I know this isn't very on the topic, but these articles make me cringe physically.<p>> “You should compete,” I suggested.<p>> He smirked. “I always compete.”<p>Feels like a vocal jerk-off. Just tell me the details, idc how tuff the interview was.
This is a style of writing called "narrative journalism" - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_journalism" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_journalism</a><p>I find it pretty distracting too.
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.<p>This is fantasy fiction for VCs, founders, AI bros, and anyone else who isn't actually looking for information.
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.
Are you accusing the SF Standard of running a paid promotion without disclosing it as such?
This is similar to a political campaign not telling you to vote on X, but still talking greatly about X. It's completely legal
> He smirked. "Yes, I am."
replit is actually quite popular among teenagers and basically third world youngsters trying to spin off a service or a "product" of their own.<p>- 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.<p>just to give u a perspective from a 20year old kid from a 3rd world county
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.
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".<p>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!
How long do those customers stay customers?<p>Are their customers making money?<p>Will they be able to build retention?<p>I've got this question of every platform like this - Lovable, etc.<p>Cursor and IDE tools and models cater to a smaller audience, but they're sticky, repeat customers, big spenders.
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'.
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.
Why don't you just use Claude?<p>I don't get all these vibe coding tools when Claude is better than any of them
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.<p>No need to think about how/where to deploy, cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), etc. Just vibe and deploy.<p>(He did end up moving off the platform once he had enough validation)
I think experienced programmers underestimate how tricky it is to sort the deploying to cloud platforms bit for beginners.
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.<p>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
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.
I'm an experienced programmer and deploying is a clusterfuck these days. It's by far the worst part of making software
I use a mix of Firebase and AWS Copilot CLI (<a href="https://aws.github.io/copilot-cli/" rel="nofollow">https://aws.github.io/copilot-cli/</a>) depending on which platform I'm on.<p>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.
I invested a couple of days to setup a K3S cluster a few years ago and I still use that for any deployment (and I deployed a few more).<p>I don't have to worry about cloud providers ruining my life with updates, free cloudflare in front so I get caching.<p>It's not too bad but there is an initial investment
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.
> (He did end up moving off the platform once he had enough validation)<p>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.
claude is just too expensive and u need to atleast a bit technical expertise in it.<p>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
Third world country could be region blocked.<p>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.
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.
i'm not aware of any service geo-blocked by OpenAI to either pakistan or india<p>Could u share a link or something?<p>P.s. found nothing on a google search
Because i can do it on the phone.
If your optimizing for simple, powerful, and on mobile then Replit is hard to beat.
which country are you from?
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.
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.<p>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.
It 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.
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.<p>Plus social media is a uniquely deranging technology. Persona on twitter is rarely who the person is in real life.
So success buys you ideological latitude
Do you know how many politicians switch sides once they have lost their power? (well, not many have been in that situation, but still!)<p>As a powerful figure, you become a literal puppet in front of the public. Your opinions don't matter
Billionaires wouldn't run their mouths, if that wasn't the case.
What's the minimum threshold for that, I wonder?
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 <i>listen</i> to what <i>you</i> 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 <i>he</i> is the bigger fish.<p>1. A subjective amount that depends entirely on the lifestyle, burn rate and life expectancy.
Effect weakly linked to Affect
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.
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=amasad">https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=amasad</a><p>Yep. Seems like he posts a bit more thoughtfully with deliberation ever since the "suing my intern over a weekend project" debacle.<p>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.
I absolutely love the idea of Replit and I think it's an awesome platform and idea.<p>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<p>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
I remember learning to code with replit, the people from the course recommended replit because there was no setup to do
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.<p>Seems to have worked out for them, mind!
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.
yes this is such a good point, the OG replit could've been the perfect conferencing / classroom tool<p>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.<p>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<p><pre><code> - 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.</code></pre>
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.<p>I think that it had a big potential for that.
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.<p>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.<p>Unfortunate.
