this post was submitted on 06 May 2026
140 points (97.3% liked)

Technology

84796 readers
3607 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
140
OpenAI president defends motives in for-profit restructuring as he reveals $30bn stake (www.ft.com)
submitted 1 week ago by sanitation@lemmy.radio to c/technology@lemmy.world
18 comments fedilink hide all child comments
all 20 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 58 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

He wrote in his diary that he wanted $1B for himself.

Not like in a fanciful, thought experiment way, in a that was his actual personal goal way.

So he wanted to hoard 10,000 six figure (100k) salaries for himself.

Why is he allowed to walk free in society? Why is someone with a goal like that not immediately thrown in prison?

You wanna know why we can't have nice things? It's not because of boomers, it's because we allow rich assholes like these two to openly rob us of the fruits of our labour.

[–] chris@links.openriver.net 14 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Why does a tech bro wanting to be a billionaire let the boomers off the hook?

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 33 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Because literally everyone older than us didn't do this to us. The rich upper class of them did, just like the rich upper class of young tech bros are screwing us over now.

It's never been a generational issue, it's always been a class issue.

Plus, the wave of anti-boomer hate is literally a massive marketing campaign paid for by the former head of Blackstone, all to get the young generation of Americans to hate social security so it could be run by private capital.

[–] chris@links.openriver.net 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Who elected Ronald Reagan twice, and George Bush, and George W. Bush? Who elected Trump?

I agree with you that the hyperbolic assertion that “every person older than us caused these problems” is wrong. But I also disagree with you that this somehow forgives boomers.

Their largest cohorts left us a dumpster fire and they’re doing everything they can on their way out to keep it burning.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Who elected Trump?

By your logic, you did.

[–] chris@links.openriver.net 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If that is what you think you haven’t understood my logic.

My generation is millennial. Our majority supported Clinton in 2016, Biden in 2020, and Harris in 2024.

Boomers as a voting cohort have always turned out disproportionately to give majority support to bad candidates.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes ,millenials elected Trump twice, because your generation was alive when he was elected.

That's the logic your using to ascribe every previous bad decision to every boomer. By your logic, you are to blame for Trump being elected.

Again, it's not boomers who did this to you, it's the rich.

[–] chris@links.openriver.net 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That isn’t the logic I’m using though. You’re refuting an argument I’m not making.

The majority of the boomer voting bloc elected these politicians and supported the policies of the rich. Their entire adult lives the majority of their voting bloc time and again supported terrible regressive policies.

That isn’t true of millennials.

To the extent we can look at a generation’s consistent and prevailing political activity, we can fault the boomers.

Sam Altman wanting to be a billionaire doesn’t excuse them.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Yes it is the logic you're using.

That logic is called "collective punishment" or collective blame, and it's you blaming all boomers for what a subset of them actually did.

If all millenials turned up to vote, or even just the majority, we wouldn't have Trump in office, therefore millenials are to be blamed as a whole for him being elected.

Don't feel like you deserve to be blamed for that? Great. Neither do boomers.

And that's on top of the fact that you're ignoring multiple factors:

  1. boomers started out farther left and then drifted farther right as they aged, same effect is true for millenials, we haven't seen how far right this generation will go yet. And on a percentage basis, they don't even skew that differently, they just have always had the tyranny of the plurality available to them since they're the biggest generation, so when their generation shift right, everything did, an effect not true for millenials or gen z.

  2. millenials and boomers were raised in different environments, with different pressures and values, hell boomers are largely the result of parents that just went through two world wars. That alone will have generational effects on families.

  3. Even just in terms of information, would you be going to the library, reading books, and paying for newspaper subscriptions to replace the internet, or would you be out playing and hanging out with friends?

  4. Without the Internet and your parents raising you, would you have fallen to Fox news or Sky news or The Telegraph, just like them?

If you were born in boomer times you would not be the person you are right now, and it's wild to blame all of them when half of them were literally deliberately manipulated by corporations, in a time with little awareness that that could be happening.

Blaming the Boomers overall accomplishes nothing. It is at best too broad a category to actually learn anything from or make any meaningful change.

The rich upper class however, has continuously fucked over Boomers, GenX, Millenials, and now Gen Z. They are the actual subset of people to blame, because a) they have the power to change the systems we live in, and b) they are by and large (though still not universally) the ones who have chosen to keep perpetuating the system.

[–] chris@links.openriver.net 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I suppose to some extent I’m blaming the collective, and to some extent I’m saying “boomers” instead of “the majority of boomers that voted to support conservative politicians since 1980” to save some time.

