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

579 points| taylorbuley | 13 years ago |reddit.com

146 comments

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[+] dm8|13 years ago|reply
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.

[+] larrywright|13 years ago|reply
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|reply
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.

[+] perry5000|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] bcoates|13 years ago|reply
Bill Gates showing off his baller touchscreen is priceless: http://i.imgur.com/1JqrLVc.jpg
[+] rayiner|13 years ago|reply
"Yeah, I have one of these. I'm Bill Gates."
[+] recoiledsnake|13 years ago|reply
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.

[+] kunai|13 years ago|reply
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.

[+] sukuriant|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] dylangs1030|13 years ago|reply
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.

[+] mratzloff|13 years ago|reply
That would be an incredible legacy if he can achieve it.
[+] vijayr|13 years ago|reply
Q: "Anything left on your bucket list?"

A: "Don't die..."

He has some humor too :P

[+] pcrh|13 years ago|reply
Q. What do people give you for your birthday, given that you can buy anything you want?

A.Free software. Just kidding.

Books actually.

[+] orangethirty|13 years ago|reply
I just asked him the following question: Do you still program? I have always been incredibly interested to find that out.
[+] Edootjuh|13 years ago|reply
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).

[+] grimlck|13 years ago|reply
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?

[+] georgemcbay|13 years ago|reply
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.

[+] kmfrk|13 years ago|reply
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.

[+] skeletonjelly|13 years ago|reply
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]"
[+] 6thSigma|13 years ago|reply
Chicken and the egg problem.
[+] ihuman|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] jbert|13 years ago|reply
Page search for '[s]' to find comments by the submitter.
[+] danso|13 years ago|reply
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.

[+] dylangs1030|13 years ago|reply
"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|reply
I guess Windows 2000 was the high point then...
[+] joonix|13 years ago|reply
That's probably why Windows ME and Vista didn't have numerical version names.
[+] rikacomet|13 years ago|reply
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

[+] potench|13 years ago|reply
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

[+] breck|13 years ago|reply
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.

[+] adamnemecek|13 years ago|reply
The fact that someone bought him Reddit Gold is pretty hilarious.
[+] RandallBrown|13 years ago|reply
every single post he replied to got Gold. I wonder if Bill Gates is purposefully buying everyone Reddit Gold?
[+] gesman|13 years ago|reply
This is cool and really nice of Bill Gates. Would be nice to see well-formatted Q/A results after this ends.
[+] speeder|13 years ago|reply
Whoa, that surprised me!

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

[+] orangethirty|13 years ago|reply 

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

    ANSWER = INPUT
    PRINT ANSWER
    PRINT "Thank you for playing."
[+] 6thSigma|13 years ago|reply
He should do an AMA here!
[+] simba-hiiipower|13 years ago|reply
..unfortunately it'd probably get flagged off the front page
[+] lifeguard|13 years ago|reply
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).