[HN Gopher] Replit founder Amjad Masad isn't afraid of Silicon V...
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Replit founder Amjad Masad isn't afraid of Silicon Valley
Author : newusertoday
Score : 288 points
Date : 2026-01-08 18:05 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (sfstandard.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (sfstandard.com)
| primitivesuave wrote:
| Public opinion on Amjad shifted quite a bit in 2021 when he
| threatened to sue a former intern for his open-source project.
|
| https://intuitiveexplanations.com/tech/replit/
| bitbasher wrote:
| This was the first thing I remembered about Amjad. I have never
| thought highly of him since.
| siltcakes wrote:
| My opinion on him shifted because along with Paul Graham,
| they're the only tech leaders who have stood up for
| Palestinians. I don't agree with Graham on everything either,
| but I've gained a lot of respect for him speaking out against
| Zionism. They're rich, but it still is difficult to go against
| the entire venture capital industry to do the right thing.
| primitivesuave wrote:
| Completely agree with you on this. It will be an unfortunate
| exercise for future historians to look back on this time,
| crunch through the enormous amount of data with their quantum
| computers, and end up realizing just how many people were
| willing to condone the slaughter of innocent civilians.
| hersko wrote:
| Only one side stormed through civilian areas killing
| everyone they met, and it wasn't the Israelis.
| siltcakes wrote:
| Yes, it actually was and is the Israelis:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
|
| Palestinians have every right to resist occupation.
| hersko wrote:
| Incredible that they have a term for a war they initiated
| and subsequently lost. Is whats happening now in Gaza
| also a Nakba?
|
| Genuinely curious what you think would have happened if
| all the Islamic countries would not have attacked Israel.
| Would there be a peaceful Palestinian country? Guess
| we'll never know....
|
| But that's all history. Your "occupation resistors"
| decided to rampage through towns and a music festival and
| massacre everyone they met. And somehow you seem okay
| with that.
| siltcakes wrote:
| Zionists committed the ethnic cleansing and invasion of
| Palestine. I invite anyone to click the link and read for
| themselves.
|
| Yes, the Nakba is ongoing.
| primitivesuave wrote:
| In my reply above, I evoked the memory of Jeanette
| Rankin, who was the lone dissenting vote against the
| Pacific War after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
| (somewhat analogous to the October 7th attack).
|
| It is a natural human tendency to desire that the people
| who inflict pain upon others to also feel pain inflicted
| upon them. This has been the human condition since
| ancient times, and yet the most revered figures in human
| history have been the pacifists who consistently advocate
| _against_ violence (e.g. Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ,
| Lao Tzu, Gandhi, MLK, etc).
| lingrush4 wrote:
| You say this as if the side you're advocating for didn't
| start the war by killing over a thousand civilians.
|
| Just in general, asserting that everyone will agree with
| your side in the future is such a bizarre rhetorical
| tactic. Do you honestly think this convinces anybody to
| reconsider their position?
| siltcakes wrote:
| All the violence in the region stems from the Zionist
| invasion, land theft and genocide.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
| primitivesuave wrote:
| My point equally applies to _everyone_ who condones
| violence to achieve some end goal. Jeanette Rankin was
| vilified for her lone dissenting vote against war, yet
| decades later she is among the few of her contemporaries
| to have a statue in the Capitol to honor her dedication
| to pacifism.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeannette_Rankin
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| Definitely was the end of Replit for me. I have that open
| source project (Riju) bookmarked though and use it from time to
| time.
| chinathrow wrote:
| Stopped reading after "shooting range".
| frumplestlatz wrote:
| > "Should I wear a keffiyeh to the shooting range?"
|
| I'll give the writer this -- they conveyed a _lot_ of
| information in just one short first sentence. I read a bit
| farther, but it didn 't tell me anything I couldn't already
| guess from that sentence.
| tomhow wrote:
| Please don't comment like this. It's not a substantive
| contribution to the discussion to tell us that you stopped
| reading the article, and it's generally fulmination or
| curmudgeonliness or a shallow dismissal or something else
| that's against the guidelines.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| eltondegeneres wrote:
| > Masad, 38, has felt obliged to speak out about Gaza ever since,
| calling out those in tech who, in his view, have supported
| Israel's "genocide" of the Palestinian people.
|
| This sentence would be better without the scare quotes. Something
| like "calling out those in tech who support what he views as a
| genocide."
| kiliantics wrote:
| The phrasing in the article shows very strong bias towards
| Israel in general
| nailer wrote:
| [flagged]
| cholantesh wrote:
| As it happens, genocide scholars disagree with you, and in
| any case, Gaza's population has not increased.
| FunnyUsername wrote:
| It's at least plausible that the population did increase.
| Estimates of births during the war are larger than the
| casualty count that Hamas claims.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| It'd be nice if Israel would let UN fact-finding
| missionaries or other independent research teams into
| Gaza to find out (in addition to not barring and/or
| killing humanitarian aid workers)
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Or even international media outside of proctored
| propaganda trips. They obviously have learned their
| lesson since the 1982 invasion.
| FunnyUsername wrote:
| It's perfectly normal for militaries to have press
| restrictions in conflict zones, for opsec among other
| good reasons. No one bats an eye when Ukraine does it for
| example.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Bad analogy, for two reasons:
|
| 1. Ukraine's media restrictions are virtually non-
| existent when compared to those enforced by the Israelis
| in Gaza, including the intentional bombing of media
| offices. Keep in mind that Hamas has repeatedly called
| upon Israel to allow foreign press and NGOs to visit and
| see what's happening on the ground.
|
| 2. The Ukraine war is a conventional war between
| sovereign nations with standing militaries with
| equivalent capabilities (air force, anti-air defenses,
| armored vehicles, bomb shelters, etc). The Gaza genocide
| is an onslaught by a sovereign nation with a well
| equipped military against a militant group in a dense
| urban area. Leveling entire city blocks when fighting
| against an opponent that has no air force or anti-air
| capabilities is not only unimpressive, but also breaks
| the principle of proportionality.
| FunnyUsername wrote:
| 1. It's pretty much the same - no press in dangerous
| areas unless invited and escorted by the military. The
| only major difference is that Ukraine is >1000x larger,
| and has safe areas far from any fighting where such press
| restrictions aren't needed.
|
| 2. You're making a bunch of separate accusations without
| connecting them to the topic at hand, which was press
| restrictions.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| No, they're not the same, and (2) is very relevant.
|
| Let me reiterate: Ukraine is a sovereign nation with a
| sovereign military that has the ability to enforce
| restrictions _within its own territory_.
|
| To bring your bad analogy more in line with reality on
| the ground, imagine if Ukraine was still part of/occupied
| by the USSR/Russia, and Russia enforced press
| restrictions across all of Ukrainian territory during a
| Ukrainian insurgency. However, in this theoretical USSR,
| Ukrainians did not get Soviet citizenship, and were under
| a total blockade.
|
| > The only major difference is that Ukraine is >1000x
| larger, and has safe areas far from any fighting where
| such press restrictions aren't needed.
|
| But Israel never allowed press into the strip, even
| during "ceasefire" periods - like right now! This implies
| that Israel is not somehow paternalistically concerned
| for press safety; it simply wants a media blackout.
|
| So no, this "major difference" is irrelevant when
| comparing restrictions between the two conflicts.
| FunnyUsername wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're getting at. Universally, modern
| militaries don't like journalists wandering around near
| their assets.
|
| > and Russia enforced press restrictions across all of
| Ukrainian territory
|
| Your analogy isn't very different from reality. Russia
| does enforce press restrictions near military assets,
| including in occupied parts of Ukraine.
|
| > However, in this theoretical USSR, Ukrainians did not
| get Soviet citizenship, and were under a total blockade.
|
| That would seem very unfair, if Russia did it just
| because they're mean and not because this hypothetical
| Ukraine had launched tens of thousands of rockets at
| them. But I'm not sure what it has to do with press
| restrictions.
|
| > even during "ceasefire" periods
|
| The ceasefire was pretty much dead once Hamas attacked
| IDF soldiers in Rafah. Now it's just a lower-intensity
| conflict. Still not a great idea to have random
| journalists waltzing around and tweeting photos of
| military assets.
|
| > it simply wants a media blackout
|
| This is a funny explanation because there are millions of
| cameras in Gaza anyway, and this is the second most
| covered conflict (by metrics like article count) in all
| of human history. Not much of a "blackout" at all.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Alright, your good faith arguments have convinced me! To
| summarize:
|
| On one side, two sovereign nations setting press
| restrictions in areas they control. Standard stuff.
|
| On the other side, a genocidal state blockading a tiny
| strip of land for 20 years waging a campaign that has
| killed & maimed so many children that we have lost count
| unilaterally enforcing a total international media
| blackout. Also standard stuff.
|
| Silly me, how could I even argue about this? It's just so
| damn obvious! Sometimes, arguing with random anons on HN
| pays off :)
| FunnyUsername wrote:
| You're just changing the topic with unrelated
| accusations. How nice or mean you think a military is
| irrelevant to the fact that they don't like random
| journalists tweeting photos of their military assets.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Next time, if you really want to have a serious
| discussion, cut the snark and try not to hide behind a
| throwaway. This is not Reddit.
| FunnyUsername wrote:
| You might want to review the HN guidelines yourself. You
| shouldn't be complaining about snark right after writing
|
| > your good faith arguments have convinced me!
|
| > Silly me, how could I even argue about this? It's just
| so damn obvious!
| Cyph0n wrote:
| I only employ snark in response to snark..
|
| > That would seem very unfair, if Russia did it just
| because they're mean
|
| > Still not a great idea to have random journalists
| waltzing around and tweeting photos of military assets.
|
| > This is a funny explanation
| jjk166 wrote:
| Gaza population September 2023: 2.3 million. Gaza
| population September 2025: 2.1 million.
|
| Hamas casualties make up only a portion of palestinian
| casualties; palestinian casualties make up only a portion
| of excess deaths; excess deaths make up only a portion of
| total deaths.
| FunnyUsername wrote:
| The next census will be in 2027. No one knows the
| population until then.
|
| It's not clear that Hamas limits their counts to excess
| deaths. Even if they intended to, a lot of it is based on
| a web form, with not much validation besides basic checks
| that the person exists etc.
|
| As with pretty much any conflict, there's a ton of
| uncertainly, and people shouldn't be recklessly
| speculating based on things like WhatsApp chats.
| Responsible casualty estimates would look more like
| Ukraine, where for example Zelenskyy said "tens of
| thousands" (one significant digit) were killed in
| Mariupol.
