I thought this was already revised? Jensen Huang said they’ll be investing more than ever:
> Nvidia is likely set to make its “largest ever investment” in ChatGPT firm OpenAI, despite reports that the deal may be under threat in recent weeks. The chip giant’s CEO, Jensen Huang, didn’t say exactly how big the investment would be, but said it would be “nothing like” the $100 billion figure mentioned in the September partnership agreement.
It also makes it impossible for Twitter/X to die, as it deserves. It is by far the most toxic mainstream social network. It has an overwhelming amount of far right supremacist content. So bad that it literally resulted in Vivek Ramaswamy, a gubernatorial candidate in Ohio, to quit Twitter/X - nearly 100% of replies to his posts were from far right racists.
Obviously advertisers have not been fans. And it is a dying business. But rather than it dying, Elon has found a clever (and probably illegal) way to make it so that SpaceX, which has national security importance, is going to prop up Twitter/X. Now our taxpayer dollars are paying for this outrageous social network to exist.
I find HN and the tech circles to be one of the main community pillars holding up X. None of my social friends use it anymore, but links absolutely abound here, and it seems like the standard line is to pretend Elon, Grok, all the one button revenge and child porn etc don’t exist. I truly can’t fathom the amount of not thinking about it it would take to keep using the platform.
I have a blocker set up in my browser to prevent accidental clicks and sending any traffic to them when I'm not careful to check a given HN link to a posting. I've never had an account there (nor any of the popular social media networks) but I don't want to send even my few clicks their way.
It was easy to support SpaceX, despite the racist/sexist/authoritarian views of its owner, because he kept that nonsense out of the conversation.
X is not the same. Elon is actively spewing his ultraconservative views on that site.
Now that these are the same company, there's no separation. SpaceX is part of Musk's political mission now. No matter how cool the tech, I cannot morally support this company, and I hope, for the sake of society, it fails.
This announcement, right after the reveal that Elon Musk reached out to Jeffrey Epstein and tried to book a trip to Little St. James so that he could party with "girls", really doesn't bode well.
It's a shame you can't vote these people out, because I loved places like Twitter, and businesses like SpaceX and Tesla, but Elon Musk is a fascist who uses his power and influence to attack some of the most important pillars of our society.
I suspect SpaceX will acquire Tesla at some point. It’s the most profitable of these companies. So basically SpaceX employees and shareholders are covering up for the failing Tesla business and the already-failed xAI business.
Let’s not forget, xAI is the parent of Twitter/X (the social network). So now, taxpayers are paying to keep Twitter/X alive. After all, it is taxpayer money going to the contracts the government gives SpaceX for launches. Nice way to subsidize what is effectively a one sided campaign machine for the GOP and far right.
> I suspect SpaceX will acquire Tesla at some point.
I think that is also likely, unless Tesla can stage a major turnaround, it is going to be beaten by Chinese competitors nearly everywhere that they are allowed (which is everywhere but the USA.)
This was my immediate thought as well. A great time to ask yourself — why am I literally paying for any of this? At best I literally don't use any of these services, at worst they are actively used against me.
I get what you're saying, but that taxpayer money is paying for the launch services at a very competitive rate (possibly the cheapest of all available options), not a subsidy scheme.
Let’s be honest - this is just a way to prop up Twitter/X. It makes SpaceX shareholders subsidize X, and also American taxpayers who are giving contracts to SpaceX for highly sensitive things. The government should ideally refuse to give SpaceX work unless it unwinds this.
Because Twitter/X is distorting our politics (with ann unbalanced scheme of censorship / amplification / suppression) and destroying the country by mainstreaming far right supremacist politics. Twitter/X does not deserve a single dollar of taxpayer money. If SpaceX is now part of that machine, it doesn’t deserve a single dollar either. I would rather pay more for alternatives and encourage their growth. I also look at any money given to this company as the equivalent of GOP campaign funding, so I feel it should be treated as illegal under the law.
The government is prevented from doing that by a little thing called the first amendment. "Mainstreaming far right supremacist politics" is just a hyperbolic way of saying he has politics you don't like and is exercising his freedom of the press by promoting it on the media platform he owns. Legally that is no different then the rights that every newspaper and TV station in the country has.
Musk is, indeed, allowed under the 1st to promote whatever he wants to promote. Him being a hypocrite about "free speech absolutism" is not a crime.
However, the current US administration appears to be actively violating the 1st and 5th in a bunch of ways, the 14th that one time, and making threats to wilfully violate the 2nd for people they don't like and the 22nd to get a third term. It is reasonable, not hyperbolic, to be concerned about Musk's support of this.
