and alternatives of a given procedure or intervention. The patient must be competent to make a voluntary decision about whether to undergo the procedure or intervention.  Informed consent is both an ethical and legal obligation of medical practitioners in the US and originates from the patient's right to direct what happens to their body.

I know that it's a stretch to apply medical ethics to business deals but I believe the principle of informed consent is still a moral requirement. An example of how this is the intent in many legal systems is the concept of a "meeting of the minds" being a mandatory part any legally valid contract. "Meeting of the minds" is similar to the idea of informed consent:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_of_the_minds

    In 2006, reddit was sold to Conde Nast. It was soon obvious to many that the sale had been premature, the site was unmanaged and under-resourced under the old-media giant who simply didn't understand it and could never realize its full potential, so the founders and their allies in Y-Combinator (where reddit had been born) hatched an audacious plan to re-extract reddit from the clutches of the 100-year-old media conglomerate.

    Together with Sam Altman, they recruited a young up-and-coming technology manager [named Yishan Wong] with social media credentials. Alexis, who was on the interview panel for the new reddit CEO, would reject all other candidates except this one. The manager was to insist as a condition of taking the job that Conde Nast would have to give up significant ownership of the company, first to employees by justifying the need for equity to be able to hire top talent, bringing in Silicon Valley insiders to help run the company. After continuing to grow the company, [Yishan Wong] would then further dilute Conde Nast's ownership by raising money from a syndicate of Silicon Valley investors led by Sam Altman, now the President of Y-Combinator itself, who in the process would take a seat on the board.

    Once this was done, [Yishan Wong] and his team would manufacture a series of otherwise-improbable leadership crises, forcing the new board to scramble to find a new CEO, allowing Altman to use his position on the board to advocate for the re-introduction of the old founders, installing them on the board and as CEO, thus returning the company to their control and relegating Conde Nast to a position as minority shareholder.

    JUST KIDDING. There's no way that could happen.

My understanding of what Sam meant by "I could never have predicted the part where you resigned on the spot" was that he was conveying respect for Yishan essentially out-playing Sam at the end (the two of them are friends) by distancing himself (Yishan) from the situation and any potential liability in order to leave Sam "holding the bag" of possible liability.

Here is Yishan's comment with his name spelled out for clarity instead of just saying "CEO":

    In 2006, reddit was sold to Conde Nast. It was soon obvious to many that the sale had been premature, the site was unmanaged and under-resourced under the old-media giant who simply didn't understand it and could never realize its full potential, so the founders and their allies in Y-Combinator (where reddit had been born) hatched an audacious plan to re-extract reddit from the clutches of the 100-year-old media conglomerate.

    Together with Sam Altman, they recruited a young up-and-coming technology manager [named Yishan Wong] with social media credentials. Alexis, who was on the interview panel for the new reddit CEO, would reject all other candidates except this one. The manager was to insist as a condition of taking the job that Conde Nast would have to give up significant ownership of the company, first to employees by justifying the need for equity to be able to hire top talent, bringing in Silicon Valley insiders to help run the company. After continuing to grow the company, [Yishan Wong] would then further dilute Conde Nast's ownership by raising money from a syndicate of Silicon Valley investors led by Sam Altman, now the President of Y-Combinator itself, who in the process would take a seat on the board.

    Once this was done, [Yishan Wong] and his team would manufacture a series of otherwise-improbable leadership crises, forcing the new board to scramble to find a new CEO, allowing Altman to use his position on the board to advocate for the re-introduction of the old founders, installing them on the board and as CEO, thus returning the company to their control and relegating Conde Nast to a position as minority shareholder.

    JUST KIDDING. There's no way that could happen.

My understanding of what Sam meant by "I could never have predicted the part where you resigned on the spot" was that he was conveying respect for Yishan essentially out-playing Sam at the end (the two of them are friends) by distancing himself (Yishan) from the situation and any potential liability in order to leave Sam "holding the bag" of possible liability.

To be clear, I do not believe that the HN moderators are doing anything wrong, but rather that Sam or his friends use a lot of accounts to flag anything bad about him, suppressing those posts.