| cholantesh wrote:
| Estimates of birth that rely on the mid-2023 figure and
| deliberately ignore Israel's systematic dismantling of
| the health and food systems in Gaza and the drop in
| fertility levels.
|
| >the casualty count that Hamas claims
|
| The Gaza Health Ministry's count is widely regarded as an
| underestimate, but mostly by people who don't refer to it
| with a dogwhistling caveat.
| tguvot wrote:
| 4000 deliveries in march of 2025. 50000 pregnant woman
| [1]
|
| 50,000 births by july of 2024 (starting with october 7th
| 2023) [2]
|
| you can sum and extrapolate the numbers. you can probably
| find more numbers about births
|
| [1]
| https://www.savethechildren.net/news/about-130-children-
| born...
|
| [2] https://www.savethechildren.net/news/women-self-
| inducing-lab...
| nailer wrote:
| > The Gaza Health Ministry's count is widely regarded as
| an underestimate
|
| You mean Hamas' estimate? Why do you think Hamas would
| underestimate their death toll?
| topaz0 wrote:
| Because the infrastructure required to document the
| deaths systematically was bombed to hell.
| nailer wrote:
| I wasn't going to reply but since you've been rescued from
| the flags: which "genocide scholars" think that in increase
| in population is possible during a genocide?
|
| And yes, it has.
| cholantesh wrote:
| I figured it may have been because you decided to get
| informed about how genocides are identified by intent and
| not population deltas. But since you think a projection
| is the same thing as a census, that obviously isn't the
| case.
| nailer wrote:
| Regarding intent: if Israel intended to kill everyone in
| Palestine they'd nuke them, and not risk the lives of
| their children trying to ensure noncombatants are out of
| harms way in operations against Hamas.
| metabagel wrote:
| I agree with you that it's a genocide, but that is not
| universally accepted, so I think the scare quotes are OK. This
| article isn't seeking to litigate the genocide in Gaza.
|
| Scare quotes don't mean that it's not true.
| user723432754 wrote:
| "Masad insists he speaks up even when it hurts his business. In
| that regard, 'I'm probably the only contrarian in Silicon
| Valley.'"
| jerlam wrote:
| The only contrarian, just like everyone else.
| siltcakes wrote:
| He and Paul Graham, truly _are_ the only people speaking out
| against Zionism though. The rest of the VC industry is either
| staunchly pro-Israel or silent on the matter.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _He and Paul Graham, truly are the only people speaking
| out against Zionism_
|
| Not sure what about this is contrarian.
| siltcakes wrote:
| Going against everyone in your industry is contrarian.
| There are countless threads where Masad is attacked by
| mainstream venture capitalists and called "antisemitic"
| or "terrorist". Same with paulg.
| yoavm wrote:
| That kinda depends on what questions the industry
| revolves around, doesn't it? For example, if I was once
| of the only vegetarian at YC, I don't think it would make
| me a contrarian. And it especially wouldn't if my
| background was of a Vegetarian-based religion.
| siltcakes wrote:
| Being against genocide and land theft is the correct side
| obviously.
| gameboy45 wrote:
| interesting hearing his justification for working w Saudi but not
| Israel: He says he would never work with Israel now. "I think
| it's an illegitimate and criminal government," he told me during
| our gun safety training. "I mean, [Benjamin] Netanyahu is a war
| criminal."
|
| When I pointed out that Saudi Arabia has its own abysmal human
| rights record, Masad drew a contrast.
|
| "I just think about how Replit is going to be used. Like, Israel
| is actively committing genocide and ethnic cleansing, and if you
| sell to the government there, it's possible that they're going to
| use it for that," he said, pointing to the country's use of
| Microsoft cloud services to track Palestinians' phone calls.
| (After an investigation by The Guardian, Microsoft said it
| disabled the services that made the tracking possible in
| September."
| hiyer wrote:
| Seems like a silly excuse. If his concern is that Israel could
| use Replit for military purposes, then SA is perfectly capable
| of doing the same. And SA has - directly or indirectly - killed
| more people in Yemen than Israel has in Gaza.
| yeasku wrote:
| More than 70000 including 20000 children? Wow thats a lot.
| dralley wrote:
| You say that like it's unrealistic. The accepted death toll
| for the conflict in Yemen is nearly 400,000 people.
| ebbi wrote:
| I mean, if he was _really_ consistent, he 'd also not be
| operating a business in America, given America is responsible
| for the deaths of millions of innocent civilians (more than
| Israel and SA combined) in recent history.
| dralley wrote:
| I'd love to hear an argument for this being true that
| doesn't involve counting all of the deaths caused by Sunni-
| Shia sectarian violence in Iraq, suicide bombings in
| civilian markets, ISIS etc. as caused by America.
| ebbi wrote:
| Well there's Vietnam, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya
| etc which would tally ~300k civilian deaths alone. Given
| the blatantly false pretences that America invaded Iraq
| under, and the sectarian violence that significantly
| flared post-Saddam, I don't see why you'd not want to
| involve Iraq in the stats?
| dralley wrote:
| I accept US responsibility for a great many of the
| civilian deaths caused in Vietnam. I don't accept US
| responsibility for Islamists of different varieties
| blowing up each other's markets and places of worship
| with weapons provided by Iran and Syria.
| ebbi wrote:
| So you don't accept the fact that a lot of this sectarian
| violence flared after the toppling of Saddam, which was
| because of the US? And how many of the deaths do you
| attribute to the sectarian violence, as opposed to the
| direct actions of the US in the region?
| UltraSane wrote:
| The VAST majority of the deaths were from sectarian
| violence.
| jokowueu wrote:
| That was caused by a power vacuum and US's intentional
| act to oust the Ba'ath Party, remove all control from a
| country and it will fall to chaos especially when blood
| feuds are involved .
| UltraSane wrote:
| This response seems to remove all agency from the actual
| people killing each other.
| hersko wrote:
| This seems to be a theme of people with certain political
| inclinations. "It's really America's fault they're
| blowing themselves up in crowded markets because...."
| cess11 wrote:
| After toppling Saddam Hussein the US took political
| control in the country and decided who got to decide
| what. The slaughter that followed was a direct and rather
| predictable result of this.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Do you believe the violence would have happened without
| the US invasion?
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Probably not the same violence. But Saddam would have
| kept genociding the Kurds if he stayed in power. And
| maybe launched another war against Iran.
| angra_mainyu wrote:
| Hey, get with the times. Whitewashing jihadis is in vogue
| these days.
| jryle70 wrote:
| "responsible" is a weasel word. By that logic China is also
| "responsible" for Cambodia genocide 1975-1979, and who are
| responsible for Sudan famine?
| DSingularity wrote:
| Am I in some weird alternative universe where Israel did not
| just engage in a genocidal campaign against a population of
| Palestinians that are descendants of refugees from their
| prior genocidal campaign? Israel just finished killing
| probably over a hundred thousand civilians. The displaced the
| majority of Gaza. They destroyed the vast majority of its
| hospitals and universities and public infrastructure. They
| killed foreign aid workers even after those foreign aid
| workers cleared their routes with Israelis. Israeli soldiers
| raped Palestinians on camera. Then those solders were
| celebrated on public Israeli television and by the Israeli
| government. Attempts to prosecute those solders resulted in
| punishment for the prosecutors.
|
| Is Saudi Arabia a human rights violator? Yeah and so is a
| bunch of western governments. But no modern government comes
| close to the abuses of the Israeli government and Israeli
| military. This is the view of the free people of this world.
| HappyPanacea wrote:
| > from their prior genocidal campaign
|
| Not only there is not a good argument for considering 1948
| war a genocide on Palestinians but there is a much stronger
| argument Arabs have tried to genocide Jews (especially to
| those who think who think there was a genocide in Gaza
| because of starvation as a weapon of war + intent):
|
| 1. In 1948 Arab forces besieged Jerusalem and they were
| starting to run out of food.
|
| 2. Azzam Pasha, General Secretary of the Arab League,
| famously threatened "a war of extermination and a momentous
| massacre", Fawzi al-Qawuqji, commander of the Arab
| Liberation Army said that "we will have to initiate total
| war. We will murder, wreck and ruin everything standing in
| our way, be it English, American or Jewish.". Hell, several
| have even extended the threats to not just the Jews of
| Mandatory Palestine, but to Jews of the Arab world as a
| whole, such as Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Said("if a
| satisfactory solution of the Palestine case was not
| reached, severe measures should be taken against all Jews
| in Arab countries.") or the head of the Egyptian delegation
| to the General Assembly, Muhammad Hussein Heykal("the lives
| of 1,000,000 Jews in Muslim countries would be jeopardized
| by the establishment of a Jewish state." ). As Matiel
| Mughannam, head of the Arab Women's Organization in
| Palestine put it in an interview with Nadia Lourie in
| January 1948, "The UN decision has united all Arabs, as
| they have never been united before, not even against the
| Crusaders.... [A Jewish state] has no chance to survive now
| that the `holy war' has been declared. All the Jews will
| eventually be massacred. " (See Benny Morris' 1948 for
| sources on all of these)
| Amir_A wrote:
| Typical hasbara whataboutism, equating a statement by one
| guy that may or may not have been said 70 years ago to a
| livestream slaughter we just witnessed, where more than
| 50% of Israelis say "not enough force was used", not just
| offhanded remarks by radical leaders, which there are
| literal gigabytes of from Israelis of all walks of life.
| Just open up any popular political figure's Twitter and
| you'll see the most horrific statements, and not just
| statements, but action.
| HappyPanacea wrote:
| It isn't whataboutism to point out a wrong claim. Which
| statement is "a statement by one guy that may or may not
| have been said 70 years ago"? I gave four. I have made no
| claims about the current situation (and there was also
| plenty of action in 1948).
| Amir_A wrote:
| It is when your trying to deflect. Your source is Benny
| Morris lmao, that's one unreliable source for all "four
| statements"
| hersko wrote:
| These are famous quotes. Are you arguing that somehow
| Benny Morris made them up and tricked everyone to think
| they are real?
| DSingularity wrote:
| Please. There is literally documentaries with retirement
| age Israelis laughing about the horrible things they did
| to ethnically cleanse Jaffa and Haifa and various parts
| of historic Palestine. You accepting real war crimes that
| have happened repeatedly -- from before Israel to now --
| at the hands of blood thirsty European Zionist settlers
| against Palestinians because of some rhetoric of Arab
| leaders? The way Zionists can act like victims when their
| victims get angry and fight back. It's like that famous
| quote by that Ukrainian settler of Palestine that was a
| prime minister "we will never forgive the Arabs for
| making us kill their children" or something like that.
