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I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. AMA
- speeder 14y agoWhoa, that surprised me! I hope people can get interesting information, Bill Gates III is seemly a interesting character.
- danso 14y agoI 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_obama_president_of_the_united_states/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=feed 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 14y 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_score_determined.3F http://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq#wiki_how_is_a_submission.27s_...
- danso 14y agoYes...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).
- Karunamon 14y ago>I'm saying, it's hard to gauge the real ratio of upvotes to downvotes with this fuzz. This is the entire point. That said, I wish they'd just ban spammers and give everyone accurate metrics.
- SquareWheel 14y agoAre you suggesting they allow spammers? Every time I remove a spammer post I submit it to /r/ReportTheSpammers, and they get killed almost immediately. What else can they do outside of that? Not allow new users to vote and comments? The best they can do is make spammers be unclear on if they're having any effect or not, by obscuring votes, or by secretly banning them without them realizing. It's a tough problem to get right, especially without making the experience worse for everybody else. I think they've found a happy medium.
- Karunamon 14y ago>Are you suggesting they allow spammers? ... for crying out loud. >That said, I wish they'd just ban spammers and give everyone accurate metrics.
- SquareWheel 14y agoThey do ban spammers. You're implying they don't.
- Karunamon 14y agoI implied no such thing. I wish they'd use the banhammer AND not break vote counts. As long as spammers are banned, there's no reason to screw up a site feature for everyone else.
- rednukleus 14y agoThat is a product of the anti-gaming filter. There are automatically generated extra upvotes and downvotes.
- 6thSigma 14y agoHe should do an AMA here!
- simba-hiiipower 14y ago..unfortunately it'd probably get flagged off the front page
- recoiledsnake 14y agoSurprisingly(or perhaps unsurprisingly), this very post seems to be getting flagged a lot.
- codingblues 14y agoIt been an hour and still no response from Bill, Obama was much more prompt with the replies
- Trufa 14y agoI think it's smart, so the good question float top.
- danso 14y agoI 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_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates/c8dce7j http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18bhme/im_bill_gates_c...
- persona 14y agoThe 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"
- codingblues 14y agoyup he's replying now...very damn punctual... #Respect... posting an hour before replying is certainly clever...
- grimlck 14y agoI 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 14y agoYou will be able to use http://www.topiama.com http://www.topiama.com when the topic will have been crawled.
- 6thSigma 14y agoChicken and the egg problem.
- SriramR 14y agoIt takes a while for the scraper to kick in, but this is what you are looking for: http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/ http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/
- kmfrk 14y agoRemember http://formspring.me 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 14y agoI'm curious what someone's sex has to do with their ability to conduct an AMA...
- StuieK 14y agoHaha steady now. He means peoples responses to their AMA.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- larrywright 14y agoPost-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 14y agoIt'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 14y agoSince smallpox I've heard of several diseases removed, but no talk about saving a few vials. Is this still done?
- nvmc 14y agoI'd guess it is. Diseases are still organisms, and we try pretty hard not to let them go extinct.
- kevincrane 14y agoWhat's the reason for keeping them though? Is it to make vaccines if they potentially come back or more sinister pre-emptive military reasons?
- sukuriant 14y agoThey'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 14y agoThat's probably because he's one of the more computer-savvy people to do an AMA.
- enry_straker 14y agoIt also helps that he is very quick, very intelligent, and has a sense of self-deprecating humor
- mkr-hn 14y agoThe enormous touchscreen probably helps.
- evolve2k 14y agoMade me laugh :)
- Samuel_Michon 14y agoHow 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.
- mkr-hn 14y agoThat was humor.
- gesman 14y agoThis is cool and really nice of Bill Gates. Would be nice to see well-formatted Q/A results after this ends.
- orangethirty 14y agoI just asked him the following question: Do you still program? I have always been incredibly interested to find that out.
- daigoba66 14y agohttp://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18bhme/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates/c8dcvve?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18bhme/im_bill_gates_c...
- orangethirty 14y agoOh thanks for posting that. It was pretty hard to search and find if someone had already asked that.