Actually the Trump administration is trying to strip legal status from people and deport them by way of an obscure law that gives the Secretary of State the discretion to do so if they deem those people a threat to the foreign policy goals of the US.
If these laws are still on the books when the next D administration takes over, they should use them against Elon, Thiel, etc - strip them of US citizenship, deport them, and nationalize their companies (followed with repealing those laws)
I disagree. He would be using taxpayer money to boost his preferred speech. And it is essentially campaign funding for the GOP. It should be treated as such.
Shouldn't the government be aiming to pay the lowest price for the best goods and services rather than using procurement as a way to promote or suppress certain political opinions?
I hope that gets denied since I think our night sky should be protected. But I have a feeling this administration may blindly approve whatever Musk asks for.
Is this some sort of corrupt way to prop up xAI with the money of shareholders in Tesla? Or is it legitimate somehow? I remember also reading that SpaceX was buying up unsold cybertruck inventory.
Maybe this is not helpful either, but I wonder if that person is correct. The national debt is already bad. With the trillions of new national debt from the Trump administration, and also the destruction of basically every foreign relationship, how will the country manage its finances? I feel like the only way out is to print money and cause extreme inflation. But that also means the death of the US dollar as the global reserve currency.
Look at any other country that went through a similar period. These regimes never voluntarily relinquish power, but they're forced to within 20 years due to some crushing military defeat, economic collapse, assassination, violent revolt, etcetera. It's never ended with a peaceful transition of power and a smooth winding down of the bad stuff.
Who’s the useful idiot for a hostile foreign power? Peter Thiel is likely a literal Russian agent, given the Epstein files mention he met with Russian officials and his handler at Epstein’s home. His buddies Elon Musk and David Sacks probably know this and are therefore also compromised, and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the government positions and contracts they have. Trump refused to ban TikTok despite the law requiring it and has generally been soft on China on many things. He also did nothing to stop Putin.
Also you should know that Musk and Melania are both illegal immigrants who violated our laws. Yet you’re aligned with them and complain here about “illegals”.
If Musk or Melania have violated laws, let action be taken - I am not going to argue against it. Illegal immigration and economic migrants masquerading as refugees are a big threat to western nations and is setting the political discourse in many countries. Why do you think countries like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, are slowly changing their laws to make it easier to deport people? How are the hordes of unskilled economic migrants/illegals going to contribute to any modern economy? My belief is that a country should defend its borders with an iron hand, otherwise you’ll lose control pretty quickly.
I agree that Luckey is effectively saving taxpayers hundreds of billions given how slow and expensive and uncompetitive the old defense companies have been. But I am very uncomfortable with the strong ties between this new wave of tech companies and the Trump administration, with all the usual investors and middlemen like Andreesen, Thiel, Joe Lonsdale, etc, who I find hard to trust. For example, Joe Lonsdale is literally pumping the Melania documentary:
It’s also disturbing to see Luckey admit he is a propagandist who will twist the truth and manipulate people to get his way.
> With Silicon Valley elites going MAGA post—last year's election, Luckey is taking a Trump-stanning victory lap. After all, he was "one of the true Trump OGs," he told Rogan. When Luckey was 15, he wrote Trump a letter asking him to run for president: "I loved his extremist rhetoric going back to 2009!" Trump seems to stan Luckey, too: At a press conference in the spring, the president archly called Anduril's Roadrunner drone a "nasty looking thing."
Completely authoritarian and unacceptable. This entire saga shows the American political system has serious flaws where it cannot hold the executive branch accountable.
Agree. This is absolutely unacceptable by any measurement you can name. They are not respecting equality under the law, they are behaving like a terrorist regime. Every one of these people needs to be held accountable and prosecuted to the fullest extent the US Constitution allows. End of Story.
"While becoming a U.S. citizen, Kurt Gödel confided in his friend Albert Einstein that he had found an inconsistency in the U.S. Constitution that would allow the U.S. to become a dictatorship, causing Einstein to worry that Gödel's unpredictability would lead to his application being denied."
It's not "cannot" but "will not", and the flaw is not with the American political system but with the GOP and the American populace. Congress could absolutely rein this in at any time if Republicans in Congress cared to do so; the Supreme Court could rein this in at any time if the Republicans on the Supreme Court cared to do so. Do not let yourself be convinced that the problem is Trump or a too-powerful executive; the problem is an entire party and the people who cheerfully vote for it.
