Replit founder Amjad Masad isn’t afraid of Silicon Valley
sfstandard.com282 points by newusertoday a day ago
282 points by newusertoday a day ago
I know this isn't very on the topic, but these articles make me cringe physically.
> “You should compete,” I suggested.
> He smirked. “I always compete.”
Feels like a vocal jerk-off. Just tell me the details, idc how tuff the interview was.
This is a style of writing called "narrative journalism" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_journalism
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.
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
Here's the ethics policy for the SF Standard: https://sfstandard.com/ethics-standards/
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.
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.
Eh people get consumed by these things. It's very hard to resist when you have a platform and your own people are at war. Very very difficult to get past abstractions and just work to help in minute particulars.
Plus social media is a uniquely deranging technology. Persona on twitter is rarely who the person is in real life.
replit is actually quite popular among teenagers and basically third world youngsters trying to spin off a service or a "product" of their own.
- i mean yes u cannot make money out of teenagers but damn replit's Vibe coding tool is fucking good. Better than Lovable or Bolt any day.
just to give u a perspective from a 20year old kid from a 3rd world county
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".
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?
Are their customers making money?
Will they be able to build retention?
I've got this question of every platform like this - Lovable, etc.
Cursor and IDE tools and models cater to a smaller audience, but they're sticky, repeat customers, big spenders.
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.
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'.
Why don't you just use Claude?
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.
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)
I think experienced programmers underestimate how tricky it is to sort the deploying to cloud platforms bit for beginners.
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 have a habit now of getting that out of the way first just so I don't have to think about it. Get a basic functioning prototype and then figure out my infra and deployment as early as possible.
Well, I got it out of the way early, but I keep discovering changes need to be made...
Depending on my projects, I tend to keep it pretty simple.
For personal projects, usually Firebase (+ occasional Cloud Run mixed in) which makes it relatively easy.
For professional projects, it's pretty easy now on AWS with their (unfortunately named) Copilot CLI [0] (highly, highly recommended).
But mostly, I keep my infra simple and bias towards modular monoliths [1] which ends up being the majority of my infra work (container packaging and deployment of the initial runtime infra).
[0] https://aws.github.io/copilot-cli/
[1] https://chrlschn.dev/blog/2024/01/a-practical-guide-to-modul...
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.
Most experienced programmers have no experience deploying apps (or their experience is from earlier in their career). Especially engineers at big companies where there are whole teams dedicated to infra/devops.
The percentage of programmers with side projects they deploy themselves is very small. I’d guess less than 10% have a side project deployed somewhere. (And these days
> Most experienced programmers have no experience deploying apps (or their experience is from earlier in their career)
Most experienced programmers in my circles have evening/weekend projects. We are notorious for hoarding unused domains for the "brilliant side project" that gets a burst of commits right after domain-renewal time
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 (https://aws.github.io/copilot-cli/) depending on which platform I'm on.
Both make it pretty dead simple to deploy. AWS Copilot being the "more powerful" of the two, but still dead simple to use compared to CDK, Cloud Formation, or writing Terraform or Pulumi scripts.
> (He did end up moving off the platform once he had enough validation)
I'm really curious what this looks like in practice? Like can you just download the whole codebase, throw it against a Supabase Postgres DB, and you're off running? What about any backing services or microservices? Is it tied to any thing like lambdas etc.
claude is just too expensive and u need to atleast a bit technical expertise in it.
replit has made it like, even a 11 year old can make something out of thin air and acutally publish it to get a link to share
Third world country could be region blocked.
Not sure why this is controversial. I know it’s an issue with Cursor as they have to limit availability of models based on region. OpenAI specifically blocks India and Pakistan for example, among a long list of other countries.
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
Could u share a link or something?
P.s. found nothing on a google search
which country are you from?
Replit with vercel starter templates and supabase is amazing. I even have it do all my migrations and RLS policies. Also playwright automated testing in github action CI/CD.
I have it originated from a master prompt project I have architected with shadcn suggestions and how I like my app router setup.
I'm hooking this up to comet to be fully agentic with Linear tasks and human-in-the-loop approvals with up to 5 UI versions per feature. And ts contract request/responses for my nextJS api endpoints.
I also host a "LangChain" similar like tool in Azure C# minimal API in a shared replit secret. It's so nice to be able to re-use secrets for Radar, etc across all my apps.
In the immortal words of Peter Stormare in the VW ad, "what does this do??"
Well, at some point in time, his workflow produces a landing page where you can express interest in funding his projects
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.
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.
I remember that was like workshop, something like learn to code in 20 minutes, and after learning the concepts and realizing you can control all those devices that power the world, just with code was magical.
I think that it had a big potential for that.
yes this is such a good point, the OG replit could've been the perfect conferencing / classroom tool
Running an IDE in a browser like that is not something I'd ever want to work with long time or experimenting on my "own" computer - maybe it's just me being weird but running the code on the metal I'm holding is much more satisfying.
