Moonloop

They have no more tricks! This was the last dance for OpenAI! This was meant to be the big one! What's meant to happen now? SoftBank said they're gonna back them on their earnings, but then again, they still need to convert, and SoftBank still isn't sure how they do the funding. Altman is washed.

20 million people pay for this? 5 million business accounts? What are they doing with it? We're way past the point that this should be a weird or hard question to ask, but nobody can give me a nuanced answer beyond software engineering, and that doesn't explain ChatGPT's growth.

I do think this is indicative of the sheer absurdity of what we're living through. OpenAI is allegedly worth $500 billion - more than Netflix - and this is their brand new product that is meant to be super powerful. Does this really make a billion dollars a month? This thing? ChatGPT?

After the DOGE purge, reality is setting in. It turns out, workers are actually needed. The FAA just announced plans to hire at least 8,900 air traffic controllers. The National Weather Service is bringing on hundreds of new staff, just months after losing more than 500 people.

The Redistricting Mess Shows How Our Election System Doesn’t Work With our winner-take-all elections, the ideal of a ‘fair’ map is impossible. Proportional representation is the only answer.

We're now in a redistricting arms race. Dems are properly fighting back.
But the endgame lets mapmakers pick lawmakers and render elections irrelevant.
Yet the problem is not the mapmakers; it's the maps.
The debacle reflects the urgent need for proportional representation.
From me:

no more educational material for your children. just poisonous right wing slop.

Saving FEMA Actual natural disasters might provide a reprieve for the broken agency.

Perhaps the only reason why FEMA might actually remain a robust federal agency is the chaos that occurs every time this slimmed-down version struggles to deal with a natural disaster, especially in a red state. @gurleygg.bsky.social reports:
prospect.org/environment/...

Even Germany is objecting to Israel's plan to take over Gaza City and expand to a full occupation and displacement

I enjoyed this piece when we did it at @prospect.org last week and it was literally read into the Congressional Record by Sen. Blumenthal.
Read @prospect.org, get the news first.
prospect.org/health/2025-...

it’s basically trite to note at this point but if this were any other president, and certainly a democrat, spending a ton of money to gild the white house would be a legit scandal

the press ought to treat pete hegseth's association with doug wilson the way they would treat a black public official who was also a hebrew israelite

The Melancholy of OpenAI I’m struggling to find articles about it, but I swear, for the last few years, people have been acting like GPT-5 would be some sort of industry-changing event, tantamount to the original iPhone. Instead, GPT-5 feels like the last Valentine’s Day before a breakup. I’m serious, there’s a genuine sadness to everything going on in AI — a kind of pained, feigned excitement for a new model that doesn’t really sound like a new model, and even Simon Willison, a well-intentioned, well-versed LLM-knower, can only muster the limp praise of “verdict: it’s just good at stuff.” How utterly melancholy! How deeply sad! We sit at what amounts to the end of, at the very least, the end of the GPT era, of the period of S development in generative AI when there were things to look forward to and when there was hope that OpenAI would create something impressive. This was, in many ways, the last real reason for anyone to take OpenAI seriously. After this, what exactly is there to wait for from this company? Its next model that becomes the top of some sort of obscure LLM benchmark for a week or two before Google or Anthropic does nearly the exact same thing? What, exactly, are we building all these data centers for? Why are we doing this? To what end? What necessitates the environmentally and societally destructive sprawl of generative AI?

Not that I ever believed that OpenAI would actually impress me, but is this really the best that Sam Altman has to offer? Is this why OpenAI has incinerated ten billion dollars since June? Is this what necessitated raising another $8.3 billion, with plans to raise another $22.5 billion to follow? Why are we acting as if there is not, on some level, a cashout happening at OpenAI right now? It’s trying to set up an employee share sale at a valuation that would make it worth more than Netflix at $500 billion. What, exactly, is it about OpenAI that makes this company worth $300 billion (Salesforce, as of writing this sentence, has a market capitalization of $243 billion), let alone $500 billion? What about GPT-5 justifies this company’s existence? Are these tools truly innovative? Are they truly useful? How is this company making a billion dollars a month, and what is it about its product that makes 20 million people pay $20-a-month for it? Are any of the 5 million business customers the ones that OpenAI has offered a month of ChatGPT Team to for a dollar? What’s it’s churn? How much money does OpenAI actually make? Investors plowing more money into OpenAI are not simply wasting their money, but enabling the reckless and erratic sprawl of Sam Altman. Nothing about this company is innovative, there is nothing impressive happening, and it is shameful that this has been allowed to go this far. This company is set to burn at least $8 billion this year according to The Information — but I think it’s going to burn far more, based on the fact it raised $10 billion in June, then $8.3 billion in August, and plans to raise another $20 billion or more by the end of the year.

What’s next? Will Anthropic end up doing exactly the same thing, then also raise a lot of money, then also have an employee share sale, then also release the newest, most powerful model of all time? I can’t wait! Really though, does anybody feel excited about what’s happening? Is anybody having fun? Is anybody truly hopeful for the future based on the launch of GPT-5? Or are they just going through the motions until somebody finally cracks and admits that things aren’t going to work out?

