I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. AMA

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18bhme/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates/

by taylorbuley • 13 years ago

579 146 13 years ago

reddit.com

speeder• 13 years ago

Whoa, that surprised me!

I hope people can get interesting information, Bill Gates III is seemly a interesting character.

danso3• 13 years ago

I wish Reddit implemented a more...un-arbitrary way of calculating upvotes. Gates currently has 6,211 net upvotes, with a total of 11,500 upvotes.

That's already almost half the net upvotes of what Obama got: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/z1c9z/i_am_barack_obam...

But Obama's IAMA got 239,221 upvotes total. Which means he got 225K downvotes...which I guess is feasible, but for all we know, that was just an arbitrary result Reddit's strange algorithm of adding downvotes to obscure the upvote count.

I guess it doesn't matter in the end, it just seems that upvotes should be a real reflection of how liked (or polarizing) a thread/discussion was.

freebsd• 13 years ago

"For all we know"? They explicitly state [0] that upvotes and downvotes are fuzzed, it really isn't a matter of some weird machination.

[0] http://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq#wiki_how_is_a_submission.27s_...

danso3• 13 years ago

Yes...I don't think I was clear enough about what I meant, in a statistical sense. I know that upvotes/downvotes are added artificially. I'm saying, it's hard to gauge the real ratio of upvotes to downvotes with this fuzz.

The FAQ you linked to gives this example: a submission with 5 upvotes and 3 downvotes may be tweaked to say 23 upvotes and 21 downvotes.

So the net number of upvotes remains the same. But the ratio of approval, a statistic that is prominently listed for each submission, changes:

     5 / (5+3) = 62.5%
     23 / (21+23) = 52.5%

I thought I had also read that, in earlier implementations of the fuzz, upvotes were either removed, or downvotes added, so that doing an all-time view of popular posts would not completely consist of new posts (because the reddit user base is much bigger than it was several years ago, so a relatively mediocre post could garner more upvotes than a very good older post).

rednukleus• 13 years ago

That is a product of the anti-gaming filter. There are automatically generated extra upvotes and downvotes.

6thSigma2• 13 years ago

He should do an AMA here!

simba-hiiipower• 13 years ago

..unfortunately it'd probably get flagged off the front page

recoiledsnake5• 13 years ago

Surprisingly(or perhaps unsurprisingly), this very post seems to be getting flagged a lot.

codingblues2• 13 years ago

It been an hour and still no response from Bill, Obama was much more prompt with the replies

Trufa• 13 years ago

I think it's smart, so the good question float top.

danso3• 13 years ago

I didn't even think of that. Good on him.

Though it looks like he won't get to answering this popular question: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18bhme/im_bill_gates_c...

persona• 13 years ago

The original post is from over an hour but answers should start now: "I’ll be answering your questions live, starting at 10:45 am PST"

codingblues2• 13 years ago

yup he's replying now...very damn punctual... #Respect... posting an hour before replying is certainly clever...

grimlck• 13 years ago

I really wish reddit had a better interface to see the questions and Bill's answers all at once without scrolling through random comments.

Why hasn't reddit's AMA been surpassed by a dedicated AMA site with a user interface designed for AMA?

arcatek• 13 years ago

You will be able to use http://www.topiama.com when the topic will have been crawled.

6thSigma2• 13 years ago

Chicken and the egg problem.

SriramR• 13 years ago

It takes a while for the scraper to kick in, but this is what you are looking for: http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/

kmfrk4• 13 years ago

Remember http://formspring.me?

I think there just aren't enough interesting people doing Q&As for a business model based on this to make much sense.

Reddit's AMA format is pretty bad, especially if it's a woman/girl answering questions, though.

andrewguenther• 13 years ago

I'm curious what someone's sex has to do with their ability to conduct an AMA...

weisser• 13 years ago

voomly is building a business model around Q&A...

voomly.com

Fred Wilson wrote about them here: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/01/voomly.html

riffplay• 13 years ago

I am just viewing his comments page: http://www.reddit.com/user/thisisbillgates/comments/

The context link will show the comment he is replying to.

jpadkins• 13 years ago

http://www.reddit.com/user/thisisbillgates

Not the best interface, but it is what you asked for...

georgemcbay3• 13 years ago

The same reason craigslist classified haven't been surpassed by a more modern system -- it is much easier for everyone to live with the shortcomings (which really aren't that bad) than it would be to recreate an equivalently large, diverse and vibrant community on another site.

