George Hotz tried to extort AMD into giving him $500k in free hardware and $2m cash, and they politely declined.

Was arguably not that polite and caused them some bad PR IMHO

You have to know the history and a bit of inside rumors to understand what was really going on.

What came out of it (and the semianalysis article) was that Anush would step up to the plate and work on improving the software.

George making noise is just a momentary blip in time that will be forgotten a week later…