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I think from Thiels' capitalist view, he's totally correct on this point.

But, you could also say, from a virus' view, to reproduce and monopolize a body is also a correct point of view.

However, what Thiel ignores is the world is not just capitalist domain, it has living organisms which those monopolies can make life miserable or worse kill. Just like the virus though, he isn't considering the whole body his views are infecting.

Thank you, well said.

What still gets me is how people could justify this type of behavior. I suppose, it's not just one person, but a group (possibly large) that are complicit in all of this. At the end of the day, Jim or Monica goes home and thinks "sure, I know this was an immoral course of action, but I'm glad we just got control of the narrative".

We see these scenarios in movies all the time, but I just wonder how people could do these things in real life? Are people really that short sighted that they think it's ok to own the patent on genes for a plant created in nature just because the law says so? And then on top of that, they make some nasty chemicals that kill things other than their patented plant.. I'm not a dystopian acknowledger really, but wow, life is stranger than fiction sometimes.

Anyway, I just don't understand how Monsanto could be seen by any rational person as a step forward in humanity's progress.. To me, they are a prime example of how humanity will self destruct at some point.

Sonic is my preferred ISP. No data caps, no snooping, solid customer support. They're just happy being a great ISP. However, outside of their fiber offering, they are hobbled by AT&T copper.

I've used Sonic many different times throughout SF and while their support guys have been great, any and all problems I've had were usually a result of the copper. And AT&T couldn't care less.

Currently I have 50Mbps FTTN service from Sonic and it's rock solid. It's never been down in the few years I've had it. It does, however, still use AT&T infrastructure. But this is the only time I've used Sonic over AT&T and been pretty happy with it.

Uh, it's widely known that fb buys tons of data from many 3rd party brokers. It's not hard for them to get whatever they need, including ssn's I'm sure. And they definitely do have addresses from 3rd parties.

Their published data partners: https://www.facebook.com/help/494750870625830

Yup, deleted my account a while ago, haven't used it in years. Don't miss it one bit.

At home, we are starting to have a 'problem' because my wife is constantly on FB. In the car, on trips, in restaurants, at the dinner table. It's fucking ridiculous. I have said a few times "what can be more important on fb than what's going on in the present moment with your family?". Behavior hasn't changed much.

What is starting to freak me out is the generations coming up. I have two young kids - pre-fb age - and they already have some questionable habits on my wife's iPhone - as soon as it comes out, they wanna look at pictures, go on youtube and fight over it. The second they see it...

I've been programming since I was 13 - a long time ago. Back then, you sat down at a table/desk to use your computer and then when you left, you did other things. You went out to play with friends. Ride bikes around. Go swimming. Go look at bugs. Eat something.

Nowadays, things are different. Different though because we let them be that way. Most parents I know are helicopter and at meet ups I'm always hearing about some bad thing that happened to someone they don't even know or is half way around the world. I'm not saying we embrace ignorance, but unless you can do something about that - and you're willing - then I don't see the point of fb and the news cycle.

As a parent (and developer), I have to be proactive and get the family back into the world. I'm not against tech in general (I'm teaching my son Basic right now), but the pendulum has clearly swung a little too far in one direction and fb/snapchat/etc, with their addictive behaviors, in my mind, are not good things for society.

People, to me, just seem happier when they're not inundated with gossip and negative news. I'ld love to see fb lose its dominance on the people who have their faces buried in their phones constantly. But, I don't think that will happen anytime soon. As long as people are checked out of the real world around them, it will be that much easier for them to get sucked in to fb and the like.

I've built (and continue to) a lot of companies using Rails. I also do Swift on iOS and have been playing around with Swift on the server since last year.

I have some friends that have an idea and I'm going to help them build it. So what do I use? The fast, low memory footprint of Swift?

No. I use Rails. I use bootstrap. I don't make a JS only frontend with api backend (Turbolinks works fine). I use what makes me productive and what's gets the first rev out the quickest.

For hosting, I put it on my Mac Mini (in my living room) via VirtualBox, with the same Nginx proxy I use for all my projects. I have no problems with scaling because I don't need to. Cross that bridge IF I get there.