Especially since any focused site that came up to do this would almost certainly put way more barriers to entry into the community than reddit (which still allows you to create a new account virtually instantly, with no email verification) has.

jbert• 13 years ago

Page search for '[s]' to find comments by the submitter.

fyi802• 13 years ago

http://reddit.com/r/tabled, after a few hours.

skeletonjelly• 13 years ago

Even though I hate it, install the Reddit Enhancement Suite extension and enable the comment navigator and navigate via submitter. Or ctrl-f for "[s]"

ihuman• 13 years ago

I have the "Reddit Enhancement Suite" extension installed, and it allows me to jump to each comment he responds to. If you are a frequent redditor, I recommend installing it.

larrywright2• 13 years ago

Post-Microsoft Bill Gates is a much more interesting person. I'm not a Microsoft fan, but I have a huge amount of respect for how he's choosing to spend the money he made. Interesting contrast to Larry Ellison, for example.

waterlesscloud• 13 years ago

It's kind of crazy when you think about his goals of eradicating some diseases completely. Totally. From the face of the Earth.

There are definitely worse ways to spend your time and money.

tobylane• 13 years ago

Since smallpox I've heard of several diseases removed, but no talk about saving a few vials. Is this still done?

gnu8• 13 years ago

He's uniquely suited to the task, that's what he did to Be and Netscape.

perry5000• 13 years ago

Larry Ellison has put virtually all of his assets into a trust with the intent of giving away 95% of his money to charitable causes when he dies.

larrywright2• 13 years ago

I did not know that. Do you have a source?

I'm not judging Ellison at all. Bill could have done the same, but I think it's cool that he is choosing to oversee how that money is spent while he's still alive.

orourkek• 13 years ago

I wasn't sure of this, so I looked it up:

http://cms.givingpledge.org/#larry_ellison

The full letter is an interesting read

smackfu• 13 years ago

What's he using to buy all his boy's toys, like yachts and plans and sports cars? Or is that just a meaningless percentage of his wealth?

dmhdlr• 13 years ago

And without pretending that he can fix the world. Which is fatuous and provides a cover for business to continue as usual. Ellison is satisfied with being destructive in one domain of affairs. Gates isn't happy with just screwing up computing. He has to poop other people's parties, too.

Give me Ellison over Gates any day.

sukuriant• 13 years ago

They've already said it on Reddit; but, he has to be the fastest Reddit AMA that I've ever paid attention to. He's responding to so much, so quickly; and a lot of the questions don't seem like ones he could pass off to someone else, not to mention the wording, etc seems consistent throughout.

Dirlewanger• 13 years ago

That's probably because he's one of the more computer-savvy people to do an AMA.

enry_straker2• 13 years ago

It also helps that he is very quick, very intelligent, and has a sense of self-deprecating humor

mkr-hn2• 13 years ago

The enormous touchscreen probably helps.

evolve2k• 13 years ago

Made me laugh :)

Samuel_Michon3• 13 years ago

How so? I seriously doubt he's typing on that 82" touchscreen, it wouldn't be very fast and it'd be hard to keep up. So if he uses an external keyboard, how does using that giant gimmick help him in answering quickly?

EDIT: Ah, I didn't notice the sarcasm tags, +1.

gesman• 13 years ago

This is cool and really nice of Bill Gates. Would be nice to see well-formatted Q/A results after this ends.

orangethirty3• 13 years ago

I just asked him the following question: Do you still program? I have always been incredibly interested to find that out.

daigoba66• 13 years ago

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18bhme/im_bill_gates_c...

orangethirty3• 13 years ago

Oh thanks for posting that. It was pretty hard to search and find if someone had already asked that.

Edootjuh• 13 years ago

I was very surprised he said Basic.