I'm not sure what features / tools replit had in this regard, but I could easily see it dominating CS education and conferences as the go-to IDE. (then making the real money by monetising the students in the future, i.e. other tools you can sell - even something like replit as a cloud provider), by having features like
- templates you could share (i.e. one per lesson)
- live sessions (where the professor could log into many students replit instance and demonstrate)
- videos built into the editor / streaming / conferencing
- "homework had-in" features, automated test sharing, etc.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.
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!)
As a powerful figure, you become a literal puppet in front of the public. Your opinions don't matter
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 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.
Well, for the sake of being an aspiring contrarian, more power to him. Last thing I want is billionaires all being unified around one opinion.
I absolutely love the idea of Replit and I think it's an awesome platform and idea.
I do wonder how sustainable it is as a business though. I expect Replit is sending the majority of that money to the big AI labs through API costs
As soon as anything becomes serious you're going to try and take it off Replit and use something like Claude Code and AWS etc
The title is a non-sequitur.
“Terrorist sympathizer” and “successful businessperson” (or “rich person”) are completely orthogonal. Building a successful business does not necessarily change your terrorist sympathisation status. You can be a rich terrorist sympathiser.
Your comment fails to mention that the accusations of sympathy for terrorism are lies.
I am not equipped to give an opinion on that either way. I’m just saying that building a successful business is independent of the accuracy of your ideology.
I think this is partly true. Raising the necessary funds, hiring enough of the right people and become sufficiently visible to get "mindshare" are all important factors in building a successful business. It is a lot harder to do these things if your ideology is out of step with what is considered mainstream.
Fair comment. They are two different things.
I think it's taking things too literally and pointedly ignoring the subtext while unintended or not having subtext of their own.
feels like sophistry
the article connects the two, so they are not orthonogonal either:
> But even as things got noisy in public, Masad met eerie silence professionally. “My calendar was suddenly empty, because I was talking about Palestine,” he said. “Replit was not a hot company anymore. We did a layoff. And at the same time, a lot of my friends were no longer my friends. I was no longer invited to parties.”
> Potential partnerships dried up. Masad became a frequent topic in pro-Israel tech groupchats, a source said, where some investors accused him of being antisemitic.
> A Replit investor who requested anonymity to speak candidly told me Masad’s public persona has been “really challenging,” and he’s had to defend the founder in investor circles. I asked if Masad had lost business because of his views. “I’m sure the answer is yes,” the investor said.
It was kind of the focus of the article though - how his pro Palestinian politics interacted with being a SV founder.
It also fitted with some @paulg twitter stuff. He wrote a fair bit about both Gaza and Replit.
> It also fitted with some @paulg twitter stuff.
TIL. Big fair-play to him, and I'm very sincere about it, he must of have left a lot of potential money on the table from possible investors as a result of his view on the genocide in Gaza. Again, fair play to him, we need a lot more people like him in our (pretty sad) industry from this point of view.
As far as I can tell, nowhere does the article argue that being "terrorist symphathizer" and being a successful business person are mutually exculsive, so you seem to be arguing against a point no one made.
What is obvious is that people should be outraged if a successful businessperson is actually a "terrorist sympathizer", because most people, whatever their ideology, would simply consider it to be an outrageous and ridiculous state of affairs if a successful businessperson was allowed to function unimpeded in western society and its business world if they themselves considered the businessperson to be an unapologetic "terrorist sympathizer".
The title is clearly an enagement ploy by the editor because it forces the reader to decide whether they themselves believe the founder is actually a terrorist sympathizer or not. If they don't think so, then it's outrageous that he's been libelled in a such a manner. If they think he is a terrorist sympathizer then it would be outrageous to them that he is allowed to operate unimpeded in western society and its economic realm.
That's why this comment sounds disingenously pedantic and your follow-up comment's detached tone doesn't feel sincere frankly. The article does list specific reasons why he was called a "terrorist sympathizer" and forces the reader to decide whether they themselves would consider the founder a "terrorist sympathizer" given the context in order to come to a conclusion about him in general.
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.
Two people got black bagged by the federal government less than a year ago for expressing this opinion
And the FBI has a wrongthink list for this opinion filed under anti semitism / domestic terrorism now.
exe.dev is already miles better already than what replit is attempting to do with it's AI things
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"
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.
"They have a video of people from this group attacking police with sledgehammers"
Do you have the name or names of the person accused of 'attacking police with sledgehammers'?
I've heard a lot about this, but it's difficult to get to actual sources about exactly what is alleged.
Even if this did happen as you say. attachking police with sledgehammers is assault, potentially even attempted murder. There's plenty of laws for that.
It's not terrorism.
> Do you have the name or names of the person accused of 'attacking police with sledgehammers'?
You should be less flippant.
The accused's name is Samuel Corner. He and his friends are still on trial for their actions.
Here's the bodycam footage where you see Samuel Corner attack police seargent Kate Evans with a sledgehammer while she was on the ground, fracturing her spine. Watch from 3m05s to 3m10s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6P7p_5D4hw
The police seargent is now disabled:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g54g1r15eo
> It's not terrorism.
