
Bill Gates: AMA on Reddit - justplay
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1xj56q/hello_reddit_im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill/#b02g10f20b14
======
Arjuna
For those that aren't aware, check out the "/r/tabled" subreddit [1].

From the official description: "a subreddit for tables of recent threads from
places such as... /r/IAmA, /r/InternetAMA, /r/AMA, /r/AskReddit,
/r/AskScience"

It makes things nice to read.

Of course, Bill Gates' new AMA will not be "tabled" yet, but as an example
(and in case you missed it), here is his AMA from February 2013 [2].

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled](http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled)

[2]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/18d2n6](http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/18d2n6)

~~~
Spittie
Check out [http://topiama.com](http://topiama.com) (It was posted here some
time ago, I have no connection with that site), I find it has a very nice
interface.

Like r/tabled, his new iAmA it's not here, but to give the same example,
here's his old one: [http://www.topiama.com/r/911/im-bill-gates-cochair-of-
the-bi...](http://www.topiama.com/r/911/im-bill-gates-cochair-of-the-bill-
melinda-gates)

~~~
dmunoz
Thanks for the reminder about topiama. I knew something like this existed, but
forgot where. I was thinking recently about writing my own as a quick pet
project. Still might, just for fun.

It's actually a bit surprising to me that reddit themselves have not written
an IAMA question-answer view. Celebrity AMAs have become a pretty big draw for
reddit, but browsing them from the default view sucks. Perhaps they view it
like they do the mobile clients (the community does them better), but it would
be nice to have something native to reddit for this behaviour.

~~~
joshschreuder
It makes a pretty good RSS feed, even if I do skip the majority of them.

------
throwaway_yy2Di
Is this his library in the background?

[http://i.imgur.com/iqvPs7N.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/iqvPs7N.jpg)

edit: Apparently so, and here's his reading recommendations from 2013 (w/ same
library in background):

[http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Personal/Best-
Books-2013](http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Personal/Best-Books-2013)

and more:

[http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Books](http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Books) <\-
lots of reviews here

~~~
pmelendez
Am I the only one who noticed the Weather for dummies? I wonder why he was
interested on it.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
His primary interests now are fighting poverty and hunger. Having a basic
understanding of weather sounds like something nice to have in that situation,
and if he spent the time in high school and college thinking about computers
and businesses, a "for dummies" book might not be the worst place to start.

~~~
olalonde
Interestingly, the first "for dummies" book was actually "DOS For Dummies"
published in 1991, followed by "Windows For Dummies".
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Dummies#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Dummies#History)

------
iambateman
I like Bill Gates. He seems like a kind, genuine guy who cares about people
and doesn't mind making fun of himself.

Big contrast from Bezos, Jobs, Ballmer.

~~~
13hours
He kinda reminds me of Woz in that way. Except Woz was never seen as evil, and
Bill had an evil image for a while there in the 90s and early 2000s.

~~~
Consultant32452
In his AMA he contrasts his younger self from other young billionaires and
millionaires by stating that they are often much more interested in "giving
back" than he was until he was much older. He was a ruthless man who cared
only for himself in his younger days and that led to some rather unethical
business practices. It wasn't until much later that he chilled out and learned
some compassion for the rest of the world.

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kevinalexbrown
You can tell it's him by the succinct and direct responses. It's a trait
that's consistent across the most successful people I know.

~~~
kmfrk
One reason is that people have a vested interest in taking your words out of
context and do a big non-story on your remarks.

~~~
kevinalexbrown
That's true, but the responses seem to be specific and tangible, rather than
vague, which is what I might expect from someone worried about being taken out
of context.

~~~
Consultant32452
If I were anywhere near being the richest guy on the planet I would have a
hard time caring whether or not I was taken out of context. In fact, I'd
probably just say all sorts of awful stuff that people would find shocking.
That's probably one of the many reasons I'm not one of the richest guys on the
planet.

