orionsbelt

He may be incentivized, but it is not “compensation” if he already owns it IMO.

Fair points as a customer, but I think a stockholder would much rather Elon focus on robotics than gapless music playback.

He didn’t buy a liver, he registered in Tennessee which has low waiting times.

I don’t know what Steve was thinking, but the desire to try alternatives is not necessarily just woo based thinking. Chemo and surgery are not just a walk in the park. I’ve seen people do chemo and surgery and then just die anyways, having basically tortured themselves with chemo and surgery before death. Cancer sucks and there are sometimes no great answers. I have a really low opinion of grifters that falsely advertise that they can definitively cure cancer with alternative medicine, but I respect any individual’s choice to take the path they are most comfortable with with their own body.

I like it here but this place has always been dour and pessimistic.

Not if the computer is not eligible and you have to buy a new computer that comes with Windows, and the computer manufacturer pays a license fee to Microsoft.

A typical startup would require the consent of a majority of the investor shares for a sale of all the assets, so there would be investor protection and consent to this type of a transaction.

And indeed this article says “Almost all of Sunshine’s investors, who include Norwest Venture Partners, Felicis Partners, and SV Angel, have signed off on the deal, Wired cited the sources as saying.”

So the investors think whatever is happening is a fair deal.

In my experience, the alternative to a pay to play or similar situation in which the old investors get hosed is the company dying, so they get hosed anyway. The fact is, a messed up cap table or zombie company is not attractive to new investors, so cleaning it up is an unfortunate necessity.

I think most of the pro-Israel crowd legitimately believe that Israel's interests are aligned with the U.S.'s interests. The same with Canada, the U.K., and Australia. We share a set of values.

Israel does a lot of dirty work in fighting back against the darker forces of middle east terrorism, and it's reasonable to believe it is in the U.S.'s interest to let Israel do that work rather than take it on itself. It is a similar argument to why the U.S. should back Ukraine in the fight against Russia.

You can of course disagree with the above (arguing against interventionism; the risk of blowback; that Israel is creating more terrorism than it is solving; etc.), but I truly don't believe that any of the pro-Israel crowd believes they are acting against the U.S. interest.

Compared to past standards, Trump and Biden were arguably both too old to run in 2020 and had obvious signs of age-related cognitive decline. But they were regular old, not senile. Biden clearly got much worse throughout his presidency, declining to a level that was obviously too far, even for the left. Trump is not there yet, although I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets there during his presidency.

“Politics no longer make sense to me. I say Democrats should just run the candidate with the most charisma and fuck everything else.”

Personally, I think they should focus on running candidates that have the best chance of winning. Politics is a competition!

Trump’s success is largely a reaction.

The democrats need to change and run a compelling alternative, and I see no evidence that will happen any time soon.

The democrats and the left have, among other issues:

- refused to run legitimate primaries, instead propping up Hillary when she was unpopular, Biden when he was senile, and Kamala when she was also unpopular and a clearly bad candidate

- wasted a lot of goodwill advocating for policies that are unpopular with the center of the country, including trans in woman sports, the border, and crime

- ignored, minimized or outright spoke down to half the country (the “deplorables”)

- spent decades advocating globalization and ignoring the economic effects on half the country

What compelling democratic candidate is there to run in 2028? What is the compelling Democratic vision? The only fresh new charismatic faces I see are AOC and Mamdani; and while I think they are impressive politicians, those types of policies will not win over the center of the country and would lose in any national elections.

I am not going to argue that many members of the "American Right" are not racist. Many of them are openly and disgustingly so. But we are talking about half the country, and a group that has as many in-group differences as the left.

I am not an expert in Charlie Kirk (I barely knew anything about him a week ago), but from the many many clips I have seen of him since, he seems to me to genuinely not be racist.

It's not worth debating whether DEI and affirmative action are problematic are not. We probably disagree, and this is a waste of both of our time. But in terms of this story, the simple fact is a journalist should not be misquoting someone. If one thinks he's racist by subtext, one can try to argue that, but at least be honest about what he's literally saying.

It’s a misquote - in quotation marks! - for which the full video is available and shows it is a misquote.

His point is not that black people are less capable but that DEI policies causing looser standards causes people to question whether a particular black person they encounter in a role is sufficiently qualified given those well known looser standards, and that this is bad for everyone, black people included. You can argue he’s still wrong, but it’s quite clear from the various clips that this is what he is arguing. In another clip, for example, he cited United’s goal of having 50% of pilots being of color or women, as compared to 13% of the population being black and women having less of an interest in careers like being a pilot; ie he has no prejudice against black peoples capabilities but has an issue with lowering hiring standards for any group of people.

Sounds delightful. Now do it for adults.

- an adult phone addict

Twitter and the terminally online need to touch grass and overemphasize things that the real world doesn’t care about, but, to an approximation, it is the vanguard and real world talking points, political trends, etc, are all downstream from there. So yes, someone very influential with the Twitter crowd is influential.