| Psychopaths.
| imp0cat wrote:
| Pecunia non olet.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| [money doesn't stink]
|
| It truly does though. Any significant pile of it stinks of
| exploitation and death.
| davedx wrote:
| If your primary cause is Palestine then it's pretty internally
| consistent?
| aerodog wrote:
| "was called" - who was behind that?
| appled232 wrote:
| that quotes attributed to "investors," according to Masad. but
| some of the most heinous stuff people said to him is public:
| https://x.com/rabois/status/1943804360863232513 "your friends
| should have not raped murdered and killed kids."
| jerlam wrote:
| It's Twitter - that's how a lot of people (or bots) say hi.
| qart wrote:
| Weasel words, basically. All too common in journalism. It's
| also common on Wikipedia but Wikipedia acknowledges it:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word
| didibus wrote:
| Reading through this piece and all I can think of is how he's
| just the other side of the same coin. Simply a different color of
| the same elitism that our world is moving into as money
| concentrates and starts to meddle more and more with our
| political spheres while accountability slowly errodes to zero.
| cholantesh wrote:
| I found the piece rambling and incoherent, but I don't really
| see how this follows. This is an individual Jordanian founder
| who made a political statement. That's not really the same
| thing as the deep integration between the Israeli state,
| Zionist organizations, and big tech.
| Sammi wrote:
| The only difference being that he wants to replace those with
| himself and his.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| As the article mentions, Saudi Arabia is aiming to build its
| own deep integration with big tech, which Masad is
| enthusiastically participating in despite the Saudi
| government's own human rights issues. (He argues, quite
| conveniently if true, that the Replit tools he sells to the
| Saudi government won't be used for any of the bad stuff.)
| cholantesh wrote:
| This clarifies things, thank you. I've gotten the
| impression that Masad doesn't have a very coherent
| worldview so I doubt he has given this contradiction much
| thought.
| ebbi wrote:
| What gives you that impression?
| kingkawn wrote:
| His own incoherent worldview
| cholantesh wrote:
| Reading the article? The only thing resembling an
| ideology in there is a vague libertarianism of the like a
| lot of founders express.
| simulator5g wrote:
| The coin is wealthy people. They're different sides of that
| coin. Hence why the commenter above is sensing some malice
| from both sides.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Both sides of...what? I'm confused. Is the idea "all these
| people have a lot more money than I think they'll ever need
| and it makes me mad"? Me too. Just don't see how it's
| relevant.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| The idea is that as money gets so concentrated, so does
| real political power. And with that concentration of
| political power comes extreme disregard for the opinions
| of the masses. I think it's a fair argument that the
| world has always catered to the will of rich people, but
| the difference now is that rich people are so
| unfathomably rich, and so much wealth is concentrated in
| so few.
| refulgentis wrote:
| I see, thank you.
|
| More plainly on my part, though I'm worried sounds like
| berating when the comments are viewed consecutively: what
| does that have to do with _the article we are
| discussing_?
| close04 wrote:
| > "There was an aspect of, like, 'Fuck the system,'"
| Masad said. "'We need to remake civilization.'"
|
| No matter what the political views, running into "real"
| money radicalizes most people and gives them the
| impression that they reached a superior evolutionary
| stage that uniquely entitles them... no, _demands_ from
| them that they bend society and human civilization to
| their will, reshape it in their image, make it better
| because they are better. A sort of messianic complex.
|
| This is the famous horseshoe paradox that says extremes
| are closer to each other than to the center. They might
| look completely different in their views but in reality
| they're back to back in the same place. 2 sides of the
| same coin. Different imprint, same value.
| csallen wrote:
| > _but the difference now is that rich people are so
| unfathomably rich..._
|
| Compared to when? How many times in history has wealth
| been _less_ concentrated?
|
| As far as I'm aware, for almost all of history post-
| agriculture, wealth was highly concentrated while the
| average person lived in abject poverty (think: kings vs
| peasants). The mid-20th century was an era of mass
| prosperity in the US and parts of Europe, but it was an
| anomalous few decades, not the norm.
| lukan wrote:
| "The mid-20th century was an era of mass prosperity in
| the US and parts of Europe, but it was an anomalous few
| decades, not the norm."
|
| But to those living and remembering that era - it was the
| norm that they (we) compare with, so it is the reference
| that matters.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Thank you
| stavros wrote:
| > How many times in history has wealth been less
| concentrated?
|
| Mostly all of them! There have been periods where
| inequality dropped, but mostly it's been rising since at
| least the 1300s. I'm on mobile and can't link research,
| but there are a few papers that investigate this.
|
| > As far as I'm aware, for almost all of history post-
| agriculture, wealth was highly concentrated while the
| average person lived in abject poverty (think: kings vs
| peasants).
|
| And yet it was less unequal than now, an era where we've
| managed to use technology to concentrate wealth at an
| unprecedented scale. No longer is the richest person you
| know the king who collects your taxes next door, now it's
| a SV trillionaire on the other side of the world.
| TitaRusell wrote:
| In the past you could find rich people on the
| battlefield. The last time America tried that was in
| Vietnam.
|
| That is what has changed.
| ArneBab wrote:
| Last I checked the Koch Brothers weren't Israeli. Do read up
| on them. Oversimplified narratives are bullshit.
| UltraSane wrote:
| What does "Zionist" mean to you? I honestly don't understand
| what it means when Israel has existed as a Jewish state for
| 76 years and seems likely to continue doing so for the
| foreseeable future.
| cess11 wrote:
| Zionism is older than the state of Israel. It is a
| political movement consisting mainly of christians.
|
| If you want to learn more you could do worse than follow
| Zachary Foster's lectures for the Rutgers Center:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zachary+foster
| +...
|
| The podcast The Empire Never Ended has recently finished a
| rather good series on Meir Kahane, one of the most
| important influences on contemporary zionism:
|
| https://www.patreon.com/tenepod
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Kahane, notably a terrorist and racial supremacist.
| nephihaha wrote:
| Although Palestinian nationalism does predate modern
| Zionism as it was originally directed at the Ottoman
| Rulers.
| throw310822 wrote:
| > is how he's just the other side of the same coin.
|
| Yes. And one side of the coin supports and justifies
| colonialism, apartheid and even genocide; the other side fights
| against it.
| hersko wrote:
| Is it apartheid that a jewish person cannot buy land in
| Palestinian controlled areas?
| throw310822 wrote:
| No. This question shows that you have no idea of what the
| word "apartheid" even means (or maybe you just hope that
| other readers don't), and that nonetheless you are ready to
| use it as a retort hoping to score some kind of cheap
| point. Not that I haven't seen precisely this behaviour a
| million times on this topic, but still: pathetic.
| hersko wrote:
| Hmmm...
|
| apartheid /@-part'hit'', -hat''/ noun
|
| - An official policy of racial segregation formerly
| practiced in the Republic of South Africa, involving
| political, legal, and economic discrimination against
| nonwhites.
|
| - A policy or practice of separating or segregating
| groups.
|
| - The condition of being separated from others;
| segregation
|
| Explain to me how this does not fit bullet point 2 and 3.
|
| From The American Heritage(r) Dictionary of the English
| Language, 5th Edition[1].
|
| [1] https://www.wordnik.com/words/apartheid
| throw310822 wrote:
| No point explaining you something so simple. Go read
| something deeper about apartheid and its definition in
| some better source than the dictionary.
| hersko wrote:
| You can just admit you were wrong. It's okay.
| dcreater wrote:
| Replit seems to be another company that doesn't justify it's
| valuation in this bubble
| riku_iki wrote:
| My bet is they sold lots if data for llm training
| ramoz wrote:
| I think they are just hitting the consumer market hard. I
| have friends who have never coded & are using Replit. That
| said, not a single one of them has launched.
| JLO64 wrote:
| I can second this. I'm an online coding instructor and
| within our company Replit was the website/environment we
| were told to use with our students. I really didn't like it
| due to all the AI features (I believe that when you're
| learning to code you shouldn't use LLMs) but the
| collaboration features were really good.
|
| Unfortunately they added a limit to the number of
| collaborators per account and we had to stop using it.
| SwtCyber wrote:
| Replit has been around for years, has real users, and now
| reportedly real revenue
| renewiltord wrote:
| All these things are so amusing. Amjad Masad dislikes Israel and
| is fine with Saudi Arabia. Palmer Luckey will spend his life
| doing rainman calculations on the angle of the car in
| Minneapolis. One is a "terrorist", other is a "fascist".
|
| But you can tell it's all motivated reasoning. Standing with your
| tribe. It's not much of a matter of honour. It's just flashing
| your banners.
|
| In the end, they are wealthy, but they are just people. And they
| have all these things and why do I really care what Ja Rule has
| to say about the new cyclone.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Excellent reference at the end, thanks for making me feel old.
| :)
| intalentive wrote:
| I respect him for standing up for his people. It's honorable,
| in my opinion. It would be dishonorable (and easy) to be a
| mercenary, profit-seeking individual with loyalty to no one but
| himself.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Everyone stands up for their people. Tribalism is the most
| primitive form of society. Standing for principle is harder
| because sometimes you have to speak against your tribe.
|
| Yes, it would be dishonorable to be mercenary, but being a
| tribalist is merely the default position. We're all so at
| some scale.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Of all the tools I try and review, replit remains to be simply
| the worst in my opinion. I struggle to do anything useful with it
| except trivial hello world type of stuff. The bubble is real.
| wombat-man wrote:
| replit worked really well as a way to play with code ideas.
| Going from 0 to running code on their site is very handy. I can
| try something out in python without much setup, as someone who
| rarely uses the language.
|
| I tried their AI coding feature a few months back, and it was
| quite bad, but it was interesting to watch it iterate.
| mannanj wrote:
| So I got excited and used Replit because I heard about it in a
| Diary of a Ceo podcast. Spent days working on my project, it was
| working in their unique tech stack and when I did local git
| commits it locked some files and conflicted with their replit
| agent also doing git operations and got stuck in a loop where the
| fix was to do a git reset --hard and reset the state.
|
| Unfortunately their tooling locks me out from doing that and I
| wouldn't get help from their team after asking twice and getting
| moved to several different support members of their team. They
| just ghosted me and so I left and took my business elsewhere.
| Doesn't seem like it was made for advanced users.
|
| Unfortunate.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| The idea of "advanced users" of vibe coding is interesting.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Unsurprising, the Diary of a CEO guy is a snake oil salesman.
| Awful interviewer, but very good at self promotion.