I went through a number of years trying the latest and greatest frameworks, aws configs, etc. None it mattered to my projects. It did help with day jobs, but that was it.

Some other poster here was right when he said tech is about 10% of your business. There is so much other stuff outside of building your app/site and having analysis paralysis is gonna stop you dead in your tracks.

My advice (as many on HN have said before): go with what you know, don't over engineer, ship early and often.

I'm surprised at the responses for this post. Mostly because there isn't much family convo on hn. Great stuff, thanks to all.

I have 2 kids - 5 & 3. It's the best and hardest all wrapped in a unpredictive, non-linted experience. On top of that, being in tech, I feel, puts you at a little more disadvantage.

Maybe because we live in SF where it feels like most software gigs want to operate at Uber speed.

I have a medium sized company job now, but have been through contracting and 3 startups since my oldest was born. I was definitely pushed many times to making the decision of company first and I've had to do what I've had to do to keep the money coming in.

Luckily my wife has her own biz and could take time off for the kids, but we've both talked about how this has put us in the traditional roles and how we wanted it to be different.

I would never take having kids back vs. a more accomplished software career (I switch between mgr and sr. engr roles anyway). Kids have put this point of my life into perspective more than anything.

If I want to do a side proj (I've done a few over the last few years), then I double down on discipline. I'm up at 4 every day, put in a solid 2 hours and then stop. Kids and family are next, then day job. I come home, usually around dinner time, give kids bath, stories and bed time.

It is definitely clockwork and treadmill feeling at times, but it's how I've made it work. In those 2 morning hours I code and keep updated on latest. Luckily I have quite a bit of exp so most things I already understand and it becomes more about translation into other languages / frameworks.

In closing I would say this: we have all been our children. I reflect back on my life remembering what made me excited and happy and try to facilitate they for my kids and be present with them. When they are asleep, then I have me time.

Great post, I love it!

I definitely have an opiniosn.

I've raised money, couldn't raise money, have had friends that couldn't, have ended up having friends slogging through to become millionaires without any vc, and even turned down rounds hoping to get more.

Now when I look back and think "how would I do this now?" I come to two conclusions.

1. If I want to own an idea as a business owner over the long term, then I don't care about investors. This is my Basecamp spidey sense and convictions. My happy path.

2. My idea is great, I need some money. However.... Nowadays I'm thinking along the lines of "long term (hopefully,, but I suspect that most people don't care bs long term"", which is not SV or wall st friendly. I am seriously looking at non-profit.

Uggggh!

I've been through #1 a gazillion times and now, since I have a family and a diff outlook on life, I'm looking longer term.

But, how does the 'family dude' perspective conflict with the Uber perspective?

Growth is the altar that we all kneel to. The Iron Throne. But, it doesn't have to be this way. Granted, we all have Maslow's needs and that varies based on a number of factors (geographic, personal, etc). But in the end, what is our purpose?

Are we here to sustain sexual harassment via star pupils at Uber so they that their 'CEO' can grow? (At the expense of human beings?)

What is the point of growth or even exponential growth? Money? Riches?

Look, I think YC is better than not and I think that we - we tech people - need to lead the way because we 'can'. Thumbs up on riches, algorithms, and technology. These are awesome progressive things!

But, seriously, after going thru the vc grinder, seeing the cap tables of founders and everyone else and then THEN (stupidly) agreeing to this inequity.. Well, the fault is obviously mine but there is is (a lot) of fault with these pump and dump startups.

Yup, timing is everything. For press.. I doubt tho, this will affect the lawsuit.

This is why I don't get Thiel. He's obviously smart, but his actipns are anything but libertarian in my mind. Just look at some of his biggest creations and investments:

1. Palantir - big database crunching and querying for some Of the worst parts of govt; NSA being the biggest offender. 2. Facebook - collects (and is sadly just given) massive amounts of consumer data for selling ads. 3. Paypal - a 'great equalizer' in payments as long as they decide your account is legit. If you get caught in their 'bad' filter, you loose access to your funds, which migjt take down your entire business. At least Musk is trying to better humanity.

