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Replit founder Amjad Masad isn’t afraid of Silicon Valley
- artninja1988 9mo agoA reminder that antizionism is not antisemitism
- iddan 9mo ago[flagged]
- halflife 9mo ago[flagged]
- rowanseymour 9mo agoYes I'm sure if the settlers who forced Amjad Masad's people into refugee camps were a different religion he'd be fine with it.
- soldthat 9mo ago[flagged]
- rowanseymour 9mo agoIt's really not and I don't think it's worth arguing with you but.. Zionism is the establishment of a Jewish majority state.. which requires the expulsion of much of the existing non-Jewish population. That not the same as other countries acknowledging the borders of Palestine.
- soldthat 9mo ago[flagged]
- siltcakes 9mo agoPalestinians are the indigenous people to the land who were ethnically cleansed via Nakba. It's not "nationalism" to allow people to return to the land that was stolen from them.
- Marsymars 9mo agoThe crux of the problem is that there are multiple peoples with reasonably legitimate claims to the same indigeneity.
- siltcakes 9mo ago[flagged]
- throw310822 9mo agoNo there aren't. Where is the legitimacy if Jewish claims to the land? That it says so in their religious texts? Ffs.
- lukan 9mo agoMaybe because most of them were born there and also their parents and grandparents? That is called birthright and the way I see it, it applies to both groups. And the conflict will never be solved (without large scale genocide), if both groups largely negate the other groups rights.
- throw310822 9mo agoYou're right, expelling Israelis from Palestine would be a crime exactly as it's been a crime expelling Palestinians. While I believe that Jews had no right in the first place to immigrate there, this doesn't change the status of their descendants who are born there and whose families are born there. But let's be clear on this: Jews that are not currently in Israel have no right to immigrate there. Jews that are in Israel have no right on any part of the land that isn't already part of Israel proper; and finally, Jews (exactly as much as Palestinians do) have a right to life, property and safety but not necessarily to their own political entity.
- vkou 9mo agoCitation needed.
- nailer 9mo ago[flagged]
- _menelaus 9mo agoRidiculous. Most of the world has a negative view of Zionism, as they should, and ethnosupremacy in general.
- FunnyUsername 9mo agoThere's nothing supremacist about Zionism, it's just the support of Jewish self-determination. Efforts to twist it into something nefarious are just propaganda with no etymological basis.
- _menelaus 9mo agoThink about what you're saying. Zionism the idea that a particular ethnic group (the Jews) will have the authority to determine what happens in their country (Israel). That is a textbook case of ethnic supremacism. And that's not even mentioning the violent expulsion of the Arabs that this de facto entailed.
- FunnyUsername 9mo agoMost Zionists have a goal of preserving a Jewish majority for pragmatic reasons - history has shown that it's the only way to ensure the safety of Jews. That's not a supremacist ideology at all. Moreover, no country is perfect, and we shouldn't have double standards just for Israel. Can you identify any other Middle Eastern country that compares favorably, in terms of diversity and tolerance of all religions and ethnicities?
- siltcakes 9mo agoZionists aren't indigenous to Palestine and have no right to that land.
- FunnyUsername 9mo agoZionism is a political view; a Zionist can be from anywhere just as a socialist can. Jews are indigenous to Judea though. Others have a right to live in the region too, hence proposals to share the land, such as the partition plan or the 2000 Camp David offer.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- moogly 9mo agoConnecting these two concepts like Netanyahu et. al. are constantly (insincerely) doing, is actually breeding real antisemitism. I wish more people realized this.
- soldthat 9mo ago[flagged]
- wizzwizz4 9mo agoExplanations aren't justifications, nor excuses. Most things happen for reasons.
- soldthat 9mo ago[flagged]
- wizzwizz4 9mo agoWhy are they racist? I assume you're not saying that some people are born racist, and other people are born anti-racist.
- soldthat 9mo ago[flagged]
- wizzwizz4 9mo agoSomeone with a tendency towards racist generalisations might start disliking a particular group due to the zeitgeist identifying "disliking the behaviour of a political entity" with "disliking all members of an ethnic group", though. If they previously didn't hold any such views, then they would go from "not racist" to "racist". (If you disagree with my category boundaries, you can construct your own similar example for your preferred category boundaries.) Just because something's wrong, that doesn't mean it's illogical. A logical conclusion from flawed premises is still logical.