| thedelanyo wrote:
| "one being so good that anyone can become a software engineer".
|
| Of course, smartphones' cameras are so good and accessible, but
| not anyone who became a professional photographer?
|
| And of course, isn't software engineering far beyond than simply
| writing code in any form - whether in English or in symbols?
| WalterBright wrote:
| Programming is mostly a craft. Engineering would be more like
| designing algorithms.
| immibis wrote:
| That's research. Engineering would be programming, but well.
| Taking into account future maintenance concerns and so on.
| Seems like the software world doesn't do a lot of it.
| WalterBright wrote:
| craft: downloading an 8088 emulator and using it
|
| engineering: implementing an 8088 emulator
|
| science: discovering a way to make an 8088 emulator using
| quantum computing
| echelon wrote:
| > Engineering would be programming, but well.
|
| Software engineering is systems and measurement.
|
| Capacity planning, growth rates, algorithmic complexity
| (typically not to the point of designing new fundamental
| algorithms), durability, DR, eventual consistency, race
| conditions, schema design, systems architecture,
| instrumentation, statistics, sampling, more measurement,
| tech debt maintenance and pragmatism, online migrations,
| designing for five nines uptime ...
|
| Programming is turning requirements into code with or
| without respect to these higher level criteria. The
| implementation detail.
|
| "Engineering would be programming, but well" fits :)
| conception wrote:
| Yes but smartphones decimated photography jobs, especially on
| the low end.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Pareto principle in action - smartphones are good enough for
| 80% of use cases. And so is AI for a lot of junior-level
| work.
|
| The problem is, when there are no trainee and junior
| positions (and, increasingly, intermediate) being filled any
| more... there is no way for people to rise to senior levels.
| And that is going to screw up many industries _hard_.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Many industries have hit this without AI. One example is
| surveying: it used to be that you'd have a crew of survey
| techs moving around equipment and measuring reference
| points, a crew chief, and a licensed surveyor directing and
| signing off on them. Those techs and crew chief were the
| future surveyors, as licensed surveyor requires x years
| working under supervision.
|
| Now there's one or two guys out there with a total station
| and/or drone. You've gone from 10 techs/junior positions
| per surveyor to 1. The average surveyor is something like
| 60 years old and has no successor lined up.
| 15155 wrote:
| They still teach surveyors how to throw chains in
| schools.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| It's kinda valuable to know the fundamentals and how to
| work even when technology fails.
| thesmtsolver2 wrote:
| Just like word processing software and LLMs meant anyone can
| become a journalist. /s
| SwtCyber wrote:
| Smartphone cameras didn't turn everyone into a professional
| photographer, but they did radically expand who can take usable
| photos, experiment, and occasionally produce something valuable
| without years of training
| kogasa240p wrote:
| > Palestinian man is ok working with the Saudis At least it isn't
| the UAE but... really? Still happy for him though.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| exe.dev is already miles better already than what replit is
| attempting to do with it's AI things
| jjsullivan5196 wrote:
| This guy isn't a mold-breaking radical, he's just a garden
| variety sociopath https://intuitiveexplanations.com/tech/replit/
| leoh wrote:
| Yup.
| Bluescreenbuddy wrote:
| Replay will implode once the AI mania cools off
| redwood wrote:
| I'm not a fan of a guy who builds a brand around politics. It
| will come around.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Like it has to other business guys who have built a brand
| around politics?
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I think it has negatively affected Elon yes.
| camillomiller wrote:
| A very good, albeit involuntary, reminder that in Silicon Valley
| your good or bad opinions and beliefs don't matter as long as
| you're a good vessel to multiply investment and add value to a
| billionaire's already obscene wealth.
| throw310822 wrote:
| The article clearly states that he lost business and risked
| bankruptcy.
| paglaghoda wrote:
| replit is actually quite popular among teenagers and basically
| third world youngsters trying to spin off a service or a
| "product" of their own.
|
| - i mean yes u cannot make money out of teenagers but damn
| replit's Vibe coding tool is fucking good. Better than Lovable or
| Bolt any day.
|
| just to give u a perspective from a 20year old kid from a 3rd
| world county
| truetraveller wrote:
| which country are you from?
| user_7832 wrote:
| Going by the username, I'm guessing India or perhaps
| Bangadesh
| paglaghoda wrote:
| India it is
| mbesto wrote:
| I think this is exactly it. Replit is a cheap and easy way to
| get an MVP off the ground ASAP. However, their audience is
| inherently hackathon attendees, not real businesses. Whether
| these can turn into real businesses (en masse to justify low
| churn and consistent SaaS ARR) or not is the real question.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Why don't you just use Claude?
|
| I don't get all these vibe coding tools when Claude is better
| than any of them
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| A friend used Replit to prove out a startup (it worked) and
| what worked for him is that Replit has a whole platform
| integrated with their coding assistant that include hosting
| and backend runtimes. So his cycle time of vibe-deploy-test
| was very short and very simple for someone non-technical.
|
| No need to think about how/where to deploy, cloud platforms
| (AWS, GCP, Azure), etc. Just vibe and deploy.
|
| (He did end up moving off the platform once he had enough
| validation)
| tim333 wrote:
| I think experienced programmers underestimate how tricky it
| is to sort the deploying to cloud platforms bit for
| beginners.
| cj wrote:
| Most experienced programmers have no experience deploying
| apps (or their experience is from earlier in their
| career). Especially engineers at big companies where
| there are whole teams dedicated to infra/devops.
|
| The percentage of programmers with side projects they
| deploy themselves is very small. I'd guess less than 10%
| have a side project deployed somewhere. (And these days
| overfeed wrote:
| > Most experienced programmers have no experience
| deploying apps (or their experience is from earlier in
| their career)
|
| Most experienced programmers in my circles have
| evening/weekend projects. We are notorious for hoarding
| unused domains for the "brilliant side project" that gets
| a burst of commits right after domain-renewal time
| jtbayly wrote:
| Yeah. I'd say about 1/4 of my time on my new app has been
| spent on deployment-related stuff, rather than the app
| itself. And I'm not inexperienced with servers and cloud.
| It's a pretty big deal to integrate that stuff.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| I have a habit now of getting that out of the way first
| just so I don't have to think about it. Get a basic
| functioning prototype and then figure out my infra and
| deployment as early as possible.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Well, I got it out of the way early, but I keep
| discovering changes need to be made...
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| Depending on my projects, I tend to keep it pretty
| simple.
|
| For personal projects, usually Firebase (+ occasional
| Cloud Run mixed in) which makes it relatively easy.
|
| For professional projects, it's pretty easy now on AWS
| with their (unfortunately named) Copilot CLI [0] (highly,
| highly recommended).
|
| But mostly, I keep my infra simple and bias towards
| modular monoliths [1] which ends up being the majority of
| my infra work (container packaging and deployment of the
| initial runtime infra).
|
| [0] https://aws.github.io/copilot-cli/
|
| [1] https://chrlschn.dev/blog/2024/01/a-practical-guide-
| to-modul...
| square_usual wrote:
| I've really shortened the loop on deploying my side
| projects with Claude Code. I run it with `--dangerously-
| skip-permissions` on a prompt I've written and it adapts
| it for the project in hand with a "safe" set of defaults,
| and I've got a basic verification script to ensure it's
| not unsafe (e.g. can't access postgres from the web,
| firewall blocking all non-required ports). The rest -
| which can vary from project to project, like creating
| VMs, configuring rules, whether it's a rust project or a
| docker compose file - Claude knows how to handle pretty
| well. Super super simple now.
| davedx wrote:
| I'm an experienced programmer and deploying is a
| clusterfuck these days. It's by far the worst part of
| making software
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| I use a mix of Firebase and AWS Copilot CLI
| (https://aws.github.io/copilot-cli/) depending on which
| platform I'm on.
|
| Both make it pretty dead simple to deploy. AWS Copilot
| being the "more powerful" of the two, but still dead
| simple to use compared to CDK, Cloud Formation, or
| writing Terraform or Pulumi scripts.
| mbesto wrote:
| > (He did end up moving off the platform once he had enough
| validation)
|
| I'm really curious what this looks like in practice? Like
| can you just download the whole codebase, throw it against
| a Supabase Postgres DB, and you're off running? What about
| any backing services or microservices? Is it tied to any
| thing like lambdas etc.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| I should be clear here that "moving off the platform"
| involved a re-write for various reasons. First and
| foremost was that the LLM generated code was in a bad
| state due to the fact that he started in late 2024 when
| coding agents weren't really quite there yet and he had
| accumulated a LOT of tech debt very quickly. But Replit
| allowed him to validate the business viability first with
| some absolutely trash tier code (hacked 3x; one time
| where the hacker event sent an email to all customers).
| paglaghoda wrote:
| claude is just too expensive and u need to atleast a bit
| technical expertise in it.
|
| replit has made it like, even a 11 year old can make
| something out of thin air and acutally publish it to get a
| link to share
| infecto wrote:
| Third world country could be region blocked.
|
| Not sure why this is controversial. I know it's an issue with
| Cursor as they have to limit availability of models based on
| region. OpenAI specifically blocks India and Pakistan for
| example, among a long list of other countries.
| paglaghoda wrote:
| i'm not aware of any service geo-blocked by OpenAI to
| either pakistan or india
|
| Could u share a link or something?
|
| P.s. found nothing on a google search
| sometimes_all wrote:
| Why would anyone region-block a country which gives them a
| ton of users? OpenAI actually has India-specific plans
| alongside their regular ones, and I use Claude Code every
| day with zero problems.
| jacooper wrote:
| Because i can do it on the phone.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| thanks for sharing, that's an interesting perspective actually.
| It's easy for us "pro devs" to kind of ignore platforms like
| Replit as "training wheels." I look at it and think "why would
| I use that, I have all my own stuff set up the way I like it
| locally".
|
| But us older guys (i'm not that old, 34, but still) can easily
| forget how valuable and exciting it is to have tools that make
| the publication / deploy easy. It's cool to hear what the
| younger, less experienced crowd gravitates towards in the
| modern dev tool landscape. Thanks for sharing!
| echelon wrote:
| How long do those customers stay customers?
|
| Are their customers making money?
|
| Will they be able to build retention?
|
| I've got this question of every platform like this - Lovable,
| etc.
|
| Cursor and IDE tools and models cater to a smaller audience,
| but they're sticky, repeat customers, big spenders.
| sieep wrote:
| Excellent point. With that being said, I think there is
| market potential for replit, specifically in the middle
| ground between 'not knowing any code' and 'full on
| developer using an IDE/Cursor'.
