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While I agree with most of this I think it's somewhat too strict. For many people their twenties is the only time they will have time, money and vigour. If you get the chance you should take advantage of that.

Why not use git?

It would be more interesting if people could reply why they disagree. I'm not the first one to come to this conclusion, hemlis is a public example. You simply can't compete with large companies several years after the fact without differentiating.

A feature like this doesn't really matter in the context of competing with mainstream messaging services because their value is to a large extent in things like brand and network effect. The notion that you're just one feature away from mainstream adaptation is often a misconception. In reality there's limited potential in living in the shadow of something else.

History shows us that you can't compete by being a lesser version of something else. There's nothing wrong with trying to make the application more attractive, but at the same time trying to shoehorn in features rather than doing things where you have an advantage is less likely to be meaningful.

I personally don't think the sentiment of "8 Christmases", as presented in the essay, is that helpful. The solution to scarcity isn't to rely on a few moments, nor necessarily to "prune bullshit", it's to create more good moments. Maybe there is only 8 Christmases, but there's 416 Sunday dinners and countless other Holidays. Christmas is only that special because that's the holiday that Americans still (somewhat) universally celebrate.

Sort of expected a better interview when I heard "The National Press Club". This is mostly "What do you think about x? I think this and that" read from notes.

"Tech", as the article uses it, tend to be less Donald Knuth and more Woody Allen in the sense that "80 percent of life is showing up". The "best of the best" is mostly busy being the best. Cities usually fail to attract talent because there aren't enough substance to their claims and they therefor can't get people to show up.

Yeah, while I can appreciate the question (curiosity is a good things) I don't think anyone with experience of software should be surprised. When you consider things like passwords, credit cards, wifi login and e-mail addresses the question is really why aren't more things like sim cards. (which is kind of what Apple is trying to do these days?)

Yangshuo, China would be my guess.

> Our digital world is built on tech developed largely for free by people rich enough to be able to afford this unpaid labour.

Citation needed. As far as I know most Internet infrastructure was developed by government funded or commercial entities.

Socioeconomic status is an important factor in how we behave. The argument here is that people with more money are less kind because having more money makes them less kind. Unless you're making a specific argument were someones skin color is the prime factor in making someone more criminal that statement isn't factually correct. So no, it's not the same thing, but your frequent rhetorical outrage is noted.

It's much harder to have a killer app when the technology isn't universally appealing yet. When (if) you can get 8k high frame rate displays, gigabit+ internet connection and better graphics card at a price that will make enough people buy it, then it will make sense to produce good content. We are probably not there yet for some time though.