froztbyte

damn you and your concision ;p

"retail investors" is a bit of a term of art, counterpointed to "institutional investors". translations: "public market investors", "people whose whole thing is doing investment"

institutionals are The Investment Firms Whose Names You Hear About, and they invest in the still-private (at the time) company, which allows the two parties involved to set specific terms and commitments and preferences, etc

the game that's been played by a bunch of bayfuckers for a couple years now is as follows:

1. pour money into something, whether bullshit or not
2. hype the everliving fuck out of it
3. spend enough to destroy/outlive "related"/"relevant" competition, if necessary
4. if still alive, live long enough to go public
5. pull in piles of retail market money
6. sell and get out before the hot air escapes the balloon
7. (optional) write about Your Incredible Journey

what's quite frustrating is how often this still works, because of dynamics of FOMO and other shit

so that when genAI goes down its our savings that go “pop”?

as to this, It's Complicated™️. depends on whether the places your money is kept ends up getting allocated into shares on shit like this, etc. it could or couldn't happen, and the only real way to know is to keep an eye on the financial-entity decision-makers in the entities involved

oh yeah, I agree quite strongly with that sentiment too (and that's why I didn't re-use the words of the post I linked)

the fedi has some pretty dire threats (shit like threads etc) that I do think it needs to deal with by way of more teeth (consider it self-protective boundary setting), but in general I think a lot of the current state of it satisfying people just for being happy to be themselves is perfectly fine and good

side note: part of my problem is that my thinking on matters is a bit waterlogged due to shortage of knowledge/references, and backfilling that is ... well, hard to find the right resources for reading, and perpetual spoon shortage. I've been working my way through some Graeber and some other stuff, but very slowly and need more things. also doesn't help that ZA is, functionally, a desert island

musk.. chess.. post.. ?

actually, forget I asked. I've had an eventful enough week of bullshit, and am going to close my friday off with some careless daydrinking and relaxation

(e: I would add: good god "musk chess post" must be one of the craziest strings of words I've seen in a while)

I endorse this usage, and am now 100% in favour of popularising "founder mode" as a term if we do this

you haven't really startup'd 'till you've been jumpscared by this at A3+ poster size in the coffee/social area

waterfacile

"not a sneer, but"

I can't recall who proposed it (the original phrase)

yeah, which is rather lol

"please believe in meeeeeeeeeee"

afaik it's not illegal but I have a strong feeling that quite a number of Typical OpenAI Practices And Behaviours are going to inform what becomes anathema and what becomes illegal in the coming years, because ho boy

Anything to do with porn or sex work will get kicked to the curb without a second thought

can't say why but I can say this is not completely/100% true; however

but fascists and bigots will be defended up to the point where they try to restart sectarian violence

yup

please don't get me wrong, I'm not going to bat for cloudflare. the company is detestable and problematic in extremely many dimensions

in this particular case and wrt the dude himself, it indeed appears to be much about the power. in the case of the commentary FredFig references, I suspect that came through a lens of "it is bad that I can do this [where "this" is "acquiesce to societal pressure to silence people I don't wish to silence"]". didn't see the comment at the time though, so I have no idea if it was dogwhistled or what at the time

from the (current?) prick-in-chief at YC in this post:

and everyone in our industry owes a debt to open source builders

nice of you to admit it. now maybe pay down some of that debt by using sending of your piles of money to those projects

oh, what's that, you only want to continue taking from it and then charging other people service rent, without ever contributing back? oh okay then

nasb, fedi is for losers

been feeling this for a while too and wondering how to put it into words. especially in light of all the techfash, pressing climate and general market problems, etc

one of the things I've been holding onto (hoping in?) is my estimation/belief that I don't think the current state of all the deeply-fucked systems is inherently stable, or viable. as I've said here before, that very instability is part of why so many of them are engaged in trying to set things up to protect those self-same systems, as they know the swingback is coming and they want to make it as hard as possible to claw things back from them

but how long until it breaks, and with how much splash damage, are things I haven't really been able to estimate