Steve Wozniak: Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about happiness

https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23765914&cid=65583466

by MilnerRoute • 11 months ago

951 623 11 months ago

yro.slashdot.org

johndoe0815• 11 months ago

Happy Birthday, Woz!

lordleft• 11 months ago

This is a slight tangent, but I have not been on slashdot since the early aughts. I'm surprised that it fell into obscurity since technical forums like HN and reddit CS subreddits are thriving. Or maybe it still vibrant and I'm making assumptions?

duxup2• 11 months ago

IMO Slashdot always had some very narrow focus points and the community pretty predictable.

Not a lot of variety in content or community compared to the digs or reddits of the world.

lanfeust62• 11 months ago

personally hoping for a cultural shift back to smaller decentralized communities

ModernMech2• 11 months ago

/. was done after the Slashdot Beta mess. Never recovered.

ghssds• 11 months ago

Slashdot refused to moderate comments in an effective manner. Comment section was always full of bad memes that became stale:

* Lot of rickrolling. but replace Rick Astley by Goatse, Tubgirl, or LemonParty.

* Frist post

* BSD is dying

* GNAA

* Nathalie Portman

* Robotic Overlord

* In Soviet Russia

* Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these memes

* etc.

Then it becames fixated on SCO and basically became Darl McBride News, for years...

However, what was interresting was their qualified upvote system. You did not simply upvote or downvote, but needed to add a qualifier to it: +1 Informative, +1 Insightful, +1 Interesting, +1 Funny, -1 Troll, -1 Offtopic, -1 Flamebeat. I never seen such a system elsewhere.

fibers• 11 months ago

jesus this takes me back

GloriousMEEPT• 11 months ago

slides a bowl of grits down the front of his pants

ec109685• 11 months ago

I used to be a meta moderator there. But you're right, you need to have a strong "hand" or the communities like that fall apart.

Their original owners also sold the site.

ryzvonusef2• 11 months ago

You forgot Cowboy Neal, you insensitive clod!

annoyingnoob• 11 months ago

slashdot stopped allowing easy new user sign ups a while back. Now its the same folks over and over, very predictable. A number of those old memes have died out, mostly. They really limited ascii art which helped too. There do seem to be a lot of trolls/psyops in the comments.

zahlman2• 11 months ago

However, what was interresting was their qualified upvote system

In the abstract, this seemed like a brilliant idea, and I don't understand why nobody else tries it, and I still don't see a good argument against it.

But in their specific implementation, if you deem that "funny" can redeem a post in and of itself (and you allow an open community to judge humour), well, you get what you measure. (And nowadays, "troll" is basically understood to mean the same thing as "flamebait", because nobody trolls the old-fashioned way — it's increasingly hard to distinguish yourself from people who are actually that clueless, and too many clueless people around to make it worthwhile to fake more.)

shmeeed• 11 months ago

Sensiblee*ection used a similar voting system. They probably borrowed it from Slashdot, but added more qualifiers.

ryzvonusef2• 11 months ago

just checked, my last comment was in 2014... damn

kevstev• 11 months ago

I still check it out a few times a week, and the discussions have just fallen off a cliff, and that was the biggest draw to me as well. The articles are far less technical these days as well and tend to lean more political - and I see the draw there, those posts are the only ones that can attract over 100 comments these days, when back in its heyday pretty much everything had around 200 comments on the front page.

And it's a weird snakepit of conservative anger. On more than one occasion I have suspected bots have stolen accounts. Looking at post history on some particularly unhinged posts after the previous election, there was a pattern of people posting regularly in the 00s about only technical things and then going quiet for 5+ years and then only making comments about politics. It was fishy enough I sent some examples to the mods but never heard anything back.

It's a real shame, slashdot used to be a juggernaut, and it's just a shadow of its former self.

yodsanklai2• 11 months ago

it's a weird snakepit of conservative anger.

I've noticed that on teamblind as well (started to use it only recently). I didn't realize there was such hate towards foreigners in the US, especially, in the tech world which I assumed was more educated/progressive. Don't know if it's fueled by Trump or the other way around, but it's pretty scary.

AceJohnny2• 11 months ago

The articles are far less technical these days as well and tend to lean more political

I dunno, it must've been 15 years since I set my signature there to "remember, Slashdot is a tabloid", after I realized how the posts skewed towards... "engagement".

(signatures seem to have been lost in some redesign since)

MetaWhirledPeas3• 11 months ago

And it's a weird snakepit of conservative anger.

I disagree. It's still 90% center left. But if you have a low tolerance for seeing conservative responses then sure maybe it feels more conservative. Those views rarely get modded up though.

daedrdev• 11 months ago

I've never been on slashdot before. And what stands out to me is it's really hard to follow the UI. It's better than the classic forum layout but it's still just not easy to read, I just can't see myself using it. Though I have similar opinions on new reddit and it is pretty popular so I think I don't represent the possible new user.

What seems more relevant is that I didn't know about it at all which seems common with many older internet sites dying a slow dead of no new users as younger audiences are literally unable to discover the site.

ok123456• 11 months ago

It was better before their "redesign" in the mid-2000s, around the same time as the Digg redesign.

nunez2• 11 months ago

Skimfeed, my entry point into HN, still indexes /. threads, so I still check it out from time to time. Definitely not what it was in the cmdrtaco days, but it has gems in there sometimes still.

insane_dreamer4• 11 months ago

Yeah, that was my take too. I used to be on it regularly 15-20 years ago, great nitty-gritty tech plus usually good-natured snarky techy humor; but haven't even visited in over a dozen years.

deeg2• 11 months ago

Woz gave a lecture in one of my classes years ago and I came away impressed. He was obviously a brilliant engineer. "Naivete" is generally used in a negative manner but he had just enough naivete to get through life happy. He talked about all the chips he redesigned as a teen and it did not sound like bragging at all. We need more Woz's and less Jobs in this world.

ModernMech2• 11 months ago

When I was a student, we tried to get him to speak to at our school, but Woz wanted mucho $$$$ to speak. But it seems plenty people will pay what he asks. I guess if my job were to just go around talking about random shit I'm interested in, and I can make $10M doing that, I'd be the happiest person ever too. I don't think it's about naivete.

Edit to clarify: I'm not saying he doesn't deserve to get paid, I'm saying his being "the happiest person ever" is directly correlated to his ability to collect millions just shooting the shit in front of a fawning audience.

namrog84• 11 months ago

it's a bit of work and effort to give a talk. And he is rich enough to not need to do it for the money. Time is important. If he'd be doing it for free he'd probably get too many requests. Adding a high $ can simply help filter down to a reasonable thing.to only the largest locations and highest number of people.

I dont want to do contract work but people ask so I just quote an unreasonably high number and on occasion someone bites. I dont need the money so I need an easy filter.

vjk800• 11 months ago

A person whose every interest and opinion gets validated by the world would indeed be very happy. Imagine just talking about whatever the hell happens to interest you to people and everyone paying attention and even paying you good money for that.

It's a bit related to how billionaires tell everyone to "just work on whatever makes you happy and it's all going to be fine".

prmph• 11 months ago

Nah, plenty of millionaires and even billionaires who have a license to print money are unhappy.

pstuart2• 11 months ago

Jobs was not a good person but we wouldn't be talking about Woz today if they had not paired up.

He was a visionary and "got" tech -- Apple's success with him (both times) and the floundering in between demonstrate his value to their story.

Again, not a nice man and not worthy of worship but definitely of respect for what he delivered.

ivape• 11 months ago

Why do we have to keep saying Jobs was not a good person?

1234letshaveatw3• 11 months ago

He was flawed, like all of humanity. We just aren't allowed to acknowledge his accomplishments anymore because he didn't personally engineer every Apple product or similar stupidity that is also used eg to diminish Musk.

rurp2• 11 months ago

Eh, there's no way to know for sure but I would bet that there are a lot more people who could have been swapped out for Jobs with similar success than the reverse. It's generally thought to be harder to find a brilliant innovative technical person for a startup than a business one. I also see a lot more passable Jobs imitators around the industry than I do Woz imitators.

lazyeye• 11 months ago

What's actually "nice"? Is it creating an industry and livelihoods for millions of people (directly or indirectly)? Or is it smiling and making people in the room feel comfortable?

bigstrat20033• 11 months ago

we wouldn't be talking about Woz today if they had not paired up.

The exact same thing is true in reverse. Jobs was a phenomenal salesman, one of the greatest to ever live. But without someone to actually make the products (and Woz was phenomenal at that), he would've had nothing to sell. You need both the business guy and the product guy to have a successful partnership.

vasco2• 11 months ago

It's not naive to try and be good and not exploit every situation to the best outcome for yourself, that's the whole point. How can people believe him to be so brilliant but also naive? Don't they see it? It doesn't take a smart man to see an apple and take it all for himself.

moolcool2• 11 months ago

"If you’re so smart, why aren’t you kind?"

delusional3• 11 months ago

There's a pretty significant difference between the statements: "You shouldn't say Woz is naive, because what Woz is ought to not be seen as naive" and "You shouldn't say Woz is naive, because most other people wouldn't understand him as naive" and it's unclear to me which of those to statements you mean.