Unsurprising, the Diary of a CEO guy is a snake oil salesman. Awful interviewer, but very good at self promotion.
The idea of "advanced users" of vibe coding is interesting.
exe.dev is already miles better already than what replit is attempting to do with it's AI things
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.<p>I have it originated from a master prompt project I have architected with shadcn suggestions and how I like my app router setup.<p>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.<p>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.
The title is a non-sequitur.<p>“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.
Your comment fails to mention that the accusations of sympathy for terrorism are lies.
It was kind of the focus of the article though - how his pro Palestinian politics interacted with being a SV founder.<p>It also fitted with some @paulg twitter stuff. He wrote a fair bit about both Gaza and Replit.
> It also fitted with some @paulg twitter stuff.<p>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.
Just look at Tal Broda for one example.
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.<p>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".<p>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.<p>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.
Nothing like paying someone to shill for you.
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
> these days anyone who says "I support Palestine Action"<p>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 <i>not</i> operating in Israel at all.<p>> "she was murdered by ICE"<p>They have a video of her being shot, pretty much needlessly. I'd say that should be manslaughter at a minimum.
"They have a video of people from this group attacking police with sledgehammers"<p>Do you have the name or names of the person accused of 'attacking police with sledgehammers'?<p>I've heard a lot about this, but it's difficult to get to actual sources about exactly what is alleged.<p>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.<p>It's not terrorism.
> Do you have the name or names of the person accused of 'attacking police with sledgehammers'?<p>You should be less flippant.<p>The accused's name is Samuel Corner. He and his friends are still on trial for their actions.<p>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:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6P7p_5D4hw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6P7p_5D4hw</a><p>The police seargent is now disabled:<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g54g1r15eo" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g54g1r15eo</a><p>> It's not terrorism.<p>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.<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1dzq41n4l9o" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1dzq41n4l9o</a><p>> 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<p>Thanks Samuel. That Oxford degree really shows, doesn't it?
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.<p>Obviously "on one occasion, a person in group X did Y" is <i>evidence</i> 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.)<p>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.)<p>(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.)<p>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).<p>[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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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".<p>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.<p>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 <i>do</i> say things along those lines do so because they think that actually the police are systematically violent and brutal.<p>I think the same applies to organizations like Palestine Action. So far as I can tell, they <i>aren't</i> 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 <i>terrorists</i>.) 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.
> 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.<p>Yet none of them are being prosecuted under the terrorism act, or on any charge related to terrorism.
That's a good point.<p><i>I</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.<p>Palestine Action is <i>already</i> 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.<p>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 <i>just for being a member, or claiming to be a member</i> of Palestine Action. Maybe the CPS can't reliably prove they are?
The quote from the article continues. You cut it off.<p>"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."<p>"My friends were in danger and they [the police] were getting quite hands-on.<p>"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.<p>I don't have any opinion on this but I think its important to have the full quote
> "My friends were in danger and they [the police] were getting quite hands-on.<p>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.<p>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.
> The quote from the article continues. You cut it off.<p>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.<p>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.<p>If you'd like to quote <i>more</i> of the article:<p>> 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".<p>Read that back to yourself while watching the attack footage again. Is this credible testimony?
Wow, thanks. It was really shameful for <i>amiga386</i> to intentionally hide that critical context. They even omitted the comma showing that there <i>was</i> additional context (and replaced it with inappropriate snark).
I find it horrifying (though not surprising) how many people can assume that just because you express some level of support for a group, you are complicit in all actions taken by that group.<p>In the extreme, that sort of view makes it impossible to have criminal lawyers.
(And not far below that extreme, we have people using all their power to go after independent judges and lawyers with every extrajudicial tool at their disposal, legal system be damned.)<p>The nuance between speech and action was one of the many casualties of social media. I wonder if, back in the 90's, people would get arrested for holding "FREE KEVIN MITNICK" posters, if we'd had two decades of social media before it.
