My comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18866778 got downvoted and flagged because I called out Khosla's selfish and boorish behavior. Apparently calling a spade a spade doesn't sit well with some of the hive mind here.
Repeatedly pointing out, hmm, their 'flaws', just detracts from the actual subject matter. And btw, I did enjoy this talk and likewise most of Stephen's blog posts/writings. [Only exception when such a comment would be warranted is when Stephen talks about humility ;)]
Even if what he says sounds legitimate, should we not question whether there are motives and ethics unmentioned that we might not have noticed, given his past behavior?
Should we mention it to viewers who may not be aware of who the man is, so they can ask those same questions as they watch?
If a man runs for office, and it turns out he used to be a member of the Klan, should that not weigh on the rest of his speeches, since presumably you can determine who he is not from what he has said, but from what he has done?
All that said, I haven't met him, I've just read the news, and maybe they have their own narrative and that isn't who he really is. I'm just saying we should consider both sides.
He has a demonstrated long history of selfishness and standing against common good. Should we be taking ideas from him? Well, if he was talking about some technical topic, I can understand your point. But "how to build a future" ....? Do we really want to learn "how to build a future" from such a selfish person?
Here we are, a community that often cares about the rest of the world; we provide shit-tons of free labor to the world at large; most hackers I know have a good heart; many of us give away products that we could really be charging for; etc. etc.
And this guy has absolutely no decency to share and be a good citizen! He's been suing anybody who disagrees with him, throwing his money at lawyers and just dragging the process along. He has benefited from the labors of others over the years (SunOS was based on BSD, for instance). But he continues to be a jerk.
BTW: this is not his first rodeo. 20+ years ago (memory is fuzzy, so apologies in advance) there was drought in the Bay Area. There were water use restrictions, and watering your lawns was forbidden/aggressively discouraged. But who in the Valley was the #1 consumer of water, using millions of gallons to water his precious lawns? Vinod Fucking Khosla.