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Ask HN: What is Marc Andreessen talking about

• mbustamanter 4y ago
  WRT the 'current thing', it's just internet slang for mocking people who go along with trends. Marc also seems to get hold of neologisms very quickly, as with the whole 'wordcel/shape rotator' meme and the informal usage of 'lindy'.
  • tibyat 4y ago
  • exfascist 4y ago
    https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmNzCMsDDddNZPRh6q7vzZEbDaEcgSekMx6sxM3cYjFsho https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmNzCMsDDddNZPRh6q7vzZEbDaE...
• Krollifi 4y ago
  He may be talking about Kindle not using an open format.
  • jjtheblunt 4y ago
    that made me chuckle
  • sjg007 4y ago
    More that Amazon can take away your books. Don't need to burn them, just remotely remove them.
    • drakonka 4y ago
      Then more applicable advice seems like it could've been "Everyone should go to their Kindle library and download their ebooks as soon as they purchase them."
      • exfascist 4y ago
        IIRC they can remove downloaded books. Better advice is "no non-free software in the house" and "mind your external dependencies" but that's a bit too extreme for most people.
        • drakonka 4y ago
          They can remove books you download to your Kindle ereader, but they can't remove book files you download to your actual PC from the Kindle library.
      • AlchemistCamp 4y ago
        Ironically, Amazon has previously deleted copies of 1984 their customers had already downloaded to their kindles and other devices. https://theguardian.com/technology/2009/jul/17/amazon-kindle-1984 https://theguardian.com/technology/2009/jul/17/amazon-kindle...
        • drakonka 4y ago
          I don't mean downloading to Kindle, but actually downloading the book file to your machine where it is no longer at Amazon's mercy. If the book has DRM Calibre takes care of that, it's how many people transfer Amazon bought books to other ereaders.
          • AlchemistCamp 4y ago
            I'm not familiar with Calibre but AFIK, all kindle books have DRM.
            • drakonka 4y ago
• mysore 4y ago
  90% of the time guy seems to be trolling for fun. the "current thing" refers to everyone bandwagoning on supporting ukraine when they didnt do anything to help them for like 10 years and there were tons of people warning "putin is going to invade someday."
• raarts 4y ago
  In my opinion he was referring to the fact that more and more often older pages on the internet are 'updated' or 'fixed' for political reasons. This can't happen with books.
• ezekg 4y ago
  Censorship via cancel/delete/rewrite? a la the Ministry of Truth [0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministries_of_Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Ministry_of_Truth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministries_of_Nineteen_Eighty-...
• okareaman 4y ago
  I've never heard Andreesen say anything I thought was particularly insightful or intelligent. He seems like a caricature of a Silicon Valley programmer who got lucky and made a bunch of money who now thinks that makes him a genius thought leader for the rest of his life. I hate his tagline "software is eating the world" If a homeless person standing outside a grocery store said these things you wouldn't listen because the sound like the ravings of a crank.
  • bko 4y ago
    I would have some reverence for the man. This isn't someone who "just got lucky". We was working on the forefront of the internet with Netscape IPOing in 1995 and being bought by AOL for 4 billion in 1999. He then went on to found another company that had a $1.6 billion exit just 4 years after the AOL acquisition. He then ran a VC that went from 300mm to 2.7bn in three years. I would say he knows something about the world. Maybe he doesn't know anything on certain topics or you disagree with him, or he has an ego. But to write him off as a "programmer who got lucky" is wrong, especially considering that the fields he succeeded in were very cutting edge. He didn't just invest in Manhattan real estate or some crap. Some life advice, go into every interaction with people assuming they know something you don't. You'll get a lot farther that way.
    • okareaman 4y ago
      I was responding to OP's question about how to react to the statement "Buy physical copies of any book you plan to read in the future. Do it now." I don't think OP needs to worry about it because Andreessen likes to be a cool kid on Twitter. If I need a physical copy of a book to read it then I have bigger problems than figuring out a way to read a book. Btw - I made a bunch of money in the dotcom bubble of the late 90's and early 2000's without even trying that hard. It was like buying Bitcoin in 2013. Maybe you've forgotten that AOL bought Time-Warner for $182 billion in 2000. It was ridiculous at the time and seems even more astonishing in retrospect. Good times.