- EtienneDeLyon 9mo agoThat doesn't make sense. Zionism depends on antisemitism, so true antisemites are by definition pro-Zionist.
- FunnyUsername 9mo agoThere are a couple problems with this view: - You could say that antisemites are a cause of Zionism, but that doesn't mean they intentionally support it. Not all antisemites are of the "go back to Palestine" type. - Just as "antisemitism" doesn't actually mean hate of Semetic people, "antizionism" doesn't actually mean opposition to Zionism. Instead it developed into a rather separate hate movement. Many antizionism ostensibly support a 2SS, which would mean they actually support rather than oppose Zionism, but are nonetheless part of the antizionism movement.
- nailer 9mo ago[flagged]
- yndoendo 9mo agoI recommend _Culture in Nazi Germany_ by Michael K Kater. [0] The push for a Zionist state started and accelerated in the 1920s to the end of the 1930s. Most of the Jews that moved from Europe to Palestine, which was part of modern day Israel, were by the Zionists. Reason is because the only jobs at the time were farming so people would have to give up their current triad. Number of these individuals actually supported fascism. Even after WWII the mind set was not that fascism was bad but poorly implemented. That mind set was shared by a number of Germans and Jews that moved to Palestine before Israel became a state. It was not until the late 1960s that younger culture started to shift that mind set to fascism is bad. If you think I am wrong about the summation of the book ... read it. [0] https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300253375/culture-in-nazi-germany/ https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300253375/culture-in-naz...
- nailer 9mo agoAs mentioned, I recommend going directly to the source. The clearest indication of what Zionism is the father of modern Zionism and Israel: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25282/25282-h/25282-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25282/25282-h/25282-h.htm It's a hundred pages. If someone hasn't read it, or even a summary, they have little knowledge of Zionism. WW2 was far after the modern return of Jews to Israel. I grew up in a very left leaning, pro terrorism household. I was absolutely wrong about what Zionism was - not a 'God promised me this because I'm special" as I was told but rather "racism means we need a homeland let's all go back to Israel".
- yndoendo 9mo agoHow does having a religious base state prevent bigotry and discrimination? Both are mutually exclusive. In the world, Jews discriminate against Jews, Christians discriminate against Christians, Muslims discriminate Muslims, ... A religious state can only have one variant of religion that is deemed the right variation even though multiple variations exist. The closest thing to a non bigot and discriminating state is one that is not built on religion but accepts other people and allows them to exercise their variation of religion. Earth is the home land of humans not a politically divided territory.
- firen777 9mo ago[flagged]
- lingrush4 9mo ago[flagged]
- primitivesuave 9mo agoPublic 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/ https://intuitiveexplanations.com/tech/replit/
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- bitbasher 9mo agoThis was the first thing I remembered about Amjad. I have never thought highly of him since.
- siltcakes 9mo agoMy 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 9mo agoCompletely 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.
- chinathrow 9mo agoStopped reading after "shooting range".
- frumplestlatz 9mo ago> “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 9mo agoPlease 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jiveturkey 9mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- eltondegeneres 9mo ago> 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."
- nailer 9mo ago[flagged]
- cholantesh 9mo agoAs it happens, genocide scholars disagree with you, and in any case, Gaza's population has not increased.
- FunnyUsername 9mo agoIt'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 9mo agoIt'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 9mo agoOr even international media outside of proctored propaganda trips. They obviously have learned their lesson since the 1982 invasion.
- FunnyUsername 9mo agoIt’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.
- user723432754 9mo ago“Masad insists he speaks up even when it hurts his business. In that regard, ‘I’m probably the only contrarian in Silicon Valley.’”
- jerlam 9mo agoThe only contrarian, just like everyone else.
- siltcakes 9mo agoHe 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 9mo ago> He and Paul Graham, truly are the only people speaking out against Zionism Not sure what about this is contrarian.
- siltcakes 9mo agoGoing 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 9mo agoThat 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 9mo agoBeing against genocide and land theft is the correct side obviously.
