3 ms·

Funny how all my "nerdy" friends love Gates now. I guess 100B$+ is enough to afford PR team that can convince public you are no longer "more evil than satan him

Funny how all my "nerdy" friends love Gates now. I guess 100B$+ is enough to afford PR team that can convince public you are no longer "more evil than satan himself".

elevaet 4y ago
Well, Gates is absolutely terrible at PR and doesn't tick any of the boxes of being chic, unless it's some kind of so uncool that he's cool kind of thing. Despite this and more importantly despite his reputation in business and the often laughable products MS produced, his tremendous philanthropy really changed my perspective on him. In a world where there are mega-billionaires, he's my least unfavourite. He's doing good things with his money like eradicating malaria and funding bleeding edge climate tech. He's pretty outstanding wrt how he spends his money.
- ThrowAgain 4y ago
  Eh, I would say he puts a lot of effort intro creating image of benevolent nerd philantropist. Point in case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hnZJIRd6Qw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hnZJIRd6Qw There must have been a team of people dedicated to carefully crafting this video, creating props, there's even a dozen or so actors there (each in the background for just a few seconds). It looks like someone put a lot of effort into this and it surely consumed thousands of dollars (my uneducated guess is somewhere in 10-100k$ range). To what end other than working on his personal brand? Speaking of malaria, after googling for 3 minutes it seems he spent around 2B$ on it. Does it really matter? Yes and no. Maybe it had impact on people's lives, but given Gates' net value is 100B$+, giving away a billion or two does not matter. It will not affect his quality of life in any significant way. He could give away a few dozen billions more and still will spend rest of his life living in luxury that I could only dream off. Sure, better to fight malaria than buy another yacht, but still, it's easy decision to make when you have that much money.
  - elevaet 4y ago
    Can't fault him on hiring a crew to craft his videos. He has better things to do with his time. Wouldn't you outsource that if you were in his position? My 2 mins of googling came up with more like 3.6B$ on malaria, but even 2B$ is a shit-ton of money. I certainly haven't donated 2% of my net value to malaria (and it's only on the order of 1/10000 of his!). Malaria rates are down around 30% since 2010, thanks in part to Gates. He's likely saved thousands to hundreds of thousands of lives. Malaria is just one part of his philanthropy. I'd love to see the numbers for Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. It would be great to all billionaires follow suit with this kind of "easy decision".
    - ThrowAgain 4y ago
      2, 3 or 5 billion don't matter if you still have tens of billions left. I'm not saying he shouldn't outsource his videos. What I'm saying is that this looks more like a professionally made commercial (advertising his personal brand). I'm pretty sure it cost O(hours) of his time (consider even getting to the set - you can see this is a professional set, so probably in some studio; I also doubt this was done in one take given how there are other actors around including the skating Santa Clauses). All in all, it really feels artificial and dishonest. What kind of person would even come up with idea of creating such a video in the first place?
      - tasuki 4y ago
        What does it matter how much he has left? There are somewhat diminishing returns spending money on philanthropic causes: if he were to spend 30 rather than 3 billion the result wouldn't be ten times better. I'm happy he's trying to make the world a better place while still keeping an eye on the money being used efficiently. Why does the 100k matter if the 3 billion don't?
  - tasuki 4y ago
    > Maybe it had impact on people's lives, but given Gates' net value is 100B$+, giving away a billion or two does not matter. Is it not enough for you that he went out of his way to improve other people's lives? Would it only satisfy you if his lifestyle suffered? > it's easy decision to make when you have that much money How do you know? Have you ever been in that position?
    - ThrowAgain 4y ago
