Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by JumpCrisscross 11 days ago
The comment you’re responding to and the comment above it are about circular financing. It’s reasonably to assume that’s the same chicanery you’re talking about; expecting everyone to watch a random video to understand your comment is unreasonable.
1 comments
oblio 11 days ago
I listed a bunch of data points that make no sense (profits spiking 50% in a non-Christmas quarter for companies) and weren't directly tied[1] to the circular financing.

[1] They're indirectly tied to it.

link
JumpCrisscross 11 days ago
> that make no sense (profits spiking 50%

They were unrealized gains on non-marketable equities. It’s clearly disclosed and done according to GAAP. It’s put under other income precisely so analysts can strip it out when modelling long-term trends.

Like, yes, if SpaceX goes to zero Google would have to realize losses and probably lose a quarter or two of GAAP profits. (But not cash flows. Cash-flow wise, it may wind up being positive due to tax effects.) It’s a risk factor, of course, but far from making no sense.

None of which is particularly relevant to the deal at hand other than in raising a potential conflict of interest among related parties.

link
oblio 11 days ago
> but far from making no sense.

When I said "it makes no sense", I didn't mean "the accounting math doesn't work out". I meant "raising a potential conflict of interest among related parties".

This whole AI financing this is the motherlode of "potential conflict of interest among related parties".

And people who are obtuse enough to ignore this because it's not illegal right now will discover 5-10 years from now that laws are written in blood (or massive bankruptcies).

link
JumpCrisscross 11 days ago
> whole AI financing this is the motherlode of "potential conflict of interest among related parties"

Sure? Lots of things are potential conflicts. In the Google and Anthropic deals, I'm not seeing evidence of problems.

And that's saying something, because we have a lot of evidence of actual circularity or related-party deals being done with no arms-length anything across AI, in many cases in ways that definitely do see like they are illegal.

link
oblio 11 days ago
> Sure? Lots of things are potential conflicts. In the Google and Anthropic deals, I'm not seeing evidence of problems.

And that's where my video comes in. Google and Amazon are very likely juicing up their share price. Of course, in this day and age we can't prove it's a pump and dump anymore...

link