I too have been lucky enough to hear him speak, and he very much does have this naivete of youth in the way he speaks. He has this very simple and straight forward way to view his contribution, along with a very simple motivation of "it makes me happy" that does feel naive.

I don't think he's nearly as naive as he comes off, but I think he wants to be seen as naive, because his personal philosophy is one that places naivete in high regard. He wants to follow happiness, and happiness can oftentimes be a little naive.

firefax3• 11 months ago

But what is the "best outcome" when you have your house paid off and ample savings? He got ripped off by Jobs early on, but Jobs also let him do the work he wanted -- it's rare to have someone as good as Woz was also understand marketing. Jobs is deified too much, but he did bring something to the table in their business relationship.

Anyways, he seems to have protected himself well later on, was able to do good (stories of him giving stock to ppl left out early on, that kind of thing) -- people hyperfocus on one very specific thing (Jobs ripping him off in the atari days) when it's a small point in a much larger life.

cyanydeez• 11 months ago

Its naive not to program defensively.

JKCalhoun4• 11 months ago

I get what they mean by "naive". I think I would have used the word "child-like"? Even that is not right though. There is a kind of playground simplicity to his philosophy. I think Woz did though in fact bring enough for the whole class.

mindwok2• 11 months ago

They're different dimensions. Naivety suggests a blindness (or maybe willingness to ignore) the true nature of people, hence why naive people are often taken advantage of, or seen as idealistic. You can be technologically brilliant and at the same time not dialled in to those kind of social/people dynamics.

jajko• 11 months ago

No its not naive, its called not being a sociopath. Some of biggest movers if not all were and are such. Utter pieces of shit as human beings, to the last one. I dont think I need to name current big names, all of them fit this.

trinsic2• 11 months ago

There is no greatness without goodness. - James Allen

bko7• 11 months ago

[written from my iPhone]

I think the net effect of people like Jobs is a huge positive in this world. Why do you judge people that did great things by the standards of everyday interaction. You think this could be related? Perhaps there is something unpleasant about the person that had some effect on his ability for greatness? Or do you think people are like a video game with knobs where you can turn down "don't be a jerk" without affecting anything else?

croes• 11 months ago

What do you consider the positive and negative effects of people like Jobs?

CjHuber2• 11 months ago

I mean are the iPhone and computing that feels frictionless really a net positive for society?

callc2• 11 months ago

I don’t see human interactions having a “net effect”. If someone is nice to me 99% of the time, and 1% screams obscenities at me, the 99% does not excuse the 1%.

Bad behavior is bad behavior full stop.

Try slapping someone and then follow it up with “but I wrote X software that benefits Y amount of people”

Barrin92• 11 months ago

Why do you judge people that did great things by the standards of everyday interaction

Because I don't want to live in a world of things built by socially maladjusted misanthropes, I want to live in a world build by kind and social people they made with their own hands.

There is something incredibly servile and pathetic in the psychology of people who latch onto perceived great men instead of looking to their neighbor. Like the kind of people who spend their day on twitter hoping that Elon retweets them and gives them attention.

xyst2• 11 months ago

We need more Woz's and less Jobs in this world

In this day and age, most people are attracted to "influencing". For better (giving back to society, educational) or worse (pranksters, grifters, "manosphere").

One notorious case is "Zara Dar", a PhD dropout to OF creator. Seemed to have high potential in the industry then something just flipped (money? too difficult? not fond of the grind?) and decided to go to OF.

The new world, with its hypercapitalistic tendencies, take advantage of the worst of us. It's one of the reasons for the rise of kakistocratic administration in the United States.

nashashmi• 11 months ago

more people need to be like Woz and we need more Jobs in the world. Jobs was a person who bullied through the ego centric system and paved a good single way forward.

Remember when MS office did not include a pdf outputter because they didn’t want to hurt adobe’s feelings? Remember that? Would that have happened with a bully like Jobs? Who went nuclear on all of those analytics companies because they put analytics without declaring it?

Jobs caused a lot of divorces with the iPhone. He did! But he cut through people’s ego like scissors and in a creative field that can happen a lot. He didn’t have ego though.

pyrale2• 11 months ago

Would that have happened with a bully like Jobs?

To assume that ms wasn't headed by bullies requires a striking ignorance of ms' history.

_mu• 11 months ago

He didn’t have ego though.

False. Steve Jobs had a massive ego and was by no means a saint. He got a girl pregnant and tried to skirt the responsibility. That's not someone with no ego.

Steve Jobs was also a genius and his bullying pushed a lot of people to excellence.

Someone can be both a genius on the one hand and a total shithead on the other. That's called being human. <3

keeganpoppen• 11 months ago

this is the right take. the world clearly needs more Steve Jobses or the world wouldn't remember this one so singularly. and i don't know what the number would be before the world didn't need any more Wozniaks. the problem is that the Wozniaks of the world nowadays, if they're not getting paid 9 figures by Zuck, are probably in a random room somewhere doing absolutely brilliant work that will take a decade to appreciate. and the more Wozes in the world, the more advantageous it is to be a Jobs. kind of a funny dynamic equilibrium.

1vuio0pswjnm73• 11 months ago

Less Jobs, more Woz

thomassmith654• 11 months ago

More of either of them works for me. Compared to Musk or Zuckerberg or Andreessen or Altman or Bezos or any other 2025 tech fucko, Jobs is Woz.

layer8• 11 months ago

Present-day Apple could use some more Jobs, though.

helveticabold48• 11 months ago

Actually the world needs more Jobs too. More Jobs, more Woz. Brilliant engineers and hackers need to partner with some super egotistic, charismatic, bullying asshole visionaries to make a dent.

Remember how Jobs single handedly bullied Adobe Flash into its graveyard? Bullied record labels into selling individual songs instead of the whole CD? Cannot imagine Woz doing that. Elon is the next Jobs only even harder to stomach. I wouldn't want to work for these people but they, along with those who can work along side them, change the world.

pbreit4• 11 months ago

You could not be more wrong.

Woz was in the right place at the right time. Jobs would have found someone else and no one would ever have heard of Woz. Jobs gave us some of the most amazing products the world has ever seen.

1vuio0pswjnm73• 11 months ago

Woz on Musk's Tesla, Inc.:

https://www.slashdot.org/~SteveWoz

Comment Re:No Autonomy (Score 2) 125

by SteveWoz on Monday April 13, 2020 @09:13AM (#59940526) Attached to: Elon Musk Still Predicts 1 Million Tesla Robotaxis By the End of the Year

You might have missed that Musk made the same claim about 2016, with the 1-camera sensor system. The 2017 claim was with the newer 8-camera system, and the claim was made before Tesla even had software for the new sensors, and the Tesla then lacked adaptive cruise control, adaptive high beam, self parking, summon, and other things that the prior model did have. I'm embarrassed that I actually believed these claims.

_____________________

Comment Die in your sleep... (Score 1) 213

by SteveWoz on Saturday June 22, 2019 @11:30PM (#58807154) Attached to: People Keep Spotting Teslas With Snoozing Drivers On the Freeway

At least Tesla respects our right to die in our sleep.

_____________________

Comment Re:Maybe they just realized (Score 1) 172

by SteveWoz on Friday June 02, 2017 @02:55PM (#54537213) Attached to: Denmark Is Killing Tesla and Other Electric Cars

You meant to say 'great' cars with 'some' quality problems. Autocorrect can be a bitch...

micromacrofoot• 11 months ago

I'm not familiar with his personality, what is he naive about? like the kind of person that ignores sort of political and business machinations and chases personal interests?

loveit___• 11 months ago

Without Woz and Jobs there’d be no Apple (as the name was because of Jobs weird eating habits), but most definitely without Woz there’d be no Apple.

Everything Jobs was though and the people around him and those that worked before him were important for the state of Apple as he left it.

But Woz is my fav also, and if there were many, many makers like Woz, and there are, that would be fantastic, and it is.

Woz, I love you, man.

WalterBright14• 11 months ago

most definitely without Woz there’d be no Apple.

I'm less sure about that. In the late 70's, I worked at a small startup in Pasadena, designing and building single board computers. The engineers in it could have designed and built an Apple. They also wrote professional tools to do it - like a first class macro assembler running on a minicomputer, while Woz hand-assembled his code. For example, Hal Finney did a stint there and wrote a BASIC interpreter in assembler in a few days.

What the company lacked, however, was drive and vision. We all thought the Apple was a toy. We just didn't get it. Jobs got it, Jobs had the drive and the vision.

Sometimes I wonder what Hal could have accomplished if he'd partnered with a visionary.

pbreit4• 11 months ago

I think there's a decent chance there's an Apple without Woz. But definitely not without Jobs.