GPT-5 was meant to be OpenAI's iPhone moment. Instead, it felt like the last Valentine's Day before a breakup. This underwhelming launch feels like the end of the GPT era, and the last trick in Clammy Sam Altman's arsenal.
www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshittification-of-generative-ai/

The Enshittification of Generative AI Thanks for subscribing to Where’s Your Ed At Premium, please shoot me an email at ez@betteroffline.com if you ever have any questions. Yesterday, OpenAI launched GPT-5, a new “flagship” model of some...

Premium Newsletter: The enshittification of AI has begun. With GPT-5, OpenAI has cut access to all other models, reducing the value of even their $200-a-month subscriptions. They join Anthropic in screwing their customers over by making their products worse.

www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshitti...

I believe the coding startups are the true canary in the coal mine of generative AI. If they fail, there are no other established business models to point to (and their business models stink!)

Exclusive: The high costs and thin margins threatening AI coding startups Coding assistant startups are highly unprofitable, says a source familiar with Windsurf financials.

The fact TechCrunch is running a piece like this highly suggests it is, in fact, Joever
techcrunch.com/2025/08/07/t...

BREAKING: Appeals Court Clears Trump Admin of Contempt of Court in Alien Enemies Act Case After sitting on the case for months, a federal appeals court Friday...

Trump Stooge Judges Bend the Law for Him

BREAKING: Appeals Court Clears Trump Admin of Contempt of Court in Alien Enemies Act Case talkingpointsmemo.com/news/breakin...

Trump Wants U.C.L.A. to Pay $1 Billion to Restore Its Research Funding

It's another good reminder of the profound state of corruption of the current federal judiciary that these kinds of openly/criminal actions can take place and citizens have no recourse to the courts. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/u...

“A legitimate PhD-level expert in anything,” they said.

“Show me a diagram of the US presidents since FDR, with their names and years in office under their photos,” I said.

@prospect.org, July 24 (left): Large health insurance premium increases are coming which will generate a backlash
Axios, August 8 (right): Large health insurance premium increases are coming which will generate a backlash
Read @prospect.org, get the news first.

Trump Is Replacing Billy Long as I.R.S. Commissioner

How bad did the ask have to be for a Trumpy sleazebag like Billy Long to say no ? www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/u...

UnitedHealth Merger Approval Again Shows Lobbyist Power Today on TAP: Another merger settlement allows consolidation in health care; UnitedHealth’s lobbyist was MAGA’s biggest firm.

I wrote about the UnitedHealth/Amedisys merger that antitrust enforcers approved yesterday with a divestiture to companies DOJ is already suing, and a cash payout for Amedisys lying about the merger of a Dr. Evil-like $1.1 million.
Shady lobbying deals remain prominent in Trump antitrust.

Schiff was a major roadblock during past efforts to curtail the DOJ's surveillance powers. So, have fun with that.

Looks like *paid* users will be able to use 4o again for an undisclosed amount of time. This, however, does not bring back any of the other models like o4 mini (which had a daily vs weekly rate limit)

Never seen anything like this, and can't imagine OpenAI rolls back to allow people to use the old models. While they could make some tweaks to make it "more conversational," I'm not sure it'll work. GPT-5, I believe, has finally shown that OpenAI is washed

Israel is continuously providing the Palestinian resistance with what it needs to resist

Andrew Cuomo & @andrewcuomo • 10m 0 ... Somewhere last night in New York City, a single mother and her children slept at a homeless shelter because you, assemblyman@ZohranKMamdani are occupying her rent controlled apartment. You grew up rich and married an even wealthier woman. You've had weddings on 3 continents. You own property in LGTBQIA+ murderous Uganda. You make $142,000 a year plus stipends, and your wife works too, meaning you together likely make well over $200,000. No matter which way you cut it: Zohran Mamdani is a rich person. You are actually very rich. Yet you and your wife pay $2,300 a month, as you have bragged, for a nice apartment in Astoria. That should be housing for someone who needs it. We are in the middle of a historic affordability crisis. Millions of low income New Yorkers need this apartment and an apartment like it. Yet your apartment remains rented to rich people who don't need it. Today, I am calling on you to move out immediately and give your affordable housing back to an unhoused family who need it. Leaders must show moral clarity. Time to move out.

Cuomo has truly lost it.

Now, they must decide between signing a voluntary separation agreement or facing involuntary removal both options offering minimal, if any, benefits. For each, the outcome could mean losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in pay, medical coverage, and other long-earned benefits.

A dozen or more transgender members of the U.S. Air Force who had sought early retirement to avoid being discharged for their gender identity have had those retirements canceled. Each has served between 15 and 18 years.

Fuck offfffffffffffffff

once again, it is a core belief of people on the american right that it should be illegal for you not to like them or want to be around them or work with them