Eh, distribution of the model is the real moat, theyre doing 700m WAU of the most financially valuable users on earth. If they truly become search, commerce and can use their model either via build or license across b2b, theyre the largest company on earth many times over.
>distribution of the model is the real moat, theyre doing 700m WAU of the most financially valuable users on earth.
Distribution isn't a moat if the thing being distributed is easily substitutable. Everything under the sun is OAI API compatible these days.
700 WAU are fickle AF when a competitor offers a comparable product for half the price.
Moat needs to be something more durable. Cheaper, Better, some other value added tie in (hardware / better UI / memory). There needs to be some edge here. And their obvious edge - raw tech superiority...is looking slim.
Not necessarily. I’m sure there is many cheaper android phones that are technically better in specs but many users won’t change. Once you are familiar, bought into the ecosystem getting rid of it is very hard. I’m lazy myself compared to how I was several years ago. The curious and experimental folks are a minority and the majority ll stick with what works initially instead of constantly analyzing what’s best all the time
I want to start by saying I have no skin in the game here. While not perfect, Saudi has very clearly moved "Westernly" on many ideas, most notably social and economic ones. It can even be argued that their recent moves in that direction have made it near impossible for the other large economy companies to move too far the other way. Th
At what point does the narrative about their investments on the larger stage become less pejorative?
"Why does everybody have such a low opinion of this oppressive theocracy?" Gee, it's such a mystery.
Remember when the current leader of Saudi Arabia lured a Washington Post journalist into a Saudi consulate, had him tortured to death, and cut into pieces to dispose of the evidence? What a bunch of merry pranksters. We really should lighten up.
>Maybe the narrative changes when their approaches towards human rights does?
Clo$e. The narrative change$ whenever the $audi$ decide that they want it to. U$ually, thi$ involve$ $omething, but I can't figure quite what that "it" could be.
>While not perfect, Saudi has very clearly moved "Westernly" on many ideas, most notably social and economic ones.
My man, they can kill you for drawing a stick figure.
Let that sink in.
SA is still a single-export economy, and those who are smart enough to get out of SA, do so. From personally having very close relationships with a few folks who worked on the NEOM project, the Saudi locals are not prepared to do any work at all, just spend money and export the work to consultants. It's about posturing, not rolling up their sleeves.
Yeah. They don't have a good track record, and that's before the (partially justified) Islamophobia kicks in.
Before anyone thinks I'm Islamophobic, I equally detest and mock all religion.
I do find it funny that if there is an afterlife, Abraham is there, and absolutely befuddled as to why all of his disciples seem to hate each other and want to kill each other.
> While not perfect, Saudi has very clearly moved "Westernly" on many ideas, most notably social
Citation very much needed. It's still a country where you can be executed for being gay, protestors against government projects get murdered in the streets, and anyone vaguely critical against the government (that includes being critical for things which have since been allowed, like women driving) being imprisoned for long periods of time. Oh, and did they not execute a dissident in a consulate? Did they not bait various government detractors living abroad to return to Saudi under threat of harm to their families?
It's still a reactionary theocracy. It has liberalised, socially, in the years since MBS has had de facto control, there is no denying that; but they're nowhere near "westernly".
> At what point does the narrative about their investments on the larger stage become less pejorative?
When their sportswashing and investmentwashing ends up entirely working. It will probably take years, Khashoggi's murder was still only 7 years ago. It will also depend a lot on how their World Cup works, a lot of the world will be watching that one closely and it will have big ramifications.
Sure, 2 inches per year, 2 steps ahead 1 step back in a good year. In 2000 years they may approach current levels of personal or religious freedom that average western country has. Till then, its absolutely horrible place if you are in any sort of minority group, or woman, or want that pesky freedom for you or your children.
The USA isn't the only country in the "western world", please stop equating the two.
Even for Britain, France, Germany, the countries with the biggest far right/reactionary political groups, where there are legitimate chances for them to end up in power, none of them are religious. Or even that socially reactionary for that matter.
Never mind third in line, the dude who is currently President just put out a memorandum declaring "anti-Christianity" to be on the same level as "support for the overthrow of the United States Government."
I really wouldn't go this far, there is _way_ too much religion in US politics for proper separation of church and state. When elected politicians regularly quote religious documents in their reasoning for making decisions, agreeing and disagreeing with others, etc. you can't claim a theocracy isn't on the cards.
No, it has not. But you cannot deny that religion being a visible, daily, part of politics, and being very often quoted as justification for political, and even worse, judicial decisions, is closer to a theocracy than it is to separation of church and state.
> There is the COVID sect. They even masked themselves outdoors in public - like the women in Iran back in the day. Without any evidence - and they did it even against evidence. It was a very religious thing
Bloody hell are we still at this nonsense today?