LandoCalrissian• 11 months ago

He's earnest and legitimately excited about it and you can pick up on that. It's always fun to talk to people like that regardless of their interest.

jimt1234• 11 months ago

I really hate to say it, but I had a different experience. Woz came to the fintech company where I work for a lecture and Q&A. I was super excited to see him, like a Little Leaguer meeting his favorite baseball player. However, Woz came off kinda rude, like "Everyone else is wrong. I'm right about everything." Maybe he was just having a bad day, or he didn't really wanna speak at my lame fintech company but somehow got roped into it. Or, maybe it's a case of "Never meet your heroes", but I was kinda disappointed. Woz and Kevin Mitnick were my two heroes as a young nerd.

JKCalhoun4• 11 months ago

I like Woz, was never a fan of Jobs. And I mean that with regard to their personality — not their skillset.

My sense though, after having seen Woz talk a few times now, is that he seemed (seems?) to be on a tear to make sure his legacy is known. Now I would never say that he came across as a braggart in his talks ... but intent on making sure it is established that is was he the designed the Apple II (not Jobs, for example).

I always feel a bit of sadness though. It seems that he dropped out as the chief architect of the hardware not long after the Apple II ascendency. I'm thinking of the Apple IIGs, etc. — certainly the Lisa and Macintosh.

It feels like the industry quickly moved beyond the reach of the "hobbyist". There were no more "clever tricks" to be employed — just thousands of very dense 4-layer traces and lots and lots of components.

I know he was not a "mere hobbyist" — he worked for HP for crissakes, but the machines became more like spreadsheets, less like "art" if you know what I mean.

kevin_thibedeau• 11 months ago

He survived a plane crash with a head injury. That can cause you to reassess your priorities.

pbreit4• 11 months ago

Woz is extraordinary lucky that he has a legacy (and a lot of money). Clearly the bulk of the credit goes to Jobs. And it seems more than likely that if not Woz, Jobs would have found someone else.

coffeebeqn2• 11 months ago

That happened to every inch of the computer adjacent industry. Programming was like that as was games and game development at one point

mschaef2• 11 months ago

It feels like the industry quickly moved beyond the reach of the "hobbyist". There were no more "clever tricks" to be employed

It happened in a matter of a few years. The Apple II was built as a machine capable of running Breakout in software. Woz picked the 6502 (originally for the Apple One) because he could afford it.

It wasn't that long after that Commodore released the C64. They chose the 6502 because they'd bought the 6502 fab to protect their calculator business (and then they used it to assemble custom video and audio chips). From there, we were off to the races with respect to larger and larger engineering requirements.

Oddly, I wrote a bit about it a few days ago (in the context of John Gruber's recent discussion on the Apple and Commodore microcomputers): https://mschaef.com/c64

Dig1t• 11 months ago

Woz is one of my favorite people ever, a lifelong hero for me.

I think it’s important to remember that he is the product of a very unique time in world history though.

He grew up in a time and place that was arguably the best time ever to be a human in all of history. He grew up in a society with extremely high social mobility, when a house in the bay was cheap, in a homogeneous society with high social trust, surrounded by the smartest people of his generation, in a place in the country which valued open mindedness and true progressive thinking. Things like going to college, buying a house, paying rent, or finding a mate were orders of magnitude easier than today.

Optimizing for happiness is a nice pursuit if this is the society that shapes your worldview, but today this is a luxury view that very few people can afford. The world is much more of a rat race, we have significantly lower social trust, basic survival is much harder to achieve than Woz’s time. So few people can go through life just trying to be happy instead of grinding to get ahead.

dogcow• 11 months ago

This is spot on. Nicely written! I think many people forget what a great, unique, and exciting time those decades were. (Or many simply did not experience them).

There was a palpable sense of nearly unlimited potential for a brighter future, powered by technology.

As someone who experienced those decades, present day feels like a dystopia in comparison.

sidgriciouus• 11 months ago

Great comment. This quote from Hunter S Thompson comes to mind (although he is referring to middle sixties so Woz would have been a teenager, not quite the 70s young adult)

“Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

ninetyninenine2• 11 months ago

People like jobs change the world so that everyone else can be a woz.

pbreit4• 11 months ago

Could not disagree more. Woz's naiveté is cute. But Jobs' creations are out-of-this-world amazing. If not Woz, Jobs would have found someone else.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 11 months ago

I tend to have a pretty open, kind, and respectful approach to others.

It’s frequently interpreted as weakness and naivety.

I’m actually a pretty hardboiled and cynical person on the inside, but choose not to approach life in that manner. There’s reasons. Long story for other venues.

It’s always interesting to see the reactions from folks that think I’m an easy mark, when it dawns on them, that I’m not.

Kindness and generosity are not [necessarily] weakness.

jondwillis• 11 months ago

It’s always interesting to see the reactions from folks that think I’m an easy mark, when it dawns on them, that I’m not.

I'll bite. Go ahead and list some recent examples of this actually happening please.

NoGravitas• 11 months ago

Maybe kindness is the real punk rock.

rw2• 11 months ago

Disagree, almost of all the accomplishments in humanity are driven by people like Steve Jobs not Woz. Elon Musk could be said to be a second iteration, a technical person extremely good at sales that can pursue and sell a vision.

There are a lot of people who want to be happy. Let them be happy, but it's the relentless builders/dreamers who pushes through the entire journey of getting a product out there to the people.

maxehmookau• 11 months ago

Define "accomplishments". Based on Woz's message, I would say he's been the true achiever in the game of life. He found, what he genuinely believes, is happiness.

Personally, I'd take that over being the creator of something valuable.

If Elon Musk is being held up as a pinnacle of achievement, I don't want that.

tim333• 11 months ago

For each Jobs/Musk having the grand vision you probably need a lot of Wozs to actually build the things.

revskill• 11 months ago

AI is taking our jobs, do not worry.

ap99• 11 months ago

It's not as simple as Woz good, Jobs bad.

We wouldn't even know who Woz was without Jobs. Sure Jobs had character flaws but everyone does.

Is there a world where you get get a person who has all of Jobs's positive traits without any of the negative? Maybe but not likely.

davidmurphy• 11 months ago

Love to see this.

sandworm1012• 11 months ago

He also famously engineered a bomb hoax in highschool, down to building a ticking device that was heroically disabled by, iirc, the school principal. Today, such behavior would easily end in terrorism charges.

It is all laughing a fun, until you meet people whose futures were destroyed for doing far less in regards to fake weapons in schools.

nancyminusone4• 11 months ago

Say it ain't so!

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

irchans• 11 months ago

My son accidentally brought a knife to school at age 12 -- maybe a 4 inch blade. When he realized that he had a knife in his backpack, he told his teacher. He was suspended from school for about 3 days and we had a fairly pleasant conversation with the principal after the suspension.

nancyminusone4• 11 months ago

I myself have been suspended for having a "weapon". The weapon in question was a bent paper clip. No I'm not kidding.

platevoltage• 11 months ago

You probably remember when the cops would get called if you were caught with a cell phone or a pager at school.

sandworm1012• 11 months ago

When I was at university, one of my classmates was a cop. He was petrified because that day, due to schedule issues, he had all his cop stuff locked in the trunk of his personal car. At the time, having that sort of weaponry on campus was a big deal. He would have been better off comming to class in full uniform (the exception for cops would not apply if he wasnt on duty or at least in uniform.) He knew what might happen if someone discovered his handgun/taser/mace was on campus.

trallnag• 11 months ago

I remember back in elementary school the YW in my class brought a huge kitchen knife with him in his backpack. He showed it to me. Later that day, he slightly cut himself with it in the toilet over a broken heart or something like that. Next day he was back to school. We called him sleeping bag because he was wearing his pants so low

softwaredoug• 11 months ago

I always think about this:

At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.”

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10651136-at-a-party-given-b...

codyb• 11 months ago

Catch-22 is a fantastic read as well!

mrtksn• 11 months ago

Steve Wozniak is one of the kind of people that makes you happy knowing they exist.

nancyminusone4• 11 months ago

I think that $10 million is a great answer for "how much money is more than you'll ever need".

Significantly more than that, and you're a hoarder.

atonse4• 11 months ago

Maybe I'm not creative enough but I've tried this thought exercise with friends and it's a fun one.

The question is, try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go.

So then you start with big ticket items (like maybe a yacht or a house). That gets you to your first $500m. After that, stuff gets WAY "cheaper" where you just run out of things generally before even hitting $1bn.

And then at the end of it we try to imagine what it's like having stuff worth $250bn. And there's just no way to make that tangible.

I did try this with my son and he said he'd buy an A-list soccer team. But I feel that starts to get into "buying companies that make you MORE money" territory.

