I borrow against my measly investment portfolio through my local banks "Loan against Securities" account. Interest rate is about 10%.
My father was using this feature for past 15 or so years from same bank. We are solidly middle class in India.
The only difference between what we do and what rich folk get is probably lower interest rates and higher percentage of loans against the securities value.
How is this used by the middle class in India? To fund day to day living expenses? to buy or build a house? for further investment? Do people tend to repay the debt now and then, or make it flow into their estate? how does succession / estate law treat that? Is this seen as prudent management? etc...
I know these ways of thinking are very different between the US and western Europe (where for example a home mortgage is very cheap, and considered normal and indispensable investing, and stock investing can be crazy conservative - all the way to considered reckless, and estate law and tax is downright brutal). I wonder about India.
Just about right for a different country than the US. Mortgage rates in India 8.3-9.5% right now, inflation 5-6%, benchmark rate 6.5% - and this may or may not be tax deductible in India, perhaps depending on the usage. And 25-44% yoy stock market gains. It's about the same as a 15-year fixed rate mortgage - same as in the US.
I always believed that while creativity can be developed through focus and practice, the pace of learning varies from person to person. In general, creative people are highly intelligent, work with tremendous focus and are dedicated individuals.
Perhaps. Other artists work in the very narrow direction THEY like and can manage technically - so of course they look like they have focus! Of course they look like they are dedicated to their art. But perhaps too it's the only thing they can do and they stumbled on something that has an audience. That does not mean they aren't amazing ... at that. That does not mean their art is not significant. That doesn't mean that their specific creativity is not worthy.
It also doesn't mean that their creativity's mode of operation isn't totally irrelevant to some other person. Might be. Might not.
> Altman said OpenAI's long development time-horizon ultimately meant it had no choice but to abandon the nonprofit model if the company intends to survive.
>
> "In spirit, we still view ourselves as working for the world," Altman said. "But I think you have to sort of play the field as it lies. And we just need so much capital to do our work. I think we'll need more capital than any nonprofit has ever raised, probably, and so this was sort of a reflection of reality."
Did he make statements counter to this at a later date?
> We're a non-profit research company. Our full-time staff of 60 researchers and engineers is dedicated to working towards our mission regardless of the opportunities for selfish gain which arise along the way.
"regardless of the opportunities for selfish gain which arise along the way", they failed really hard on that point. That Sam Altman had already changed course by 2019 doesn't mean he didn't lie at the start.
I thought Sam had no equity in OpenAI and this story is claiming there's no plan for him to have a significant stake.
Where is the selfish gain?
You can claim that the story is false and there is a plan for gain but at this stage we have someone saying A and someone saying !A. It's probably a time to look for evidence.
The whole point is that Sam is not going to stick to his statements.
He is working behind the scenes to get a good stake in the company, and he most likely has told them he needs that stake to motivate himself to take the company to the next level.
I am guessing that they have a slew of new tools upcoming and this is Sam cashing out.
I realize that you believe that he will not stick to his statements.
My query is what evidence are you basing this belief upon? I'm prepared to be convinced by evidence. It seems like for so many people to have a strong opinion that he is a serial liar that there should be many cite-able sources where
A) It is undeniable that Sam Altman said that.
B) It is clear that this is false.
and C) this has happened repeatedly.
Too much of this seems to be relying on "Sources familiar with .... claim .... ".
I'm really not trying to advocate for Altman or OpenAI here, I just would like the claims against them to be robust.
Of course, as with any conspiracy theory, there are many unknown unknowns so make of it what you will. Personally, the many accounts of those who've worked with him along with these recorded statements push me towards being wary of his intentions.
It actually reminds me of descriptions I've heard of Larry Ellison (including the ones famously made by bcantrill) that he's very personable. You'll hear all these things about him that sound awful but then you meet him and he seems okay, quite reasonable, even. Then you start to observe that he's really just motivated by money, full stop. The charm is only there to get yours. That's the feeling I get reading about sama.
The company started as a non-profit. A pretty damning evidence in itself.
This was in December 2015. Did it take this genius 4 years to figure out that to survive as a company, you need to a for profit entity?
Nah.
I think the strategy was to milk the marketing for all its worth, claiming to be "advancing the world, with no penny in pocket" high minded savior company. And then pivot (an innovative move) into raking in the money.
Did all the investors pour in billions without the understanding that this will become a for profit, and a for profit that will 10x their investments?
Hey, he's in competition with his old mate Elon. Clearly this is what he's referencing.
Tesla has made about 34bn in income over the last 3 years, with stormy waters ahead, yet Elon pocketed himself 56bn under the guise of saving humanity, which is a "vibe" OpenAI also needlessly projects.
You aren’t missing anything. The comment you’re responding to is wrong and understating net income for some reason. It was indeed $15B last year. Plus the targets set for Elon’s package was based on a number of metrics there were already met, so I don’t know why net income matters.
Pocketed? No he took a zero salary comp package with equity for hitting absurd targets no one thought he could hit. A strong majority of shareholders approved the package then and reapproved it now. He hit the targets so it’s accurate to say he earned it.
That’s the claim, but the court document’s tone and language shows this was an ideological decision for the judge rather than a factual determination.
Regardless, shareholders just voted again on that same exact package retroactively and re approved it. This was a clear indication that the market still feels, even in hindsight, that the past targets were deserving of the equity granted. What internal folks thought or the judge’s guess about shareholders being “tricked” doesn’t matter since it is something shareholders (owners of the company) have judged on their own with all the information they have now about past performance. Also, neither Elon nor his brother voted on the measure. So to me all this serves as evidence that enough people think the targets were absurd enough to at least justify the equity.
If internal folks really thought the share price would increase by 983%(the pay package target), they would have bought shares with all the money they have, plus sell/pawn everything they have and borrow as much as they could. That didn't happen.
He's already a billionaire. I don't understand the motivation. I follow a lot of fatFIRE type subreddits and those people are done when they get a few tens of millions and concentrate on quality of life and enjoying their years remaining. It must take an enhanced level of megalomania or God complex to throw away everything (humanity, your reputation) to go for more than 1 billion.
Aadhaar has come into existence to facilitate direct benefit transfers to eligible recipients of state and national level welfare schemes.
This is necessary because of massive corruption in distribution of wealth in such schemes, where the actual beneficiary gets just 20 bucks or so for very 100 bucks allotted by the govt.
It has slowly transformed into an identity in itself, which is wrong. However, with 1.5 billion people, what other alternative is there? Any and all solutions end up looking like a centralized identity system.
Its mainly cultural. .net is yet to penetrate the ever so crucial US university labs, currently dominated by the cool kids like node, python, etc.
Microsoft has made great big strides to simplify .net web development, where a simple hello world rest api is not much different than its counterpart in expressjs on node.
.net is truly a wonderful platform, but it carries too much baggage.
I guess the "narrow" in the current context is the beam widening to hundreds of miles on earth.
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