Miscellaneous News

BoraTas said:

Denmark needs some DF-17s

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Fatty said:

They will offer 5m and then claim the model didn’t reach their expectations and end up not even paying up. This is basically what happened with Su-57 btw. India either didn’t want to pay or they couldn’t afford it so they withdrew from the program claiming some BS about underperformance

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Developing the cockpit of the fifth-generation Su-57 fighter​

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Serb said:

What’s likely to happen instead is that the U.S. government will simply continue and increase catering to tech oligarchs, like future trillionaires Musk, Bezos, Zuck, and even Altman, unlike the more optimal superior approach Xi Jinping demonstrated by reining in Big Tech timely.

They’ll ignorantly keep pouring billions into outdated AI projects while banning companies like DeepSeek from operating in the West.

They’re doubling down on these pointless investments while turning a blind eye to real innovation like DeepSeek. It’s not about fostering progress or technology, it’s about consolidating power, and control, and living out their fantasies of being modern sci-fi feudal lords.

This strategy just allows mediocre, corrupt domestic tech giants to strengthen their grip on the market, propping up their techno-feudal, rent-seeking empires.

And of course, they’ll keep adding more top-tier superior Chinese companies like Unitree to their blacklist, joining names like Huawei, TikTok, DJI, and others.

When they can’t compete, they ban and ordinary people pay the price, it’s as simple as that, oligarchs can't lose now. It’s honestly absurd how clownish and plutocratic the U.S. has become. And they’ll keep at it, right until the whole system finally comes crashing down soon.

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Wall Street Banks Prepare to Sell Billions of Dollars of X Loans​

Wall Street banks are getting ready to sell a big chunk of debt holdings in X, the social-media platform controlled by Elon Musk.
Morgan Stanley bankers have reached out to investors ahead of a planned sale next week of up to $3 billion of debt the bank and others such as Bank of America and Barclays lent to Musk to complete his 2022 buyout of the company formerly known as Twitter, people familiar with the matter said.

The banks hope to sell senior debt at 90-95 cents on the dollar, while retaining more-junior holdings, the people said. The banks just sold approximately $1 billion of debt in a private transaction to several investors, some of the people said.

The sale would mark an important step in removing an albatross that has weighed on the banks since they agreed to finance Musk’s $44 billion purchase of the social-media company. Banks lent around $13 billion to help pay for the deal.

The price Musk paid for Twitter was high, even at the time of his purchase, and the company’s rocky performance had knocked down the value. The deal is considered one of the worst that banks agreed to finance since the 2008 financial crisis.

To sell the debt, bankers will have to convince investors that the company’s financials have stabilized. Musk’s recent rise in power and alliance with President Trump have seemed to help change the narrative around X’s fortunes.

Investors have been reaching out to the banks and have indicated interest in buying the company’s debt because they believe that the company’s financials are on an upward trajectory, one of the people familiar said.

In a January email to staff, Musk pointed to the company’s growing influence and power, but said the finances remain problematic.

“Our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we’re barely breaking even,” he said in the email, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The banks never disclosed how they value the loans on their books. Some of X’s equity investors had written down their stakes in the company by as much as 75%.

Banks don’t finance acquisitions intending to hold the buyout debt for long; usually, they will arrange a sale to outside debt investors within months of their commitment to finance the deal. But in volatile periods, when fewer investors are lining up as buyers, banks will opt to hold on to the loans for longer stretches to avoid selling it at a discount, locking in losses.

With the X debt, the banks have waited—and waited—for a moment when both the markets and the company’s financial health would open the window to sell without huge losses.

Meantime, X’s lenders, which also include Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, BNP Paribas, Mizuho and Société Générale, have been collecting hefty interest payments. Loans to companies like X typically pay out several percentage points more in interest than the benchmark rate for investment-grade credit.

After Musk bought the social-media company, major advertisers fled and the company’s revenue plunged. However, the company’s financials have been steadily improving as some brands have started spending again on the platform, people familiar with the company said.

Musk in his staff email tipped his hat to the current rising fortunes of the company.

“Over the last few months, we’ve witnessed the power of X in shaping national conversations and outcomes,” Musk wrote. “We are also seeing other platforms begin to adopt our commitment to free speech and unbiased truth,” he added, in a seeming reference to Meta Platforms’ recent decision to roll back fact-checking and adopt a user-driven Community Notes system similar to the one on X.

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The banks hope to sell senior debt at 90-95 cents on the dollar, while retaining more-junior holdings

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Some of X’s equity investors had written down their stakes in the company by as much as 75%.

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“Our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we’re barely breaking even,” Musk said in the email,

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Chevalier said:

I just realised Deepseek’s domination over OpenAI means the American technological war is lost and the embargo of chips against China is rendered moot, since the embargo was meant to assure Anglo American dominance in AI.
Deepseek just rendered that entire model moot and useless.

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Randomuser said:

Im actually starting to worry about DeepSeek. Its possible Americans will send someone to murder its founder.

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Randomuser said:

As I said in the AI thread, I don't think people are discussing DeepSeek enough given the implications.

It basically means if it really was done by some quant fund in China as a side project for $5m, it means that all those techbros and H1B Indians are basically scamming everyone. We need a gorillion dollars and all these talents to work on AI or we lose the AI war!

No wonder they are screeching so much on Deepseek! They got exposed HARD

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