At a much smaller scale, it seems to be that $10mn is so much that you could live in a $2m house (good by any standard in any location), have a stable of cars, have full-time help, fly first class or even private everywhere, and vacation as much as you want. Or am I off by a lot given inflation?

tempestn• 11 months ago

Remember you need enough left over to throw off an income to maintain your yacht and private jet. Those things aren't cheap.

qaq2• 11 months ago

Art

azinman22• 11 months ago

$10M being enough depends on a lot of things:

1. Do you have children, and if so, are they going to expensive private schools or have other expensive hobbies

2. Are you planning on stopping working, and how many years do you need to support at what lifestyle

3. Debt

4. Do you support others, like parents, etc

5. Do you have health issues, or will you, that will be expensive to support

There are more factors but these are just some that prevent 10M from being enough.

ethersteeds• 11 months ago

I'm of the "only way to win is not to play" mind with this exercise. I would peel off 10-20 million to eliminate lifetime financial concerns for my circle, and immediately go MacKenzie Scott on the rest, trying to put it towards maximum societal benefit.

Need to get that set up before the yacht brochures start arriving in the mail. Before the dark whispers take hold...

sseagull• 11 months ago

This made an impression on me:

https://www.spend-elon-fortune.com/

Buying all this stuff that seems expensive, but then seeing that it barely makes a dent in a truly wealthy person’s fortune.

Of course, he wants even more…

dcminter• 11 months ago

I've always been given to understand that making a small fortune (out of a large one) was the main goal of owning a bookshop. I'd try that :)

danschuller• 11 months ago

I don't know if you intended this to be only spent selfishly. But if you look to how the old robber barons spent their money they did things like giving the US a large portion of it's public library system. I don't think it would be hard find things to do like this that make everyones lives better.

kleiba2• 11 months ago

Nice house, nice car, allowance for everyday stuff (food, bills, etc.) and travel, and a little bit of money for retirement.

The rest: charities.

ryandrake• 11 months ago

There was a long Reddit thread[1] a while ago that describes what people in various wealth tranches spend their money on. It's very long, but the TLDR is: They don't buy "things" so much as they buy Experiences, Access, Influence, Time, Political Power, and so on.

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2s9u0s/comment/c...

xyst2• 11 months ago

Maybe I'm not creative enough
So then you start with big ticket items (like maybe a yacht or a house)

You answered your own question. Very boring and selfish answer, and just serving yourself (ie, greed).

Your son has more creativity than you.

If you are given $1B in hard cash, and the first thing you do is spend it on yourself. You are probably the worst person to ever get a windfall.

Natsu• 11 months ago

The question is, try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go.

That gets a lot easier to spend if you decide you want to explore space or something.

saclark11• 11 months ago

Sounds like you'll love "Spend Bill Gates' Money" [1]

[1] https://neal.fun/spend

which• 11 months ago

It would seem that accumulating stuff is a waste of time at a point much lower than one billion. On the other hand, giving every Debian maintainer $500 a month is ~$5M a year. Add in Gentoo, Alpine, and other things I like and you're looking at probably double that total. Ivy admission for kids is a few million a year for 5-10 years... Retaking Artsakh would be north of $3 billion

jama2113• 11 months ago

Not to be that guy as I think your point is fantastic, but 1bn dollar yachts exist, probably just to break your question! Haha

jp57• 11 months ago

The best part of this game is that it takes time to spend the money, if you can't manage to spend more than 4-5%/year then your wealth will actually be growing.

For reference, on $1bn that's $40M/year or about $100k/day in earnings if you just have the cash in a money market account.

ponector• 11 months ago

That is not so hard. Try to buy/build something really big and price tag easily goes to 1bn.

A skyscraper. An eco-friendly village. A ship. A spacecraft.

stronglikedan• 11 months ago

try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go.

High end audio equipment. Done. Next!

simonebrunozzi• 11 months ago

The "number" is always part of a big debate. There's no right or wrong.

Usually, they say that you can maintain your wealth (adjusted for inflation) indefinitely by using the so-called "safe withdrawal rate" [0], which people put between 1% and 4%.

So, say that you have $1M in wealth, and you pick your SWR at 2%. It means that you can use 2% of that, or $20,000, every year, knowing that your wealth will keep growing at least by the inflation rate, for a long time (30 years, or 100, or whatever).

If you have $10M, you can spend $200,000/year.

Clearly, it depends on your lifestyle how much you need to have saved in order to FIRE (Financially Independent, Retired Early).

All of this assumes that for the next 30, 40 years, we will not see any catastrophic or monumental changes in how the financial system works.

[0] https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Safe_withdrawal_rates

insane_dreamer4• 11 months ago

When you have that much money, you're not interesting in buying things anymore, you're interested in buying power, people.

You want to buy a social network.

Or see if you can swing an election to your favor.

That's what you do with $Bs. It's usually not very good.

deepsun2• 11 months ago

try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go.

https://neal.fun/spend/

CGMthrowaway• 11 months ago

try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go.

I'll bite. Private island, superyacht, G7, prime mansions in LA, NYC, London, Singapore, collection of old masters, part owner in an NFL team, establish a foundation and trusts for the kids/grandkids, trip to space. Easy

eps• 11 months ago

try to spend $1bn on stuff

Buy an election.

If not, buy a newspaper, a TV network or a media outlet with a good outreach.

Then you can get you 1B back tenfold.

thaumaturgy• 11 months ago

I mean, can I not just spend the money to buy a better society in which to live?

Museums. I love museums. They all need more support. Kids need more places to do field trips.

Libraries ... they are experiencing budget cuts everywhere now as cities prioritize police spending.

Parks.

Homes for people that can't afford them. Seriously, one of the most effective possible cures for homelessness is to set up a program that helps people cover their rent for a month or two if they get into trouble.

Health care. Like, there's got to be a pile of people that need urgent health care and can't afford it, right?

Education. Adult education, too.

Science and research.

And most, maybe all of these, aren't even things that necessarily need an entirely new organization to spearhead them, or some kind of dramatic social change. They are all things that exist right now and need more funding than anything else. You could hire a small team to just look up all kinds of programs all day long and write checks for them and it would be enormously impactful.

I just... the answer to this seems so blindingly obvious to me, and then I read the rest of the comments, and I really wonder when exactly the hacker ethos got co-opted by the crab mentality.

bearl2• 11 months ago

It seems like a lot then I think about how California’s EDD department gave 50 billion to criminals in 2020/2021 and then it feels less ginormous.

My answer because I don’t see it: climate change research. A billion isn’t much but if it can help save the planet that would be worth it to me personally.

renewiltord• 11 months ago

This is crazy. I could easily spend a billion dollars without even thinking. That doesn't even get you a novel drug. Like, if I made $100b I have a shit ton of things I could attack with that.

Even a trillion dollars I could probably spend. I like sailboats so a yacht sounds nice, but I cannot believe it even a fraction of the satisfaction of developing some research, or of having the fundamental research itself done.

jppope• 11 months ago

I hear what you are saying: consumables and normal luxury items are hard to spend a lot of money on (houses, cars, boats, planes, clothes, food, etc)... if you however were to choose to spend a lot of money on the R&D required to reducing human suffering you'll find that the money will go like its on fire. Build a new drug, create novel ai tech, driverless cars... $1B would feel like you need to clip coupons for the grocery store.

artursapek2• 11 months ago

That's only if you spend your money on stuff. I wouldn't spend it on stuff, I would fund things like ambitious art and architecture projects. If you can't think of ways to allocate $1B you're probably a very boring person, and if your first thought is "yachts" then you're definitely one.

anon1919283• 11 months ago

or just look at how many big yatcht Gabe newell owns and try to calculate cost of maintaining them for a year. That alone easily requires $1billion invested in somewhere so returns can maintain the ownership + trips. Also now he now owns shipyard too.

kragen3• 11 months ago

Yachts and houses are boring. Can't you think of anything you'd rather do with your life than live in a house and go sailing? You can do that without money!

A million dollars is, roughly speaking, a person-year of dedicated professional services from a world-class professional of almost any profession. There are a few exceptions, like stockbrokers, surgeons, and some kinds of lawyers. But a billion dollars buys you, say, 1000 person-years of the best professionals.

For millions of dollars, you could have your own vaccination program, your own particle accelerator, your own web browser, your own steel mill, your own religious cult, your own pyramid, your own AI research lab, your own permaculture experiment station, your own rare book collection (which you could digitize), and so on.

That's leaving aside personal consumption of things like a diplomatic passport from a foreign country, a private doctor, a comfortable apartment in a former missile silo, and a helicopter to get to it with. Your yacht isn't going to do you much good if you get arrested in a foreign country on trumped-up charges because you unintentionally insulted the wrong guy's daughter, or if your cancer goes undiagnosed until stage 4.

jonas21• 11 months ago

There was a movie from the 80s with this premise. When I mention this to people, I'm usually surprised to find out that I'm the only one in the group who's seen it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster%27s_Millions_(1985_fi...

calf• 11 months ago

I assume people with $1bn are playing Civilization IRL, they aren't "spending" the way consumers think of goods.

bornfreddy• 11 months ago

The question is, try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go.