- gameboy45 9mo agointeresting 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 9mo agoSeems 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.
- catlover76 9mo ago[dead]
- yeasku 9mo agoMore than 70000 including 20000 children? Wow thats a lot.
- dralley 9mo agoYou say that like it's unrealistic. The accepted death toll for the conflict in Yemen is nearly 400,000 people.
- ebbi 9mo agoI 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.
- aerodog 9mo ago"was called" - who was behind that?
- appled232 9mo agothat 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 https://x.com/rabois/status/1943804360863232513 "your friends should have not raped murdered and killed kids."
- qart 9mo agoWeasel words, basically. All too common in journalism. It's also common on Wikipedia but Wikipedia acknowledges it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word
- didibus 9mo agoReading 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 9mo agoI 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.
- simulator5g 9mo agoThe coin is wealthy people. They're different sides of that coin. Hence why the commenter above is sensing some malice from both sides.
- refulgentis 9mo agoBoth 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 9mo agoThe 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 9mo ago
- mdni007 9mo ago[flagged]
- dcreater 9mo agoReplit seems to be another company that doesn't justify it's valuation in this bubble
- riku_iki 9mo agoMy bet is they sold lots if data for llm training
- ramoz 9mo agoI 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 9mo agoI 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 9mo agoReplit has been around for years, has real users, and now reportedly real revenue
- dcreater 9mo agoThat doesn't necessitate a fair valuation.
- renewiltord 9mo agoAll 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 9mo agoExcellent reference at the end, thanks for making me feel old. :)
- intalentive 9mo agoI 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 9mo agoEveryone 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.
- mise_en_place 9mo ago[flagged]
- renewiltord 9mo agoThe majority of Americans are of British ancestry and the polarization between Dems and Reps is pretty high. You think that a coastal elite immigrant British descendant and Asian-American are farther apart than the same chap and a similar counterpart in Appalachia? I doubt it.
- KK7NIL 9mo ago> The majority of Americans are of British ancestry No they aren't. Even if you narrow it down just to white Americans, British ancestry is almost even with German and does not hold a majority once you include Irish, Italian, etc. [1] I don't blame you for thinking they are tough, as Anglo culture and language has been unusually dominant, probably because the original 13 colonies were very Anglo and the whites that trickled in later largely assimilated. "Albion's seed" is an interesting book on this topic. [1]: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/10/2020-census-dhc-a-white-population.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/10/2020-census-d... Edit: British doesn't usually denote an ethnic group so I took it to mean Anglo, but if you take it to mean Anglo+Celtic then it would indeed make a majority of whites in the US due to the very large Irish population.
- renewiltord 9mo agoSorry, yeah, I meant the majority of Whites and I should have said British Isles. Thank you for correcting what I said, which was indeed wildly inaccurate. I do think British ancestry is underreported because of an exoticism bias but we can ignore that.
- KK7NIL 9mo ago> I do think British ancestry is underreported because of an exoticism bias but we can ignore that. That's fair but I'll also point out that pan-Germanic (including Nordic) ancestry is actually the majority in many Midwest and West coast states, while the northeast is obviously very Anglo. So you can get a very different impression depending where you spend your time.
- anonzzzies 9mo agoOf 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.
- verisimi 9mo ago[flagged]
- pcurve 9mo agoPersonally speaking, I get much better outcome from Lovable than Replit using same prompts.
- anonzzzies 9mo agoIt is not political; I did not know the owner had political opinions. I started using Replit before it had AI, had some ideas and they gave me a free year of AI last year when I complained it is so far behind the rest. And imho, it still is. Like the other comment here: I just have much better outcomes with the same prompts with other tools. That is all I meant to say.
- verisimi 9mo agoCheers
- wombat-man 9mo agoreplit 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.
- anonzzzies 9mo agoI am comparing it to the state of the art of AI envs and as for the setup; github could also do that for quite a long time now (but it got a lot easier and cheaper); for the past, I would say year, it was easy to experiment with whatever on github too, and recently on chatgpt and claude. All of them now have containers that start which can run anything. So they caught up with Replit there, but AI wise replit didn't catch up with them. Sure it is interesting to watch it iterate, but that is also interesting for all the others as they do that too, just better. I cannot see why one would use replit over the rest at this point but obviously that can change if it does get significantly better.