The group's stated aim is to stop the UK or any UK companies giving Israel any military support. They target companies who they think supply Israel. They break in and smash them, and as you've hopefully just seen with your own eyes, they are not afraid to attack people with sledgehammers. They use violence to achieve their political aim. They are terrorists and belong in prison.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1dzq41n4l9o
> Samuel Corner, 23, [...] Oxford University graduate from Devon [...] when asked why he struck Sgt Evans with the sledgehammer, he replied: "It was me not really knowing what I was doing
Thanks Samuel. That Oxford degree really shows, doesn't it?
It feels to me like there's a distinction between "on one occasion, one person in group X did Y" and "group X does Y", and it's the second of those that (for some choices of Y, including "attacking police with sledgehammers") could justify calling group X a terrorist group.
Obviously "on one occasion, a person in group X did Y" is evidence for "group X does Y". If Samuel Corner attacked a police sergeant with a sledgehammer during one Palestine Action, er, action, then that's the sort of thing we expect to see more often if PA is generally in favour of attacking police with sledgehammers. (Either as a matter of explicit open policy, or as a nudge-nudge-wink-wink thing where everyone in PA knows that if they start smashing up police as well as property then their PA comrades will think better of them rather than worse.)
But it falls way short of proof. Maybe Samuel Corner sledgehammered a cop because Palestine Action is a terrorist organization after all; but maybe Samuel Corner sledgehammered a cop because Samuel Corner is a thug or an idiot or was drunk or whatever. Or maybe Samuel Corner sledgehammered a cop because the cops were already being violent with the Palestine Action folks and he was doing his (ill-advised) best to protect the others from the police. (This, as I understand it, is his account of things.)
(An Oxford University graduate attacked a police officer with a sledgehammer. I take it you would not say that that makes the University of Oxford a terrorist organization, and you wouldn't say that even if he'd done it while attending, say, a university social function rather than while smashing up alleged military hardware. It matters how typical the action is of the organization, what the group's leadership thinks of the action, etc.)
I took a look at the video. It's not easy to tell what's going on, but it looks to me as follows. One of the PA people is on the ground, being forcibly restrained and tasered by a police officer, complaining loudly about what the police officer is doing. (It isn't obvious to me whether or not her complaints are justified[1].) There is another police officer, whom I take to be Kate Evans, nearby, kneeling on the ground and helping to restrain this PA person. Samuel Corner approaches with his sledgehammer and attacks that second police officer. I can't tell from the video exactly what he's trying to do (e.g., whether he's being as violent as possible and hoping to kill or maim, or whether he's trying to get the police officer off the other person with minimal force but all he's got is a sledgehammer).
[1] I get the impression that she feels she has the right not to suffer any pain while being forcibly restrained by police, which seems like a rather naive view of things. But I also get the impression that the police were being pretty free with their tasering. But it's hard to tell exactly what's going on, and I imagine it was even harder in real time, and I am inclined to cut both her and the police some slack on those grounds.
It's highly misleading, even though not technically false, to say that Corner attacked Kate Evans "while she was on the ground"; she certainly was on the ground in the sense that she was supported by the floor, and even in the sense that she wasn't standing up -- I think she was crouching -- but it's not like she was lying on the ground injured or inactive; she was fighting one of the other PA people, and she was "on the ground" because that PA person was (in a stronger sense) "on the ground" too.
For the avoidance of doubt, I do not approve of attacking police officers with sledgehammers just because they are restraining someone you would prefer them not to be restraining, even if you think they're doing it more violently than necessary. And I have a lot of sympathy with police officers not being super-gentle when the people they're dealing with are armed with sledgehammers.
But the story here looks to me more like "there were a bunch of PA people, who had sledgehammers because they were planning to smash up military hardware; the cops arrived and wrestled and tasered them, and one of the PA people lost his temper and went for one of the cops to try to defend his friend whom he thought was being mistreated, and unfortunately he was wielding a sledgehammer at the time" than like "PA is in the business of attacking cops with sledgehammers".
None of that makes Kate Evans any less injured. But I think those two possibilities say very different things about Palestine Action. Carrying sledgehammers because you want to smash equipment is different from carrying sledgehammers because you want to smash people. Attacking police because they are a symbol of the state is different from attacking police because they are attacking your friend. One person doing something bad in the heat of the moment because he thinks his friend is being mistreated is different from an organization setting out to do that bad thing.
There are plenty of documented cases of police being violent (sometimes with deadly effect) with members of the public. Sometimes they have good justification for it, sometimes not so much. Most of us don't on those grounds call the police a terrorist organization. Those who do say things along those lines do so because they think that actually the police are systematically violent and brutal.
I think the same applies to organizations like Palestine Action. So far as I can tell, they aren't systematically violent and brutal. Mostly they smash up hardware that they think would otherwise be used to oppress Palestinians. (I am making no judgement as to whether they're right about that, which is relevant to whether they're a Good Thing or a Bad Thing but not to whether they're terrorists.) Sometimes that leads to skirmishes with the police. On one occasion so far, one of them badly injured a police officer. It's very bad that that happened, but this all seems well short of what it would take to justify calling the organization a terrorist one.
