I simply don't understand the Venn diagram of people who read/write in such a manner and HN but here we are.

  I was vaguely aware of Andreessen as the guy who invented the first web browser, a socially useful accomplishment by any measure and a story I had long kept in the back of my mind as an outstanding proof text that useful invention often flourishes best when government subsidizes it, socialism-style—given that Andreessen had created it while a student at a public institution, the University of Illinois. Then I boned up on what he was up to now, courtesy of a gargantuan 13,000-word profile from two years earlier in The New Yorker.