      > Is it not enough for you that he went out of his way to improve other people's lives? How did he went out of his way? > How do you know? Have you ever been in that position? I don't think snark is necessary here; probably there are no 100B$+ users on HN. But it's not hard to extrapolate from where am I. I have comfortable tech job, I could easily give away few thousands bucks to some charitable cause just to show off (and my quality of life wouldn't change). Would that automatically make me a good and trustworthy person? I think the answer here is no. I also guess if for some reason my net worth went up a few orders of magnitude, I could also give few orders of magnitude more. Would then I be a good and trustworthy person?
      - tasuki 4y ago
        > How did he went out of his way? He spent a considerable amount of his free time. > I have comfortable tech job, I could easily give away few thousands bucks to some charitable cause just to show off (and my quality of life wouldn't change). Yes, you could. Do you? > Would that automatically make me a good and trustworthy person? I think the answer here is no. It wouldn't. But also because there are no good and bad people. There are good and bad actions. I use Linux and absolutely hate what Bill Gates was doing wrt the whole free software ecosystem. I still commend him for his charity work. > I also guess if for some reason my net worth went up a few orders of magnitude, I could also give few orders of magnitude more. Yes, you could. Would you though?
- stcroixx 4y ago
  Strong disagree. I started software dev in the late 90's and among everyone I knew in tech MS was uniformly hated, even the DOJ sued them. They did everything they could to stomp out open internet standards. Untold amounts of money, business, etc. were lost by all of us fighting this scourge. The fact that anyone alive thinks anything remotely positive of him could only be due to PR. IMO even if he gave away every cent, I'd just consider that restitution for all of the damage he's done to the world. Then he'd still owe us.
  - elevaet 4y ago
    I didn't work in the industry at that time but I did hear the stories. I might have a different perspective if I was on the ground. We have a pretty open internet today, or at least MS is no longer the biggest threat to it so maybe this was just another MS-bungled project lol. Jokes aside, utmost respect to the people who have fought for an open internet over the years.
whizzter 4y ago
No, we've just realized that they're just less evil than all the other current behemoths. Sun tried to be "cool" but was really just a money loss machine and now Java and MySQL is the property of we-will-audit-you-Oracle and Mr I-will-sue-people-when-I-need-another-yacht-Ellison. G had a motto of "do no evil", that motto is long gone. I've always disliked their handling of the Android platform (the handset manufucaturer/carrier dominance over application stores back in the J2ME days was horrible, Google's quest for marketshare let that go on for a few more years and allowed for some bad fragmentation for developers). And this was just the start, their "AI-handles-support-so-we-don't-need-to-talk-to-humans" combined with accounts being suspended willy-nilly just leaves people stranded (anybody remember how an indie guy making an Stadia exclusive game was shut out of his Google account?) and speaking of stadia, what's Googles cancelled product body-count up to now? Apple has had some pros on the privacy side but they've stumbled even there, and apart from that they've been quite a heavy-handed player with a clear my-way-or-the-highway attitude (vs Epic,Spotify,etc). Amazon busting unions, fleecing people on AWS and copying popular products on the marketplace needs no more mentions. The Ubers, Spotifys,etc of the world might've made things cheaper and more streamlined but there's been at a cost of distinct monetary pressure on drivers,musicians,etc. Facebook facilitating genocides (Rohynga), election fraud (US/UK) and general lax privacy (Cambridge Analytica). MS might have gotten worse in terms of privacy and ads(start menu ads,wtf?), but in general they've mostly kept to making money and actually supporting developers and opensource. NPM/Github costs might be fractional for MS but would've probably landed the rest of us another SourceForge (remember the spyware they added to make money? That was probably what got GH off the ground more than anything) because we've not yet sorted a way for developers and distribution to get paid for our "free" contributions.
- hinkley 4y ago
  You get what you measure and if you work in a C Corp long enough, especially a big one, you spend a lot of time measuring revenue and "cost centers".
hinkley 4y ago
Honestly I think this all is Melinda's doing. If he hadn't got married to her he'd still be a raging piece of shit.