Congratulations, you've reached the level of "terrorist well-wisher"
> It is strange how much of this 'direction action' is harming Ukraine support<p>How is direct action on Palestine impacting Ukraine support? (We are also not intervening in Ukraine)
> (We are also not intervening in Ukraine)<p>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.<p>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.
> We are also not intervening in Ukraine<p>Hahhahaha. Hahaha. Ha.<p>The cost of this non-intervention is now at almost $200B, is it not? I guess this money went to elves?
> They have a video of her being shot<p>Why was her vehicle in gear, engine running?
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?<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1q7cg7o/minneapolis_ice_shooter_can_be_seen_walking/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1q7cg7o/minneapolis_ic...</a>
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.
> these days anyone who says "I support Palestine Action"<p>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?
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.<p>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.
"Damaged a bunch of UK Military's planes" == spray painted two planes
Yes. They're a bunch of violent criminals. But that's not the point.<p>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.<p>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 - <i>embarrassed the Government</i>, and the government retaliated by <i>making it illegal to say you support them</i>.<p>Say it out loud? Criminal. Wear a t-shirt? Criminal. Hold a placard? Criminal.<p>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.<p>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 <i>crime</i>. 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.
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.<p>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.
<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1dzq41n4l9o" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1dzq41n4l9o</a><p>> 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".<p>I count "causing as much damage as possible" to be violent.<p>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.<p>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:<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g54g1r15eo" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g54g1r15eo</a><p>Full video, sledgehammer attack at 3m05s to 3m10s: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6P7p_5D4hw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6P7p_5D4hw</a><p>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.
> I count "causing as much damage as possible" to be violent.<p>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 <i>which might have people still in it</i> is certainly violent, but destroying property for the sake or property destruction is not.<p>Of course, deliberately attacking someone with a sledgehammer certainly is.
There are a lot of definitions for violence, but most would include "destruction" along with "harm", "pain", "suffering" and so on.<p>If I intentionally wreck your home, like I properly ransack the place, smash it all up, I'd say I had been <i>violent</i> 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?<p>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?
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.<p>(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.)<p>If you dropped a bomb on a weapons factory <i>that had, or plausibly could have had, people in it</i> 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.<p>(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.)<p>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.<p>There <i>are</i> 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".
> 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?<p>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.<p>But, having said all that, no I wouldn't say you had been violent, if you hadn't actually tried to hurt anyone.<p>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.
I don't really understand the distinction here. Are you saying that it's not possible to harm someone by damaging their property?<p>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.
One member did very violently attack a police officer:<p>> 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.<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g54g1r15eo" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g54g1r15eo</a><p>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.
Damaging <i>military equipment</i> is the farthest thing from terrorism. That's literally the one thing that can never be terrorism.
If your standard for designating someone a terrorist is "they did something quite naughty" - go at it.
Why are you surprised that people who sympathize with terrorists are called terrorists sympathizers?<p>Roughly 75% of Palestinians support terrorism (the number changes with every survey but it's consistently over 50%).<p>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.
> The lady in Minneapolis was using her car as a weapon to impede law enforcement operations.<p>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.<p>It would be equivalent to call this comment a "weapon" I'm using to impede you announcing your opinion unopposed.<p>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.
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.<p>[1] <a href="https://lamag.com/news/cox-family-heir-james-fergie-chambers-funding-palestine-action-in-exclusive-funding-palestinian-action-us/" rel="nofollow">https://lamag.com/news/cox-family-heir-james-fergie-chambers...</a>
"Palestine Action" is terrorism.
> 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.<p>This sentence would be better without the scare quotes. Something like "calling out those in tech who support what he views as a genocide."
The phrasing in the article shows very strong bias towards Israel in general
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.<p>Scare quotes don’t mean that it’s not true.
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As it happens, genocide scholars disagree with you, and in any case, Gaza's population has not increased.
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.”<p>When I pointed out that Saudi Arabia has its own abysmal human rights record, Masad drew a contrast.<p>“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."
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.
I mean, if he was <i>really</i> 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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
Hey, get with the times. Whitewashing jihadis is in vogue these days.