- mannanj 9mo agoSo 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 9mo agoThe idea of "advanced users" of vibe coding is interesting.
- danpalmer 9mo agoUnsurprising, the Diary of a CEO guy is a snake oil salesman. Awful interviewer, but very good at self promotion.
- mannanj 9mo agoSnake oil salesman is a rather deceptive and false accusation isn't it? He's launched, invested in and maintains success in multi-million and billion dollar companies. Snake oil sales don't get you that far.
- nirushiv 9mo ago[flagged]
- gosub100 9mo agoI'd say SBF takes that title, followed by holmes and the wework clown
- rekttrader 9mo ago[flagged]
- thedelanyo 9mo ago"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 9mo agoProgramming is mostly a craft. Engineering would be more like designing algorithms.
- immibis 9mo agoThat'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 9mo agocraft: 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 9mo ago> 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 9mo agoYes but smartphones decimated photography jobs, especially on the low end.
- kogasa240p 9mo ago> Palestinian man is ok working with the Saudis At least it isn't the UAE but... really? Still happy for him though.
- indigodaddy 9mo agoexe.dev is already miles better already than what replit is attempting to do with it's AI things
- jjsullivan5196 9mo agoThis guy isn't a mold-breaking radical, he's just a garden variety sociopath https://intuitiveexplanations.com/tech/replit/ https://intuitiveexplanations.com/tech/replit/
- leoh 9mo agoYup.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- throwaway290 9mo agoThis was making rounds on hn but I think no one bothered to connect the dots. most people cheering for that guy probably outraged over the same guy that time.
- Bluescreenbuddy 9mo agoReplay will implode once the AI mania cools off
- redwood 9mo agoI'm not a fan of a guy who builds a brand around politics. It will come around.
- lostlogin 9mo agoLike it has to other business guys who have built a brand around politics?
- zeroonetwothree 9mo agoI think it has negatively affected Elon yes.
- lostlogin 9mo agoI’m not sure that was his politics so much as it was him erratically doing whatever came to him that minute. Elons politics are similar to Trumps, and Trump isn’t hurting.
- camillomiller 9mo agoA 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 9mo agoThe article clearly states that he lost business and risked bankruptcy.
- paglaghoda 9mo agoreplit 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 9mo agowhich country are you from?
- user_7832 9mo agoGoing by the username, I'm guessing India or perhaps Bangadesh
- paglaghoda 9mo agoIndia it is
- mbesto 9mo agoI 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 9mo agoWhy don't you just use Claude? I don't get all these vibe coding tools when Claude is better than any of them
- CharlieDigital 9mo agoA 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)
- classified 9mo ago[flagged]
- wtcactus 9mo agoWhat 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 9mo ago“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 9mo ago> “Terrorist sympathiser” doesn’t mean much these days. I guess it means almost as little as "fascist" then.
- ImPostingOnHN 9mo ago> I guess it means almost as little as "fascist" then. Which I guess means almost as little as "antisemite" then.
- jeanlou 9mo agoIt's funny how when talking about Israël's wrongdoings, everything is just "allegedly". Facts already confirms genocide, but hey, they don't want to land in hot water.
- cbeach 9mo ago[flagged]
- chakintosh 9mo ago> The Hamas Charter explicitly called for the “annihilation” of the Jewish state. See, this is what grinds my effing gears. On one hand you have a party "calling" for the "annihilation" of Israel. On the other hand, you have a part who is calling for the annihilation of palestinians AND they are ACTIVELY doing it. But no, you have to draw an equivalence somehow ...
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- cbeach 9mo ago> you have a part who is calling for the annihilation of palestinians No you don't. You have a democratically elected government aiming for the dismantling of Hamas. Hamas is the proscribed terror organisation that is currently leading Gaza. Israel is not calling for the annihilation of Palestinians. The death of Palestinians is entirely the fault of Hamas, whose blatent and attrocious terrorism led Israel with no choice other than to respond with force and defend Israeli citizens from the further attrocities that Hamas have promised.