I have a good sense of what Waymo and Tesla’s capabilities are, but not Zoox. Can anyone here clue me in on how Zoox compares?

I’d guess they are trying to limit power draw given the smaller battery. It’s a trade off.

I’d get the Air but I really like the 0.5x camera. I’m disappointed at how the Pros keep getting heavier.

The Air is going to be very popular.

VC is a marketing game. You want to be attractive to founders, so that the best founders/companies come to you and want to choose you.

There is nothing I can see which suggests the shares have positive value. The FAQ I linked directly says the opposite. Nothing is suspect here, other than journalists and internet commentators making assumptions based on misunderstandings.

This happens hundreds if not thousands of times a year at startups that sell for less than the aggregate liquidation preferences.

Doesn't that just mean the Common was underwater and worthless? It’s another way of saying they are due $0.

Edited to Add:

Yeah, the above seems right. This seems like standard fare. See the below FAQ from https://philzcoffee.com/stakeholderfaqs:

How many employees who invested in your company lost their money and/or stock options as a result of this transaction?

A total of 10 former employees who chose to invest in Philz Coffee by buying common stock years ago at much higher prices than the current price of the shares will unfortunately lose the value of that stock. There are no other Philz Coffee common stockholders or broader group of Philz common stockholders who were affected by the transaction and no current employees are Philz common stockholders who were affected by the transaction. Additionally, out of our approximately 1,500 current employees, 47 were granted stock options (the right to buy stock at a certain price in the future) in 2022 and earlier that are not exercisable based on the current price of the shares. Unfortunately, those options will expire per their original terms, but since the employees did not buy stock, they did not lose any money.

Predictions about the future and puffery are not illegal. Lying about facts are. Nobody knows how far away AGI is, everyone just has their own predictions.

The administration seems to be deliberately making the deportations as cruel and scary as possible (CECOT, Alligator Alcatraz, etc) as a means of deterring future illegal immigration and encouraging self deportation. I haven’t looked into the numbers to see how well that’s working or not, but focusing on deportations alone is missing two thirds of the picture.

I’m not sure if this is accurate, but for example: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/07/31/migrant-crossings-darien...

Apologies if I misread your post, but by calling Sam a psychopath in the same post, it seemed to imply that you would have offered her treatment that he did not.

Maybe before you judge someone you should know the facts. They have basically done that, per the below statement by the rest of the family. I have a mentally ill family member and they are enormously difficult and are their own worst enemy and refuse help; there’s a reason many end up homeless.

“Our family loves Annie and is very concerned about her well-being. Caring for a family member who faces mental health challenges is incredibly difficult. We know many families facing similar struggles understand this well.Over the years, we've tried in many ways to support Annie and help her find stability, following professional advice on how to be supportive without enabling harmful behaviors. To give a sense of our efforts, we have given her monthly financial support, directly paid her bills, covered her rent, helped her find employment opportunities, attempted to get her medical help, and have offered to buy her a house through a trust (so that she would have a secure place to live, but not be able to sell it immediately). Via our late father's estate, Annie receives monthly financial support, which we expect to continue for the rest of her life. Despite this, Annie continues to demand more money from us. In this vein, Annie has made deeply hurtful and entirely untrue claims about our family, and especially Sam. We've chosen not to respond publicly, out of respect for her privacy and our own. However, she has now taken legal action against Sam, and we feel we have no choice but to address this. Over the years, she has accused members of our family of improperly withholding our father's 401k funds, hacking her wife, and "shadowbanning" her from various websites including ChatGPT, Twitter, and more. The worst allegation she has made is that she was sexually abused by Sam as a child (she has also claimed instances of sexual abuse from others). Her claims have evolved drastically over time. Newly for this lawsuit, they now include allegations of incidents where Sam was over 18. All of these claims are utterly untrue. This situation causes immense pain to our entire family. It is especially gut-wrenching when she refuses conventional treatment and lashes out at family members who are genuinely trying to help. We ask for understanding and compassion from everyone as we continue to support Annie in the best way we can. We sincerely hope she finds the stability and peace she's been searching for. -Connie, Sam, Max, and Jack”

Mr. McMahon, a documentary on Netflix, is a great watch.

While I am wary of AI being used to pump out crappy papers with bad science, I will say that many academics can be good in their fields while being quite bad at communicating clearly. I don't think it's a bad thing for a good scientist to use AI be used to take a genuine and scientifically interesting draft paper and use it to improve the writing so that it's clearer to the reader.

I quickly adapted and this barely slowed me down. I recommend the following iOS apps:

1. Jomo - you can create block lists of distracting apps. Like OneSec, when you try to open a blocked app, it makes you wait 5 seconds or more. More importantly, on that screen, you can select 5 minutes, so that it only gives you 5 minutes of unblocked access.

2. Brick - a physical device with an NFC tag you put somewhere. Block all the distracting apps on your phone. If you want to look at them, you need to physically scan the Brick with your phone to get back in.