You might be into that. The rest of us like to analyse things honestly, especially given America is going down the route of making the same moves as history. If you don't see that, then it'd probably be better for you to go read something than to offer pithy comments on here.
Do you believe the violence would have happened without the US invasion?
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Let's not forget Laos and Cambodia, where unexploded munitions dumped by the US decades ago are killing and maiming people even today - <a href="https://www.humanium.org/en/unexploded-bombs-still-endanger-children-in-laos-and-cambodia/" rel="nofollow">https://www.humanium.org/en/unexploded-bombs-still-endanger-...</a>
"responsible" is a weasel word. By that logic China is also "responsible" for Cambodia genocide 1975-1979, and who are responsible for Sudan famine?
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More than 70000 including 20000 children? Wow thats a lot.
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.<p>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.
> from their prior genocidal campaign<p>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):<p>1. In 1948 Arab forces besieged Jerusalem and they were starting to run out of food.<p>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)
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.
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.
If your primary cause is Palestine then it's pretty internally consistent?
Pecunia non olet.
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> blowing up kids<p>not to refute the difference in extent but this is somewhat notable
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahyan_airstrike" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahyan_airstrike</a>
The Saudi war against Houthis was more brutal than the Gaza war. 70,000 dead from only starvation for starters. But not only is it not genocide it doesn't even enter conscious awareness as a thing that happened. I wonder why.
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.
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.
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.)
The coin is wealthy people. They're different sides of that coin. Hence why the commenter above is sensing some malice from both sides.
Last I checked the Koch Brothers weren’t Israeli. Do read up on them. Oversimplified narratives are bullshit.
The only difference being that he wants to replace those with himself and his.
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.
Zionism is older than the state of Israel. It is a political movement consisting mainly of christians.<p>If you want to learn more you could do worse than follow Zachary Foster's lectures for the Rutgers Center:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zachary+foster+rutgers" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zachary+foster+...</a><p>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:<p><a href="https://www.patreon.com/tenepod" rel="nofollow">https://www.patreon.com/tenepod</a>
Although Palestinian nationalism does predate modern Zionism as it was originally directed at the Ottoman Rulers.
Kahane, notably a terrorist and racial supremacist.
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> is how he's just the other side of the same coin.<p>Yes. And one side of the coin supports and justifies colonialism, apartheid and even genocide; the other side fights against it.
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.
Replit seems to be another company that doesn't justify it's valuation in this bubble
Replit has been around for years, has real users, and now reportedly real revenue
My bet is they sold lots if data for llm training
Public opinion on Amjad shifted quite a bit in 2021 when he threatened to sue a former intern for his open-source project.<p><a href="https://intuitiveexplanations.com/tech/replit/" rel="nofollow">https://intuitiveexplanations.com/tech/replit/</a>
This was the first thing I remembered about Amjad. I have never thought highly of him since.
Definitely was the end of Replit for me. I have that open source project (Riju) bookmarked though and use it from time to time.
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.
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.
You say this as if the side you're advocating for didn't start the war by killing over a thousand civilians.<p>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?
My point equally applies to <i>everyone</i> 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.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeannette_Rankin" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeannette_Rankin</a>
All the violence in the region stems from the Zionist invasion, land theft and genocide.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba</a>
Only one side stormed through civilian areas killing everyone they met, and it wasn't the Israelis.
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).<p>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 <i>against</i> violence (e.g. Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ, Lao Tzu, Gandhi, MLK, etc).
Yes, it actually was and is the Israelis:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba</a><p>Palestinians have every right to resist occupation.
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”.<p>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.<p>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.
Excellent reference at the end, thanks for making me feel old. :)
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.
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.<p>Yes, it would be dishonorable to be mercenary, but being a tribalist is merely the default position. We’re all so at some scale.
I'm not a fan of a guy who builds a brand around politics. It will come around.
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.
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.
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.<p>I tried their AI coding feature a few months back, and it was quite bad, but it was interesting to watch it iterate.