| echelon wrote:
| And they can grow into the latter if they believe that's
| the opportunity.
| tchock23 wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. These are valid
| criticisms of platforms like Lovable, Bolt, Replit, etc.
| that cater to "fast MVP" type customers. I'm not sure how
| you sustain the valuations if the churn inherent to those
| type of "hobbyist" or "solopreneur" type customers isn't
| solved.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| If your optimizing for simple, powerful, and on mobile then
| Replit is hard to beat.
| wtcactus wrote:
| What an interesting tile. Is the value of his AI company expected
| to overcome the 'terrorist sympathizer' allegation? Is this how
| it works always or just when the person is inside the present
| Overton Window?
|
| Let's try Elon Musk then: "He was called a 'fascist'. Now, his
| tech company is valued $1.5T"
|
| This is the way, right?
| blks wrote:
| "Terrorist sympathiser" doesn't mean much these days. People
| call Ms. Rachel a "terrorist sympathiser" and "antisemite of
| the year" for not wanting kids to die or become amputees
| wtcactus wrote:
| > "Terrorist sympathiser" doesn't mean much these days.
|
| I guess it means almost as little as "fascist" then.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> I guess it means almost as little as "fascist" then._
|
| Which I guess means almost as little as "antisemite" then.
| jeanlou wrote:
| It's funny how when talking about Israel's wrongdoings,
| everything is just "allegedly". Facts already confirms genocide,
| but hey, they don't want to land in hot water.
| jwblackwell wrote:
| I absolutely love the idea of Replit and I think it's an awesome
| platform and idea.
|
| I do wonder how sustainable it is as a business though. I expect
| Replit is sending the majority of that money to the big AI labs
| through API costs
|
| As soon as anything becomes serious you're going to try and take
| it off Replit and use something like Claude Code and AWS etc
| internet_points wrote:
| well, it's not a high bar - these days anyone who says "I support
| Palestine Action" or "she was murdered by ICE" is called a
| terrorist sympathizer
| flumpcakes wrote:
| > these days anyone who says "I support Palestine Action"
|
| They have a video of people from this group attacking police
| with sledgehammers. It is strange how much of this 'direction
| action' is harming Ukraine support and not Israel. If people
| wanted to support Palestine they can do it without attacking
| their own countries' military - which is _not_ operating in
| Israel at all.
|
| > "she was murdered by ICE"
|
| They have a video of her being shot, pretty much needlessly.
| I'd say that should be manslaughter at a minimum.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Congratulations, you've reached the level of "terrorist well-
| wisher"
| flumpcakes wrote:
| Is there something you disagree with? My opinions were
| pretty neutral.
| simondotau wrote:
| The internet is where every issue is a binary, nuance is
| scorned, and moderate views are weakness. You should know
| this already.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's like Hamlet. "To upvote, or to downvote".
| iso1631 wrote:
| "centrist dad" is apparently an insult
| Y_Y wrote:
| I just felt you didn't quite reach the criteria for
| "terrorist sympathizer" outlined above. I don't make the
| rules!
| megous wrote:
| UK military is operating in Palestine (very frequent
| military flights from their post-colonial base in
| Cyprus), and is operating in Israel (when they were
| shooting down drones, etc.), and is supplying Israel with
| weapons (directly by soldier training and indirectly by
| allowing to use their military bases), and joined in
| international coverup (they have detailed intelligence on
| what Israel was doing in Gaza, which they never released
| publicly any part of).
|
| Pretty solid basis for direct action.
|
| If they provided this level of support for Russia, they'd
| be a new Belarus.
| dgroshev wrote:
| Equating surveillance flights off the coast with
| "operating in the country" is tenuous at best. If that's
| the threshold, Russian military is already operating in
| Britain (see Yantar's adventures).
|
| The mental effort a lot of people has made to pretend
| they aren't entirely powerless and irrelevant for
| stopping Israel's crimes is deeply impressive. The
| reality is that there's nothing the UK can do to stop
| Israel as long as the US is supporting them (short of
| going to war with both the US and Israel), but this
| reality is at odds with the desire to do _something_ , so
| people invent and inflate leverage where there isn't any.
| Moreover, most of the time the very same people oppose
| creating more leverage for the future, as your added
| qualifier of "post-colonial" implies. It's depressing.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > It is strange how much of this 'direction action' is
| harming Ukraine support
|
| How is direct action on Palestine impacting Ukraine support?
| (We are also not intervening in Ukraine)
| flumpcakes wrote:
| > (We are also not intervening in Ukraine)
|
| Not direct intervention; but we fly sorties, provide
| intelligence, ship military equipment, build systems for...
| None of which we provide Israel for their current war.
|
| It's just odd to me that Israel draws so much Ire when the
| UK deals with all sorts. There are many worse things
| happening that doesn't get a second of airtime.
| temp8830 wrote:
| > We are also not intervening in Ukraine
|
| Hahhahaha. Hahaha. Ha.
|
| The cost of this non-intervention is now at almost $200B,
| is it not? I guess this money went to elves?
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| The UK military is and has been operating in Gaza, the UK
| government is just lying about it. Public flight tracking
| data makes it obvious.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| That's a big statement to make - do you have any credible
| sources on that?
| barnabee wrote:
| At a minimum the RAF has operated hundreds of
| surveillance flights over Gaza.
|
| Multiple sources linked on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/United_Kingdom_and_the_Gaza_wa...
| duggan wrote:
| "Robot boots 30,000 feet above the ground" doesn't have
| quite the same ring to it.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| I guess those Russian drones in Ukraine aren't military
| combatants then?
| flumpcakes wrote:
| Well the Russian drones are munitions, so that's not
| comparable. Is the UK dropping bombs on Gaza? I have seen
| zero reporting to say they have.
|
| The UK might be flying spy planes outside it's airspace
| when it's citizens were kidnapped. That's not a
| "combatant". Was the UK a combatant when flying spy
| planes near the Ukraine border?
|
| I think you are way off the mark based on reporting, I'm
| not even sure how you are coming to these stated
| opinions.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| No, they're not dropping munitions, they're simply
| coordinating with the Israeli military to facilitate the
| dropping of munitions, doing everything possible save
| putting boots on the ground (that we know of). So you're
| right, in that case Britain is more like China in this
| situation, perfectly blameless.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| If I recall correctly this was in direct response to
| British citizens being kidnapped and held hostage inside
| Gaza. These were intelligence sorties with the express
| aim to help locate UK citizens.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Literally hilarious.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| So UK citizens were not kidnapped? Or are you implying
| the UK were not doing intelligence flights, but were
| attacking Gaza directly, or had boots on the ground
| directly? Because I have seen absolutely zero reporting
| to infer that.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Like all defenders of the indefensible, you will shift
| the goalposts incessantly to suit the narrative you wish
| to defend.
|
| First it was, "The British military isn't doing anything
| in Gaza, anyone who says otherwise is lying."
|
| Now it is, "The British military might be doing something
| in Gaza, but they're justified in doing so, and it's
| limited to protecting British citizens anyways."
|
| What will it be now?
|
| "While the Ministry of Defence (MoD) claims these flights
| are solely for locating Israeli hostages held by Hamas,
| AOAV found that the RAF conducted 24 flights in the two
| weeks leading up to and including the day of Israel's
| deadly attack on the Nuseirat Refugee Camp on 8 June
| 2024, which killed 274 Palestinians and injured over
| 700."
|
| https://aoav.org.uk/2025/britain-sent-over-500-spy-
| flights-t...
|
| "On October 19, 2024, four days after it had been at RAF
| Brize Norton, the "Re'em" aircraft with registration 272
| appeared directly over Gaza at 7:32 p.m. local time, less
| than 5km away from Beit Lahiya, a city in north Gaza.
| Three hours later, at 11:20 p.m., the IAF bombed a
| residential complex in Beit Lahiya killing at least 73
| people.
|
| On October 24, 2024, nine days after traveling to the UK,
| the same 272 aircraft was located at 9:30 p.m. less than
| 5 miles from Jabalia camp. An hour later, at 10:40 p.m.,
| airstrikes were recorded destroying apartment blocks in
| Jabalia. The aircraft remained airborne patrolling the
| airspace near Gaza until it was recorded at 10:36 p.m.
| near Ashdod, a coastal city near Tel Aviv, flying towards
| Hatzor Airbase."
|
| https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/revealed-uk-labour-
| israeli-mi...
| gghhzzgghhzz wrote:
| "They have a video of people from this group attacking police
| with sledgehammers"
|
| Do you have the name or names of the person accused of
| 'attacking police with sledgehammers'?
|
| I've heard a lot about this, but it's difficult to get to
| actual sources about exactly what is alleged.
|
| Even if this did happen as you say. attachking police with
| sledgehammers is assault, potentially even attempted murder.
| There's plenty of laws for that.
|
| It's not terrorism.
| amiga386 wrote:
| > Do you have the name or names of the person accused of
| 'attacking police with sledgehammers'?
|
| You should be less flippant.
|
| The accused's name is Samuel Corner. He and his friends are
| still on trial for their actions.
|
| Here's the bodycam footage where you see Samuel Corner
| attack police seargent Kate Evans with a sledgehammer while
| she was on the ground, fracturing her spine. Watch from
| 3m05s to 3m10s:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6P7p_5D4hw
|
| The police seargent is now disabled:
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g54g1r15eo
|
| > It's not terrorism.
|
| The group's stated aim is to stop the UK or any UK
| companies giving Israel any military support. They target
| companies who they think supply Israel. They break in and
| smash them, and as you've hopefully just seen with your own
| eyes, they are not afraid to attack people with
| sledgehammers. They use violence to achieve their political
| aim. They are terrorists and belong in prison.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1dzq41n4l9o
|
| > Samuel Corner, 23, [...] Oxford University graduate from
| Devon [...] when asked why he struck Sgt Evans with the
| sledgehammer, he replied: "It was me not really knowing
| what I was doing
|
| Thanks Samuel. That Oxford degree really shows, doesn't it?
| RugnirViking wrote:
| The quote from the article continues. You cut it off.
|
| "It was me not really knowing what I was doing, I was
| trying to protect Leona, or Zoe. I couldn't tell who was
| screaming."
|
| "My friends were in danger and they [the police] were
| getting quite hands-on.
|
| "I remember just feeling like I had to help somehow. I
| would never think to do that to someone, I was just
| trying to help," he said.
|
| I don't have any opinion on this but I think its
| important to have the full quote
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Wow, thanks. It was really shameful for _amiga386_ to
| intentionally hide that critical context. They even
| omitted the comma showing that there _was_ additional
| context (and replaced it with inappropriate snark).