Genie: I’ll give you one billion dollars if you can spend 100M in a month. There are 3 rules: No gifting, no gambling, no throwing it away

SRE: Can I use AWS?

Genie: There are 4 rules

UltraSane2• 11 months ago

The only real way to spend billions is to build many huge houses all over the world or ONE really big house. To spend hundreds of billions you would have to build something ridiculous like a mile high pyramid with a 1 square mile base.

x-complexity• 11 months ago

The question is, try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go.

Easy: The largest ship in the world by area. (Goal - either 500m x 500m, or at least 0.25km^2 with the breadth >= 300m)

The current status quo for bulk carriers are the Valemax ships (360m x 65m), with each one costing around $100 million. (actual figure wildly varies, but sticks around that number)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valemax#Sale_of_ships

https://www.tradewindsnews.com/containerships/evergreen-adds...

(500 * 500) / (360 * 65) = 10.683760683760683

10.68 * $100 million = $1.068 billion

Even just going with 5 Valemax ships side-by-side (360m x 325m) costs half a billion.

TheAceOfHearts• 11 months ago

Posts like these seem a bit silly to me because it's incredibly easy to spend billions of dollars as soon as you get away from a consumer mindset. The value in a billion dollars comes from being able to shape the future in whichever direction you want. I'm not interested in spending money just to make my own life marginally more comfortable, but in elevating the quality of life and overall experience of everyone around me.

Here's a few random frustrations I have:

Most modern hardware appliances are not easily repaired or hackable. I'd love to manufacture and sell open hardware appliances which prioritize repairability and maintainability, including sharing the CAD models and opening up the firmware.

Despite the years of effort that have gone into the Linux Desktop Experience, it still often lacks polish in various areas. You could afford to hire world class engineers and designers to fix up every minor annoyance and really provide the most deluxe desktop experience possible without compromising on the slightest detail. Not only that, you could contract companies to add Linux support for any essential tools and applications which aren't already supported.

And that's not even getting into the ability to fund the creation of really outstanding media. Most modern kid's entertainment treats them like morons while slapping them in the face with basic lessons. You could create some truly delightful kid shows without having to skimp on any aspect, and really lay the foundations for creating a brighter future. Embed lessons of every major topic as part of the show without being hamfisted about it, and when they start to encounter those challenging topics in school they will have some foundational models on which to build upon. A basic example: you can teach a kid the fundamentals of calculus from an intuitive perspective, and when they actually learn proper calculus in school it'll be much easier to ramp up.

Heck, you could fund the modernization of a ton of college level educational content with enough money. Buy the rights to any important textbooks, rewrite as needed, then make them freely available. Hire a team of world class artists, animators, and builders to help create supporting materials / content that cover any topic. Pair that with world class educators and experts. You put that all together and create the most powerful repository of high quality educational content that the world has ever seen. By doing this you're laying the foundations for the development of future generations and setting them up for success!

Those are just some quick thoughts which I'm willing to write up here... If I thought about it longer I'd probably be able to come up with more significant quality of life improvements that could be spread out if someone was willing to spend a few billion dollars into making them into a reality.

Oh here's a final quick one: funding maker spaces across the country. It's not clear how much potential could be unlocked if we had widely available maker spaces where people can ask for help with their projects and ideas. Sometimes all it takes is having someone who can point you to the right tools or people.

strken• 11 months ago

Maybe I'm missing the point, but all that stuff is personal spending on luxury goods, which is probably the least useful thing money can do. If your goal is something like "solve supply-side housing in my city" then you might need to build hundreds of high-rise apartment blocks, at which point you'll be able to burn through $1bn pretty quickly. And yeah, you'll eventually make your money back, but that's a side benefit.

thrance2• 11 months ago

50 billion cheeseburgers.

https://neal.fun/spend/

user_7832• 11 months ago

The question is, try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go.

Try to reduce stray animal suffering across a single city here in India. Or if you somehow are successful, extend that to the country.

If you think that leaves you with a lot of funds, maybe provide a few villages with healthcare checkups for a few days.

gdubs• 11 months ago

Buy a sports team :)

fragmede• 11 months ago

Coming up with a list of things to buy isn't an interesting use of the money. Starting companies, using that money to pay people to do things, for, say, 10 years, for all industries you want to get involved in. A billion dollars, over ten years, for 1,000 people, is 100k. Which is fairly decent salary.

Make it 500 people and give them housing.

What to use those people for is left as an exercise for the reader.

threatofrain2• 11 months ago

I'd like to build something interesting so I want more. Some people want to buy homes, happiness, and family prosperity with their wealth. If that's the case then $10M is too much. That's multiple homes territory.

But if you want to build something for society and not die doing it then you might need more than $10M.

qaq2• 11 months ago

Depends on where person wants to live

qzw2• 11 months ago

Isn’t that backwards? Most people need to build a business to make the $10M+ in the first place. Are you talking about a nonprofit or an airplane/movie business (both famous for turning large fortunes into small ones). Otherwise you probably should follow the advice from the “Producers”: never put your own money in the show.

delusional3• 11 months ago

I'd like to build something interesting so I want more.

My dad built tents for diabetes research in Africa, I think that's pretty interesting and helpful. He's never had even a million dollars.

You need way less than you think.

nancyminusone4• 11 months ago

how much you'll ever need

If that's the case then it's no longer just for you, so I think that's fair

ahmeneeroe-v2• 11 months ago

You are exactly right. If you want to build something big from scratch you will likely need to control that thing, which in our system means ownership and wealth. If you don't own it, someone else will own/control it and you could lose your ability to execute on your vision.

gota• 11 months ago

Actual numbers aside - I couldn't posssibly respect and admire Woz's statement more than I did.

My English may not be enough to express it but above all else it exhudes a "clarity of purpose" that is remarkable

dfee• 11 months ago

And a couple of homes. In the Bay Area, that’s another $10MM

stonemetal12• 11 months ago

Would buying a good chunk of land make you a "hoarder"? Depending on where you are 20 acres can be more than $10 million even before you build a house etc.

zarzavat• 11 months ago

Definitions of wealth often exclude primary residence for this reason, it depends a lot on where you live, and it's also not very liquid. There are poor people who own large houses (but can't sell for whatever reason), and there are rich people who don't own any house at all.

delusional3• 11 months ago

There's an argument to be had about how if that was viewed as hoarding and taxed appropriately, land would probably be a lot cheaper.

kube-system2• 11 months ago

Earth has about 3 acres of habitable land per person.

carlosjobim2• 11 months ago

Our lord and savior already answered your question 2000 years ago in Matthew 21:33-46

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+21%3A33...

vitaflo• 11 months ago

Spending $10m to buy 20 acres is hardly a "need". I think people here are missing the point of the quote by throwing out a bunch of absurd technicalities.

dismalaf• 11 months ago

I agree. With $10 million I'd immediately buy a decent chunk of land in the middle of nowhere, build a modest home + a guest home or two, have a hobby farm, and retire with a solid $8 million or so left. Invest, live off interest, done.

csallen• 11 months ago

Most rich people don't "hoard" money like Scrooge McDuck. They're generally spending it on:

1. Equity in companies or loans to the government.

2. Expensive food, homes, clothes, hotel stays, travel, child care, etc.

skeaker• 11 months ago

Citation needed, but also buying homes (that you don't intend to live in or actually use) is still hoarding, and is arguably even worse than hoarding wealth.

nicbou• 11 months ago

I would measure it in multiples of the median income. At 5-6x I imagine that you can buy anything you want but not everything. You are still somewhat price sensitive but rarely bothered by a setback or an expensive meal.

socalgal2• 11 months ago

There's lots of things I'd like to do that would cost more than $10 million. Maybe if you're saying I personally only have $10m but control $1t?

Things I'd do if I didn't have to raise money, find investors, etc.

Bribe/payoff whoever I had to and then build a real transit system in LA,SF,Seattle as one example.

Consider making a museum/expo-center that's like the Lucas Museum (https://www.lucasmuseum.org/) but centered around Video Games and/or Interactive Digital Art.

carlosjobim2• 11 months ago

Having more money than that is not for your personal expenses and comfort, but to finance projects at a large scale.

That's why they need more than $10 million for space exploration, or for setting up giant factories to make any kind of goods, for developing massive infrastructure, for warfare, etc etc.

teaearlgraycold4• 11 months ago

More than that should be taxed at a 100% marginal tax rate. Eliminate endless greed as a motivator.

alchemist1e93• 11 months ago

It’s so disappointing to constantly see this type of evil envy driven nonsense posted on HN. Capitalism has delivered humanity unbelievable prosperity and improvements in living conditions.

Anyone finding themselves agreeing with ideas like 100% marginal taxes needs to look deep into their own soul and understand where it originates from and then go back and learn history and read authors like Hayek, Mises, and Sowell.