But neither congress nor the presidency is an accurate representation of the will of the people, and that is one of the flaws with the American political system.
The problem is that it does represent a lot of people in America. A very vocal and active part of America. It’s not some tiny demographic either. It doesn’t represent the majority but the majority doesn’t vote, doesn’t take action, and is overall extremely passive in their political position. Some of this is good because most Americans are wildly uneducated. Problem is that people are more likely to try to protect what exists than try to move towards a new paradigm. That’s the biggest reason we have such a slow moving system in the US. Most people in the US are very wary of change at this point because they’re not educated about anything.
I agree the voters and party are a problem, but disagree that we shouldn’t do more. We need better checks and balances on an administration that willfully and casually violates constitutional rights all the time. Not to mention the constant corruption and grifting that enriches the Trump family. We should have a system that can protect against this even when the majority makes a bad voting decision.
There were some. They all got dismantled. Loyalists have been systematically installed into all relevant positions. What system is immune to this? There is none. Voters have to take responsibility for what they voted for, which is the complete destruction of the United States of America as a political unit.
How on earth can you say that with a straight face?
> Attached to this order is an appendix that identifies 96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases. The extent of ICE’s noncompliance is almost certainly substantially understated. This list is confined to orders issued since January 1, 2026, and the list was hurriedly compiled by extraordinarily busy judges.
> ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.
This is an official filing--facts, not a news report. A judge placed his job on the line and said these things in a written, filed, official ruling.
The problem isn't judicial rulings; the problems are petulant bullies who simply ignore the rulings; and completely subservient sycophants who only can say "As you wish, master."
It was a long period of time voting for totalitarians. Checks and balances worked by design: preventing immediate radical changes. And they worked by design: allowing changes gradually over a period of time if people keep voting for the same thing. And now it's here.
This story in particular seems like a flaw. There should not be such a thing as a privilege that the executive branch can revoke with no explanation or process.
The American political system has definite problems, but so does every other system. If you rank democracies by any metric, the USA has done rather well, if not the best. If you disagree with that statement, I invite you to list the countries you consider democratic, in your order of ‘successfulness’.
LOL, the first list also seems to use the US as the cut-off & first country that is a “deficient democracy”. The magic number must be between somewhere between 0.811 and 0.821.
Having spent a good chunk of my life in Canada and the US, a list that has Canada as more democratic doesn’t make any sense to me. In the end, it’s just a random mix of different measurements, weighted to tell whatever story you want to tell.
Not that they had a wide field of choice and not that they can actually fire him.
Both reasons the US political system isn't all that great - it nosedived into a two party Hotelling's Law quagmire despite the founders being against party politics. It's hardly suprising a system centuries old and creaking failed to scale.
Washminster systems are a literal reaction to the cracks in the Westminster and Washington systems.
Maybe check those American Exceptionalism / Manifest Destiny blinkers and look about a little, it's hard to see out of a rut.
Washington captured many issues of the party system in his farewell address. This can relate to many times in history for both parties.
"They serve to organize faction, to give it an
artificial and extraordinary force—to put in the place
of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party;
often a small but artful and enterprising minority of
the community; and, according to the alternate
triumphs of different parties, to make the public
administration the mirror of the ill concerted and
incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ
of consistent and wholesome plans digested by
common councils and modified by mutual interests.
However combinations or associations of the above
description may now and then answer popular ends,
they are likely, in the course of time and things, to
become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious,
and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the
power of the people and to usurp for themselves the
reins of government, destroying afterwards the very
engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."
Ben Franklin on why the US Constitution is "Probably the best we can do for now" but will likely "fall to a Despot" is worth a revist in these Trumpian times.
> The Germans literally elected the Nazis... you think they’re better at democracy
FYI - Germany changed their government after this regime fell, to ensure that it would become more democratic and harder to concentrate power in the executive. So they became more democratic as a learning process.
The US had an actual civil war (over slavery no less) and didn't change anything fundamental about their constitution nor government structure as a result. It was less deadly than the holocaust, but enduring a civil war is not a sign of a functioning democracy.
Yes, and in part because of that. The way they teach history and make their citizens resistant to authoritarianism through schooling is different from the really basic ways history is taught in America.
> Nvidia is likely set to make its “largest ever investment” in ChatGPT firm OpenAI, despite reports that the deal may be under threat in recent weeks. The chip giant’s CEO, Jensen Huang, didn’t say exactly how big the investment would be, but said it would be “nothing like” the $100 billion figure mentioned in the September partnership agreement.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/nvidia-ceo-well-make-our-largest-...
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