RE: https://infosec.exchange/@jerry/116242195809861609

I know what—I have an even worse business plan! Why don't we build all our new fission reactors IN SPAAACE? That way we'll be safe from the radiation and any meltdowns!

Also me: I am a teapot, short and stout: this is my handle and this is my spout …

/s

@cstross Okay, let me see if I have a handle on this…

⁃ Musk wants to IPO SpaceX.
⁃ So he wants to merge SpaceX and his AI company, because SpaceX looks better if he can glue in the $N-billion investments that he's getting for AI stuff.
⁃ He shouts “AI datacenters in space!" This has no business or economic meaning; it's just stringing VC buzzwords together for a SpaceX/XAI merger.
⁃ Nvidia says “Sure, boss, we can do you an AI-in-space chip.”

@zarfeblong @cstross Twitter ran out of money when tesla was a bit ring-fenced by the legal infighting over his mega-pay package, so he merged twitter into his AI startup during the height of tulip bulb mania. Then the tickle-me-elmo money subsided and his AI startup ran out of money too ($1b/month burn rate), so he merged it into his space company with big NASA contracts. But subtracting $1b/month from $16b/year gross income means that's not looking great, so he's asking wall street for money.

@landley For a while, I figured Twitter was paying its way by providing a pre-sorted data feed for the AI company. (The tulip-craze money comes easier if you can say “Look at all the training data users give me out of the goodness of their hearts!”)

You're probably right that that's run its course though.

@zarfeblong Keeping the data for himself to train grok was an excuse, but not a cash flow.

The historical dataset had already been digested by openai etc long ago, via https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2017/12/update-on-the-twitter-archive-at-the-library-of-congress-2/ and https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenaebarnes/2023/02/03/twitter-ends-its-free-api-heres-who-will-be-affected/ and so on.

The loss of free access coincided with the desirable userbase leaving and bots coming to dominate traffic (https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/10/it-sure-looks-like-x-twitter-has-a-verified-bot-problem/) so nobody else wanted to pay for the current updates anyway.

Update on the Twitter Archive at the Library of Congress | Timeless

An update on the status of the Twitter archives at the Library of Congress.

The Library of Congress