Sowell - “I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”

0xy2• 11 months ago

So when you create $10,000,000 of economic value you should be forced at gunpoint to stop contributing to society and creating jobs.

Jeff Bezos has created many, many millions of jobs while selling essential goods at margins sometimes below 1%. If his reward was stolen after $10m, why would he have bothered slaving away?

Aside the blatant jealousy factor, it's economic suicide and contains shadows of economic systems which have led to the deaths of tens of millions of people.

latchkey• 11 months ago

Reminds me of this old post. Once you get to a certain level of wealth, it isn't about money, it is about power.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ifiwonthelottery/comments/9qv4e1/po...

lutusp2• 11 months ago

I think that $10 million is a great answer for "how much money is more than you'll ever need".

Years ago I lived on $40 per month, after building my own cabin in Oregon -- wood heat, kerosene lanterns. Then I bought an Apple II and things got more complicated (https://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programm...). But basically I agree with you. Most people will never have that much, or need it.

tmendez• 11 months ago

Flight delayed for a couple hours at SFO; this was a great read, thank you!

blendo• 11 months ago

Yes. With $10 million in the bank, earning 4%, you'll see $400,000 a year, less taxes.

Whereas with $10 billion, you'll get $400 million a year, or about $7.5 million PER WEEK!

I think guys like Musk and Andreesen (&SBF) might have gone insane just trying to spend their money.

supriyo-biswas• 11 months ago

Most of a typical billionaire’s net worth is a lot of equity though.

dehrmann• 11 months ago

With $10 million in the bank, earning 4%, you'll see $400,000 a year, less taxes.

This isn't your point, but $400k puts you in a top tax bracket, so figure 30% of that goes to taxes. that brings your return down to 2.8%. The Fed wants to keep inflation at 2%, but it's usually a bit higher, leaving your real return at 0.3%. That's $30k per year.

bko7• 11 months ago

Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about Happiness, which is Smiles minus Frowns

For me happiness is a terrible life goal. Sure it's nice to be happy, but its such a vapid meaningless emotion. If I were to optimize for "happiness" I would just cash out, abandon my family, move to Vietnam, play video games and eat Hot Pockets all day. It doesn't take much to ride out the rest of my years.

But the life I choose is hard because doing hard things is good and fulfilling. I often willfully forgo happiness because, you know, I'm an adult. Maybe I'm just stupid?

Trasmatta2• 11 months ago

Why would abandoning your family make you happy?

I feel like you seem to have an entirely different definition of happiness than most other people. Are you confusing hedonism with happiness?

bko7• 11 months ago

Happiness is a positive emotion, pleasure, or contentment. It tends to be episodic and reactive, arising from enjoyable experiences, satisfying desires, or reaching short-term goals.

I am "happy" watching Netflix (smile). I am not happy on a long vacation with screaming children (frown).

If you were to optimize for smile - frown, you would do more Netflix, less children. In fact childless people report themselves much happier than people with children.

jstummbillig• 11 months ago

Abandoning your family does generally not sound like a recipe for happiness to me, given a somewhat healthy relationship.

If you think doing hard things is good and fulfilling, maybe that's what is happiness to you.

bko7• 11 months ago

Happiness does not mean good and fulfilling.

Having a family is hard. For instance, people with children are consistently less "happy" than their childless peers, yet many choose to have children knowing that. If you optimize for happiness you may be optimizing for selfish empty shallow existence. I'm sure you can take a drug to make you "happy" but that seems foolish.

aiono• 11 months ago

I think you conflate happiness and pleasure. Maintaining a family surely not always pleasant, but for the most people it makes you happier than being alone.

aylmao2• 11 months ago

If I were to optimize for "happiness" I would just cash out, abandon my family, move to Vietnam, play video games and eat Hot Pockets all day.

That sounds like hedonism, not happiness.

But the life I choose is hard because doing hard things is good and fulfilling.

Fulfillment is a big component of happiness. Aristotle famously contrasted hedonism (seeking pleasure) and eudaimonia (meaning and fulfillment) in Ethics iirc and mostly agreed with you— happiness is found eudamonia, not hedonism.

I'll also mention, hedonism is most often associated with money, because pleasures can be bought, but eudaimonia is only achieved through meaning, wisdom, action, etc.

jdelman• 11 months ago

You don't think Wozniak is using "happy" to mean "fulfilling"? This is a strawman.

mclau157• 11 months ago

that is an upfront assumption about what happiness would look like, if you got a few months into that plan you would realize that meaning and fulfilment go farther with happiness

justin664• 11 months ago

Love Woz but Woz U is definitely a sell out.

justin664• 11 months ago

It's not?

cole-k• 11 months ago

I heard Woz give a talk (or Q&A?) at a conference and it was very enjoyable, even for someone who doesn't know much about Apple's history.

If we are to believe his word about not selling out, then I must assume that https://www.efforce.io/company also brings him more smiles than frowns. I suppose if you change the definition of "sell out" you can conventionally sell out without meeting your own definition. That said, I am reluctantly open to being shown evidence that the company isn't a grift.

lysace• 11 months ago

I randomly rewatched Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) last night. Recommended.

thomassmith654• 11 months ago

While it's certainly not one of the finest movies ever made, it is the finest movie ever made about Apple, and a must-see for anyone in tech.

Noah Wyle was perfectly cast as Steve Jobs. In fact, Wyle participated in an amusing Apple prank at MacWorld 1999:

https://youtu.be/watch?v=TIClAanU7Os

meindnoch• 11 months ago

Not even when you created that Woz coin in 2021? Whatever it was called...

zamadatix• 11 months ago

I suppose that depends on whether or not he did it to get a huge pay day or if he just did it because he genuinely thought it was a cool way to try to encourage energy efficiency (but didn't make bank off that backing). Selling out isn't the same thing as not always picking the right thing.

bryceacc• 11 months ago

huh, does everyone forget this happened?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25330613

sn0wtrooper• 11 months ago

Wow, I didn't know that. Disappointing.

windowshopping• 11 months ago

Here I thought you were about to link something genuinely bad, like a sexual allegation, and you link him creating a blockchain coin (that was probably indeed useless) in 2020 at a time when all anyone was talking about in tech was how the blockchain was going to change everything and EVERYONE was launching blockchain-based apps.

Do you really think he did this with bad intentions? He almost certainly just thought it was cool and maybe would be useful or profitable. There's no reason to frame this as if it's a reason to ignore everything else about him. Completely disingenuous. Honestly shame on you imo. As if everyone who bought into the blockchain hype is a bad person.

I hope by the time you're 75 you don't have people linking a single failure to sum up and dismiss your entire character and the work of your entire lifetime.

arjie• 11 months ago

It's kind of nostalgic. Man, back in the day people would flip out on you if you used the wrong technology: "You fucking microserf!"

There's a strange sense of joy I feel about someone being upset that he made a blockchain app. In some parallel universe we're still in the old world of the '90s culturally and engineers go online to yell at each other for which data structure they use. "You asshole! Did you just use distributed hash tables?!"

stusmall• 11 months ago

1) Love to see this 2) Totally checks out that the woz is still active on /.

mocmoc• 11 months ago

Woz we all love you , for real. When I was a kid and I got to know who was this guy that invented RGB , that was always smiling… you changed our lives

gabrielsroka• 11 months ago

The rest of the story. https://slashdot.org/story/445414

testfrequency4• 11 months ago

I love seeing all the positive comments here on HN regarding Woz.

I worked at Apple for a good amount of time, and the general rhetoric from Apple folks still there is that Woz is “insane” and not to be trusted.

I personally always found that to be so far from the truth, and the root of it really was how much Apple people didn’t like him speaking open and freely about the company (failures, success, and everything between).

ProAm4• 11 months ago

I worked at Apple for a good amount of time, and the general rhetoric from Apple folks still there is that Woz is “insane” and not to be trusted.

Are you sure they werent talking about the other Steve? Are there any stories or examples from your co-workers? I've also only ever heard good things about him as a human and engineer.

testfrequency4• 11 months ago

Nobody calls Woz “Steve”, he’s almost always referred to as Woz.

justin664• 11 months ago

You're either talking about people who worked with him at least forty years ago and had a problem with him, or people who are talking out of their ass. No doubt about which this is, but I wonder why.

Fricken• 11 months ago

Woz bought 2 Model 3s thinking he would be able to rent them out as robotaxis. I'm sure he's a nice guy but I have no idea why he's (still) held up as some kind of tech guru.

BetaDeltaAlpha• 11 months ago

He's in the arena trying things

yarri• 11 months ago

Many of us grew up in the PLD era, k-maps, etc. Woz pushed early HW to the limit, with SW APIs that delivered real value. Woz made astute design trade-offs based on full stack knowledge that his peers lacked. The world’s moved on to the GPU (low precision, accelerated parallel compute?) era, but the Woz view point still holds. You can see it in the AI kernel optimizations, or rematerialization methods to push GPU HW to the new limits, and trade-offs need to be made. GPU HW for 4-bit QAT or even 2-bit will dramatically affect the SW (AI) of this era. What trade-offs do you make?