> The group's stated aim is to stop the UK or any UK companies giving Israel any military support. They target companies who they think supply Israel. They break in and smash them, and as you've hopefully just seen with your own eyes, they are not afraid to attack people with sledgehammers. They use violence to achieve their political aim. They are terrorists and belong in prison.
Yet none of them are being prosecuted under the terrorism act, or on any charge related to terrorism.
That's a good point.
I think they meet the definition of "terrorists" by their stated goals and acts. But it seems there's reticence by the CPS to break out the Terrorism Act.
Palestine Action is already a proscribed group because of spraypainting RAF planes. I would say this raid seems more terroristic than base invasion, but what do I know? I'm not the Home Secretary.
It raises questions, because while the Terrorism Act is heavily criticised for being overbroad and making a number of otherwise innocuous things crimes, the CPS haven't used it against this group of people, who'd face prison just for being a member, or claiming to be a member of Palestine Action. Maybe the CPS can't reliably prove they are?
The quote from the article continues. You cut it off.
"It was me not really knowing what I was doing, I was trying to protect Leona, or Zoe. I couldn't tell who was screaming."
"My friends were in danger and they [the police] were getting quite hands-on.
"I remember just feeling like I had to help somehow. I would never think to do that to someone, I was just trying to help," he said.
I don't have any opinion on this but I think its important to have the full quote
> "My friends were in danger and they [the police] were getting quite hands-on.
They were petulantly resisting arrest (it looks on camera to scream instead of just complying calmly) while committing destructive/violent crimes. The police were very restrained here. There was no danger from the police, at all.
Now a police officer doing their job has a spinal injury. Palestine Action says they will not stop doing 'direct action' (sabotage, property destruction, violence). They deserve the proscription.
> The quote from the article continues. You cut it off.
I quoted three separate snippets from the article that I wanted to draw attention to, and gave you the URL to read the rest yourself.
I'm of the opinion that, someone who sledgehammers an unaware opponent and claims in their defense "I was just trying to help", they are being disingenuous. Especially as one of Britain's most elite and privileged youngsters.
If you'd like to quote more of the article:
> When asked by his barrister Tom Wainwright whether he was willing to injure a person or use violence during the break-in, he replied: "No, not at all".
Read that back to yourself while watching the attack footage again. Is this credible testimony?
Wow, thanks. It was really shameful for amiga386 to intentionally hide that critical context. They even omitted the comma showing that there was additional context (and replaced it with inappropriate snark).
Congratulations, you've reached the level of "terrorist well-wisher"
Is there something you disagree with? My opinions were pretty neutral.
The internet is where every issue is a binary, nuance is scorned, and moderate views are weakness. You should know this already.
I just felt you didn't quite reach the criteria for "terrorist sympathizer" outlined above. I don't make the rules!
UK military is operating in Palestine (very frequent military flights from their post-colonial base in Cyprus), and is operating in Israel (when they were shooting down drones, etc.), and is supplying Israel with weapons (directly by soldier training and indirectly by allowing to use their military bases), and joined in international coverup (they have detailed intelligence on what Israel was doing in Gaza, which they never released publicly any part of).
Pretty solid basis for direct action.
If they provided this level of support for Russia, they'd be a new Belarus.
Equating surveillance flights off the coast with "operating in the country" is tenuous at best. If that's the threshold, Russian military is already operating in Britain (see Yantar's adventures).
The mental effort a lot of people has made to pretend they aren't entirely powerless and irrelevant for stopping Israel's crimes is deeply impressive. The reality is that there's nothing the UK can do to stop Israel as long as the US is supporting them (short of going to war with both the US and Israel), but this reality is at odds with the desire to do something, so people invent and inflate leverage where there isn't any. Moreover, most of the time the very same people oppose creating more leverage for the future, as your added qualifier of "post-colonial" implies. It's depressing.
> They have a video of her being shot
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?
https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1q7cg7o/minneapolis_ic...
> It is strange how much of this 'direction action' is harming Ukraine support
How is direct action on Palestine impacting Ukraine support? (We are also not intervening in Ukraine)
> (We are also not intervening in Ukraine)
Not direct intervention; but we fly sorties, provide intelligence, ship military equipment, build systems for... None of which we provide Israel for their current war.
It's just odd to me that Israel draws so much Ire when the UK deals with all sorts. There are many worse things happening that doesn't get a second of airtime.
> We are also not intervening in Ukraine
Hahhahaha. Hahaha. Ha.
The cost of this non-intervention is now at almost $200B, is it not? I guess this money went to elves?
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.
That's a big statement to make - do you have any credible sources on that?
At a minimum the RAF has operated hundreds of surveillance flights over Gaza.
Multiple sources linked on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_and_the_Gaza_wa...
If I recall correctly this was in direct response to British citizens being kidnapped and held hostage inside Gaza. These were intelligence sorties with the express aim to help locate UK citizens.
Literally hilarious.
So UK citizens were not kidnapped? Or are you implying the UK were not doing intelligence flights, but were attacking Gaza directly, or had boots on the ground directly? Because I have seen absolutely zero reporting to infer that.
Like all defenders of the indefensible, you will shift the goalposts incessantly to suit the narrative you wish to defend.