If, as a libertarian, he wanted govt out of the common mans lives, then why invest and build tools/platforms that take away people's freedom to transact and live lives of true freedom?

He's done the opposite in my mind. Nothing he has built, in my mind, betters himanity like Musk has.

Basecamp is one of the few bright beacons in the tech industry. They walk the walk.

I often turn to SvN whenever I need a quick morale boost or injection of reality.

Yah, I mean, the Clintons are interesting. Bill is a Rhodes Scholar, Hillary is Wellesley & Yale. Nothing to brush off for sure. Chelsea and a PhD, again, no small feat.

I dunno, on one hand I really respect that level of commitment to learning, especially at an entire immediate family level.

What sorta boggles my mind is Hillary's complete fuck up of the election. And maybe this is because either: A. She's still a novice compared to how far the right wing will go to bury her (I guess they hate her more than no other - a driven woman) B. Her hubris is bigger than Trump's (doubtful)

My wife was really bummed she lost. She even took pics with my 3yr old daughter on a 'historic' day.

We'll see a woman president soon I think and hopefully she's more in touch than Hillary was. Who knows, maybe Chelsea (altho I think the Clinton name is prob done in the whitehouse).

Look no further than the Bush's, their connections to the Saudi's, Carlyle group and many others.

The short answer is: for conviction, no.

We'll see with Trump since he cares about hiding these connections even less than Bush did. He would probably even say they make America more winning.

Or a book. :)

I'm still tryig to figure out how to process all this.

My first thought is, communities do not need facebook to form/grow. They never have.

However, even in light of the Arab Spring and other social uprisings around the world, I still can't buy into anything Zuck says.

I just can't reconcile in my head how the most detailed online advertising machine can ever 'help create' any real or longstanding community.

Real communities are based on real people with real interactions. Granted, I know there are discussions and groups on fb (my wife is part of a group that meets up every few mos in the 'real world'). But i also see how mich time people spend with their faces plowed into their devices, ignoring the real world going on around them.

I'm not saying fb or twitter aren't powerful tools to organize with. I am saying that I put little to no faith into them as stewards of global community building. Their motives are not altruistic and I'm sure if their ad market dropped out next week, we would not see any of these types of posts from Zuck.

And regarding the fake news bit, what's to do about that? People found massive audiences in their system and deliberately posted lies to sway opinions. To me, that's a complete failure of the benefit of fb ('connecting' the world) and why I just don't believe anything that comes out of there.

I been on campus numerous times and have quite a number of friends that work there, so it's not like I don't get fb and how they make their money. I really do. But, are these really the types of companies we want to build? You can probably say this about a lot of tech companies nowadays, but when it's free, you're the product.. This is not good for the global community long term.

This is bummer news for me. My whole team is based out of SF so we have to dral with Caltrain or drive. :( Plus, there is just not much to do in downtown SJ.

There's only one part of Moscone that's being renovated and Apple never used that bldg anyway.

This year will definitely not have the same after conference vibe as years before.

Not only passwords, but api keys as well. I can't tell you how many times I've come across public repos that have full api credentials in them. Boggles the mind..

So beautiful and true on multiple levels.

1. What it says 2. The prose and length of how it is said

I will be thinking of this for the rest of the day, thank you.

Sadly, this will never happen and like so many gov documentaries that bring to light abuses by groups, people will be outraged and then life will happen.

I wish the FBI or relevant body could get their shit together and say "hey, we really should look into this and do something about it."

:-/

Yah, my thoughts exactly. Such a big loss for humanity. :( At least we have his son to carry on - there's still a lot of work to be done.

This is a partisan issue. The pro big biz republicans love to tear down any regulation.

The democrats aren't that much better, but at least you had a guy running the FCC that wanted to keep net neutrality going.

Now, any of those ideas & discussions are completely dead. So, yes, this is very much a partisan issue.

I think the reality of your example would follow the way cable companies offer their typical packages. This 'innovation' usually includes some base of certain channels that you don't even want. Then you can pay up for more premium channels.