I 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.<p>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.<p>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.
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It 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.<p>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.
Personally speaking, I get much better outcome from Lovable than Replit using same prompts.
You can be a controversial figure politically and still build a generation defining product. The market rewards utility, not ideological purity.<p>The headline frames this as a paradox, as if these two things are incompatible. But they aren't mutually exclusive, he can be both.
This guy isn't a mold-breaking radical, he's just a garden variety sociopath <a href="https://intuitiveexplanations.com/tech/replit/" rel="nofollow">https://intuitiveexplanations.com/tech/replit/</a>
"was called" - who was behind that?
Weasel words, basically. All too common in journalism. It's also common on Wikipedia but Wikipedia acknowledges it: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word</a>
that quotes attributed to "investors," according to Masad. but some of the most heinous stuff people said to him is public: <a href="https://x.com/rabois/status/1943804360863232513" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/rabois/status/1943804360863232513</a> "your friends should have not raped murdered and killed kids."
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?<p>Let's try Elon Musk then:
"He was called a 'fascist'. Now, his tech company is valued $1.5T"<p>This is the way, right?
"one being so good that anyone can become a software engineer".<p>Of course, smartphones' cameras are so good and accessible, but not anyone who became a professional photographer?<p>And of course, isn't software engineering far beyond than simply writing code in any form - whether in English or in symbols?
Yes but smartphones decimated photography jobs, especially on the low end.
Pareto principle in action - smartphones are good enough for 80% of use cases. And so is AI for a lot of junior-level work.<p>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 <i>hard</i>.
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.<p>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.
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
Programming is mostly a craft. Engineering would be more like designing algorithms.
Just like word processing software and LLMs meant anyone can become a journalist. /s
“Masad insists he speaks up even when it hurts his business. In that regard, ‘I’m probably the only contrarian in Silicon Valley.’”
GPT wrapper.
> Palestinian man is ok working with the Saudis
At least it isn't the UAE but... really? Still happy for him though.
What kind of dumbass title is this? 99.99% of the world is not afraid of silicon valley.
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A reminder that antizionism is not antisemitism
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Yes 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.
Connecting these two concepts like Netanyahu et. al. are constantly (insincerely) doing, is <i>actually</i> breeding <i>real</i> antisemitism. I wish more people realized this.
Ridiculous. Most of the world has a negative view of Zionism, as they should, and ethnosupremacy in general.
There'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.
Most of the world has a positive view of self-determination for every other group; Ukrainians, Palestinians, the Irish, etc.
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There are 2 million Arabs in Israel. There are 0 Jews in areas under full Palestinian control.
> Those groups are indigenous to the land they live on<p>Homo Sapiens is only indigenous to South Africa, pedantically speaking.
That doesn't make sense. Zionism depends on antisemitism, so true antisemites are by definition pro-Zionist.
There are a couple problems with this view:<p>- 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.<p>- 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.
Citation needed.
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Trying to frame the violent expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland as just "Jews trying to live in their own homeland".. isn't working in 2026 and nobody needs to read the thoughts of a man who saw Cecil Rhodes as a kindred spirit.
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Jews were not only expelled from Arab counties, catholic too.
Jews left Arab stats on their own accord because of rise of Zionism.<p>Arab were the only folks who accepted Jews in the first place as they sought refuge from Nazi Europe
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How is Arab conquest of Palestine "resistance"? Palestine was at the time controlled by the Byzantine Empire: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Muslim_conquest_of_Jerusalem" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Muslim_conquest_of_Jerus...</a>
Remember when Germany lost the second world war, lost a third of its territory, had millions ethnically cleansed from said territory and then proceeded to <i>not</i> maintain a goal to wipe Poland off the map (again)?
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Would you please stop posting flamebait and perpetuating flamewars? You've been doing this a ton lately and your account is crossing over the line (<a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...</a>). We've repeatedly asked you to fix this and your latest run has been one of the worst. That's not good.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>
In your opinion, if an American converts to Judaism, at what point does America cease to become their homeland?
