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Posted by coloneltcb 2 days ago

Grokipedia and the coup against reality(www.thedissident.news)
125 points | 179 commentspage 3
tim333 2 days ago|
'Coup Against Reality Itself' seems a bit of an over reaction to Musk's attempt to do a slightly less woke version of Wikipedia. If you try reading it, it's not terrible. It waffles on a bit in the usual LLM fashion.

There's some HN discussion of it here which got flagged for some reason https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459

Gigachad 2 days ago|
Most of it is just generic slop, you have to find the specific pages that interest Musk where he has clearly stuck his finger on the scales to make it say what he wants.
systemstops 2 days ago||
Grokipedia literally just came out a few hours ago. So this article was already in the can before they could even test it.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2 days ago|
> Grokipedia literally just came out a few hours ago.

Maybe regional roll-outs? I was reading it yesterday.

systemstops 2 days ago||
Yeah, I guess you're right - came out last night while I was sleeping.
chasd00 2 days ago||
people on the autism spectrum are amazingly good at what they're good at and spectacularly bad at what they're bad at. I wish Musk would just stick to what he's good at like SpaceX and Tesla etc.
LeoPanthera 2 days ago||
As an ex Tesla owner, I am amused by the idea that anyone thinks that Musk was "good" at running Tesla. Those cars are cheaply and shoddily made, and have probably the worst service experience in the industry.

It's my understanding that Musk has only minimal influence on SpaceX.

Edit: I would like to repeat the point that I owned one, for four years, during which it had to go in for service 12 times, four of which were "car is completely dead". And almost every time I had to fight for service. Every Tesla owner I ever spoke in person to described a similar experience. It's funny how online, the message is very different.

theteapot 2 days ago|||
Talk about a coup against reality. Pay the man his due. Tesla produce very competitive EVs. He has been instrumental in the success of SpaceX and Tesla.
mikkupikku 2 days ago||||
Insofar as Tesla has survived at all, I think there's a case to be made that it has been "successful". Challenging the "big three" auto manufacturers usually ends in failure or buyout.

I certainly wouldn't buy a Tesla though.

condensedcrab 2 days ago||||
To be fair, the one thing Musk has going for him is bringing funding to opportunities and making the most of it.

I wouldn't say that Musk is the only person who could have brought SpaceX and Tesla to where there are now, and certainly there are many individuals who contributed heavily to get them there. That being said, not many people have the money and interest to do it.

mikkupikku 2 days ago||
Bezos had the money and opportunity to do the same as SpaceX but hasn't been even remotely as successful. He technically started Blue Origin first, but wasted several years not taking it seriously as a rocket company; back then it was basically just a space-themed club for him and his friends (Neal Stephenson, etc.) SpaceX went balls to the walls and never let up. The day to day operations are run by Shotwell and she deserves enormous credit, but we shouldn't ignore the role Elon played in recognizing her potential, keeping her happy and letting her do her job (usually) not getting in her way. And a lot of the dreamer stuff, all the Mars colonization and Starship stuff, has Musk's fingerprints all over it. Granted, none of that stuff has actually happened or worked, but it has clearly been good for helping SpaceX recruit highly motivated talent. If you're a young aerospace engineer with something to prove in 2010, which company do you go to? The one that is sending stuff to the space station and talking about putting people on Mars? Or the one that hasn't publicly done anything and doesn't talk about anything either? SpaceX was run extremely well compared to Blue Origin, not just in terms of day to day management but also their big picture strategy.
pogue 2 days ago||||
The next administration (if there is one) should force Musk to take random drug tests and revoke his ability to run SpaceX on failure. I think we'd get to the bottom of what's going on rather quickly if he didn't have the opportunity to cheat on them.
baconbrand 2 days ago||
The next administration should imprison Musk. I don’t think I need to elaborate.
pogue 2 days ago|||
I say:

1) Deport Musk to South Africa 2) Nationalize SpaceX & sell Tesla to GM or Ford 3) Pull the life support cable on Twitter

asacrowflies 1 day ago||
Yes!!! Seize all usa subsidized assets and send him back to South Africa.
shwaj 1 day ago|||
Sorry, for which crimes? I know the justice system is flawed, but ideally shouldn’t there be specific laws that are broken, to justify imprisonment?
baconbrand 1 day ago||
I’m sure there could be some argument to be made for obstruction of justice considering he oversaw the firing/dissolution of agencies and people investigating his dealings. Plus wherever those investigations lead.

The SSA data heist also sticks out.

bb123 2 days ago||||
That has not been my experience with them at all. I've done nearly quarter of a million miles in various Teslas and never had a serious issue. My service experience with them has also been lightyears ahead of the traditional manufacturers.
beezlewax 2 days ago||||
This is a fact. Teslas are not cars that feel quality.
GuB-42 2 days ago||||
Musk was definitely good at running Tesla for what matters for a company: making money.

I suspect that just as with SpaceX, he shows off more than he does actual work. He is well known for taking credit for other people work, but you can't deny that he takes credit (and money) for the work of the right people, and it has value!

