Ask HN: What is Marc Andreessen talking about

[limteary]

I saw Marc Andreessen tweet "Buy physical copies of any book you plan to read in the future. Do it now." and thought there was a solar flare coming or something.

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1511929365264805897

He's also been non-stop tweeting about "current thing", is there some SV drama that's gotten him worked up?

[manofmanysmiles]

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.

[cpp_frog]

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'.

[exfascist]

https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmNzCMsDDddNZPRh6q7vzZEbDaE...

[mysore]

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."

[browserman]

He's red and mad about posts. Spending too much time on Twitter will drive even a disciplined mind insane.

[slater]

"red"?

[atroche]

Possibly meant in the sense of Blue Tribe / Red Tribe from here: 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]

No euphemism, I meant he was physically turning himself red with online rage

[raarts]

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.

[WFHRenaissance]

He’s talking about Milady NFTs, Urbit, and psychic Zoomers… duh

[runjake]

“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.)

[travisporter]

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-dri...

[mikewarot]

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.

[ezekg]

Censorship via cancel/delete/rewrite? a la the Ministry of Truth [0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministries_of_Nineteen_Eighty-...

[bogomipz]

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-bo...

and

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/04/07/book-ban...

[mikewarot]

Given the rapid change in the way people consume information, books are likely to be as easy to get as Paper Road Atlases are.

[RichardHeart]

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]

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]

Appeal to percentages is always funny to me. If you get killed by a faulty tire exploding, you can take solace in that it doesn't happen that often. Maybe number of humans is a really good metric.

[RichardHeart]

Further support for "number of humans" being a good metric. Just looking at percentages, you could do great harm to one group or area, and just "buy" yourself out of it ethically by treating other people somewhere else a little better on net. The devil is literally in the details.

[RichardHeart]

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.

[webmaven]

Frame it as a percentage of the total population.

[RichardHeart]

The beautiful thing about censorship, is, it's hard to detect, because those censored must find side channels to announce they've been harmed. The private companies doing the censoring don't publish stats. Your advice, so far, is quite similar to "start your own social network." Do you have anything actionable I can use to make the world a better place?

[webmaven]

You state that the number of people suffering from censorship is at an all time high. Presumably you have a number to back that up? If so, you can express that as a percentage of the relevant population(s) instead.

As for something even more constructive...

Perhaps you could promote the use of TOR and other privacy and censorship circumvention tools.

[MrMan]

Where are you trying to travel?

[RichardHeart]

Canada.

[Krollifi]

He may be talking about Kindle not using an open format.

[sjg007]

More that Amazon can take away your books. Don't need to burn them, just remotely remove them.

[drakonka]

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."

[AlchemistCamp]

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...

[drakonka]

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]

I'm not familiar with Calibre but AFIK, all kindle books have DRM.

[exfascist]

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]

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.

[jjtheblunt]

that made me chuckle

[ls15]

Outages?

[president]

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]

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.

[crate_barre]

You guys severely underestimate how many people have some wine or a beer and tweet lol.

Drunk tweeting is a thing.

[okareaman]

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]

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.

[borroka]

He is very smart and incredibly successful. He comes across, at least to me and online, as terribly obnoxious. But he's not talking to me with his tweets, he's talking to his peers, who are other VCs, CEOs, founders, younger and emerging politicians.

He's also very nerdy - and how could he not be if he was building browsers in his 20s while I was chasing skirts or trousers at that age - and I don't get along with super nerds outside of work. It's okay at work, they tend to do better than other psychological types. Is it me or him, then? I don't know, but I muted him, his takes have zero to negative effect on my mood.

[Barrin92]

I think it's fair to give (a lot of) credit for the Netscape work, but people like Andreessen at some point have so much money and clout that in particular in the VC field they can literally make reality as they wish and turn everything into a successful exit or just absorb an almost infinite amount of failures that nobody else would get away with.

I put a lot more weight on what people do when they had no name than what they did in this industry with its personality cults once they got the ball rolling.

[robocat]

Only 5% of modern VC funds make enough to cover investor risk: https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/the-meeting-that-showed-me... 50% don’t even make their money back (figure is much worse when you adjust for overheads and depreciation).

Assuming that VCs are successful just because they have money is selection bias, because you mostly only hear about the successful VC funds.

Aside: VCs partners themselves can make money even if their fund doesn’t due to the 2% management fees of a normal 2+20 fund structure.

[taurath]

OTOH he gets to see what ultimately is succeeding or not, but that comes with the caveat that the metric by which what is "succeeding" is what ultimately gets more money, which he has a ton of influence over.

[okareaman]

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]

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.

[sjg007]

A16Z podcasts are pretty good and I saw an interview on Bloomberg where he came across quite well. They had a clubhouse thing that seems to have stopped recently along with the clubhouse hype in general. It is hard to disambiguate the marketing and messaging around web3 vs the actual tech however. NFTs will mean a lot more in an object but not centered digital universe which we don't really have yet.

I enjoy listening to their opinions on technology and business. They also throw in stuff on leadership, history and have interesting takes on the VC industry.

All VCs have this problem of missing big bets which they seem to want to figure out how to avoid making.

[AlchemistCamp]

> 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

… okareaman typed into a web browser, the very technology Andreesen became wealthy pioneering.

[okareaman]

Right, Andreessen wrote it himself without the help from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and it was a totally new idea since three other GUI browsers didn't exist and he never saw the source code for these other browsers that didn't exist

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwise

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViolaWWW

[AlchemistCamp]

Andreessen worked at NCSA and was the largest contributor to Mosaic!

He was even responsible for how various parts of the web standard coming into existence back then. For example, Tim Berners-Lee shared a different proposal than the img tag we now have. But Andreesen suggested the img tag for embedded images and shipped working code in the Mosaic browser.

After starting Netscape itself, the shift towards building entirely new technology and features only accelerated. That was an intense team effort but one he lead.

Getting so “lucky“ required working very energetically and solving difficult problems, for years.

[okareaman]

> Getting so “lucky“ required working very energetically and solving difficult problems, for years.

A lot of people work very energetically and solving difficult problems, for years, and don't get rich. Sad but true. If you are one of them, I salute you and thank you for trying to make the world a better place. And if you did get rich but realized that "money doesn't make the man" so you did your good deeds in private, I also salute you. The world would be a much worse place without people like you. Frankly, the Marc Andreessens of the world are a dime a dozen and I don't mean to disparge Marc as a private person, I'm disparging the puffed up Wizard of Oz public image that people like him build on the advice of their PR people. It's good for business I hear.

[johnthescott]

i vaguely recall that mark is on record crediting eric bina with rendering engine in mosaic. at netscape bina prefered to stay away from sv, but he was quite active on usenet, as i recall.

[WFHRenaissance]

No… lol. If I a homeless person said that, it would seem weirdly insightful for a homeless person.