upwardbound

Nick Cole, continued:

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.”

Because I hope that more people listen to the audiobook series Strange Company:

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.)

Reminds me a little bit of Arduino LLC vs Arduino SRL. (which was ultimately resolved amicably)

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

That's not true at least in the USA on my carrier. Some spammers just ignore the STOP and continue messaging anyways.

I see; thank you for checking and for this detailed data review.

I think it is the case here, and I hope Elon Musk persists in his lawsuits about this. As a large donor to the nonprofit in its early days he’s one of the people with the strongest standing to sue / strongest claim for damages.

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/

Does that amount to making a false forward-looking financial statement? (Specifically his claim that he wasn’t interested in getting equity in the future.)

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.

I fully agree that users flagged it. What I would appreciate would be if you can please check the data to see if there is a small group of users who consistently flag all negative things about Sam Altman. I suspect the answer is yes.

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.

Thank you dalant979 for finding a previous pattern of behavior also by Sam with a similar structure to what we have seen unfolding on the board of OpenAI.

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

> manufacture a series of otherwise-improbable leadership crises

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

Nearly simultaneously, the comment in this thread which explains what Yishan was saying suddenly dropped from being the #1 comment to being below a bunch of other comments, which makes this whole thread harder to understand unless you scroll down. This is despite the comment having 17 points and high engagement.

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.

With 144 points, this story suddenly went from being ~#12 on the front page to now being #70, on page 3. If any journalists or regulators are reading this I recommend that possible astroturfing behavior (collusive downvoting (flagging)) be investigated, and I'm happy to cooperate with any investigation if contacted.

Depriving any party of free will & the right to voluntarily consent is still a con, even if it's for (ostensibly) their own benefit.

I'm not saying this isn't common (hence proverbs like "might (strength) makes right" and "the winners write the history books") but I think consent is important even amongst businesses and that it's important to protect.

If I understand the history correctly, Yishan (the former Reddit CEO) is talking about himself when he talks about a CEO in this story, and so Yishan's post is a brag, with a thin denial tacked on at the end. That's why I believe that Sam (Yishan's friend) is also engaging in thinly-veiled bragging about these events. 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.

-- yishanwong

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.

If I understand the history correctly, Yishan (the former Reddit CEO) is talking about himself when he talks about a CEO in this story, and so Yishan's post is a brag, with a thin denial tacked on at the end. That's why I believe that Sam (Yishan's friend) is also engaging in thinly-veiled bragging about these events.

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.

-- yishanwong

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.

Another post which is on the front page with fewer points and older / more stale time is "Writing Portable Rendering Code with Nvrhi" with 5 points from 3 hours ago.

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

Relatedly, dalant979 found this fascinating bit of history: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the...

Yishan Wong describes a series of actions by Yishan and Sam Altman as a "con", and Sam jumps in to brag that it was "child's play for me" with a smiley face. :)

Thread context: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the...

HN removes the "?context=3" when submitting the link as a post, which is why I have to put it here in a comment.

Credit to dalant979 for surfacing this, which they did here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41652513

Has anyone posted a deep dive yet on pinning down which exact waveguide design is being used and which exact projector (based on past papers, M&A activity, key hires, etc.)? I'm surprised Karl Guttag hasn't published anything yet about either Orion or Spectacles 24. https://kguttag.com/ His blog is normally the definitive source for reverse-engineering AR optics systems from public information. Maybe someone posted a deep dive on Reddit or something ?

I'll post links here that could serve as a starting point:

- The microLED display panel vendor is likely to be Plessey: https://www.uploadvr.com/facebook-plessey-microled-deal/

- The waveguides are likely being produced "directly" by a contract manufacturer working under the direction of Meta's in-house team, and reporting appears to confirm that Meta is procuring the raw materials directly: "The silicon carbide waveguides are also proving challenging to procure. The material can deliver a wider field of view than the glass waveguides used in current transparent AR headsets, but it is also incredibly expensive. Further, Ma's report explained that because the material is used in military radars and sensors, the US government imposes strict export controls on it. That means glasses using it will have to be assembled inside the US, significantly raising the production cost, despite most of the manufacturing and components coming from China and Taiwan." https://www.uploadvr.com/meta-ar-glasses-lead-claims-as-mind...

One thing I don't understand is whether the current Orion announcement is actually a new announcement or is re-announcing an already publicized project. This article from 2023 talks about Orion and its 70 deg FOV in the past tense as a line of development which Meta considered but then decided to abandon after Orion in its plans for the 2027 consumer version to be called Artemis: https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/19/23800228/meta-ar-glasses-... "Meta’s Artemis glasses will reportedly use a glass waveguide, a component that allows light to travel through the glasses and into your eyes, potentially limiting its field of view to 50 degrees. According to The Information, Meta had originally planned to use silicon carbide, which allowed for a 70-degree field of view. The downgrade could make it harder for Meta’s consumer-focused glasses to stand out among the competition, as both Microsoft’s second-gen HoloLens and the Magic Leap One sport a 50-degree field of view."

Maybe the hope is that with the Orion test devices, Meta can see whether people care about 70 deg vs 50 deg FOV enough to justify the costs of US-based waveguide manufacturing for the generation after Artemis?

Disclaimer: I worked extensively on Snap Spectacles for a number of years so I'm highly biased, but credit where credit is due: I believe both Meta and Snap have done incredible work in their AR glasses and I am excited to see the competition heating up. I also hope that both company's efforts here can motivate Apple and Google to get in the game instead of sitting around doing more or less nothing really interesting or adventurous while cautiously sitting on piles of cash, while life passes us by and we get closer every day to old age. For heck's sake, either one of those tech giants could privately fund a LITERAL moon base, and they choose not to. Why should we have to live in a boring world? Life is short and I'd rather we get to see some very magical tech soon, in our lifetimes, instead of the tech companies conservatively waiting around for more of Moore's Law to happen first or something. Even Magic Leap, though a colossal failure, pursued a wonderful vision - to create innocent, whimsical literal magic in people's lives - like the world of Harry Potter - in our real world.

Yeah! Some reference info about this amazing approach:

Human click-based echolocation: Effects of blindness and age, and real-life implications in a 10-week training program https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8171922/

Human echolocation lets blind man 'see' (CNN video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHYCs8xtzUI

Human echolocation - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation

Not sure why this is downvoted. I know your son is just a baby but my whole point in posting this is to illustrate that with today's tech, he won't have to grow up being less independent than other people.

One of my friends even came up with a UX that could, if built into smartglasses, someday allow blind people to drive:

https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~brian/projects/rad.html

I feel like it's nice to give people hope

There's a Google Glass reseller + app maker called Envision, which lets you use Google Glass's camera and speaker to have the computer explain what you're looking at.

https://shop.letsenvision.com/products/glasses-home

    features: Instant Text, Scan Text, Batch Scan, Call an Ally, Call Aira, Describe Scene, Detect Light, Recognise Cash, Detect Colors, Find People, Find Objects, Teach a Face, Ask Envision, Explore and more

https://www.businessinsider.com/envision-glasses-chatgpt-goo...