| flumpcakes wrote:
| > "My friends were in danger and they [the police] were
| getting quite hands-on.
|
| They were petulantly resisting arrest (it looks on camera
| to scream instead of just complying calmly) while
| committing destructive/violent crimes. The police were
| very restrained here. There was no danger from the
| police, at all.
|
| Now a police officer doing their job has a spinal injury.
| Palestine Action says they will not stop doing 'direct
| action' (sabotage, property destruction, violence). They
| deserve the proscription.
| nanna wrote:
| Imagine if they were dealing with the US police...
| amiga386 wrote:
| > The quote from the article continues. You cut it off.
|
| I quoted three separate snippets from the article that I
| wanted to draw attention to, and gave you the URL to read
| the rest yourself.
|
| I'm of the opinion that, someone who sledgehammers an
| unaware opponent and claims in their defense "I was just
| trying to help", they are being disingenuous. Especially
| as one of Britain's most elite and privileged youngsters.
|
| If you'd like to quote _more_ of the article:
|
| > When asked by his barrister Tom Wainwright whether he
| was willing to injure a person or use violence during the
| break-in, he replied: "No, not at all".
|
| Read that back to yourself while watching the attack
| footage again. Is this credible testimony?
| gjm11 wrote:
| It feels to me like there's a distinction between "on one
| occasion, one person in group X did Y" and "group X does
| Y", and it's the second of those that (for some choices
| of Y, including "attacking police with sledgehammers")
| could justify calling group X a terrorist group.
|
| Obviously "on one occasion, a person in group X did Y" is
| _evidence_ for "group X does Y". If Samuel Corner
| attacked a police sergeant with a sledgehammer during one
| Palestine Action, er, action, then that's the sort of
| thing we expect to see more often if PA is generally in
| favour of attacking police with sledgehammers. (Either as
| a matter of explicit open policy, or as a nudge-nudge-
| wink-wink thing where everyone in PA knows that if they
| start smashing up police as well as property then their
| PA comrades will think better of them rather than worse.)
|
| But it falls way short of proof. Maybe Samuel Corner
| sledgehammered a cop because Palestine Action is a
| terrorist organization after all; but maybe Samuel Corner
| sledgehammered a cop because Samuel Corner is a thug or
| an idiot or was drunk or whatever. Or maybe Samuel Corner
| sledgehammered a cop because the cops were already being
| violent with the Palestine Action folks and he was doing
| his (ill-advised) best to protect the others from the
| police. (This, as I understand it, is his account of
| things.)
|
| (An Oxford University graduate attacked a police officer
| with a sledgehammer. I take it you would not say that
| that makes the University of Oxford a terrorist
| organization, and you wouldn't say that even if he'd done
| it while attending, say, a university social function
| rather than while smashing up alleged military hardware.
| It matters how typical the action is of the organization,
| what the group's leadership thinks of the action, etc.)
|
| I took a look at the video. It's not easy to tell what's
| going on, but it looks to me as follows. One of the PA
| people is on the ground, being forcibly restrained and
| tasered by a police officer, complaining loudly about
| what the police officer is doing. (It isn't obvious to me
| whether or not her complaints are justified[1].) There is
| another police officer, whom I take to be Kate Evans,
| nearby, kneeling on the ground and helping to restrain
| this PA person. Samuel Corner approaches with his
| sledgehammer and attacks that second police officer. I
| can't tell from the video exactly what he's trying to do
| (e.g., whether he's being as violent as possible and
| hoping to kill or maim, or whether he's trying to get the
| police officer off the other person with minimal force
| but all he's got is a sledgehammer).
|
| [1] I get the impression that she feels she has the right
| not to suffer any pain while being forcibly restrained by
| police, which seems like a rather naive view of things.
| But I also get the impression that the police were being
| pretty free with their tasering. But it's hard to tell
| exactly what's going on, and I imagine it was even harder
| in real time, and I am inclined to cut both her and the
| police some slack on those grounds.
|
| It's highly misleading, even though not technically
| false, to say that Corner attacked Kate Evans "while she
| was on the ground"; she certainly was on the ground in
| the sense that she was supported by the floor, and even
| in the sense that she wasn't standing up -- I think she
| was crouching -- but it's not like she was lying on the
| ground injured or inactive; she was fighting one of the
| other PA people, and she was "on the ground" because that
| PA person was (in a stronger sense) "on the ground" too.
|
| For the avoidance of doubt, I do not approve of attacking
| police officers with sledgehammers just because they are
| restraining someone you would prefer them not to be
| restraining, even if you think they're doing it more
| violently than necessary. And I have a lot of sympathy
| with police officers not being super-gentle when the
| people they're dealing with are armed with sledgehammers.
|
| But the story here looks to me more like "there were a
| bunch of PA people, who had sledgehammers because they
| were planning to smash up military hardware; the cops
| arrived and wrestled and tasered them, and one of the PA
| people lost his temper and went for one of the cops to
| try to defend his friend whom he thought was being
| mistreated, and unfortunately he was wielding a
| sledgehammer at the time" than like "PA is in the
| business of attacking cops with sledgehammers".
|
| None of that makes Kate Evans any less injured. But I
| think those two possibilities say very different things
| about Palestine Action. Carrying sledgehammers because
| you want to smash equipment is different from carrying
| sledgehammers because you want to smash people. Attacking
| police because they are a symbol of the state is
| different from attacking police because they are
| attacking your friend. One person doing something bad in
| the heat of the moment because he thinks his friend is
| being mistreated is different from an organization
| setting out to do that bad thing.
|
| There are plenty of documented cases of police being
| violent (sometimes with deadly effect) with members of
| the public. Sometimes they have good justification for
| it, sometimes not so much. Most of us don't on those
| grounds call the police a terrorist organization. Those
| who _do_ say things along those lines do so because they
| think that actually the police are systematically violent
| and brutal.
|
| I think the same applies to organizations like Palestine
| Action. So far as I can tell, they _aren 't_
| systematically violent and brutal. Mostly they smash up
| hardware that they think would otherwise be used to
| oppress Palestinians. (I am making no judgement as to
| whether they're right about that, which is relevant to
| whether they're a Good Thing or a Bad Thing but not to
| whether they're _terrorists_.) Sometimes that leads to
| skirmishes with the police. On one occasion so far, one
| of them badly injured a police officer. It 's very bad
| that that happened, but this all seems well short of what
| it would take to justify calling the organization a
| terrorist one.
| gghhzzgghhzz wrote:
| > The group's stated aim is to stop the UK or any UK
| companies giving Israel any military support. They target
| companies who they think supply Israel. They break in and
| smash them, and as you've hopefully just seen with your
| own eyes, they are not afraid to attack people with
| sledgehammers. They use violence to achieve their
| political aim. They are terrorists and belong in prison.
|
| Yet none of them are being prosecuted under the terrorism
| act, or on any charge related to terrorism.
| amiga386 wrote:
| That's a good point.
|
| _I_ think they meet the definition of "terrorists" by
| their stated goals and acts. But it seems there's
| reticence by the CPS to break out the Terrorism Act.
|
| Palestine Action is _already_ a proscribed group because
| of spraypainting RAF planes. I would say this raid seems
| more terroristic than base invasion, but what do I know?
| I 'm not the Home Secretary.
|
| It raises questions, because while the Terrorism Act is
| heavily criticised for being overbroad and making a
| number of otherwise innocuous things crimes, the CPS
| haven't used it against this group of people, who'd face
| prison _just for being a member, or claiming to be a
| member_ of Palestine Action. Maybe the CPS can 't
| reliably prove they are?
| 15155 wrote:
| > They have a video of her being shot
|
| Why was her vehicle in gear, engine running?
| z0r wrote:
| Not that your comment is relevant, but why is there a
| narrative of obstruction when you can visibly see Renee
| Good wave another truck by moments before she was killed?
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1q7cg7o/minneapolis_i
| c...
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| See for yourself: https://nypost.com/2026/01/09/us-
| news/dramatic-footage-from-...
| z0r wrote:
| The newly released footage is truly a political Rorschach
| test. It is unbelievable to me that anyone without
| diminished mental capabilities could believe that
| exonerates the camera man.
| reliabilityguy wrote:
| > these days anyone who says "I support Palestine Action"
|
| You mean the group that sneaked in and damaged a bunch of UK
| Military's planes on a military base? Was this the action that
| put them into the terrorist category?
| ikamm wrote:
| "Damaged a bunch of UK Military's planes" == spray painted
| two planes
| veeti wrote:
| Spray painting a jet engine causes millions in damages, but
| it's a cute sleight of hand to insinuate it's just some
| graffiti on a wall or something.
| ikamm wrote:
| You don't actually know how much it cost, you just
| believe what the police say despite the fact that they've
| provided no figures.
| avianlyric wrote:
| Not quite in the same league as IS, Al-Qaeda etc etc. Used to
| be a organisation had to murder and terrorise an entire
| population, or fly planes into city centres.
|
| Apparently our standards have dropped so low that spray
| painting a couple of planes and embarrassing the UK military
| now puts you on par with those other organisations.
| uhhhd wrote:
| Yes supporting the Islamists puts you in the same league as
| the Islamists.
| amiga386 wrote:
| Yes. They're a bunch of violent criminals. But that's not the
| point.
|
| There are lots of violent criminals who harm businesses and
| injure, or even kill people. They should be prosecuted and
| imprisoned. It's not illegal to say "I support <name of
| criminal or criminal gang>", even if people strongly disagree
| with you.
|
| However, by showing they could break into an RAF base and
| spraypaint the planes - that says to me that the RAF are
| completely shit at their job, how can they protect their base
| from Russians if they can't even keep out local criminals -
| _embarrassed the Government_ , and the government retaliated
| by _making it illegal to say you support them_.
|
| Say it out loud? Criminal. Wear a t-shirt? Criminal. Hold a
| placard? Criminal.
|
| Might as well just hold up blank sheets of paper and wait for
| the police to arrest you because they know what you want to
| write on them, like they do in Russia.
|
| To me, that's a free speech issue. What an affront to free
| speech it is. Saying you support criminal scumbags should not
| be a _crime_. You should be able to say you support a bunch
| of violent yahoos, to whoever will listen to you, and I
| should be able to laugh at you and call you a simpleton for
| your idiot beliefs.
| kolektiv wrote:
| I'm not sure they've been shown to be violent (unless you
| consider damage to property as violence- I know some do,
| but personally my "things are just things" stance limits
| violence to actions which impact people, who matter.