------
blisterpeanuts
What a strange format. I'm not a regular Reddit visitor so maybe I just don't
"get it" but it seems like the top level questions for Gates are pretty
intelligent, all questions I'd like to ask him (well, almost all--I don't get
the condom one), and the responses to those questions are mostly snide, petty,
and stupid.

~~~
Trufa
I'm a frequent Redditor, and while I find the IAMA subreddits one of the most
interesting ones, I'm pretty disappointed by how softball questions they were.

Reddit is a great opportunity to be more direct and poignant (always in an
educated and intelligent manner).

For the people that don't know, the general "consensus" on reddit is that Bill
Gates is awesome and Steve Jobs sucked, of course it's oversimplified but you
see it around.

I for one would have liked to know if now with hindsight, he sees Microsoft's
actions in the past over aggressive maybe hindering the progress of open
source and stuff like that.

I don't want to accuse him of anything, I just would like to know his
perspective on some of the controversial topics in which he is involved.

I can read in 150 thousand traditional interviews where does he see the future
of technology and how exited he is about the cloud.

~~~
10feet
Your questions are awful questions. It is much more important to focus on what
he is doing now, which is bigger than what he has done in the past. He is
actually helping millions of people around the world now, and you want to
focus on what he did in business 20-30 years ago.

Of course he was over aggressive in his running of Microsoft in the past. Does
it matter if he says so? Or does it matter what he does today with his
billions?

~~~
dennisgorelik
Through Microsoft Gates was helping tens of millions of people (including
myself).

His charity efforts are small in comparison.

------
kosei
Not gonna lie - seeing an interaction between David Hewlett and Bill Gates on
a reddit AMA pretty much made my day.

~~~
pavanky
link ?

 __EDIT: __NVM
([http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1xj56q/hello_reddit_im...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1xj56q/hello_reddit_im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill/cfbspdi))

------
TeMPOraL
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynQ5ZhxYAss](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynQ5ZhxYAss)
<\-- in this video (linked by Gates in AMA), there's a moment in which there's
a book shown, with "Dell #1 in laptops" written on the back cover. Had a good
laugh, given the whole Dell speakers thing from yesterday.

~~~
ck2
This was hilarious.

There were years I was worried but he turned out to be great for humanity.

------
um304
anonymouslives: "What is your best personal financial advice for people who
make under $100,000 per year?", thisisbillgates: "Invest in your education.".
Trying to digest this bit when dropping-off to do startups is in fashion.

~~~
jleader
Note that he didn't say "go to school". If you don't know much about startups,
dropping out to do one (as Gates did) might be considered an investment in
your education. So might reading widely, or taking online courses, or of
course paying a lot of money to attend a 4-year university.

~~~
Aldo_MX

      Note that he didn't say "go to school".
    

Quoted for Emphasis.

------
m_ke
Did he really just say that deep learning started at Microsoft?

~~~
jhartmann
I saw that and maybe its stretching it a little bit, but I know Patrice Simard
was involved in this sort of research relatively early (he started at
Microsoft in 99, and worked at Bell Labs before.) I would not be surprised if
there were some other people there that were doing this sort of research even
earlier.

There is actually some very high quality ground breaking research that comes
out of Microsoft, they just have had problems making it into products
traditionally.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Hinton is where it really starts of course, but a lot of our researchers were
involved in making it practical (e.g. train quickly on GPUs).

~~~
nl
TIL Hinton's great great grandfather is George Boole (inventor of Boolean
logic).

------
kyle_t
I am curious what Bill Gates (or anyone who doesn't necessarily have an
immediate profit making venture to promote i.e an actor) hopes to achieve with
an AMA?

I can't imagine they are very much fun after the first dozen questions.
Promoting philanthropy to a wider audience? Bringing the spotlight on a
specific cause?

Its awesome that someone as busy and important as Bill Gates is willing to
take the time to do this whatever his reasons, I'm just wondering the reason
why?

~~~
benbou09
On the other hand, he also does his own dishes

~~~
lmm
Seriously? That seems incredibly wasteful, not to mention boring. No way I'd
be doing that if I had a fraction of his wealth.