Public health authorities, across multiple continents, said to mask up. Did it limit spread? Yes, it did, and studies proved so. What the hell is your problem there? May I remind you the initial heavy weeks with makeshift morgues in ice rinks and refrigerated trucks, and military hospitals being deployed? Lockdowns and masking and vaccine mandates were reasonable, and reasonably effective, remedies for how horrific things could get (and did get, at the start, in multiple countries).
> There is the climate sect. There are many young followers with strong believes - but nobody has ever read any book on atmosphere science. And nobody has read any recent paper on the subject. Once you do, you'll find it very surprising how little substance is behind their dogmas.
Aha, so trusting the scientific consensus is "a sect". Do enlighten us, how is climate change not real? Or is it real, but God given? Or what is your deal?
> Another group now shouts for war - and if you listen to them they're about as intelligent as the worst kind of crusaders back in the day.
What war? Putting Russia back in its place? Si vis pacem, para bellum. The only thing a bully would understand is strength.
Please don't engage in flamewar about the relative merits of nations or regions (or COVID masks in 2025) on HN. It's not what HN is for and it destroys what it is for. This article is about the acquisition of a computer games company. The discussion ended up in a completely irrelevant and toxic place. Please remind yourself of the guidelines and make an effort to heed them in future.
You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to.
Phrases like "You've bought into multiple cults" and "I think you're pretty lost. Study some history. Seek help!" are never acceptable on HN, no matter the context.
And, really, are we still arguing about masks in 2025? Nobody is changing their mind about it now. Please just let it go.
Discussion like this is not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Calling cargo cultists to get back to data and science is absolutely something for Hackers.. This is the only thing that might help them. - and they need help - If nobody can find keywords about those subjects to get started researching, they'll end up like the women in Iran. In Iran it was more difficult to argue against some vague will of god. But the modern western cargo cults go openly against hard data. So it's a lot easier - at least for people with a bit of skill in math in physics.
It seems like the only solution is going to be an FDR style president that sort of runs up against traditional liberties in order to to build. I do wonder if an interesting quirk of the current president essentially consolidated executive power for questionable reasons, leads to a candidate that uses some of those changes to bulldoze these types of projects back into America.
I think the question is probably would something closer to chaos be more effective that the current general system? If so, than this is probably promising.
This is the same stupid argument people used to justify voting for Trump when when there was demonstrably no substantive reason to support doing so. Is it recursive, are we supposed to cheer for chaos all the way downstream with his appointees and then the problems they cause and so on?
You're drawing an inflammatory connection that I'm going to try my best to dodge. It's true in general that systems can become ossified in such a way that they aren't working but can't be changed without breaking things and causing chaos. It's also true that sometimes the system is perfectly fine and doesn't need to be broken - but I don't think many researchers had that opinion of the grant process before ChatGPT.
These are consumer products that are basically commodities to all but the largest power users. If you loved their product than this approach should make you ecstatic as its the only way they'll be able to survive as an independent.
OpenAi literally retired all their models to the anger of the likes of people like you because they know this is all basically a race for the most familiar consumer assistant on a monthly subscription.
I think the most interesting part about this is that this is first "out group" that theyre taking aim at that truly has money, power and extremely organized cultural weaponry.
It seems they think coming after this group with impunity like they have the poor and some other specific minorities is going to work out with little consequence or true backlash. Id bet this group serves more third rail than they are anticpating.
If there are indeed better candidates why not compare the results of those candidates in field? Backing a hope versus a working solution with all your chips means that even if these end up being better the decision was still deeply wrong and we got lucky. Just abysmal risk mismangement.
Look, it’s not that BARDA is throwing science out the window in favor of some wishful thinking. It’s that they’re looking beyond what works now and toward what might work better, not just for today’s virus, but for the ones waiting in the wings.
Oral vaccines, nasal sprays, multi-antigen, multi-receptor approaches, these aren’t just buzzwords. They aim at mucosal immunity, they aim at T-cells, they aim at the places our current tools often miss. And when you learn that SARS-CoV-2 can persist in the body long after the sniffles are gone(i.e. Long COVID/MIS-C), you realize we need more than just antibodies.
This is a gross oversimplification. Hamas has used aid drops as attack points and military refueling opportunities. The idea that this conflict has a good guy bad guy and is simple has done more disservice to an outcome than almost anything else.
That is a valid opinion, and I also have an equally valid opinion, that it is a gross undersimplification. Our two valid opinions cancel each other out! :)
> Hamas has used aid drops as attack points and military refueling opportunities.
This may be true, or it may be false (israel forbids journalists from reporting from Gaza and often attacks them) but it is included in the "everything else" referred to in the above post. Nothing Hamas does detracts from israel's obligations I mentioned. That's why it's not a "gross oversimplification".
Besides, israel has been systematically using aid points as attack points.
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