I saw Woz on Northbound 280 “driving” his cherry red Model S, using FSD. He was looking down at the screen the whole time I watched him. Swear he had ssh’d into it.

flounder3• 11 months ago

You must have worked in a very odd and isolated department. I never heard that rhetoric, even once, throughout my tenure. Nor have any of my old colleagues who still work there and are quite well known internally (notorious patents, features / tentpole DRI, etc).

brcmthrowaway• 11 months ago

From your post history, you left Apple in 2018, so I doubt you have up to date knowledge.

gitaarik• 11 months ago

Why would they promote that narrative? Was Woz critical of the company after he left?

jasoneckert• 11 months ago

I think the reason why so many of us look up to the Woz in the tech world is that he is genuine, in an industry where we see so much of the opposite regularly - and we want to be the same.

preommr• 11 months ago

I really do wonder if this is still the case.

As a younger millenial I am somewhat familiar with the legends of yore. But not as familiar as someone older that was around when the tech world was much smaller and more intimate. Where people casually met a wild Stallman at random conferences.

Given how much bigger the software and tech world has gotten, with how much time has passed, and how much things have changed, I wonder if people still see Wozniak as tech hero and as part of casual tech culture knowledge.

MetaWhirledPeas3• 11 months ago

Dude. Yes we still see him that way 1000%. It's just that there are a lot of tech people on this planet and they all have different ages and experiences, so they don't all think the same.

tabtab• 11 months ago

There's an interesting job interview question: do you want to be more like Woz or S. Jobs? Elon Musk's management style is very Jobs-like: Motivates via manipulation and wow-factor of cutting edge, has grand visions, yet knows what factories and the market can and can't handle, tries odd drugs, etc. However, Jobs rarely stuck his nose into politics; Jobs mostly just trolled about tech.

MetaWhirledPeas3• 11 months ago

I'm definitely a Woz. I appreciate both Jobs and Musk despite their blemishes, but I must say where Musk has Jobs beat is vision. Jobs was content to give everyone a computer. Musk is trying to bring the optimistic future to life on all fronts.

mnadkvlb• 11 months ago

I don't like idolization of rich people. Yea, Woz was great for the contribution to computing.

He did sell out though, launching a billion dollar crypto ico which is now at a valuation of around million dollar. Sure anyone would be happiest person ever.

itsthecourier• 11 months ago

i won a bid on Juliens for a book that was at some point given to Jobs by Woz.

the dedication reads:

"to the terminally ill, Woz"

I adore Woz, I hope my friends keep pulling a leg on me on my worst days too. Woz is all a man need in a good friend. exemplary

bonus: it's a computer science jokes book Woz wrote

c4pt0r• 11 months ago

https://www.juliensauctions.com/en/items/23156/steve-jobs-co...

that's cool!

MilnerRoute• 11 months ago

I love how someone took clips of Woz smiling his way through "Dancing with the Stars," and spliced them into a song about "doing it for fun," and for passion...

https://youtu.be/3FzuZdZLt54?si=l1hyv_ouGOcYD-ez

judah• 11 months ago

Met Woz randomly at the San Francisco airport a few years ago[0].

One of the nicest guys in the world. Humble, kind, gracious.

[0] https://www.facebook.com/share/1BHAeRQDGP/?mibextid=wwXIfr

craigmoliver• 11 months ago

Apparently he was so happy with integers that Apple had to license Basic from Microsoft.

WillAdams• 11 months ago

Unfortunately, he never got around to creating the floating point routines for the version of Basic he created for the 8-bit Apple computers which had unfortunate results:

https://www.folklore.org/MacBasic.html

WorldPeas2• 11 months ago

The most telling thing to me about Woz's personality was this walkthrough at the CHM. Note the section about the homebrew scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsB8Hxnb52o

djmips• 11 months ago

Thanks - a very good video! The quick anecdote of how he talks about in his teens / high school he stumbled over the PDP-8 small computer handbook which lead him to sneaking into the Stanford linear accelerator libary on a slow Sunday with his friend and reading through their prized selection of industry computer magazines, filling out the trade cards and getting back manuals for minicomputers which often had very detailed information about practical computer architecture - where he would then shut himself in a room and design on paper his own computers in a game to make them to use less and less chips. He competed with himself. This is a key detail in how he was self taught that I'd never heard before!

https://youtu.be/hsB8Hxnb52o?t=1083

Small Computer Handbook

https://www.grc.com/pdp-8/docs/PDP-8_Small_Computer_Handbook...

WorldPeas2• 11 months ago

another thing I heard but never thought of that was in the video, Woz said he based the Apple I off a terminal! In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense.

He was designing a terminal to be used with DARPANet, the predecessor to the internet. He wanted an inexpensive way to use a keyboard and TV as the display for use as a computer terminal.

https://historysanjose.org/how-we-restored-our-apple-1-to-wo...

I guess the IPhone was walking his path after all (as heretical as it may sound)

nunez2• 11 months ago

Woz is the FUCKING MAN.

He was on Dancing with the Stars, ffs. Before it got enshittified after Len died. (How did he even get that gig?)

He's doing it right.

throw48472852• 11 months ago

I love the line they give Woz in the movie Steve Jobs. In the big final confrontation he says, "Your products are better than you are brother."

The movie is a fiction, but Woz apparently liked it a lot and thought that Seth Rogen did a phenomenal job playing him. So this attitude of his adds up.

squigz• 11 months ago

"It's not binary, you can be decent and gifted at the same time"

throw48472852• 11 months ago

I love that Jobs doesn't have a comeback for that.

dileeparanawake• 11 months ago

Sounds like an accomplished life

aatd86• 11 months ago

The question is would he have been happy if he hadn't been successful?

xorvoid2• 11 months ago

That would be my guess. Or you can even consider that him focusing on happiness led to success.

xorvoid2• 11 months ago

(For his definition of success, which I would agree with, but not everyone would)

alkyon• 11 months ago

Success in itself is not a sufficient condition of happiness. How many unhappy billionairs are out there?

markus_zhang• 11 months ago

I think worst case he is going to be a successful HP engineer, definitely not as rich but can probably still retire early and do some teachings.

jomsk1e• 11 months ago

Even in another universe, if such thing exists, I can imagine Woz is just as successful, if not more, than he is here.

ethan_smith• 11 months ago

Research suggests happiness often precedes success rather than following from it - Woz likely would have found joy in engineering and creation regardless of financial outcomes.

fsiefken• 11 months ago

Some quotes relevant quotes from the net/youtube:

"I didn’t want to be corrupted, ever, in my life. I thought this out when I was 20 years old. A lot of basic ethics is truth and honesty, and I’m going to be an honest person. I’m not going to be corrupted to where I do things for the sake of money. I don’t want to be in that group (chasing power and wealth), I just want to have a nice life, a good life, maybe better than a typical engineer. But I gave away a lot of my money. I’m very comfortable with who I am, I’m not one of those private jet people. Part of my philosophy was everything you do should have an element of fun in it. I came up with the formula for happiness, what life is about. Happiness to me is smiles minus frowns, H=S-F. Increase your smiles, do a lot of fun things, enjoy entertainment, talk with people, make jokes. That’s creativity." -- The Guardian interview, 3 May 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2016/may/03/wisdom...

"My starting point was the desire to be a good person. So, I came up with a lot of different values, largely based on truth being the most important thing of all, and the value of what's called ethics. And I just said, I want to be in the middle, where I can associate with the maximum number of people. People are one of the most important parts of this life. Who you are, who your friends are, how you can talk to them—it was important to me because I was shy; I was an outsider. And I wanted to be in the middle, not one of these extreme "way up" people where you can only deal with other "way up" type people. Part of my thinking, was to be open-spirited to people. Part of that was not to build a hierarchy. [..] I wanted to build a philosophy, not a hierarchy. Just say, "Hey, I'm going to present how I think," and if somebody else has a different way of thinking, they just have a different mind. They're not bad, they're just different. So I developed a lot of these different philosophies for life, including things like the desire to make the world better with technology and computers. So, I didn't forget who I was. After a bit of success happened, it also goes to your head; you want to have more value and more money. That's good, that's fine. But I was just one who never sought those goals. I never wanted to be so above everybody else that I would kind of forget them and shove them aside. [..] I think more people should know who they are, decide who they are, think about it, and decide to be that person they want to be." -- Encuentro Nacional Coparmex 2017 in Queretaro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZVPz3T-8JA

"Seth Rogen, who portrayed Woz in the 2015 movie Steve Jobs, described him to Variety as “immensely lovable,” “sweet, compassionate, caring” and “the kind of guy you want to give a hug to.” Throughout his career – in numerous interviews and in iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon, his memoir written with Gina Smith – Wozniak has always been a fount of knowledge and wisdom, whether speaking on subjects like innovation and entrepreneurship, the importance of honesty, or Star Trek and The Big Bang Theory. Think of them as aphorisms by Woz or, as we like to think of them, Woz-isms."