One can similarly become Palestinian by immigrating to Palestine (and "fitting in", which involves speaking Arabic etc). Arafat was born in Egypt, for example.<p>Does this refute the notion that Palestinians are from Palestine? I would say no. Similarly Jews are from Judea, despite the existence of a small number of converts with "impure" lineage.
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The focus on a particular location is a religious one (in the scriptures there was a Jewish homeland before Israel or Egypt, and Israel is singled out because God told them to go), but it's also a selective one that ignores all the times God arranged for Israel not to be there; and crucially does not stop and wait for His opinion about the present. It is the most dangerous kind of religious opinion: one invented by us.
Damn those racist Haredi Jews, right?
Don't get too excited about their views - they very much believe that the land belongs to Jews, they just think they should wait for the Messiah to give us the signal before going there.<p>It's funny how people associate their views with humanism: they are simply extremely religious and on this specific question, the current result of their extreme beliefs happen to align with yours.
I recommend _Culture in Nazi Germany_ by Michael K Kater. [0]<p>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.<p>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.<p>It was not until the late 1960s that younger culture started to shift that mind set to fascism is bad.<p>If you think I am wrong about the summation of the book ... read it.<p>[0] <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300253375/culture-in-nazi-germany/" rel="nofollow">https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300253375/culture-in-naz...</a>
As mentioned, I recommend going directly to the source. The clearest indication of what Zionism is the father of modern Zionism and Israel: <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25282/25282-h/25282-h.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25282/25282-h/25282-h.htm</a><p>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.<p>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".
You sound like you’re trying to collapse the term into a single definition based on one guy, which just doesn’t match the variety of people and motivations using it today. Christian white nationalists in the US are not calling themselves Zionist because “we need a homeland, let’s all go back to Israel”.<p>You might as well say that Republicans are the party that fought the Confederates and freed the slaves. It is not true today.
How does having a religious base state prevent bigotry and discrimination? Both are mutually exclusive.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Earth is the home land of humans not a politically divided territory.
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"More rights than most Arab countries" lmao sure, just cause you keep repeating a slogan doesn't make it true, that's called propaganda, there's very systematic and well-documented racism towards anyone who's not a Jew
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> <i>Jewish homeland is Poland, Russia, Germany</i><p>Jews have been in the Levant longer than they’ve been in Germany. (And in both for less time than they’ve been in America.)<p>The problem is with the notion of a homeland. Whose ancestors had what claim to something shouldn’t have bearing on how people are treated today.
Do you have an example? I've studied quite a bit of Hertzel and what I mainly remember repeated to us is "We shall never discriminate between one man and another; We shall never ask 'what is your religion?' nor 'what is your race?'. For us it is enough that he is a human being." and "My will to the People of Israel: create your country in such a way, that the non-Jew will feel good to be your neighbour".
Sure:<p>In a diary entry from June 12, 1895, Herzl detailed his plan: "We shall try to spirit the penniless [Palestinian] population across the border by denying it any employment in our own country... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly".
The Arab homeland is in Arabia, not Palestine. Palestine is a Roman creation after the destruction of Judea. It was named after a group of European invaders who conquered a small part of Israel 3000+ years ago.<p>Arabs aren't native to Palestine. Jews are. They were present in Palestine before the name Palestine was ever used.
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Exactly. It's usually the Zionist sources themselves that are unabashedly genocidal and supportive of ethnic cleansing.<p>More recent example is Bari Weiss, who wrote in 2021:<p>"The results of this mess, as always, are especially bad for the Palestinians who live under Hamas rule. Casualty reports are hard to verify because Hamas controls the media (even the international press) inside the Gaza Strip, but it appears that more than 50 Palestinians have been killed. Some of these people are entirely innocent non-combatants, including children. This is an unspeakable tragedy. It is also one of the unavoidable burdens of political power, of Zionism's dream turned into the reality of self-determination."<p>So according to Bari Weiss, the mass slaughter of children is one of Zionism's political responsibilities of power.