As for the cars themselves, Tesla is usually in the middle of the pack, with the Japanese on top and Americans at the bottom, making Tesla rather good for an American car brand. All that to say, nothing special on the reliability side, except that people talk a lot about Tesla in one way or another. You probably got unlucky while the people contradicting you got lucky.

fourseventy 2 days ago|||
> It's my understanding that Musk has only minimal influence on SpaceX.

You can't possibly be serious?

nemomarx 2 days ago||
I always hear shotwell does most of the real managing and he only provides direction
Animats 2 days ago|||
It's probably drugs. Before Musk announced he was a druggie, he had a good track record. Since then, it's been weird.
verdverm 2 days ago|||
A lot of people turn to drugs when the wealth and fame reaches a certain point. We see it across all walks of life and big tech is no exception
tigerali 2 days ago||||
Was that before or after he floated some stupid idea to save those trapped kids and then called that dude living in Thailand a "pedo guy."
immibis 2 days ago||
Is he even good at rockets and cars or is he just good at hyping them up and attracting funding?
mikkupikku 2 days ago|||
There is no organization on Earth, private or government, which is better at the launch business than SpaceX. And it wasn't handed to him, he had to sue the government and go up against entrenched contractors with decades of experience.
ben_w 2 days ago||||
Rockets, yes, he's good at them.

Cars… not great, but good enough to turn Tesla from a joke into an OK company selling in a "Blue Ocean"* market. Which isn't nothing, but then a bunch of other electric car companies popped up and now Tesla cars are solidly B-tier… well, except for the Cybertruck which is just a flop.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy

kneel 2 days ago|||
Even if he was not involved in engineering whatsoever, his ability to attract talent, direct capital, and drive innovation is unmatched.
taylodl 2 days ago||
Musk’s ability to attract talent and capital is undeniable - but it’s not unmatched, and it comes at a cost. Innovation driven by charisma and chaos isn’t sustainable, especially when it veers into ideological distortion.
dzhiurgis 2 days ago||
[flagged]
tomhow 1 day ago||
Please don't introduce flamebait like this on HN. Context about the author's background can be helpful, but "spreading hate", along with the whole tone of the comment, is inflammatory rhetoric of the kind we're trying to avoid here.
HK-NC 2 days ago|||
Unsurprising. I just quickly read through the Wiki and the Groki articles on "transgender" and they are entirely different, and the author certainly wouldn't appreciate the latter. The wikipedia article presents the entire thing as fact without any critique or controversy somehow (funnily enough the authors BlueSky page proudly shares a Star Wars quote: "The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil...") While the grok article is just an AI wall of shit that somehow treads totally different ground. What a dumb time to be alive.
sighand 2 days ago||
[flagged]
MallocVoidstar 2 days ago||
Alejandra Caraballo is a woman.
HK-NC 2 days ago|||
Because I dont know who this person is, this sentence gives me absolutely no information about the subject or the person posting it.
MallocVoidstar 2 days ago||
The highest post in the chain we're in:

>PSA: author is Alejandra Caraballo [...]

The reply:

>Yep, this whole article is basically just -->his<-- very biased opinions [...]

My reply:

>Alejandra Caraballo is a woman.

I'm correcting them.

HK-NC 2 days ago||
Was the user mistaken or just anti trans? Were you correcting a mistake or asserting your/Caraballo's opinion? It just struck me that the word has no meaning now is all.
sighand 2 days ago|||
[flagged]
MallocVoidstar 2 days ago||
The existence of trans people isn't sexist.
sighand 2 days ago||
[flagged]
mmooss 1 day ago||
I'm not sure what you mean. I know we couldn't agree to eliminate the human rights, including the most basic self-determination, of anyone - trans, cis-norm WASP male, progressive, fascist, or otherwise.
CupricTea 2 days ago||
Interesting that a neutral submission for the launch of and direct link to Grokipedia was just flagged [1] while this highly sensationalized news article goes up after

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459

MadDemon 2 days ago||
I'm not a fan of Elon or whatever, but I agree with the parent. "Grokipedia by xAI has just launched with 885,279 articles" does not seem like a title that should be flagged.
immibis 2 days ago|||
Neutrality means reporting the truth, it doesn't mean reporting in between both sides.
CupricTea 2 days ago||
The submission is titled "Grokipedia by xAI has just launched with 885,279 articles" and is just a direct link to Grokipedia. It is quite literally the most neutral, non-editorialized submission to HN.
BoredPositron 2 days ago|||
Should be a ShowHN. There is nothing to discuss by just linking the startpage otherwise. An article like this can be discussed...
pogue 2 days ago||
Show HN: A big batch of AI Slop & Propaganda Elon Musk did all by himself and no one else but him because he is the number one business man and "World's Best Genius™"
tclancy 2 days ago|||
Did you read any of the comments in the thread? It's not done in good faith and it looks like they should have turned the dial more toward "quality" than "quantity". A stable with lots of manure isn't inherently better than a stable with less manure.
CupricTea 2 days ago||
I think the comments in this thread bandwagoning the knee-jerk hate against Elon Musk put forth by the submission are a lot more bad faith and vitriolic than in the other submission.