- Edootjuh 14y agoI 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 14y agoGates has a long history with BASIC. It would, IMO, stand to reason that he would keep his hand in.
- astine 14y agoGates 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.
- 0x0 14y agoYeah, Microsoft really is the "BASIC company". From the early 8bit machines (did you know the Commodore 64 BASIC ROM is (c) Microsoft?) through qbasic and all the way up to visual basic and VBA...
- bdcravens 14y agoLooking 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 14y agoThe 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_space_shuttle_engineer_created/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/q9qzn/iama_former_nasa...
- tapp 14y agoHe's promoted it on his verified Twitter account and his blog as well; I'd say it's the real deal.
- kunai 14y agoI 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.
- dm8 14y agoWow, Bill Gates thinks his portrayal in Pirates of Silicon Valley was very accurate (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18bhme/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates/c8ddpwq?context=3 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.
- angersock 14y agoHonestly, 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).
- CurtMonash 14y agoI 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.
- angersock 14y agoAny funny stories you'd care to share from those experiences?
- CurtMonash 14y agohttp://www.softwarememories.com/2009/04/25/wsj-article-on-bill-gates-family-and-other-stories/ http://www.softwarememories.com/2009/04/25/wsj-article-on-bi... has a bit.
- Samuel_Michon 14y agoFrom 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.
- potench 14y agoHe 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 14y agoBill Gates showing off his baller touchscreen is priceless: http://i.imgur.com/1JqrLVc.jpg http://i.imgur.com/1JqrLVc.jpg
- rayiner 14y ago"Yeah, I have one of these. I'm Bill Gates."
- recoiledsnake 14y agoFanboys 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 14y agohow do you know it was flagged?
- recoiledsnake 14y agoIt has 222 points and is at #17, far below other posts posted longer ago and with less points. This is an indication of heavy flagging. http://i.imgur.com/hFFueFf.png http://i.imgur.com/hFFueFf.png This isn't the first time anyway. Pretty much any post mentioning Microsoft in a not bad light seems to get flagged by people with good karma abusing it. Edit: It's at 325 points(posted 4 hours ago) right now and stuck at #14. Has to break some record for the most upvoted and flagged story.
- cooldeal 14y agoLooks like even mentioning the flagging is taboo. My top level comment on this story[1] calling out the flagging is sitting at the bottom of the comment pile, very grayed out. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5203191 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5203191
- vijayr 14y agoQ: "Anything left on your bucket list?" A: "Don't die..." He has some humor too :P
- pcrh 14y agoQ. 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 14y agoI will send him a Trisquel GNU/Hurd CD for his birthday :p.
- RandallBrown 14y agoor he has enough money to cure death.
- cooldeal 14y agoWhy in the name of sweet Jeebus would someone flag this post on HN? http://i.imgur.com/ao8qgdG.png 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 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.
- dylangs1030 14y agoListen, 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.
- cooldeal 14y agoThe "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.
- dylangs1030 14y agoI should clarify; I meant email info.ycombinator. And I said the catch-all about German history because it's still one facet of Germany. It was just a more eloquent way of saying it.
- dylangs1030 14y 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 14y agoI guess Windows 2000 was the high point then...
- csmattryder 14y agoLittle too high there, buddy. Wind it back to 98, and you've got it.
- joonix 14y agoThat's probably why Windows ME and Vista didn't have numerical version names.
- lifeguard 14y agoSomeone 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 14y agoFwiw, I know religious people who think church is a waste of time. Not sure his answer to that would be particularly interesting.
- adamnemecek 14y agoThe fact that someone bought him Reddit Gold is pretty hilarious.
- RandallBrown 14y agoevery single post he replied to got Gold. I wonder if Bill Gates is purposefully buying everyone Reddit Gold?
- dylangs1030 14y agoI 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.
- mratzloff 14y agoThat would be an incredible legacy if he can achieve it.
- breck 14y agoI 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.
- orangethirty 14y ago'Anyone good at QBasic? 'I haven't written it in years. ANSWER = INPUT PRINT ANSWER PRINT "Thank you for playing."
- rikacomet 14y agoThis 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