https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1725682088639119857
nothing to do with dishonesty. That’s just the official reason.
———-
I haven’t heard anyone commenting about this, but the two main figures here-consider: This MUST come down to a disagreement between Altman and Sutskever.
Also interesting that Sutskever tweeted a month and a half ago
https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1707752576077176907
The press release about candid talk with the board… It’s probably just cover up for some deep seated philosophical disagreement. They found a reason to fire him that not necessarily reflects why they are firing him. He and Ilya no longer saw eye to eye and it reached its fever pitch with gpt 4 turbo.
Ultimately, it’s been surmised that Sutskever had all the leverage because of his technical ability. Sam being the consummate businessperson, they probably got in some final disagreement and Sutskever reached his tipping point and decided to use said leverage.
I’ve been in tech too long and have seen this play out. Don’t piss off an irreplaceable engineer or they’ll fire you. not taking any sides here.
PS most engineers, like myself, are replaceable. Ilya is probably not.
There’s really no nice way to tell someone to fuck off from the biggest thing. Ever.
Of course the press release is under scrutiny, we are all wondering What Really Happened. But careless statements create significant legal (and thus financial) risk for a big corporate entity, and board members have fiduciary responsibilities, which is why 99.99% of corporate communications are bland in tone, whatever human drama may be taking place in conference rooms.
>I'm not patronizing you
(A)ssuming (G)ood (F)aith, referring to someone online by their name, even in an edge case where their username is their name, is considered patronizing as it is difficult to convey a tone via text medium that isn't perceived as a mockery/veiled threat.
This may be a US-internet thing; analogous to getting within striking distance with a raised voice can be a capital offense in the US, juxtaposed to being completely normal in some parts of the Middle East.
This has to be a joke, right?
1) The comments are meant to be read by all, not just the author. If you want to email the author directly and start the message with a greeting containing their name ("hi jrockway!"), or even just their name, that's pretty normal.
2) You don't actually know the person's first name. In this case, it's pretty obvious, since the user in question goes by what looks like <firstname><lastname>. But who knows if that's actually their name. Plenty of people name their accounts after fictional people. It would be weird to everyone if your HN comment to darthvader was "Darth, I don't think you understand how corporate law departments work." Darth is not reading the comment. (OK, actually I would find that hilarious to read.)
3) Starting a sentence with someone's name and a long pause (which the written comma heavily implies) sounds like a parent scolding a child. You rarely see this form outside of a lecture, and the original comment in question is a lecture. You add the person's name to the beginning of the comment to be extra patronizing. I know that's what was going on and the person who was being replied to knows that's what was going on. The person who used that language denies that they were trying to be patronizing, but frankly, I don't believe it. Maybe they didn't mean to consciously do it, but they typed the extra word at the beginning of the sentence for some reason. What was that reason? If to soften the lecture, why not soften it even more by simply not clicking reply? It just doesn't add up.
4) It's Simply Not Done. Open any random HN discussion, and 99.99% of the time, nobody is starting replies with someone's name and a comma. It's not just HN; the same convention applies on Reddit. When you use style that deviates from the norm, you're sending a message, and it's going to have a jarring effect on the reader. Doubly jarring if you're the person they're naming.
TL;DR: Don't start your replies with the name of the person you're replying to. If you're talking with someone in person, sure, throw their name in there. That's totally normal. In writing? Less normal.