|
| Broadly speaking though, I agree. What they did was
| criminal damage, undoubtedly, I have no problem arresting
| and prosecuting people for that. But I don't believe that
| it's terrorism, nor that it would have been so unpopular
| had it not been bloody embarrassing for the armed forces.
| Honestly, bolt cutters and some paint should not be
| grounding some of your air defence.
| amiga386 wrote:
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1dzq41n4l9o
|
| > Giving evidence earlier, he said the group's only
| intention was to "break in, cause as much damage to the
| factory as possible, destroy weapons and prevent the
| factory from reopening".
|
| I count "causing as much damage as possible" to be
| violent.
|
| While I think graffiti taggers "damage property" but are
| non-violent. But in many places, rival gangs blow up/set
| alight/demolish their rivals' homes/businesses/vehicles,
| etc. That counts as pretty strong violence to me, even if
| no people are injured.
|
| Anyway, talking of people being injured, watch a member
| of Palestine Action (Samuel Corner, 23, Oxford University
| graduate) drive a sledgehammer into a police seargent
| while she's trying to arrest his comrade:
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g54g1r15eo
|
| Full video, sledgehammer attack at 3m05s to 3m10s:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6P7p_5D4hw
|
| I'd designate them as a terrorist group for destroying
| factories, not so much for spraypainting planes. But I'd
| still support your right to say you support them, even
| though I'd disagree.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| > I count "causing as much damage as possible" to be
| violent.
|
| That is just not what the word violent means (unless used
| figuratively but I don't think that's what you mean). It
| means hurting, or attempting to hurt, a person (or maybe
| an animal). Setting fire or blowing up a home _which
| might have people still in it_ is certainly violent, but
| destroying property for the sake or property destruction
| is not.
|
| Of course, deliberately attacking someone with a
| sledgehammer certainly is.
| amiga386 wrote:
| There are a lot of definitions for violence, but most
| would include "destruction" along with "harm", "pain",
| "suffering" and so on.
|
| If I intentionally wreck your home, like I properly
| ransack the place, smash it all up, I'd say I had been
| _violent_ to you. Wouldn 't you? You wouldn't walk in to
| find your home and your life ruined and say "oh it's just
| property damage", would you?
|
| If my nation was at war with yours, and we dropped a bomb
| on your weapons factory, would you count that as violent,
| or non-violent?
| gjm11 wrote:
| FWIW, if you did that to my house I'd be upset and angry
| and not much inclined to use the word "just" about it,
| but no, I wouldn't say you'd been violent to me.
|
| (I would say you'd been violent to me if you'd slapped me
| in the face. I would rather be slapped in the face than
| have my house ransacked and smashed up. Some not-violent
| things are worse than some violent things.)
|
| If you dropped a bomb on a weapons factory _that had, or
| plausibly could have had, people in it_ then that would
| unquestionably be an act of violence. If you somehow knew
| that there was nothing there but hardware then I wouldn
| 't call it an act of violence.
|
| (In practice, I'm pretty sure that when you drop a bomb
| you scarcely ever know that you're not going to injure or
| kill anyone.)
|
| I'm not claiming that this is the only way, or the only
| proper way, to use the word "violence". But, so far as I
| can tell from introspection, it is how I would use it.
|
| There _are_ contexts in which I would use the word
| "violence" to include destruction that only affects
| things and not people. But they'd be contexts that
| already make it clear that it's things and not people
| being affected. E.g., "We smashed up that misbehaving
| printer with great violence, and very satisfying it was
| too".
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| > If I intentionally wreck your home, like I properly
| ransack the place, smash it all up, I'd say I had been
| violent to you. Wouldn't you? You wouldn't walk in to
| find your home and your life ruined and say "oh it's just
| property damage", would you?
|
| There's certainly implied violence. Like, if you done
| that once, maybe you'll be back tomorrow when I happen to
| be in, and actually be violent to me. And even if that
| weren't the case, I'd still obviously be very distressed
| about the situation.
|
| But, having said all that, no I wouldn't say you had been
| violent, if you hadn't actually tried to hurt anyone.
|
| If you dropped a bomb on an abandoned or fully automated
| factory, that you could be 100% sure doesn't have any
| people in it - then I still wouldn't count that as
| "violent" (except maybe figuratively), no matter how
| destructive.
| ItsABytecode wrote:
| I don't really understand the distinction here. Are you
| saying that it's not possible to harm someone by damaging
| their property?
|
| Sure I destroyed their car and they weren't able to go to
| work and got fired, but I didn't physically attack them
| so no harm done.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| One member did very violently attack a police officer:
|
| > A police sergeant was left unable to drive, shower or
| dress herself after a Palestine Action activist allegedly
| hit her with a sledgehammer during a break-in at an
| Israeli defence firm's UK site, a trial has heard.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g54g1r15eo
|
| Of course, one violent member does not make an
| organisation into a terrorist organisation. But, just as
| a matter of fact, there has been some actual violence
| against a person.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Damaging _military equipment_ is the farthest thing from
| terrorism. That 's literally the one thing that can never be
| terrorism.
| davedx wrote:
| If your standard for designating someone a terrorist is "they
| did something quite naughty" - go at it.
| uhhhd wrote:
| "Palestine Action" is terrorism.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Spray painting a bunch of airplanes is terrorism. Got it.
|
| Oh, and don't come crying when the same authoritarian laws
| put in place for Palestine Action are used to label _your_
| cause as terrorism to quash dissent.
| lmc wrote:
| Guess you didn't see the footage of them attacking the
| police with sledgehammers?
|
| https://news.sky.com/story/bodycam-footage-of-alleged-
| sledge...
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Even if I hadn't, I surely would have by now given the
| amount of "gotchas" in this thread using this crime as
| some kind of smoking gun justification for proscription.
|
| But it is good to know that criminal assault is now
| equivalent to terrorism.
| lmc wrote:
| Whatever. I suggest you take some time to reflect on your
| biases. What if a group used similar tactics to try and
| shut down e.g. gay friendly spaces?
| Cyph0n wrote:
| 1) Uh.. not terrorism? Hate crime perhaps, but that
| should be decided by a jury, not unilaterally determined
| by the gov.
|
| 2) So arms manufacturers participating in a war (at
| best!) are now equivalent to.. gay establishments? I
| suggest thinking through your examples before sharing
| them :)
| lmc wrote:
| Ha, fair points. But i still think you're wrong. Any
| group going around hitting people with slegehammers
| shouldn't be tolerated.
| lingrush4 wrote:
| Why are you surprised that people who sympathize with
| terrorists are called terrorists sympathizers?
|
| Roughly 75% of Palestinians support terrorism (the number
| changes with every survey but it's consistently over 50%).
|
| The lady in Minneapolis was using her car as a weapon to impede
| law enforcement operations. That's not really terrorism;
| insurrection would be a more accurate description. But she
| certainly wasn't a good person deserving of any sympathy.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > The lady in Minneapolis was using her car as a weapon to
| impede law enforcement operations.
|
| A hysterical take like this isn't really credible.
| "Obstruction", sure, but calling a stopped vehicle a "weapon"
| because it's slightly in the way defies the English language
| to the point where you damage your own credibility.
|
| It would be equivalent to call this comment a "weapon" I'm
| using to impede you announcing your opinion unopposed.
|
| She's absolutely deserving of sympathy; she was killed
| unjustly. We don't have a law on the books allowing capital
| punishment for parking a vehicle somewhere law enforcement
| finds it inconvenient. Just because you happen not to agree
| with her actions at the time, illegal or no, doesn't imply
| "and therefore she deserved death". I suggest you consider
| the consequences to your own self of people applying your own
| logic to you, and how long you would last if this was the
| general state of affairs.
| veeti wrote:
| I'll do you one better: Palestine Action is bankrolled by
| notorious pro-Russia tankie Fergie Chambers, who supports
| Vladimir Putin's genocidal campaign in Ukraine. So please add
| genocide sympathizer to your list.
|
| [1] https://lamag.com/news/cox-family-heir-james-fergie-
| chambers...
| thinkindie wrote:
| I don't understand why the word genocide is quoted, as if it was
| an odd opinion of the person they are writing the profile about.
| sd9 wrote:
| The title is a non-sequitur.
|
| "Terrorist sympathizer" and "successful businessperson" (or "rich
| person") are completely orthogonal. Building a successful
| business does not necessarily change your terrorist
| sympathisation status. You can be a rich terrorist sympathiser.
| terespuwash wrote:
| Your comment fails to mention that the accusations of sympathy
| for terrorism are lies.
| sd9 wrote:
| I am not equipped to give an opinion on that either way. I'm
| just saying that building a successful business is
| independent of the accuracy of your ideology.
| nephihaha wrote:
| Fair comment. They are two different things.
| yipbub wrote:
| I think it's taking things too literally and pointedly
| ignoring the subtext while unintended or not having
| subtext of their own.
|
| feels like sophistry
|
| the article connects the two, so they are not
| orthonogonal either:
|
| > But even as things got noisy in public, Masad met eerie
| silence professionally. "My calendar was suddenly empty,
| because I was talking about Palestine," he said. "Replit
| was not a hot company anymore. We did a layoff. And at
| the same time, a lot of my friends were no longer my
| friends. I was no longer invited to parties."
|
| > Potential partnerships dried up. Masad became a
| frequent topic in pro-Israel tech groupchats, a source
| said, where some investors accused him of being
| antisemitic.
|
| > A Replit investor who requested anonymity to speak
| candidly told me Masad's public persona has been "really
| challenging," and he's had to defend the founder in
| investor circles. I asked if Masad had lost business
| because of his views. "I'm sure the answer is yes," the
| investor said.
| wulfstan wrote:
| I think this is partly true. Raising the necessary funds,
| hiring enough of the right people and become sufficiently
| visible to get "mindshare" are all important factors in
| building a successful business. It is a lot harder to do
| these things if your ideology is out of step with what is
| considered mainstream.
| tim333 wrote:
| It was kind of the focus of the article though - how his pro
| Palestinian politics interacted with being a SV founder.
|
| It also fitted with some @paulg twitter stuff. He wrote a fair
| bit about both Gaza and Replit.
| paganel wrote:
| > It also fitted with some @paulg twitter stuff.
|
| TIL. Big fair-play to him, and I'm very sincere about it, he
| must of have left a lot of potential money on the table from
| possible investors as a result of his view on the genocide in
| Gaza. Again, fair play to him, we need a lot more people like
| him in our (pretty sad) industry from this point of view.
| tdeck wrote:
| Just look at Tal Broda for one example.