First it was, "The British military isn't doing anything in Gaza, anyone who says otherwise is lying."
Now it is, "The British military might be doing something in Gaza, but they're justified in doing so, and it's limited to protecting British citizens anyways."
What will it be now?
"While the Ministry of Defence (MoD) claims these flights are solely for locating Israeli hostages held by Hamas, AOAV found that the RAF conducted 24 flights in the two weeks leading up to and including the day of Israel’s deadly attack on the Nuseirat Refugee Camp on 8 June 2024, which killed 274 Palestinians and injured over 700."
https://aoav.org.uk/2025/britain-sent-over-500-spy-flights-t...
"On October 19, 2024, four days after it had been at RAF Brize Norton, the “Re’em” aircraft with registration 272 appeared directly over Gaza at 7:32 p.m. local time, less than 5km away from Beit Lahiya, a city in north Gaza. Three hours later, at 11:20 p.m., the IAF bombed a residential complex in Beit Lahiya killing at least 73 people.
On October 24, 2024, nine days after traveling to the UK, the same 272 aircraft was located at 9:30 p.m. less than 5 miles from Jabalia camp. An hour later, at 10:40 p.m., airstrikes were recorded destroying apartment blocks in Jabalia. The aircraft remained airborne patrolling the airspace near Gaza until it was recorded at 10:36 p.m. near Ashdod, a coastal city near Tel Aviv, flying towards Hatzor Airbase."
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/revealed-uk-labour-israeli-mi...
"Robot boots 30,000 feet above the ground" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
I guess those Russian drones in Ukraine aren’t military combatants then?
Well the Russian drones are munitions, so that's not comparable. Is the UK dropping bombs on Gaza? I have seen zero reporting to say they have.
The UK might be flying spy planes outside it's airspace when it's citizens were kidnapped. That's not a "combatant". Was the UK a combatant when flying spy planes near the Ukraine border?
I think you are way off the mark based on reporting, I'm not even sure how you are coming to these stated opinions.
No, they're not dropping munitions, they're simply coordinating with the Israeli military to facilitate the dropping of munitions, doing everything possible save putting boots on the ground (that we know of). So you're right, in that case Britain is more like China in this situation, perfectly blameless.
> these days anyone who says "I support Palestine Action"
You mean the group that sneaked in and damaged a bunch of UK Military’s planes on a military base? Was this the action that put them into the terrorist category?
Not quite in the same league as IS, Al-Qaeda etc etc. Used to be a organisation had to murder and terrorise an entire population, or fly planes into city centres.
Apparently our standards have dropped so low that spray painting a couple of planes and embarrassing the UK military now puts you on par with those other organisations.
"Damaged a bunch of UK Military's planes" == spray painted two planes
Spray painting a jet engine causes millions in damages, but it's a cute sleight of hand to insinuate it's just some graffiti on a wall or something.
Yes. They're a bunch of violent criminals. But that's not the point.
There are lots of violent criminals who harm businesses and injure, or even kill people. They should be prosecuted and imprisoned. It's not illegal to say "I support <name of criminal or criminal gang>", even if people strongly disagree with you.
However, by showing they could break into an RAF base and spraypaint the planes - that says to me that the RAF are completely shit at their job, how can they protect their base from Russians if they can't even keep out local criminals - embarrassed the Government, and the government retaliated by making it illegal to say you support them.
Say it out loud? Criminal. Wear a t-shirt? Criminal. Hold a placard? Criminal.
Might as well just hold up blank sheets of paper and wait for the police to arrest you because they know what you want to write on them, like they do in Russia.
To me, that's a free speech issue. What an affront to free speech it is. Saying you support criminal scumbags should not be a crime. You should be able to say you support a bunch of violent yahoos, to whoever will listen to you, and I should be able to laugh at you and call you a simpleton for your idiot beliefs.
I'm not sure they've been shown to be violent (unless you consider damage to property as violence- I know some do, but personally my "things are just things" stance limits violence to actions which impact people, who matter.
Broadly speaking though, I agree. What they did was criminal damage, undoubtedly, I have no problem arresting and prosecuting people for that. But I don't believe that it's terrorism, nor that it would have been so unpopular had it not been bloody embarrassing for the armed forces. Honestly, bolt cutters and some paint should not be grounding some of your air defence.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1dzq41n4l9o
> Giving evidence earlier, he said the group's only intention was to "break in, cause as much damage to the factory as possible, destroy weapons and prevent the factory from reopening".
I count "causing as much damage as possible" to be violent.
While I think graffiti taggers "damage property" but are non-violent. But in many places, rival gangs blow up/set alight/demolish their rivals' homes/businesses/vehicles, etc. That counts as pretty strong violence to me, even if no people are injured.
Anyway, talking of people being injured, watch a member of Palestine Action (Samuel Corner, 23, Oxford University graduate) drive a sledgehammer into a police seargent while she's trying to arrest his comrade:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g54g1r15eo
Full video, sledgehammer attack at 3m05s to 3m10s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6P7p_5D4hw
I'd designate them as a terrorist group for destroying factories, not so much for spraypainting planes. But I'd still support your right to say you support them, even though I'd disagree.
