Oh this is smart! Reading where Slack stores the local data in your filesystem instead of using their API/MCP (which they charge for).
Very clever; similar to OpenAI launching Atlas when websites start blocking bot requests--just build your own browser so your bot becomes an actual user.
Water allocation in the American West has been a mess ever since the beginning, when Prior Appropriation was decided as the way to claim water rights. Essentially, the first person to put a claim of water into "beneficial use" gets those rights.
This is why you see California with such a large share of the Colorado River's water rights, even though it "touches" the river the least: they were the earliest fast-growing state to "use" that water. And that's why you see so many water-hungry crops being grown in the West--the owners have the rights already, and to them, if they don't use it, they'll lose it.
So any agreement here needs to make a compromise between states, the federal government, prior settled law, and owners with effectively "free" water that don't want it taken away from them.
It's a complicated issue, but one step would be to force private owners of water rights to list their rights on an open market (right now some owners of water rights, like the Imperial Irrigation District can choose to never sell them). At least that way you can start the conversation somewhere.
(In fact, John Wesley Powell, namesake of Lake Powell, argued strongly against "prior appropriation" before the area was even settled, and instead argued against a collective approach to the limited and volatile amount of freshwater. He did not succeed.)
> force private owners of water rights to list their rights on an open market
You don't need to force them, they've done it for decades to the extent it is allowed. I've owned titled water rights in Nevada. They are worth something but not nearly as much as many people likely assume.
Nevada has additional complications due to the structure of the aquifers. It is difficult/impossible to move water from where it is to where it may be needed.
> complicated due to the structure of the aquifers
Guess - you're referring not to the aquifers themselves, but to the shape of the watersheds. Especially to the "water doesn't naturally flow along roller coaster tracks" topography of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basin_and_Range_Province
Yes, the watersheds but also the prevalence of mountaintop aquifers that don't go beyond their part of the range. These can be extremely fragmented. You'll have ample water for the taking in one area and none a few kilometers away. AFAIK, you can still acquire revocable water rights to some of this without much fuss since it doesn't interact with any official watershed. It just isn't located anywhere remotely convenient or useful.
Sometimes the valleys have good wells but that isn't guaranteed due to the geology of Nevada. Lots of brine, sulfur, hydrocarbons, hot springs, etc. You never know what you are going to get and the fresh water eventually mixes into this underground.
You do not even need to force water rights owners to list their rights on the open market. They already want to, it is just illegal for them to sell their water rights (separate from their land) to entitys with more productive uses of the water.
That's not a solution, either. See William Mulholland buying up the water rights in the Owens Valley to feed Los Angles, thus turning Owens Lake into toxic dust that is costing $1 billion and counting to manage. Mulholland is long dead, and we're just getting started paying for that.
Water rights in the West are hard, and we've known that since John Wesley Powell was in charge, as a nearby commenter explained. The Colorado was divided up during an unusually wet year a long time ago, and rising demand and falling supply have only made things worse ever since.
OpenAI needs to IPO because they want to access the public capital markets to fund their AI investments, more deep-pocketed investors are wary of investing in a LLC, and for liquidity, etc.
OpenAI needs to convert to a C-corp in order to IPO.
OpenAI needs the CA Attorney General's approval to convert a LLC into a C-Corp because the LLCs is headquartered in CA and incorporated with many CA laws.
So the article is making the point that OpenAI likely got the CA Attorney General's approval for the conversion because they promised to stay in CA (whether or not that's actually true).
(or support journalism and pay to read the article)
Not entirely by coincidence. Yes Shockley was from CA, but as late as the 1980, two places were competing to be the center: Boston's Route 128 ("America's Technology Highway") or Silicon Valley.
Silicon Valley won out because the CA constitution explicitly prohibits non-competes (which MA allows), leading to more rapid innovation. Very likely the infamous Traitorous Eight who left Shockley Semiconductor to found Fairchild could not have done that if noncompetes could be enforced.
Non-competes are one aspect, absolutely. However that's can't be the whole story because that applies to all of California and it's a decently sized state, with a lot of other areas. Any part of the southern California basin, San Diego, and Sacramento. If we include smaller areas (because silicon valley was once just apple orchards, that list gets longer.
In any negotiation, you need to understand what leverage either side has. In this case, CA could block the conversion, and OpenAI could leave California. Both are possible but extremely unlikely outcomes! So the whole point is to take these unlikely outcomes to the table, negotiate in good faith, and come out with an agreement.
So California needs to believe that OpenAI will stay in California just as much as OpenAI needs to believe that CA won't block the conversion (or impose other onerous regulations around AI). So yes, it's possible to speculate about whether or not people are sincere in their motivations, but when you need to make a deal, there needs to be a measure of good faith and trust on both sides in order to make something happen.
And in this case, both sides are incentivized to make the deal. OpenAI wants to be a PBC in order to access more capital, and California wants OpenAI to be a PBC so that it can IPO so that all employees (all of whom are likely CA residents), will sell stock, which can then be taxed as CA income.
California is home to 1 in 8 Americans, and likely a much higher fraction of AI researchers, users and partner organizations to OpenAI (like Nvidia). The California AG has plenty of leverage beyond blocking/reversing the conversion. What leverage will OpenAI have after "leaving"[1] the California?