- cess11 9mo agoThe Hamas charter indicates that they would accept a two-state solution with 1967 borders. This is not something the state of Israel will accept and is quite blatant in declaring that they would prefer to keep up the genocide.
- jwblackwell 9mo agoI 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 9mo agowell, 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 9mo ago> 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 9mo agoCongratulations, you've reached the level of "terrorist well-wisher"
- flumpcakes 9mo agoIs there something you disagree with? My opinions were pretty neutral.
- simondotau 9mo agoThe internet is where every issue is a binary, nuance is scorned, and moderate views are weakness. You should know this already.
- thinkindie 9mo agoI 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.
- afroboy 9mo ago[flagged]
- flyinglizard 9mo agoIt's in consensus, even by Hamas themselves.
- PunchyHamster 9mo ago[flagged]
- sd9 9mo agoThe 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 9mo agoYour comment fails to mention that the accusations of sympathy for terrorism are lies.
- sd9 9mo agoI 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 9mo agoFair comment. They are two different things.
- yipbub 9mo agoI 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.
- SwtCyber 9mo agoSo success buys you ideological latitude
- overfeed 9mo agoBillionaires wouldn't run their mouths, if that wasn't the case.
- ramon156 9mo agoDo 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 9mo agoEffect weakly linked to Affect
- mikestorrent 9mo agoWhat's the minimum threshold for that, I wonder?
- overfeed 9mo agoHaving "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 9mo agoWell, 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 9mo agoAre 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 9mo agoYou've got to admit Holmes is an interesting character though.
- pamcake 9mo agoI really don't.
- nephihaha 9mo agoFair doos. I find con artists and hoaxers fascinating.
- toss1 9mo agoSeriously? 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).
- terespuwash 9mo agoIt'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.
- nerdsniper 9mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=amasad https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=amasad Yep. Seems like he posts a bit more thoughtfully with deliberation ever since the "suing my intern over a weekend project" debacle. Having other close friends from Jordan, it's not surprising that he's outspoken on the topic of Israeli occupation - it's very difficult to spend a significant amount of time in the affected regions and not come away with a very strong opinion.
- nikanj 9mo agoWho in this current political climate hasn't been called a 'terrorist sympathizer'? Feels like 80% of the population qualify
- kburman 9mo agoYou 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 9mo agoConsidering 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 9mo agoI remember learning to code with replit, the people from the course recommended replit because there was no setup to do
- bdcravens 9mo agoSome 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 9mo agoyes 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 9mo agoI 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 9mo agoI 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!
- ramon156 9mo agoI 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.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- ActionHank 9mo agoThese 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 9mo agoAre you accusing the SF Standard of running a paid promotion without disclosing it as such?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- ramon156 9mo agoThis is similar to a political campaign not telling you to vote on X, but still talking greatly about X. It's completely legal
- simonw 9mo agoHere's the ethics policy for the SF Standard: https://sfstandard.com/ethics-standards/ https://sfstandard.com/ethics-standards/
- ActionHank 9mo ago
- uhhhd 9mo agoGPT wrapper.
- Alex_L_Wood 9mo agoWell, he still is a terrorist symphatizer, just rich now.
- kaicianflone 9mo agoReplit 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 9mo agoIn the immortal words of Peter Stormare in the VW ad, "what does this do??"
- mikestorrent 9mo agoWell, at some point in time, his workflow produces a landing page where you can express interest in funding his projects
- kaicianflone 9mo agoMy momma always told me I'd be criticized by people who never build anything :)
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- kaicianflone 9mo agoThe bane of intelligence is contempt instead of curiosity
- AlexandrB 9mo agoIt'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.
- lingrush4 9mo agoWhat kind of dumbass title is this? 99.99% of the world is not afraid of silicon valley.
- coffeemug 9mo agoKnow 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.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- bko 9mo agoHe 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 9mo agoEh 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.
- ugh123 9mo agoIt sounds like you're mainly responding and reacting to what people (and media) choose to write about him (a narrative revolving around his political beliefs), rather than how he (mostly) goes about his day to day.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- a456463 9mo agoNothing like paying someone to shill for you.