Along the way, they will offer some 'discount' for a month or two and then raise your rate. Trying to request a downgrade usually takes a lot of your time to convince someone to actually put the order in.

There are plenty of abuses available if you just search for cable company abuses.

There is NO REASON for any of these companies to offer any true innovation or competition. While they're not strictly monopolists, they can pretty much guarantee little to no competition in their respective markets.

And where they might receive competition from cities who want to build out their own broadband services, they lobby to have the laws changed making it illegal to do so.

The only way around this is to offer some revolutionary new wireless network that sidestepped all of the fiber, cable, and telco providers. It would have to have massive bandwidth, buy-in from all kinds of hardware provides (mobile especially) and magically get approval for spectrum by the govt.

....Provided that said companies don't lobby against your effort.

The FCC wasn't going to fix all this overnight (or possibly ever), but it was a step in the right direction for the citizenry of the country it was created to protect.

Disrupting any of the cable/telco industry is a fantasy at this point.

This only matters - voting in the presidential elections - in the red states. If you're a liberal, progressive, futurist, etc, and you're living in states like CA or NY or OR, then statistically speaking, those states are pretty much gonna go democrat regardless. So your vote counts 'less' there.

What is needed is a bunch of these people to move to swing states where the vote really matters. Places like OH, FL, etc.

But, the blue states people have built their own little comfortable enclaves in their respective states and there's little chance they'll be moving to places like AK, TN, or MS.

Now, why does this matter? Well, because it's clear the republicans are pro big business and in the case of net neutrality, pro locking up the internet for the few (the few being, big media/telecom companies). There will never be a pro-citizen net neutrality policy as long as the republicans/big-business types are running the show.

So, living in CA, for instance, doesn't matter much in this case. Having a progressive, pro-net mentality will make much more difference in swing states.

Hmm, honestly, I've been using adblockers since the early 00's. It started in the form of flash blockers, since there were tons of ads that were flash back then.

As humanity progressed, this included various ad networks and other human beneficiary systems. Today, it's all about blocking the anti-ad blockers. :-\

I've been amazed over the years tho how some friends and colleagues let this crap through. My wife, for instance, using Yahoo mail would stupefy me on how she could concentrate on writing emails when there are banner and tower ads animating and annoyingly blinking on the periphery of their ui.

As a software developer/creator, having shit all over the screen going apeshit with animations and visually assaulting assets, was just to much for me from the beginning.

Cocoa over the last few years has made a lot of cleanup/progress on its api's. Making a Mac app in Swift 3 is almost as painless as making an iOS app nowadays. I feel like there has been a big difference in just the last few years. Swift is a big part of this, but also, I'm sure Federighi's group is the real reason.

I think you're missing the point of some people's disgust: why does one of Trump's figure heads need citizenship in another country to begin with? If he is so in with the Trump administration, why this move?

Frankly, I lost all respect for Thiel joining forces with Trump. Granted, he's a capitalist and that's fine, but throwing your lot in with a bigoted administration escapes me. If the party you are part of represents openly a disdain for gays, immigrants, and women, what is even the point of belonging to that. Seems like you could find or form your own pro-capitalist party minus all the divisiveness.

I think like many that voted for Trump, Thiel will probably see that he was not so 'smart' when he threw his lot in with such a devicisive and destructive administration.

> But others perhaps care. So I strongly encourage you to open-source it if you don't care about it anymore.

This is false thinking in my mind. Others may care, but that does not mean they have the right to guilt someone into releasing the source for _their creation_.

On a grander scale - nothing lasts forever. Not even stars. So, we don't need to preserve everything - this is very egoic mind to me. It is ok to let things die and be forgotten. Software, art, ideas, songs, poems included.

If the creator of these things decides to not release it to the world, that is _their_ prerogative.

How are your rights 'trendy'?

I tend to stay out of politics, and don't really label people as such, but Trump is a bad guy. I'm happy to donate engineering time to the ACLU.

Also, the rich folks get a place in the poorer neighborhoods (we've talked to people that just pay an additional rent and don't even move there) which then gets them their first choice.