> I count "causing as much damage as possible" to be violent.
That is just not what the word violent means (unless used figuratively but I don't think that's what you mean). It means hurting, or attempting to hurt, a person (or maybe an animal). Setting fire or blowing up a home which might have people still in it is certainly violent, but destroying property for the sake or property destruction is not.
Of course, deliberately attacking someone with a sledgehammer certainly is.
I don't really understand the distinction here. Are you saying that it's not possible to harm someone by damaging their property?
Sure I destroyed their car and they weren't able to go to work and got fired, but I didn't physically attack them so no harm done.
There are a lot of definitions for violence, but most would include "destruction" along with "harm", "pain", "suffering" and so on.
If I intentionally wreck your home, like I properly ransack the place, smash it all up, I'd say I had been violent to you. Wouldn't you? You wouldn't walk in to find your home and your life ruined and say "oh it's just property damage", would you?
If my nation was at war with yours, and we dropped a bomb on your weapons factory, would you count that as violent, or non-violent?
FWIW, if you did that to my house I'd be upset and angry and not much inclined to use the word "just" about it, but no, I wouldn't say you'd been violent to me.
(I would say you'd been violent to me if you'd slapped me in the face. I would rather be slapped in the face than have my house ransacked and smashed up. Some not-violent things are worse than some violent things.)
If you dropped a bomb on a weapons factory that had, or plausibly could have had, people in it then that would unquestionably be an act of violence. If you somehow knew that there was nothing there but hardware then I wouldn't call it an act of violence.
(In practice, I'm pretty sure that when you drop a bomb you scarcely ever know that you're not going to injure or kill anyone.)
I'm not claiming that this is the only way, or the only proper way, to use the word "violence". But, so far as I can tell from introspection, it is how I would use it.
There are contexts in which I would use the word "violence" to include destruction that only affects things and not people. But they'd be contexts that already make it clear that it's things and not people being affected. E.g., "We smashed up that misbehaving printer with great violence, and very satisfying it was too".
> If I intentionally wreck your home, like I properly ransack the place, smash it all up, I'd say I had been violent to you. Wouldn't you? You wouldn't walk in to find your home and your life ruined and say "oh it's just property damage", would you?
There's certainly implied violence. Like, if you done that once, maybe you'll be back tomorrow when I happen to be in, and actually be violent to me. And even if that weren't the case, I'd still obviously be very distressed about the situation.
But, having said all that, no I wouldn't say you had been violent, if you hadn't actually tried to hurt anyone.
If you dropped a bomb on an abandoned or fully automated factory, that you could be 100% sure doesn't have any people in it - then I still wouldn't count that as "violent" (except maybe figuratively), no matter how destructive.
One member did very violently attack a police officer:
> A police sergeant was left unable to drive, shower or dress herself after a Palestine Action activist allegedly hit her with a sledgehammer during a break-in at an Israeli defence firm's UK site, a trial has heard.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g54g1r15eo
Of course, one violent member does not make an organisation into a terrorist organisation. But, just as a matter of fact, there has been some actual violence against a person.
If your standard for designating someone a terrorist is "they did something quite naughty" - go at it.
Damaging military equipment is the farthest thing from terrorism. That's literally the one thing that can never be terrorism.
Why are you surprised that people who sympathize with terrorists are called terrorists sympathizers?
Roughly 75% of Palestinians support terrorism (the number changes with every survey but it's consistently over 50%).
The lady in Minneapolis was using her car as a weapon to impede law enforcement operations. That's not really terrorism; insurrection would be a more accurate description. But she certainly wasn't a good person deserving of any sympathy.
> The lady in Minneapolis was using her car as a weapon to impede law enforcement operations.
A hysterical take like this isn't really credible. "Obstruction", sure, but calling a stopped vehicle a "weapon" because it's slightly in the way defies the English language to the point where you damage your own credibility.
It would be equivalent to call this comment a "weapon" I'm using to impede you announcing your opinion unopposed.
She's absolutely deserving of sympathy; she was killed unjustly. We don't have a law on the books allowing capital punishment for parking a vehicle somewhere law enforcement finds it inconvenient. Just because you happen not to agree with her actions at the time, illegal or no, doesn't imply "and therefore she deserved death". I suggest you consider the consequences to your own self of people applying your own logic to you, and how long you would last if this was the general state of affairs.
I'll do you one better: Palestine Action is bankrolled by notorious pro-Russia tankie Fergie Chambers, who supports Vladimir Putin's genocidal campaign in Ukraine. So please add genocide sympathizer to your list.
[1] https://lamag.com/news/cox-family-heir-james-fergie-chambers...
"Palestine Action" is terrorism.
Spray painting a bunch of airplanes is terrorism. Got it.
Oh, and don’t come crying when the same authoritarian laws put in place for Palestine Action are used to label your cause as terrorism to quash dissent.
Guess you didn't see the footage of them attacking the police with sledgehammers?
https://news.sky.com/story/bodycam-footage-of-alleged-sledge...
Even if I hadn’t, I surely would have by now given the amount of “gotchas” in this thread using this crime as some kind of smoking gun justification for proscription.