~~~
davidwihl
I'm a CEO who does his family's dishes as night. It keeps you grounded. It's a
good message for your kids that in spite of their wealth they should clean up
after themselves. It makes a connection to the millions of hard working people
out there. Finally, if your wife cooks dinner (as mine does), it shows
appreciation for her work and effort. I use a dishwasher (as does BillG most
likely) but there is still plenty of work like pots & pans.

------
Splendor
I'm glad to see him doing another AMA. His AMA last year was one of the better
ones I've read.

------
CmonDev
There are always thousands of questions by the time you get there. Do his
assistants check everyone of them and summarize?

~~~
jedberg
I've done an AMA that was pretty popular, it's not that hard to keep up
actually.

You start with the top voted comment, reply, go to the next, etc. Then you
reload the page and do it again.

It helps if you have gold because then you can highlight the stuff that is new
since you last loaded the page, which helps you find the questions faster.

The trick for the user is to have a good enough question to get it voted to
the top.

~~~
phit_
alternative to having gold is this chrome addon

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-new-
comment...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-new-comments-
highl/ajdilinnnkbmpoegibgacadjlblmpjad)

------
donniezazen
The part that resonated with how I feel everyone should live this tiny
universe.

    
    
        Just creating an innovative company is a huge contribution to the world.
    

World would be a much better place if we just go about minding our own
business making our own lives easier and not interfering in other people's
business.

------
mrmondo
Timely, given all the bad Microsoft press yesterday stemming from Paul
Thurrott's public disapproval of Windows.

~~~
skeletonjelly
Judging by the official photo of the alien suit in Gates' office, I don't
think this was planned on a whim.

------
ntnj
Within an hour, he reached all time top 5 IAmA. His previous one is at no. 2,
after Obama.

------
Aoyagi
Not having a Reddit account, this makes me want to create one and ask Gates if
he's going to protect us from the _power of the cloud_. By "us" I mean "people
who don't really trust the cloud".

~~~
jedberg
It takes like 2 seconds to make one. You don't even have to give them an email
address! :)

~~~
Aoyagi
But I would lose my status of a social outcast if I used service as popular as
Reddit :)

~~~
sliverstorm
But no one would ever know, unless you told them or gave yourself away in your
comment.

------
anonu
Im not sure why Bill Gates decided to do this a 2nd time. Just reading
people's inane, nonsensical, idiotic comments makes me think there's got to be
a better forum to host something like that...

------
pmelendez
Another one? Wow.. he must like reddit a lot.

~~~
richardlblair
Looking at his history, it seems he does.

Did you see the girl who got her gift from Bill?

[http://redditgifts.com/gallery/gift/spoiler-alert-bill-
gates...](http://redditgifts.com/gallery/gift/spoiler-alert-bill-gates-did-
not-get-you/)

------
userbinator
Does anyone know if someone has asked him about the infamous 640K quote?

~~~
rbanffy
No need to:
[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Misattributed](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Misattributed)

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theinterjection
Wait, he did one less than a year ago. What an attention whore!

------
frik
He added an link to a Youtube video:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZnmpDrjtDc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZnmpDrjtDc)

Interesting art style and that his assistants choose an old-school method to
animate the movie. That gives the "information at your fingertip" a new
meaning ;)

~~~
Schweigi
His thank you video is hilarious:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynQ5ZhxYAss](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynQ5ZhxYAss)
:)

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interstitial
They are always AMAIWAAIC anyway. (Ask me anything, I will answer as I
choose). If there were pre-voted by community questions, and rules requiring
answers by the AMAer, now that would be interesting.

~~~
Jemaclus
Well, it IS called AMA (Ask Me Anything) and not IAA (I'll Answer
Anything).... You can ask all you want, you just might not get an answer!

------
kimonos
I would like to ask him: What can you do to help the poor especially those
that are in the 3rd world countries?

~~~
yen223
Running a huge charity foundation seems to be a good start.