3 Woz-isms:

“Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me – they’re shy and they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone – best outside of corporate environments, best where they can control an invention’s design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee. I don’t believe anything revolutionary has ever been invented by committee. Because the committee would never agree on it!”

“You need to believe in yourself. Don’t waver. There will be people – and I’m talking about the vast majority of people, practically everybody you’ll ever meet – who just think in black-and-white terms. Most people see things the way the media sees them or the way their friends see them, and they think if they’re right, everyone else is wrong. So a new idea – a revolutionary new product or product feature – won’t be understandable to most people because they see things so black and white. Maybe they don’t get it because they can’t imagine it….Don’t let these people get you down.”

“Start out with tiny projects that aren’t worth any money in the world, but that’s how you develop your brain and that’s how you learn. Every project you work on in your life – I just look at my own life as an example – is the prior project and a little better and a little more. And every technique you come up with for doing things better you keep forever in your head.” -–Interview with Prof. Alan Brown"

https://www.zurich.com/media/magazine/2022/the-wise-words-of...

billy99k• 11 months ago

Easy to say when you have so much money, you don't need to worry about your next job.

apwell23• 11 months ago

to me life is about getting $10 million so i can be happy by not having to go to work everyday.

AIorNot2• 11 months ago

Woz was always the best Steve at apple

aanet• 11 months ago

Here's my Woz story... (from a ~decade ago)

I had gone to SFO to drop off my mom at the airport. After dropping her, I saw somebody who looked like Woz at the Delta First Class queue. I hung back to let him do his chat with the airline agents.

As soon as he was finished, he turned around and I was sure it was him. He had his trade-marked backpack full of electronics on his torso.

Approached him gingerly to ask, "Are you, umm, Mr Woz?"

If he seemed surprised / annoyed, he didn't show.

Then I got tongue-tied... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ In a brief second, the entire history of Apple came flooding to me...

I blurted at him that he was a boyhood hero of mine and just thanked him for his contributions, etc. (which is true, I do admire him)

He seemed surprised. He said folks these days have sports heros, and was glad to hear what I said. Inquired about me / my work (also tech), my brief journey, etc. Exchanged a few pleasantries. That was it.

I didn't have any elevator pitch or anything. I came away genuinely happy having met him in person.

yodsanklai2• 11 months ago

I liked this video on his thoughts on Trump/Musk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck-f3qZVcWM

giantg23• 11 months ago

You know, I there aren't many celebrities, especially in tech, that I think "It would be cool to have a beer with them". Not Gates, not Jobs, probably not Musk. But Woz seems like a cool guy with great stories to tell.

martinky24• 11 months ago

Lmao at that probably

giantg23• 11 months ago

I mean, the rockets are pretty cool.

NoPicklez• 11 months ago

I agree, but I also think Gates would be very interesting, especially in his earlier days

rTX5CMRXIfFG• 11 months ago

I think I would like to have wine or tea with Tim Cook

Wohlf• 11 months ago

I think Steve Ballmer would be pretty fun to hang out with for a bit. Maybe not a beer but lunch with Bill Gates would be alright, I'd love to pick his brain about his charity work.

UltraSane2• 11 months ago

I find Woz's lifestyle far preferable to Job's.

lutusp2• 11 months ago

A key turning point in Woz's life was when he crashed his Beechcraft Bonanza, fully loaded with friends and luggage, from a runway that was too short for the aircraft load and air temperature (high temperatures require longer takeoff rolls). Woz also wasn't rated for the aircraft, but I'm not sure that really made much difference, compared to the allegedly skipped weight & balance calculation, which if performed would likely have predicted the outcome.

This accident is said to have changed Woz's outlook on life, but when I knew him years earlier he already seemed very focused on worthwhile things, like excellent hardware designs and little interest in accumulating money, compared for example to Steve Jobs.

When I heard that Woz quit Apple to become a schoolteacher in a small California town, I though to myself there aren't words of praise sufficient to describe that choice. Still think so.

m0llusk• 11 months ago

"Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty." --The Bene Gesserit Coda

kazinator• 11 months ago

Logged in to Slashdot! User 1483, since around Q4 1997.

blindriver• 11 months ago

What a beautiful man, and I envy him immensely! 75 and being able to say he is happy is a privilege most don't get, and he truly deserves it!

madrasman• 11 months ago

Love the simplicity of “Happiness is more smiles than frowns”!

chistev• 11 months ago

But accomplishments lead to happiness

rpastuszak• 11 months ago

Can you recommend any books/biographies/documentaries about Woz? Ideally, more focused on him than Jobs.

jmfldn• 11 months ago

I love his attitude, an example to us all. Woz knows what's important.

dreamlayers• 11 months ago

It is about accomplishment, but about accomplishing what is truly meaningful to you and what makes you happy.

gchamonlive4• 11 months ago

About happiness in life, that only happens when the needs of the body and the needs of the soul are satisfied. Only then we can talk about happiness and piece of mind. Virtually no amount of Buddhist intention can overcome a hungry body and an empty soul.

That is not to bash on those like me that pursue this post-consumerist happiness state, only to say that you can't expect those that are hungry to overcome their state without help, as well as expect those that have their basic needs satisfied to feel guilty.

mettamage• 11 months ago

About happiness in life, that only happens when the needs of the body and the needs of the soul are satisfied. Only then we can talk about happiness and piece of mind. Virtually no amount of Buddhist intention can overcome a hungry body and an empty soul.

Could you elaborate on empty soul? It's easy to think what is meant by empty body (no food, water or oxygen). But one could, for example, believe that any amount of Buddhist intention is fulfilling for the soul?

But you presume that's not the case. Maybe you mean something different with soul than I do. So I'm curious on how you'd elaborate on it.

gchamonlive4• 11 months ago

I'd never make justice to Need for Roots from Weil. What I'm saying is that while a very few can just detach from human contact and supposedly be fine with it, the majority if prevented from creating bonds with other human beings will develop severe psychosomatic problems. But it goes beyond just interacting and feeling like you belong. It's the need to have your identity, collective memory and ancestry preserved.

reactordev4• 11 months ago

You can overcome a hungry body by asking for food, cooking food you find, hunting for food, or fishing for it. There's no such thing as an empty soul - just bad people. Do good and good things will follow. Happiness is a choice, a state of being, not an end-game.

I've been rich, I've been poor, I've been in mansions, I've been on the streets. Your life is a rollercoaster, the more risks you take, the more extreme the ride. I happen to like going upside down so I'm a risk taker.

gchamonlive4• 11 months ago

Could you overcome a hungry body by asking for food in Gaza?

What I'm saying is that happiness doesn't hold on the extremes of the human experience, and no amount of positive thinking can make up for that.

There's no such thing as an empty soul - just bad people.

Maybe we are talking about the same thing. For me an empty soul is that soul that doesn't have roots in reality and is boundless and thus meaningless.

jart• 11 months ago

Steve Wozniak is doing a great job funding other people's retirements. Half of all revenue collected by US federal govt in 2024 (totaling $2565 billion) was given to retirees. Mostly middle class and government retirees. That's $1500b for social security, $865b for medicare, $128b for retired feds, and $72b for retired military.

reactordev4• 11 months ago

You rule Woz!

Pomelolo• 11 months ago

I think there's 2 kinds of psychodelic oneshot. Woz & Jobs. Woz became content with all he had and Jobs turned into a psycopath. Both geniuses, both gave us a lot. I'd rather have someone like Woz be a trillionare and e/alt using his wealth for good than a money hungry monster.

piyuv• 11 months ago

Jobs is as much a genius as Musk.

qarl• 11 months ago

every good thing i ever did i did because it was fun.

megamix• 11 months ago

This should be pinned. Thank for this! Really really a big thank you!

farceSpherule• 11 months ago

Steve Jobs was a narcissistic asshole who treated people like idiots. More specifically:

- Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder - Narcissistic Personality Disorder - Borderline Personality Disorder

He thought he could cure his cancer with energy crystals and fruit juice.

freediver• 11 months ago

I read outlines of Stoic philosophy here. Recommend "A guide to good life" by William Irving as a great intro into it.

sc077y• 11 months ago

Woz is just a nerd, simple as that. And he stayed true to himself and that ethos his whole life.

eboynyc32• 11 months ago

Hmm SW would still be playing with his HP calculator if SJ hadn’t come along and of course the reverse is true too.

mbar84• 11 months ago

I never look for any type of tax dodge.

If you're engaging in philanthropy, dodging taxes is perfectly justified. The main thing to look out for is whether or not you are using the money better than the government would, which isn't that difficult.

kenny239• 11 months ago

keep up the good view & never stop i guess

Steve Wozniak: Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about happiness

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