But it is good to know that criminal assault is now equivalent to terrorism.
Whatever. I suggest you take some time to reflect on your biases. What if a group used similar tactics to try and shut down e.g. gay friendly spaces?
1) Uh.. not terrorism? Hate crime perhaps, but that should be decided by a jury, not unilaterally determined by the gov.
2) So arms manufacturers participating in a war (at best!) are now equivalent to.. gay establishments? I suggest thinking through your examples before sharing them :)
Ha, fair points. But i still think you're wrong. Any group going around hitting people with slegehammers shouldn't be tolerated.
What kind of dumbass title is this? 99.99% of the world is not afraid of silicon valley.
You can be a controversial figure politically and still build a generation defining product. The market rewards utility, not ideological purity.
The headline frames this as a paradox, as if these two things are incompatible. But they aren't mutually exclusive, he can be both.
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
I think they are just hitting the consumer market hard. I have friends who have never coded & are using Replit. That said, not a single one of them has launched.
I can second this. I'm an online coding instructor and within our company Replit was the website/environment we were told to use with our students. I really didn't like it due to all the AI features (I believe that when you're learning to code you shouldn't use LLMs) but the collaboration features were really good.
Unfortunately they added a limit to the number of collaborators per account and we had to stop using it.
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.
You've got to admit Holmes is an interesting character though.
Seriously? She was a fake in every sense of the word, copying everything down to Steve Jobs' mannerisms, photo-ops, and black turtleneck sweater.
The only interesting bit is how so many investors were unable to see through the obvious act and also failed to do the due diligence which is the One Job of VC firms (i.e., if I'm an investor, I'm trusting the VC to do real due diligence, otherwise why wouldn't I just invest directly in the companies).
I find her interesting because she is such a fake. More than Steve Jobs in some ways. I'm always fascinated about how people can be taken in.
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.
The coin is wealthy people. They're different sides of that coin. Hence why the commenter above is sensing some malice from both sides.
Both sides of...what? I'm confused. Is the idea "all these people have a lot more money than I think they'll ever need and it makes me mad"? Me too. Just don't see how it's relevant.
The idea is that as money gets so concentrated, so does real political power. And with that concentration of political power comes extreme disregard for the opinions of the masses. I think it's a fair argument that the world has always catered to the will of rich people, but the difference now is that rich people are so unfathomably rich, and so much wealth is concentrated in so few.
I see, thank you.
More plainly on my part, though I'm worried sounds like berating when the comments are viewed consecutively: what does that have to do with the article we are discussing?
> “There was an aspect of, like, ‘Fuck the system,’” Masad said. “‘We need to remake civilization.’”
No matter what the political views, running into "real" money radicalizes most people and gives them the impression that they reached a superior evolutionary stage that uniquely entitles them... no, demands from them that they bend society and human civilization to their will, reshape it in their image, make it better because they are better. A sort of messianic complex.
This is the famous horseshoe paradox that says extremes are closer to each other than to the center. They might look completely different in their views but in reality they're back to back in the same place. 2 sides of the same coin. Different imprint, same value.
> but the difference now is that rich people are so unfathomably rich...
Compared to when? How many times in history has wealth been less concentrated?
As far as I'm aware, for almost all of history post-agriculture, wealth was highly concentrated while the average person lived in abject poverty (think: kings vs peasants). The mid-20th century was an era of mass prosperity in the US and parts of Europe, but it was an anomalous few decades, not the norm.
"The mid-20th century was an era of mass prosperity in the US and parts of Europe, but it was an anomalous few decades, not the norm."
But to those living and remembering that era - it was the norm that they (we) compare with, so it is the reference that matters.
In the past you could find rich people on the battlefield. The last time America tried that was in Vietnam.
That is what has changed.
> How many times in history has wealth been less concentrated?
Mostly all of them! There have been periods where inequality dropped, but mostly it's been rising since at least the 1300s. I'm on mobile and can't link research, but there are a few papers that investigate this.
> As far as I'm aware, for almost all of history post-agriculture, wealth was highly concentrated while the average person lived in abject poverty (think: kings vs peasants).
And yet it was less unequal than now, an era where we've managed to use technology to concentrate wealth at an unprecedented scale. No longer is the richest person you know the king who collects your taxes next door, now it's a SV trillionaire on the other side of the world.
Last I checked the Koch Brothers weren’t Israeli. Do read up on them. Oversimplified narratives are bullshit.
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.)
This clarifies things, thank you. I've gotten the impression that Masad doesn't have a very coherent worldview so I doubt he has given this contradiction much thought.
What gives you that impression?
Reading the article? The only thing resembling an ideology in there is a vague libertarianism of the like a lot of founders express.
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.
Zionist has become the OK word used to bash Jewish people. You ask 10 people what the word means you'll get 11 answers.
Is 'Zionism' the expansion of Israel into other territories?
Is 'Zionism' the belief that Israel and the majority of the world's Jews shouldn't be exterminated?
I thought it meant the first, lately I think people are meaning the second.
Well put. It really does seem to be a k-word substitute in a lot of cases. I like the third definition.