| sillyfluke wrote:
| As far as I can tell, nowhere does the article argue that being
| "terrorist symphathizer" and being a successful business person
| are mutually exculsive, so you seem to be arguing against a
| point no one made.
|
| What is obvious is that people should be outraged if a
| successful businessperson is actually a "terrorist
| sympathizer", because most people, whatever their ideology,
| would simply consider it to be an outrageous and ridiculous
| state of affairs if a successful businessperson was allowed to
| function unimpeded in western society and its business world if
| they themselves considered the businessperson to be an
| unapologetic "terrorist sympathizer".
|
| The title is clearly an enagement ploy by the editor because it
| forces the reader to decide whether they themselves believe the
| founder is actually a terrorist sympathizer or not. If they
| don't think so, then it's outrageous that he's been libelled in
| a such a manner. If they think he is a terrorist sympathizer
| then it would be outrageous to them that he is allowed to
| operate unimpeded in western society and its economic realm.
|
| That's why this comment sounds disingenously pedantic and your
| follow-up comment's detached tone doesn't feel sincere frankly.
| The article does list specific reasons why he was called a
| "terrorist sympathizer" and forces the reader to decide whether
| they themselves would consider the founder a "terrorist
| sympathizer" given the context in order to come to a conclusion
| about him in general.
| SwtCyber wrote:
| So success buys you ideological latitude
| overfeed wrote:
| Billionaires wouldn't run their mouths, if that wasn't the
| case.
| ramon156 wrote:
| Do you know how many politicians switch sides once they have
| lost their power? (well, not many have been in that situation,
| but still!)
|
| As a powerful figure, you become a literal puppet in front of
| the public. Your opinions don't matter
| adolph wrote:
| Effect weakly linked to Affect
| mikestorrent wrote:
| What's the minimum threshold for that, I wonder?
| overfeed wrote:
| Having "Fuck You" money[1] means you don't have to listen to
| anyone (but you still can be shunned, as described in the
| article). You'll substantially greater wealth that FU money
| to make people _listen_ to what _you_ have to say and be
| "uncancellable", like owning a media outlet, hiring a PR
| firm, or buying a pet politician or seat in government. Amjad
| seems to have crossed from the former to the latter by
| economic power: not only can a deal with him now could
| potentially generate lots of wealth, but it may not be a good
| thing to be on his shit-list later when _he_ is the bigger
| fish.
|
| 1. A subjective amount that depends entirely on the
| lifestyle, burn rate and life expectancy.
| mikestorrent wrote:
| Well, for the sake of being an aspiring contrarian, more
| power to him. Last thing I want is billionaires all being
| unified around one opinion.
| pamcake wrote:
| Are we still doing these kinds of lionizing puff pieces after
| SBF, Holmes, Musk and all the others? By now, I consider being
| featured in one a negative signal.
| nephihaha wrote:
| You've got to admit Holmes is an interesting character though.
| pamcake wrote:
| I really don't.
| nephihaha wrote:
| Fair doos. I find con artists and hoaxers fascinating.
| toss1 wrote:
| Seriously? She was a fake in every sense of the word, copying
| everything down to Steve Jobs' mannerisms, photo-ops, and
| black turtleneck sweater.
|
| The only interesting bit is how so many investors were unable
| to see through the obvious act and also failed to do the due
| diligence which is the One Job of VC firms (i.e., if I'm an
| investor, I'm trusting the VC to do real due diligence,
| otherwise why wouldn't I just invest directly in the
| companies).
| nephihaha wrote:
| I find her interesting because she is such a fake. More
| than Steve Jobs in some ways. I'm always fascinated about
| how people can be taken in.
| toss1 wrote:
| Touche -- worth looking more into that aspect!
| gulfofamerica wrote:
| Model Y and Falcon 9 are fakes?
| pamcake wrote:
| Writing this from your fully self-driving car on Mars?
| terespuwash wrote:
| It's fascinating to read how Hacker News helped make Replit
| successful. I hope everyone will try this tool! I wonder if Masad
| still scrolls here nowadays.
| nikanj wrote:
| Who in this current political climate hasn't been called a
| 'terrorist sympathizer'? Feels like 80% of the population qualify
| kburman wrote:
| You can be a controversial figure politically and still build a
| generation defining product. The market rewards utility, not
| ideological purity.
|
| The headline frames this as a paradox, as if these two things are
| incompatible. But they aren't mutually exclusive, he can be both.
| hopelite wrote:
| Considering circumstances all over the West, pretty soon everyone
| will be "terrorist sympathizers" or a sympathizer of whatever the
| next enemy boogeyman du jour is of the abusive ruling class. And
| it's not your favorite political sport team that is good and
| never does that, while the other team always does it and is evil.
| It's being done in the US and it is being done in the EU as well
| as in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand; not even to
| mention Israel, but that can't be considered the West.
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| I remember learning to code with replit, the people from the
| course recommended replit because there was no setup to do
| bdcravens wrote:
| Some criticize that approach, suggesting that you're not
| learning important skills, but I applaud that approach. Anyone
| who's ever been in a workshop at a conference, where you have
| limited time to learn a topic, knows how much time is wasted
| doing initial setup.
| miningape wrote:
| yes this is such a good point, the OG replit could've been
| the perfect conferencing / classroom tool
|
| Running an IDE in a browser like that is not something I'd
| ever want to work with long time or experimenting on my "own"
| computer - maybe it's just me being weird but running the
| code on the metal I'm holding is much more satisfying.
|
| I'm not sure what features / tools replit had in this regard,
| but I could easily see it dominating CS education and
| conferences as the go-to IDE. (then making the real money by
| monetising the students in the future, i.e. other tools you
| can sell - even something like replit as a cloud provider),
| by having features like - templates you could
| share (i.e. one per lesson) - live sessions (where the
| professor could log into many students replit instance and
| demonstrate) - videos built into the editor / streaming
| / conferencing - "homework had-in" features, automated
| test sharing, etc.
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| I remember that was like workshop, something like learn to
| code in 20 minutes, and after learning the concepts and
| realizing you can control all those devices that power the
| world, just with code was magical.
|
| I think that it had a big potential for that.
| jamesbelchamber wrote:
| I used to teach with it - at classroom-scale it was really
| good. Unfortunately they shut all that down a little while
| back, and there wasn't really a good replacement. Which was a
| shame.
|
| Seems to have worked out for them, mind!
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| Such a shame, it was really good for that
| ramon156 wrote:
| I know this isn't very on the topic, but these articles make me
| cringe physically.
|
| > "You should compete," I suggested.
|
| > He smirked. "I always compete."
|
| Feels like a vocal jerk-off. Just tell me the details, idc how
| tuff the interview was.
| ActionHank wrote:
| These pieces are usually just advertising with more words. They
| want to frame Replit and their hero founder as being rebels who
| don't follow the rules or fear goliath.
|
| This is fantasy fiction for VCs, founders, AI bros, and anyone
| else who isn't actually looking for information.
| simonw wrote:
| Are you accusing the SF Standard of running a paid promotion
| without disclosing it as such?
| ramon156 wrote:
| This is similar to a political campaign not telling you to
| vote on X, but still talking greatly about X. It's
| completely legal
| simonw wrote:
| Here's the ethics policy for the SF Standard:
| https://sfstandard.com/ethics-standards/
| barbarr wrote:
| > He smirked. "Yes, I am."
| CjHuber wrote:
| I don't know what it is but I don't think that it's an ad.
| Otherwise I guess they wouldn't have that snarky pro-israel
| undertone towards him.
| ramon156 wrote:
| I did not even notice that, yikes.
| simonw wrote:
| This is a style of writing called "narrative journalism" -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_journalism
|
| I find it pretty distracting too.
| uhhhd wrote:
| GPT wrapper.
| Alex_L_Wood wrote:
| Well, he still is a terrorist symphatizer, just rich now.
| kaicianflone wrote:
| Replit with vercel starter templates and supabase is amazing. I
| even have it do all my migrations and RLS policies. Also
| playwright automated testing in github action CI/CD.
|
| I have it originated from a master prompt project I have
| architected with shadcn suggestions and how I like my app router
| setup.
|
| I'm hooking this up to comet to be fully agentic with Linear
| tasks and human-in-the-loop approvals with up to 5 UI versions
| per feature. And ts contract request/responses for my nextJS api
| endpoints.
|
| I also host a "LangChain" similar like tool in Azure C# minimal
| API in a shared replit secret. It's so nice to be able to re-use
| secrets for Radar, etc across all my apps.
| foobarian wrote:
| In the immortal words of Peter Stormare in the VW ad, "what
| does this do??"
| mikestorrent wrote:
| Well, at some point in time, his workflow produces a landing
| page where you can express interest in funding his projects
| kaicianflone wrote:
| My momma always told me I'd be criticized by people who
| never build anything :)
| kaicianflone wrote:
| The bane of intelligence is contempt instead of curiosity
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's ridiculous to frame an opinion that's extremely common and
| popular as some kind of expression of rebellion against "the
| man". What a puff-piece.
| _bohm wrote:
| Two people got black bagged by the federal government less than
| a year ago for expressing this opinion
| braebo wrote:
| And the FBI has a wrongthink list for this opinion filed
| under anti semitism / domestic terrorism now.
| lingrush4 wrote:
| What kind of dumbass title is this? 99.99% of the world is not
| afraid of silicon valley.
| coffeemug wrote:
| Know Amjad from years ago. We're on the opposite sides of
| ideological barricades, but he's no terrorist sympathizer. Just a
| man who loves his people. He seemed extremely pragmatic too-- if
| he ran Gaza it'd be an economic paradise by now.
| bko wrote:
| He doesn't seem pragmatic because everything I read about him
| or any time I hear from him it's about this geopolitical issue.
| Doesn't he have a company to run? What's the point of making
| this front and center part of your personality. His thoughts on
| the war in Gaza is literally the only thing I know about him.
| That and him firing an intern about a weekend project. It's all
| just exhausting.
|
| How is that pragmatic? If you want to do good things, build a
| business and donate money or whatever. Getting into Twitter
| wars with internet strangers and spending on PR to tell
| everyone what you think about geopolitics strikes me as
| anything but pragmatic.
| coffeemug wrote:
| Eh people get consumed by these things. It's very hard to
| resist when you have a platform and your own people are at
| war. Very very difficult to get past abstractions and just
| work to help in minute particulars.
|
| Plus social media is a uniquely deranging technology. Persona
| on twitter is rarely who the person is in real life.
| a456463 wrote:
| Nothing like paying someone to shill for you.
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