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What are you even talking about? My family is Argentine and 100% assimilated, speak English, love and embrace American culture and values. No one has ever treated us any differently in any context both in middle America and on the coasts.<p>It’s not a racial issue either, because my friends who are first generation Asian, Indian, etc, would all share the same sentiment. America is the most welcoming place on Earth for immigrants who are willing to put up even the smallest effort to assimilate into the culture.
So racism has been (more or less) eradicated in the US? Just trying to understand your comment before I respond more substantively because that’s a very striking claim and I want to be sure that’s actually what you mean.
Not OP, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say racism is “more or less eradicated” in the US. People’s experiences vary a lot by region, by urban vs rural areas, and even by neighbourhood and institution within the same city. Some places are clearly more inclusive than others, and disparities still show up in things like housing, policing, and employment within the city. So it’s hard to generalize.
This will shock people, but America is not all that racist by world standards. Talk to someone from Asia for starters.<p>I’m not aware of anywhere with no racism. Humans are tribal and broad stereotypes are intellectually lazy but easy.
> This will shock people, but America is not all that racist by world standards. Talk to someone from Asia for starters.<p>I’m not shocked. I also don’t believe that “not as bad as…” is the same as “not a real problem.”<p>Getting stabbed twice in the side missing a major organ/artery isn’t as bad as getting shot twice in the heart, but both are very serious and painful.
I'm not making a normative judgement here, it's just my observation as the child of immigrants myself. There are of course exceptions to the rule. I'm making an argument in the context of political economy, please don't take it personally.
No, you’re not making an argument in the context of political economy. You’re making an argument based on nothing: no data, no studies, just anecdote and personal opinion.<p>I don’t take seriously your attempt to hide it behind a supposed “observed factual reality.” This is similar to how eugenicists made up their own fake science to try to justify racism.<p>People are well within their rights to take xenophobic hate personally.
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I don't understand this comment. Are you saying that Masad is not assimilated into the US because he doesn't support Israel's genocide against his people? Israel is not the US and supporting it is an increasingly unpopular position in the US. If anything he's <i>more</i> assimilated due to his position.
The 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.
> The majority of Americans are of British ancestry<p>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]<p>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.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/10/2020-census-dhc-a-white-population.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/10/2020-census-d...</a><p>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 <i>whites</i> in the US due to the very large Irish population.
Sorry, 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.
> I do think British ancestry is underreported because of an exoticism bias but we can ignore that.<p>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.
> The majority of Americans are of British ancestry<p>Wildly inaccurate
That’s a fair point - as demonstrated by Amjad’s high regard for libertarian values.<p>People are multifaceted. We’re complex and sometimes irrational. I can also believe that you can share certain views yet still not be fully embraced or respected for them.<p>As a crude example, a Caucasian man who was born and raised in Japan thought of himself to be Japanese ideologically. Yet to the Japanese he was always an outsider - as a result, he has never felt truly at home anywhere.
I will remind you that most of the world and many Americans consider what is happening in Gaza a genocide: the intent to destroy a group in whole or in part. Israel intends ethnic cleansing by genocidal means and continues to attack civilians despite a "ceasefire". Just today I got a terrified text message from a teacher as they airstriked in her camp while she lives in a partly destroyed house that cannot be repaired. They previously bombed the ppl in tents outside who had run from the north with nothing.<p>I hope there is some humanity left in this country.
He seems assimilated as fuck. What are you talking about?
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It'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.
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Likud government and charter explicitly calls for all land between the river and the sea to be for Jews.
That is a territorial/sovereignty claim (i.e., rejecting Palestinian sovereignty/statehood in that space). It is not an explicit call to kill, expel, or physically destroy Palestinians, nor does it literally say “for Jews only.”<p>Under the Genocide Convention, genocide requires specific intent (“intent to destroy, in whole or in part”) a protected group, plus one of the listed genocidal acts (killing; causing serious harm; inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction; preventing births; forcibly transferring children).