      • bko 4y ago
        If you said he's purposely being obtuse because he wants to be a cool kid, I wouldn't have commented and probably would have agreed. But re-read your original comment. It was an unnecessary personal attack on someone that has accomplished a lot and presumably knows a lot: > He seems like a caricature of a Silicon Valley programmer who got lucky and made a bunch of money who now thinks that makes him a genius thought leader for the rest of his life. Congrats on your success. There's a difference between "making money in early 2000's" and founding a hugely influential company that helped shaped the web in the 90s. His track record as a VC is also impressive. I think he's someone definitely worth listening to as he obviously sees things differently than others, otherwise he wouldn't have been such an outlier throughout his whole career.
• RichardHeart 4y ago
  He is talking about all time high levels of censorship if you count the number of humans being censored. I've been banned and unbanned 4 times (130k subs on youtube.) An ex president was removed everywhere. Tons of people are banned every single day, with no recourse but to go to empty alt-tech sites where no one watches. You are also at all time high surveillance. You're also at all time high freedom of movement restriction. I could go on, but I'm tired of gritting my teeth.
  • morelisp 4y ago
    We are also at record numbers of humans speaking their mind freely, record numbers of humans keeping secrets, and (if we stop ca. pre-2020 or project current trends a year or two in the future) record numbers of humans moving between countries. Maybe "number of humans" is not a good metric.
    • RichardHeart 4y ago
      As a person being surveilled, censored and my ability to travel impaired, how would you suggest I best frame the argument? While you're at it, I'm rather tired of the value of the money I saved being destroyed by lifetime high inflation rates. Thanks for helping me frame my arguments better.
      • MrMan 4y ago
        Where are you trying to travel?
        • RichardHeart 4y ago
          Canada.
      • webmaven 4y ago
        Frame it as a percentage of the total population.
• crate_barre 4y ago
  You guys severely underestimate how many people have some wine or a beer and tweet lol. Drunk tweeting is a thing.
• ls15 4y ago
  Outages?
• bogomipz 4y ago
  My guess is that it could relate to state legislatures recently passing legislation that prohibits certain books from public schools in the US. It seems this could possibly be a new front in the on-going culture wars. See: https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/05/politics/republican-states-book-ban-race-lgbtq/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/05/politics/republican-states-bo... and https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/04/07/book-bans-congress-student-library/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/04/07/book-ban...
• browserman 4y ago
  He's red and mad about posts. Spending too much time on Twitter will drive even a disciplined mind insane.
  • slater 4y ago
    "red"?
    • atroche 4y ago
      Possibly meant in the sense of Blue Tribe / Red Tribe from here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin... But maybe it's just more generally red as euphemism for conservative (b/c of how political maps are coloured in the US).
      • browserman 4y ago
        No euphemism, I meant he was physically turning himself red with online rage
• travisporter 4y ago
  Would a solar flare destroy all data on SSDs or magnetic hard drives? I couldn't find a good resource. I figure CDs/DVDs would be safe https://www.quora.com/Could-a-large-solar-flare-fry-disk-drives-and-SSDs-across-the-planet?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Could-a-large-solar-flare-fry-disk-dri...
  • mikewarot 4y ago
    A solar flare wouldn't even hurt the power grid, if management shuts it off in time. If some Republican Governor insists his state doesn't shut theirs down... well, that's just Darwin entering the 22nd Century.
• president 4y ago
  He's trolling and lampooning people that are obsessed with blindly agreeing with the mainstream-sanctioned narratives (Covid, Ukraine). The book thing is probably a comment on censorship and historical revisionism that is occurring as part of the effort to prop up certain narratives. I'm surprised he hasn't gotten called a right-wing nationalist yet.
  • chrischattin 4y ago
    This shouldn't be downvoted b/c it's exactly what he's doing. He's mocking people who instantly conform to the current narrative.
• timcavel 4y ago
  [dead]
• runjake 4y ago
  “Current thing” in this context is the “current thing the Internet is outraged by or is perceived to be overly-concerned about”. An oblique reference to Cancel Culture. It seems like he’s become emboldened by Elon Musk’s tweeting and is trying to play a similar role. (I have no opinion of pmarca, good or bad, except perhaps that he wastes too much time thinking about Internet drama.)
• manofmanysmiles 4y ago
  He’s talking about how the mainstream media is whipping people up into a fury over one crisis after another while civilization collapses, with free speech crumbing, supply chains failing and the potential for large scale war and disease a real possibility. Also some stuff might get even more exciting in the political arena, WRT the revelations of corruption around certain high profile figures. Also the threat of cyber attacks seems very real.
• WFHRenaissance 4y ago
  He’s talking about Milady NFTs, Urbit, and psychic Zoomers… duh
• mikewarot 4y ago
  Given the rapid change in the way people consume information, books are likely to be as easy to get as Paper Road Atlases are.