Zionism is a political movement that perpetrates atrocities with the aim of removing jewish populations from other parts of the world and settling them in Palestine.
It consists mainly of christians. If you assemble ten random zionists most or all of them will be christians, not jews.
Zionism is older than the state of Israel. It is a political movement consisting mainly of christians.
If you want to learn more you could do worse than follow Zachary Foster's lectures for the Rutgers Center:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zachary+foster+...
The podcast The Empire Never Ended has recently finished a rather good series on Meir Kahane, one of the most important influences on contemporary zionism:
Although Palestinian nationalism does predate modern Zionism as it was originally directed at the Ottoman Rulers.
> is how he's just the other side of the same coin.
Yes. And one side of the coin supports and justifies colonialism, apartheid and even genocide; the other side fights against it.
Is it apartheid that a jewish person cannot buy land in Palestinian controlled areas?
No. This question shows that you have no idea of what the word "apartheid" even means (or maybe you just hope that other readers don't), and that nonetheless you are ready to use it as a retort hoping to score some kind of cheap point. Not that I haven't seen precisely this behaviour a million times on this topic, but still: pathetic.
Hmmm...
apartheid /ə-pärt′hīt″, -hāt″/ noun
- An official policy of racial segregation formerly practiced in the Republic of South Africa, involving political, legal, and economic discrimination against nonwhites.
- A policy or practice of separating or segregating groups.
- The condition of being separated from others; segregation
Explain to me how this does not fit bullet point 2 and 3.
From The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition[1].
No point explaining you something so simple. Go read something deeper about apartheid and its definition in some better source than the dictionary.
I'm not a fan of a guy who builds a brand around politics. It will come around.
GPT wrapper.
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.
I tried their AI coding feature a few months back, and it was quite bad, but it was interesting to watch it iterate.
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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.
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.
Public opinion on Amjad shifted quite a bit in 2021 when he threatened to sue a former intern for his open-source project.
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.
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 everyone who condones violence to achieve some end goal. Jeanette Rankin was vilified for her lone dissenting vote against war, yet decades later she is among the few of her contemporaries to have a statue in the Capitol to honor her dedication to pacifism.
All the violence in the region stems from the Zionist invasion, land theft and genocide.
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).
It is a natural human tendency to desire that the people who inflict pain upon others to also feel pain inflicted upon them. This has been the human condition since ancient times, and yet the most revered figures in human history have been the pacifists who consistently advocate against violence (e.g. Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ, Lao Tzu, Gandhi, MLK, etc).
Yes, it actually was and is the Israelis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
Palestinians have every right to resist occupation.
Incredible that they have a term for a war they initiated and subsequently lost. Is whats happening now in Gaza also a Nakba?
Genuinely curious what you think would have happened if all the Islamic countries would not have attacked Israel. Would there be a peaceful Palestinian country? Guess we'll never know....
But that's all history. Your "occupation resistors" decided to rampage through towns and a music festival and massacre everyone they met. And somehow you seem okay with that.
Zionists committed the ethnic cleansing and invasion of Palestine. I invite anyone to click the link and read for themselves.
Yes, the Nakba is ongoing.
This was the first thing I remembered about Amjad. I have never thought highly of him since.
This guy isn't a mold-breaking radical, he's just a garden variety sociopath https://intuitiveexplanations.com/tech/replit/
> 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."
I agree with you that it’s a genocide, but that is not universally accepted, so I think the scare quotes are OK. This article isn’t seeking to litigate the genocide in Gaza.
Scare quotes don’t mean that it’s not true.
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As it happens, genocide scholars disagree with you, and in any case, Gaza's population has not increased.
It's at least plausible that the population did increase. Estimates of births during the war are larger than the casualty count that Hamas claims.
It'd be nice if Israel would let UN fact-finding missionaries or other independent research teams into Gaza to find out (in addition to not barring and/or killing humanitarian aid workers)
Or even international media outside of proctored propaganda trips. They obviously have learned their lesson since the 1982 invasion.
It’s perfectly normal for militaries to have press restrictions in conflict zones, for opsec among other good reasons. No one bats an eye when Ukraine does it for example.
Bad analogy, for two reasons:
1. Ukraine’s media restrictions are virtually non-existent when compared to those enforced by the Israelis in Gaza, including the intentional bombing of media offices. Keep in mind that Hamas has repeatedly called upon Israel to allow foreign press and NGOs to visit and see what’s happening on the ground.
2. The Ukraine war is a conventional war between sovereign nations with standing militaries with equivalent capabilities (air force, anti-air defenses, armored vehicles, bomb shelters, etc). The Gaza genocide is an onslaught by a sovereign nation with a well equipped military against a militant group in a dense urban area. Leveling entire city blocks when fighting against an opponent that has no air force or anti-air capabilities is not only unimpressive, but also breaks the principle of proportionality.
1. It's pretty much the same - no press in dangerous areas unless invited and escorted by the military. The only major difference is that Ukraine is >1000x larger, and has safe areas far from any fighting where such press restrictions aren't needed.
2. You're making a bunch of separate accusations without connecting them to the topic at hand, which was press restrictions.