Funny how all my "nerdy" friends love Gates now. I guess 100B$+ is enough to afford PR team that can convince public you are no longer "more evil than satan himself".

elevaet 4y ago

Well, Gates is absolutely terrible at PR and doesn't tick any of the boxes of being chic, unless it's some kind of so uncool that he's cool kind of thing. Despite this and more importantly despite his reputation in business and the often laughable products MS produced, his tremendous philanthropy really changed my perspective on him. In a world where there are mega-billionaires, he's my least unfavourite. He's doing good things with his money like eradicating malaria and funding bleeding edge climate tech. He's pretty outstanding wrt how he spends his money.

ThrowAgain 4y ago
Eh, I would say he puts a lot of effort intro creating image of benevolent nerd philantropist. Point in case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hnZJIRd6Qw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hnZJIRd6Qw There must have been a team of people dedicated to carefully crafting this video, creating props, there's even a dozen or so actors there (each in the background for just a few seconds). It looks like someone put a lot of effort into this and it surely consumed thousands of dollars (my uneducated guess is somewhere in 10-100k$ range). To what end other than working on his personal brand? Speaking of malaria, after googling for 3 minutes it seems he spent around 2B$ on it. Does it really matter? Yes and no. Maybe it had impact on people's lives, but given Gates' net value is 100B$+, giving away a billion or two does not matter. It will not affect his quality of life in any significant way. He could give away a few dozen billions more and still will spend rest of his life living in luxury that I could only dream off. Sure, better to fight malaria than buy another yacht, but still, it's easy decision to make when you have that much money.
- elevaet 4y ago
  Can't fault him on hiring a crew to craft his videos. He has better things to do with his time. Wouldn't you outsource that if you were in his position? My 2 mins of googling came up with more like 3.6B$ on malaria, but even 2B$ is a shit-ton of money. I certainly haven't donated 2% of my net value to malaria (and it's only on the order of 1/10000 of his!). Malaria rates are down around 30% since 2010, thanks in part to Gates. He's likely saved thousands to hundreds of thousands of lives. Malaria is just one part of his philanthropy. I'd love to see the numbers for Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. It would be great to all billionaires follow suit with this kind of "easy decision".
  - ThrowAgain 4y ago
    2, 3 or 5 billion don't matter if you still have tens of billions left. I'm not saying he shouldn't outsource his videos. What I'm saying is that this looks more like a professionally made commercial (advertising his personal brand). I'm pretty sure it cost O(hours) of his time (consider even getting to the set - you can see this is a professional set, so probably in some studio; I also doubt this was done in one take given how there are other actors around including the skating Santa Clauses). All in all, it really feels artificial and dishonest. What kind of person would even come up with idea of creating such a video in the first place?
    - tasuki 4y ago
      What does it matter how much he has left? There are somewhat diminishing returns spending money on philanthropic causes: if he were to spend 30 rather than 3 billion the result wouldn't be ten times better. I'm happy he's trying to make the world a better place while still keeping an eye on the money being used efficiently. Why does the 100k matter if the 3 billion don't?
- tasuki 4y ago
  > Maybe it had impact on people's lives, but given Gates' net value is 100B$+, giving away a billion or two does not matter. Is it not enough for you that he went out of his way to improve other people's lives? Would it only satisfy you if his lifestyle suffered? > it's easy decision to make when you have that much money How do you know? Have you ever been in that position?
  - ThrowAgain 4y ago
    > Is it not enough for you that he went out of his way to improve other people's lives? How did he went out of his way? > How do you know? Have you ever been in that position? I don't think snark is necessary here; probably there are no 100B$+ users on HN. But it's not hard to extrapolate from where am I. I have comfortable tech job, I could easily give away few thousands bucks to some charitable cause just to show off (and my quality of life wouldn't change). Would that automatically make me a good and trustworthy person? I think the answer here is no. I also guess if for some reason my net worth went up a few orders of magnitude, I could also give few orders of magnitude more. Would then I be a good and trustworthy person?
    - tasuki 4y ago
      > How did he went out of his way? He spent a considerable amount of his free time. > I have comfortable tech job, I could easily give away few thousands bucks to some charitable cause just to show off (and my quality of life wouldn't change). Yes, you could. Do you? > Would that automatically make me a good and trustworthy person? I think the answer here is no. It wouldn't. But also because there are no good and bad people. There are good and bad actions. I use Linux and absolutely hate what Bill Gates was doing wrt the whole free software ecosystem. I still commend him for his charity work. > I also guess if for some reason my net worth went up a few orders of magnitude, I could also give few orders of magnitude more. Yes, you could. Would you though?
stcroixx 4y ago
Strong disagree. I started software dev in the late 90's and among everyone I knew in tech MS was uniformly hated, even the DOJ sued them. They did everything they could to stomp out open internet standards. Untold amounts of money, business, etc. were lost by all of us fighting this scourge. The fact that anyone alive thinks anything remotely positive of him could only be due to PR. IMO even if he gave away every cent, I'd just consider that restitution for all of the damage he's done to the world. Then he'd still owe us.
- elevaet 4y ago
  I didn't work in the industry at that time but I did hear the stories. I might have a different perspective if I was on the ground. We have a pretty open internet today, or at least MS is no longer the biggest threat to it so maybe this was just another MS-bungled project lol. Jokes aside, utmost respect to the people who have fought for an open internet over the years.

whizzter 4y ago

No, we've just realized that they're just less evil than all the other current behemoths. Sun tried to be "cool" but was really just a money loss machine and now Java and MySQL is the property of we-will-audit-you-Oracle and Mr I-will-sue-people-when-I-need-another-yacht-Ellison. G had a motto of "do no evil", that motto is long gone. I've always disliked their handling of the Android platform (the handset manufucaturer/carrier dominance over application stores back in the J2ME days was horrible, Google's quest for marketshare let that go on for a few more years and allowed for some bad fragmentation for developers). And this was just the start, their "AI-handles-support-so-we-don't-need-to-talk-to-humans" combined with accounts being suspended willy-nilly just leaves people stranded (anybody remember how an indie guy making an Stadia exclusive game was shut out of his Google account?) and speaking of stadia, what's Googles cancelled product body-count up to now? Apple has had some pros on the privacy side but they've stumbled even there, and apart from that they've been quite a heavy-handed player with a clear my-way-or-the-highway attitude (vs Epic,Spotify,etc). Amazon busting unions, fleecing people on AWS and copying popular products on the marketplace needs no more mentions. The Ubers, Spotifys,etc of the world might've made things cheaper and more streamlined but there's been at a cost of distinct monetary pressure on drivers,musicians,etc. Facebook facilitating genocides (Rohynga), election fraud (US/UK) and general lax privacy (Cambridge Analytica). MS might have gotten worse in terms of privacy and ads(start menu ads,wtf?), but in general they've mostly kept to making money and actually supporting developers and opensource. NPM/Github costs might be fractional for MS but would've probably landed the rest of us another SourceForge (remember the spyware they added to make money? That was probably what got GH off the ground more than anything) because we've not yet sorted a way for developers and distribution to get paid for our "free" contributions.

hinkley 4y ago
You get what you measure and if you work in a C Corp long enough, especially a big one, you spend a lot of time measuring revenue and "cost centers".

hinkley 4y ago

Honestly I think this all is Melinda's doing. If he hadn't got married to her he'd still be a raging piece of shit.