The Hamas charter indicates that they would accept a two-state solution with 1967 borders.<p>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.
In the 2017 Charter, Hamas states its claims, such as making Jerusalem its capital. However, nowhere in the charter does Hamas state that it will recognise Israel. In fact the document explicitly rejects recognition of Israel and aims for “liberation of all of Palestine”<p>Note also that Hamas never repealed their 1988 charter that called for the annihilation of Israel and contains openly antisemitic language.<p>For a two-state solution to work, Hamas will need to recognise Israel's right to co-exist alongside a Palestine state. And Hamas will need to stop killing innocent Israeli citizens.
No, they reject zionism:<p>"20. Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus."<p>Which is a very reasonable position, since it is a movement predicated on genocidal violence and the crime of apartheid. If the state of Israel were to reform or through revolution become democratic and stop its incessant aggression towards both neighbours and more distant countries, I'm sure Hamas would "recognise Israel".<p>But as I said, this is not an acceptable alternative to the jewish israeli mainstream, nor the zionist movement generally.<p>The palestinians are actually pretty good at not killing "innocent[s]". Much better than the israelis, who have made sport, commerce and dating out of humiliation and terror perpetrated against palestinians.
You claim Israel needs to “become democratic” and is an “apartheid” state despite the fact Israel is a functioning pluralist democracy that comprises both Jews and Arabs (unlike Gaza, which expelled Jews and is led by terrorists).<p>By the “Zionist entity,” Hamas are describing Israel.<p>I don’t think you’re ignorant. I think you’re wilfully turning a blind eye to just how hypocritical Hamas are in their criticism of Israel.
No, it is not a democracy. Apartheid states are not democracies, and Israel is not pluralistic, it is fiercely supremacist. And, as it happens, led by at least one convicted terrorist.<p>It wasn't Hamas that "expelled the Jews" in 2005, it was Israel that dismantled its illegal settlements.<p>Right, by the zionist entity Hamas is describing Israel today, but leaves it open whether it might still be a genocidal settler state in the future.<p>I'm not so sure Hamas criticises Israel. Do you have something in particular in mind? From my perspective they try to resist the occupation and genocidal policies. To the extent that they publish criticism it is usually aimed at international institutions and countries enabling Israel that claim to value international law and human rights but clearly do so in a severely racist and bigoted way.
> No, it is not a democracy.<p>Israel is a parliamentary democracy with a multi-party system, independent judiciary, elections and civil liberty.<p>If you believe otherwise, you must be knee-deep in Hamas propaganda, as many Western leftists seem to be.<p>> It wasn't Hamas that "expelled the Jews" in 2005, it was Israel that dismantled its illegal settlements.<p>So Hamas made it illegal for Jews to live in Gaza? Sounds like an apartheid state to me...<p>Meanwhile 21% of Israeli citizens are Arab.
No, it is not, it is a supremacist apartheid state, which is also illegally occupying and settling territory. Hamas more commonly calls israelis nazis, rather than mentioning the apartheid.<p>No, international law made it illegal.<p>It's a stretch to call them "citizens".
> The Hamas Charter explicitly called for the “annihilation” of the Jewish state.<p>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 ...
> you have a part who is calling for the annihilation of palestinians<p>No you don't.<p>You have a democratically elected government aiming for the dismantling of Hamas.<p>Hamas is the proscribed terror organisation that is currently leading Gaza.<p>Israel is not calling for the annihilation of Palestinians.<p>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.
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.
Stopped reading after "shooting range".
> “Should I wear a keffiyeh to the shooting range?”<p>I'll give the writer this -- they conveyed a <i>lot</i> 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.
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. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>
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.
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.
Replay will implode once the AI mania cools off
Well, he still is a terrorist symphatizer, just rich now.
Who in this current political climate hasn't been called a 'terrorist sympathizer'? Feels like 80% of the population qualify