Of course, he presume he doesn't do much hard core software engineering anymore, but I assumed that family was pretty much a thing of the past (and legacy code).

pnathan• 13 years ago

Gates has a long history with BASIC. It would, IMO, stand to reason that he would keep his hand in.

astine• 13 years ago

Gates founded Microsoft to sell a Basic interpreter. His company spent a lot of time keeping Basic as a core part of its line up long after it was considered passé. I suspect that Gates has some nostalgia for it.

sp332• 13 years ago

VB.Net is a completely different beast from older Visual Basic (up to VB6). It's still under active development as a first-class citizen on MS's .Net stack. It has iterators, generics, partial classes, anonymous types, lambdas, and other stuff you wouldn't expect to find in a BASIC.

bloaf• 13 years ago

There is "Small Basic" which is a bit more capable than the QBASIC of yore.

http://smallbasic.com/about.aspx

kunai2• 13 years ago

I'm pretty sure he meant VB. I don't think anybody programs in pure QBasic anymore.

bdcravens• 13 years ago

Looking at the AMA, the "verification photo", and the posted video, I see nothing convincing me it's real. However, the responses seem non-trolly, but I'm still not convinced.

lutusp• 13 years ago

The people at Reddit are pretty careful about establishing identities. They certainly did for my two AMAs. Here's a link to my most recent AMA -- notice the bona-fides at the top:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/q9qzn/iama_former_nasa...

tapp• 13 years ago

He's promoted it on his verified Twitter account and his blog as well; I'd say it's the real deal.

kunai2• 13 years ago

I created a Reddit account simply for this moment.

Amazing. Bill has had his fair share of flak and has made some decisions in his career that I wouldn't approve of, and I am not particularly a fan of Microsoft, but his humility, modesty, and great work has made him one of my greatest inspirations.

He's a multi-billionaire with a heart that is worth so much more.

dm82• 13 years ago

Wow, Bill Gates thinks his portrayal in Pirates of Silicon Valley was very accurate (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18bhme/im_bill_gates_c...).

Even Woz had said that the film accurately portrayed all the personalities.

However, we should appreciate Bill for his honesty. He is not shown in good light in that movie.

angersock2• 13 years ago

Honestly, of the two icons shown in the movie, I'd rather take Gates to dinner over Jobs. Sure, he's shown as being a conniving schemer, but at the same time much less of a reprehensible human being (PoSV was not kind in its depiction of Job's handling of his daughter).

CurtMonash2• 13 years ago

I had dinner with Bill a few times in the 1980s. Discussions were intense. Somewhat too much of trying to prove ourselves (both our faults).

I only talked once w/ Steve for a couple of minutes, in the same era. He seemed like a jerk.

Samuel_Michon3• 13 years ago

From the IAmA:

Q: "How was your relationship with Steve jobs? I always hoped that y'all were really good friends and competitors."

A: "He and I respected each other. Our biggest joint project was the Mac where Microsoft had more people on the project than Apple did as we wrote a lot of applications."

So Bill might be giving away some money nowadays, his character doesn't seem to have changed much, still taking credit where it isn't due.

enry_straker2• 13 years ago

The keyword was 'reasonably accurate'

Negitivefrags• 13 years ago

In that movie Gates is shown to be ruthless in his business dealings with other companies, but Steve Jobs is ruthless in his dealings with his own staff. In the movie, Steve Jobs actively promoted infighting between teams and mandated insane working conditions.

Based entirely on the movie, Steve Jobs is clearly shown as the worse of the two.

mratzloff2• 13 years ago

Of course, Gates mandated insane working conditions as well.

dm82• 13 years ago

It's an interesting showdown of personalities. Steve Jobs had invited the actor who portrayed him at WWDC. So looks like Jobs also thought portrayal was accurate. I think both of them had their own flaws as individuals but their strengths made them what they are.

potench• 13 years ago

He has some pretty insightful responses in general, but I really enjoyed this gem:

Q: What's the cheapest thing that gives you most pleasure? A: kids, cheeseburgers... Q: where are you acquiring cheap kids? A: the stork

bcoates• 13 years ago

Bill Gates showing off his baller touchscreen is priceless: http://i.imgur.com/1JqrLVc.jpg

rayiner2• 13 years ago

"Yeah, I have one of these. I'm Bill Gates."

recoiledsnake5• 13 years ago

Fanboys and haters flagging this HN article is more priceless to me.

Grow up guys, you can upvote your Apple and Google posts all you want, you don't need to go out of your way to flag this post out of spite and abuse your moderator privileges.

zem• 13 years ago

how do you know it was flagged?

marknutter2• 13 years ago

If I could go a week without someone on HN using the word "fanboy" I'd be a happy man.

vijayr• 13 years ago

Q: "Anything left on your bucket list?"

A: "Don't die..."

He has some humor too :P

pcrh• 13 years ago

Q. What do people give you for your birthday, given that you can buy anything you want?

A.Free software. Just kidding.