I'm not even particularly fond of the man but this is childish behavior.

baconbrand 2 days ago||
I don’t find it particularly childish to hate on a man who led the charge to destroy food and medicine meant for orphans. Among other things.

If he didn’t want bad publicity for everything he touched, he shouldn’t have done that.

timdaub 11 hours ago|||
Hey CupricTea,

I'm working on building a social media site that wants to improve on moderation and I've found the case of the Grokipedia curious. So I'd love to get in touch with your but didn't find any details in your bio. Please reach out to me and let's do a user interview (can be via email too). My contacts are in my bio

cool_man_bob 2 days ago||
[flagged]
gadders 2 days ago|
>> This is the construction of a reality production cartel that creates a parallel information ecosystem designed to codify a deeply partisan, far-right worldview as objective fact.

Perhaps if Wikipedia hadn't drifted so far left (on culture war topics, it's fine for science etc), then maybe it wouldn't have been necessary.

https://manhattan.institute/article/is-wikipedia-politically...

tigerali 2 days ago|
lmao the manhattan institute
gadders 2 days ago||
Ad hominem attack. Nice one.
cess11 2 days ago|||
It's a far-right lobby group.
gadders 1 day ago|||
But do you disagree with their conclusions? What about Larry Sanger?
cess11 1 day ago||
You can't reason with fascists so the 'but they say things I agree with sometimes' is irrelevant. Either you keep pushing them out of public spaces and undermine their ability to organise regardless of whether they manage to say something innocuous or dress nicely for once, or you're at best lacking in knowledge about how the movement functions but more likely a sympathiser.

Sanger has been voicing politically motivated antipathy towards Wikipedia for a quarter of a century or so, and worked for competing projects for most of that time. This includes supporting far-right nasties like The Heritage Foundation.

gadders 1 day ago||
[flagged]
cess11 15 hours ago||
No, there are many other political movements I also disagree with, for example the broader reactionary tendency, including conservatives and neo-liberal groups.

Commonly I also disagree with people on ethical or religious grounds. For example I vehemently disagree with most protestants on the issue of capitalism which they consider compatible with the teachings of the biblical Jesus, and I while I agree with many catholics on this same issue I disagree with church mediated caritas as the social solution.

Frankly, I think you're the one that mostly comes across as scared here.

gadders 8 hours ago||
What am I scared of? I'm concerned for your grip on reality if you think a free market think tank is a bunch of fascists. That's about as factual as me calling Obama a communist.
tgv 2 days ago|||
It seems they agree with Trump on practically everything. So yes.
jauntywundrkind 2 days ago||||
They don't deserve a single iota of respect, are a total joke & nightmare for the world, feeding lies and disinformation to the world. Would be plutocrats Koch Brothers, Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, Chris twitter-poster-shit-show-freaking Rufo?! A whose who of extreme conservatives eager to get us back to the 1850's. Here's some sites from about covering them, in gentle neutral terms, but Manhanttan Institute absolutely deserve more serious lambasting & being laughed out of any polite company. Ad hominem maybe, but absolutely people working in opposition to a better world, trying to drag us into a corporate controlled hell world, and deserving of no regards.

https://supremetransparency.org/powerbrokers/manhattan-insti...

https://centerjd.org/content/fact-sheet-manhattan-institute

https://www.monitoringinfluence.org/org/manhattan-institute/

gadders 1 day ago||
They are the counter-balance to far left people like George Soros and his numerous foundations.
titaniumtown 1 day ago||
"far left" "George Soros" Are you a bot? Or are you just trying to start internet arguments to inflate your own ego?
gadders 13 hours ago||
[flagged]
jauntywundrkind 7 hours ago||
It's just hilarious that there's one dude who is the lightning rod for right-wing hatred. Like, it's one dude! It's so unclear what he does that is so menacing to the right: there's seemingly a fact free desperation to have some big bad rich guy on the left's side doing so much.

Because the right has 99% of the big bad evil dudes. Manhattan Institute is one of dozens of identical (ok not every pit has a king cobra FedSoc Leonard Leo) billionaire funded pits of world burning vipers. The E1 Global Elite class aka the barbarians (https://alexdanco.com/2021/01/22/the-michael-scott-theory-of...) are not the richest people by being liberal or nice or progressive. They're where they are because they are right wing people who (in right wing style) don't give half a fig about anyone else or much besides their bottom line and power.

I find it so beyond pathetic that George Soros is parroted around as some incredible omni-present mastermind of the left. But the right's favorite tactic is projection, is the classic "Accuse your enemy of what you are doing, as you are doing it" "Paint one's self as being the defender of the very thing you are aiming to destroy." Neither of these has any respect for reality or facts: they are what the right radically embraces: flooding the zone with shit. Not respecting reality. Sowing confusion. It's just so pathetic that such a mild mannered decent dude as Soros is the best cope ya'll could come up with for a boogeyman: quaking in your boots, at this guy? For reals.

cindyllm 6 hours ago||
[dead]
tigerali 2 days ago|||
as an attorney, the lowest form of scum on earth is someone pulling out so-called logical fallacies and thinking that is an argument.

perhaps i thought your clearly biased "institute" didn't deserve any more feedback than that

gadders 1 day ago||
[flagged]