Which would mean, as is so often the case, that the "killer feature" of the LLMs is also its biggest weakness and the two can't be disentangled. Now, we are inventive creatures and we might come up with a remedy for these issues, but what you basically see so far is more guardrails, the use of harnesses and building a whole bunch of infrastructure around the LLMs to get useful work out of them.

Which, btw is not a critique, I do it as well and it's a fun engineering challenge.

That being said, controlling android and apple mobile devices is kind of a big deal. And their video models are still top notch.

Haven't done any serious coding work with the flash models though — but I'm seeing more and more HN comments from people who seem to have picked it up for that in the last couple of months.

When I was less into tech (2010-2015), I hated how everyone fawned about Elon (remember Hollywood casting him in iron man?). As I started to transition into tech I remember being impressed by the design principles of his companies (simplify, remove complexity).

But I am absolutely baffled how his detractors don't see that exactly what you mentioned, that they are part of subset of society, with very strong opinions (think race, economics, religion) and can't fathom somebody having a different opinion without that person being immoral. And the worst part is what you mention at the very end: the mental policing of this group in the past 10-15 years. I liken it to a religious sect (ironically, even though they hate Christianity, probably closest to a new age christian sect).

I've had this discussion up here last week pointing out the vitriol Elon gets is, to my mind, for the wrong reasons (and the reasons are exactly what you mention).

I completely agree his foray was a fiasco (and his shareholders paid for it) and your colourful portrayal is more accurate than my shorthand, but I would argue that the comments would have been fewer (on this portal, maybe not on foxnews.com) if he had done the same thing in the Biden admin.

I will admit this is not always the case. But humans weren't built for consistency. And my point is merely (was making it to another commentator in this thread), that Elon gets more flak up here not because he is inherently less moral than, say Larry Page, but because more people on HN are ideologically closer to the other side of the political spectrum. Which, I will again reiterate, is fine. But then I would expect (or actually, see first paragraph - I wouldn't) that the vitriol would be consistenly dished. But it isn't. Now to be sure, partly this is due to Elon's move into politics and his personality, but I doubt he would have got the same amount of hate if he went into politics in the Biden administration.

As for the rest, especially in the US (im from the EU), we should invest in everything you mentioned and I wouldnt mind taxing Elon and his gang more either.

As to the first point: maybe it should. But look at how the aid actually works, what it funds (it was not politically neutral - btw nothing in the realm of society is) etc. I mean, not just USAID, a lot of these schemes are at the expense of people who pay the most taxes, to fund corporations that send aid to countries that otherwise wouldn't have been able to afford the commodities at the market price. Surely you can see that as a taxpayer you might support the dismantling of these orgs?

Now, I do agree that the ramp-down could have been 1-2 years and that the theatre around it shows the worst of Elon. And the current administration.

I'm saying a lot of the populace is against foreign aid. And that populace has the right to shut it off. And we live in nation states - the state giving the aid can always shut it off (for whatever reason). Granted, I see no reason to do it SO abruptly (and I agree that was an infantile show), but I am not convinced aid as such is a net benefit for humanity. At the very least this is something you can do an econometric analysis and discuss different policy choices.

Now, that being said, I do agree it would have probably made more sense, from an austerity point of view, to cut the military aid to Israel.

The world is more nuanced (or should be). But up till Trump (who is a loathsome cheap crook, so Im not saying this in support, but stating a fact) the whole Silicon valley other than Karp and Thiel was basically one hivemind. And btw that's ok, they/you are allowed to have your worldviews. But don't mistake morality for preference similarity. Fine, you like your elves black, your models chinese, your religion from the Arab peninsula and your sexual preferences lean towards the rainbow (the cliche right wing characterization of a "lefty" in 2026), you have every right to have that view. And also every right to say Elon suck (and yes, he is marketing over matter, I agree, but he is the only serious westerd large scale industrialist). But then let's not pretend that the reason why Dario or Sam are "ok" isn't because you're lifestyle and worldviews are more aligned with them. And not because of an objective real metric which makes Elon bad and Altman better (example, pick any tech CEO/founder other than Karp or Luckey).

My point being, it seems incredibly simplistic to just assume that aid is good and no aid is bad. This is just first order effects that you're looking at. Also, if you want to look at how real world systems operate (u like USAID, for example, but NATO, a western imperialist project, operates much the same), institutions rarely respond to slow change (i.e. evolution). That's the surest route to keep the status quo (once a government agency has been set up, it will rarely be wound down). Now maybe the status quo is preferable! But maybe it isn't. And maybe - most likely - it depends on subjective preferences and your Weltanschauung.

And I would argue that for all his marketing and missing deadlines, the man has changed the world for the better (my view). And I would also argue if he were a Biden and Harris supporter, this comment section would look completely different. And that tells us just as much about the HN crowd as it does about Elon. Now I won't go into his political views, but he obviously isn't alone with those views (for which I think HN believes are influenced by Elon, which is incredibly patronizing) and maybe, just maybe, there are valid reasons for those views.

As for the model itself - seems like a similar set of metrics we always get with SOTA and near SOTA models, they compare themselves to anthropic and they are usually way cheaper. But the combination of the harness (claude code) and the models makes their end product noticeably better than the competition (admittedly haven't tried codex). I'll definitely give it a try with pi if its on openrouter (currently using GLM 5.2 there mainly).

My point being, I think we havent found the sweet spot yet.

Now, I know it's not a very representative car. But nobody said the buttons need to be as flashy or as numerous.