This is sort of how discussion works. You’re also doing this. You’re saying rich people instead of “politically active rich people supplying money to XYZ, while ignoring those born into money and disconnected or lottery winners, or whatever other issue with syntax I can dig up. I’m just interpreting your language in good faith and more generously.

To your point, I do blame non-voters for electing Trump.

At some point “they’re a product of their time” stops being exculpatory. That logic can forgive just about anything when taken too far. For me boomers don’t get let off the hook. They’re happy to live in the GOPs alternate reality rather than face the reality of what they’ve done. The generation needs to be regarded with what their political activity produced and continues to produce, which is the entrenchment of the policies of the rich.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

“the majority of boomers that voted to support conservative politicians since 1980”

This is inaccurate again.

  1. Boomers is a generation of people, not Americans. The majority of boomer aged people around the world did not vote for conservative politicians in the way you're describing.

  2. the majority of American boomers didn't even vote for them. Are you sure that Republicans have held more offices, for longer, then Democrats? Are you sure it's not just that they've been more effective at accomplishing their goals? Even if that is the case, given voter turnout rates, it's not the majority of that generation, just of who turned out to vote.

This is sort of how discussion works. You’re also doing this. You’re saying rich people instead of “politically active rich people supplying money to XYZ, while ignoring those born into money and disconnected or lottery winners, or whatever other issue with syntax I can dig up.

No, it's fundamentally different. You can never change being a boomer, you can change whether or not you're rich.

They’re happy to live in the GOPs alternate reality rather than face the reality of what they’ve done.

Your own sentence points out the issue. You yourself instinctually scoped it down to those living in the GOPs reality, which is a tiny fraction of the billions of boomers.

At the end of the day, you have to ask what the purpose of blame is. Is it so that you can vent? That's human, but helpful only to you, and only in the extremely short term while it feels satisfying. In the long term constantly ascribing blame just makes you bitter and makes you see calculated ill intent where there's just chance, systemic effects, or ignorance.

Blame is useful as a tool only so much as it can actually effect future change in the world.

And baming an entire generation for 'being conservative' evidently isn't accomplishing anything given how conservative gen z and alpha are. This isn't the kind of blame anyone can draw any meaningful lessons from. Systemically reducing wealth and class inequality is.

[–] chris@links.openriver.net 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I thought it was assumed we were discussing American boomers since we were discussing American elections. The continued drill down isn’t really useful except if you’re trying to miss the point.

But really considering the past couple days of our exchanges. I’m saying boomers as this shortcut. I could as easily be saying conservatives, and probably be running in to less trouble while having a much more accurate net. So I blame conservative voters let’s say, and we will let the data speak to how many boomers that does or doesn’t catch.

To your other point, blame is useful in my mind to establish a record, consequences, and future disincentive. I don’t blame to feel better. I blame because I want to see bad action be consequenced.

If for a generation American republican voters can produce what they have produced, but be held blameless as a product of their time, or because billionaires are more powerful, then why not just forget everyone else and only act in my own short term self interest while enjoying all the benefits of the society I’m voting to destroy for the next generation?

Those individuals need to wear trickledown economics, and the Iraq war, and the Afghanistan war, and climate inaction, financial collapses, deregulation, massive debt, the return of fascism, open racism, and everything else they supported as badges for history to see and judge them. No one went to jail for lying to start the Iraq war. No one went to jail for any of the multiple financial crises in my lifetime. Everyone was let out of jail for attempting to violently overthrow the election of 2020. Nobody is going to jail over the Epstein stuff.

I blame the rich like you do. I also blame their useful, selfish, nationalistic idiots. I want them all held to account on the road to a better society. Blame as the first step to consequences.

Otherwise you can’t achieve a better society or even if you did they’ll be happy to dismantle it in the name of their short term personal benefit as soon as they can.

[–] eldebryn@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I get the sentiment/frustration, but I suppose they're trying to say "there are boomers who understand how greedy this is and there are people younger than the boomer generation who perpetuate and vote for these greedy, unsustainable practices".

[–] chris@links.openriver.net 1 points 1 week ago

I agree with those assertions. I think they’re going a few steps further than that too though. And that is where I’m trying to understand the thinking.

[–] ChetManly@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Vacant and dead eyes

[–] Dojan@pawb.social 3 points 1 week ago

He should aspire to that instead of aspiring to be a billionaire.

[–] fubarx@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

"OpenAI exec becomes top Trump donor with $25 million gift. Greg Brockman, the ChatGPT-maker's president, is helping fund Republicans' congressional fights:"

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/brockman-openai-top-trump-donor-21273419.php