Books actually.

kostya-kow• 13 years ago

I will send him a Trisquel GNU/Hurd CD for his birthday :p.

RandallBrown2• 13 years ago

or he has enough money to cure death.

cooldeal5• 13 years ago

Why in the name of sweet Jeebus would someone flag this post on HN?

http://i.imgur.com/ao8qgdG.png

This is ridiculous, and proves that HN is filled with closed minded fanboys and hater zealots instead of technology lovers who otherwise have good karma.

Can anyone who flagged this post tell us why they did so?

If this is not moderator abuse, I don't know what is.

Reminds me of the Germany jury system that had to be abolished: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury#Germany

>Trial by jury was introduced in most German states after the revolutionary events of 1848; however, it remained controversial and early in the 20th century there were moves to abolish it.[34] The Emminger Reform of January 4, 1924, during an Article 48 state of emergency, abolished the jury system and replaced it with a mixed system including bench trials and lay judges. In 1925 the Social Democrats called for the reinstitution of the jury, and a special meeting of the German Bar demanded revocation of the decrees, but "on the whole the abolition of the jury caused little commotion".[35] Their verdicts were widely perceived as unjust and inconsistent.

dylangs10308• 13 years ago

Listen, I don't mean to be rude, but this isn't really the place to hash it out with moderators, or draw parallels with any part of Germany's less reputable history.

You should email them if you're convinced it's flagged and you have an issue with it.

cooldeal5• 13 years ago

The "moderators" here are just readers and commenters with karma more than 500(including you, I see).

How does one email them?

>draw parallels with any part of Germany less reputable history

Erm, it's about a jury system that failed, not really about German history.

recoiledsnake5• 13 years ago

>and you have an issue with it

You don't see a problem with a section of posters with good karma flagging posts like this?

Edit: I do think a better parallel is Digg's bury brigades.

https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=digg+bury+b...

vgm• 13 years ago

I have flagged articles by accident before due to vimium + my sausage fingers. The flagging might have been unintentional.

mcphilip• 13 years ago

It's quite possible that there's a scaling factor (e.g. 0.3) applied to upvotes to stories submitted from reddit. Although the following linked pg comment is several years old, it does give insight into pg's goal to reduce the ease with which submissions of 'lightweight' content reach the top of the HN front page.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=294439

dylangs10308• 13 years ago

"Windows 7 or Windows 8? Be honest, Bill."

"Higher is better."

Probably the funniest part of this entire thread is the slew of comments now trying to establish an out of context quote in response to that:

"Higher is better." ~ Bill Gates

mdda• 13 years ago

I guess Windows 2000 was the high point then...

csmattryder• 13 years ago

Little too high there, buddy.

Wind it back to 98, and you've got it.

joonix• 13 years ago

That's probably why Windows ME and Vista didn't have numerical version names.

lifeguard• 13 years ago

Someone ask him if it is true he thinks church is a waste of time (said this in an interview in the past I think).

SkyMarshal• 13 years ago

Fwiw, I know religious people who think church is a waste of time. Not sure his answer to that would be particularly interesting.

adamnemecek• 13 years ago

The fact that someone bought him Reddit Gold is pretty hilarious.

RandallBrown2• 13 years ago

every single post he replied to got Gold. I wonder if Bill Gates is purposefully buying everyone Reddit Gold?

dylangs10308• 13 years ago

I just finished reading the entire AMA.

If there's anyone who doesn't want to dig deep into the comments, here's a cool thing:

Bill Gates intends to eradicate Polio within the next six years and then eradicate Malaria within his lifetime.

Kudos, Bill.

mratzloff2• 13 years ago

That would be an incredible legacy if he can achieve it.

breck• 13 years ago

I liked this question a lot:

> What's your favorite book?

> "My favorite [book] of the last decade in Pinker's Better Angels of our Nature."

Hadn't heard of that book before, but definitely going to read it now.

orangethirty3• 13 years ago

    'Anyone good at QBasic?
    'I haven't written it in years.

    ANSWER = INPUT
    PRINT ANSWER
    PRINT "Thank you for playing."

rikacomet• 13 years ago

This is the 'fuck I shitted my pants' moment!

Really great to have him in public this way, I mean, most of the celebrities have help teams, that post for them, which is kinda boring, but there are always haters and weeners, that would fill up such pages with some meaningless crap, so my biggest concern is Bill Gates, getting err... unlovey to Reddit ? :( that would be sad

I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. AMA

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