1. They're guaranteed to have an engineering office in the SF Bay. Not many of those folk will agree to relocate to Texas/Miami.
Yup the Tesla treatment. Can change HQ's all you want but the main engineering work, brains, and talent will be at a HQ in California no matter what. Sam will probably do this for brownie points with the current administration, it will be politicized news for a cycle, but after the dust settles the majority of non-admin people will still be working unchanged out of CA.
That’s assuming Altman is sincerely going to keep trying to develop “AGI” and not try to turn OpenAI into a profitable business. You don’t need AI researchers if you get good enough video generation and pornbots to become immortally wealthy and say fuck the rest. If this is the case, OpenAI could be a completely done product, all that’s left to do is stop spending so much money on SG&A and get those revenue streams cranking.
What's stopping OpenAI from offering telework? AI isn't dealing with high security or particularly sensitive data (that developers need to actively access - training data is all public or stolen works) and it's not a hardware product.
Unless you're Universal and Marvel, leaving Disney unable to buy out Universal's contract with Marvel, and unable to use classic comic book characters because the parks too close to Universals. Still cracks me up.
Not if the big holders aren't residents, they can move away just before like Rogan with his Spotify deal, or Jonathan Blow just before a game release after developing in California and going to public college there, etc.
Since it's a non-profit still holding it any gains to the non-profit entity upon the conversion don't go to California, and principal stakeholders can move away. Other funds raised from the IPO can be invested in other states untaxed (long term datacenter leases instead of booking the capital of building one) until they move the company away I think.
There will probably be a lot of smaller stakeholders that stay with a lot of money for the state, and California at least doesn't do the $15 million QSBS so they may get a lot from that tail of employees. A large portion of this tail of lower compensated employees may get laid off due to AI replacement before IPO and lose a lot of unvested years, if we are to believe OpenAI's own claims about timelines for job replacement in that field at lower levels.
I'd recommend anyone expecting to profit from OpenAI stock and aiming to avoid California taxes to look into the subject in depth with paid advisors. The California FTB is not stupid or naïve and has a history of successfully getting paid for stock that vested with a California nexus, even if the beneficiary moves out of state. Good luck!
You're right, it's harder with vesting stock compensation than other things you build up over time like an audience or a developing a game over a long span.
Everyone here seems to hate on the idea of seeing ads on an appliance you purchased. I hate ads too!
But, let's consider the counterfactual. What if Samsung offered you a new fridge for free, as long as you were ok with passive ads?
I hate ads, but I'm not sure I would pass up a free fridge...those things are expensive!
(this is not even that unrealistic. Let's say you have a household of 3 and a fridge lasts 10 years. Meta makes about $200 per year per user solely from showing ads; that's $6000 over 10 years. If Samsung got as good as Meta is (which they likely won't), 6k is more than enough to cover the cost of giving a fridge away for free)
> What if Samsung offered you a new fridge for free, as long as you were ok with passive ads?
I'd still buy a normal fridge from a different vendor. There's absolutely no reason why fridge needs a display screen nor any "smart" features. And no ad deal would convince me because next thing that would come after this would be the obvious "watch ads to unlock the fridge".
Household appliances are meant to work for years - sure, now lifespan is way shorter than used to be but these aren't phones we're replacing every 3 years or so. The fridge we once had lasted 25 up until cooling unit failed and there was no way to replace it or fix.
I hope you rolled some really low bait here because if you really think like that then... I sincerely feel sorry for you.
So the OpenAI nonprofit will control ~20% of the OpenAI PBC once the conversion is done. This says nothing about different share classes that determine control (the nonprofit will likely still have control of the PBC due to higher power voting shares). The biggest question is how much equity in the PBC Microsoft will get.
Related to Judge Mehta's recent ruling on remedies for Google's monopoly status, I'm reminded of Bill Gates' quote that software companies should not be valued as highly as traditional companies, because the rules change so quickly (i.e. OpenAI's rise).
Wow, congrats on finally using up your single Launch HN, David and Amanda! :wink:
No but seriously, y'all have built not only an incredible product that I had the chance to demo, but a great company as well, through your previous pivots and cofounder changes. You're building schlep tools that product companies _definitely_ don't want to do, years before it was clear there was a market here, and do it well.
There's definitely demand for a native screen recorder, and I think it's the right move to be agnostic to privacy (the lower down the stack you go, the more permissable you should be about use-cases). Imagine how much competition in file storage there would have been had there been an API provider for Dropbox's Finder sync technology (though you could argue it just incentivizes large companies like Hubspot to build their own screen recording feature into their platform, rather than enabling new startups like Gong but I digress).
Y'all deserve the success that you have, and wishing you all the best of luck with the new product launch!
How come this acquisition gets to go through, but Windsurf didn't? There might be antitrust review here too, and Microsoft might also lay a claim to Statsig's IP due to their contract with OpenAI. Maybe Statsig didn't care that Microsoft would have access to the IP?
Very clever; similar to OpenAI launching Atlas when websites start blocking bot requests--just build your own browser so your bot becomes an actual user.
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