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].
I appreciate the link! I created topiama and posted it on hackernews almost 2 years ago.
As a fellow user of topiama... I am a bit annoyed at how it looks on mobile. What I plan to do is use bootstrap to make a nice responsive layout for all devices. Stay tuned. Probably Spring/Summer.
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.
Eventually went ahead and wrote a small chrome extension which injects some css and javascript into IAMA threads to make it easy to switch between the full thread and a simplified Q&A thread. See https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cleanama-for-reddi... if you think you need something of the sort.
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.
Wow. Just the other day I was looking at the clouds and wondering how it all works up there and not some three-hundred word blogpost; seriously, why are there different clouds? The sky is such a big part of my everyday life, yet I know nothing about it. I searched around but couldn't find any good books on clouds.
This seems like a good start though. Mad respect for Bill.
I assume it's only a tiny slice of his library. Inferring from the fact he's the world's richest geek, and that he's spent $30 million on a set of da Vinci papers,
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.
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.
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.
In my opinion it's the other way around. Because they're successful, they're busy, they're proven with the tongue, they have to be succinct and direct.
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.
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.
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?
What's the point ? He would give diplomatic answers about events 20 years ago. What would that accomplish ?
His energy right now is behind a really great thing and a great inspiration for all of us - to apply ourselves and our geek brains to doing something useful in the world, not just optimizing hip city limo rentals for inflated multiples.
So I think these so called soft ball questions are great. They set him up to hit the ball out of the park. Go Bill ! Hit that thing ! Let even the shallow and dull minded hear the message and see that this is what great people do when they have the opportunity.
Public opinion is fickle and there is far too much snark and strife. He is going in the right direction so God speed.
But I'm not going to start using SQL-server or anything.
"Microsoft's actions in the past over aggressive maybe hindering the progress of open source and stuff like that"
Take your pick from:
1) Why do you think Bill Gates cares about open source given that he made his fortune from closed source software?
2) Sure it hindered the progress of open source, that was the whole point, open source was a potentially significant competitor to the corporation Bill Gates was running and he'd have been negligent in his role as CEO if he'd not looked to undermine and damage it at any opportunity.
You may not like those positions or agree with them but it would be somewhat odd to think that they weren't relatively close to what Bill Gates was thinking at the time and still thinks.
Neither of those would be what he'd say of course, he'd almost certainly point out that MS do embrace FOSS far more these days and also that while Windows may have been closed, by becoming a defacto standard for desktop computing it did an enormous amount for standardisation (in a practical, that is what people are actually using, rather than an open standards sense) and spreading computing to the masses.
Ultimately it might be an interesting subject, but it's not one you can expect to get an honest answer on. Even if he weren't involved in MS day to day and a major shareholder still, he's very unlikely to perform an about turn that says "I was basically wrong about my entire career".
yep. not asking softball question wont gather you the karma. hence why i laugh hard every time people suggest those (this?) sites are even a slight replacement for editorialized news sources.
>I'm pretty disappointed by how softball questions they were
This is not the way to look at it.
The answered questions were just that: answered. More hardball questions were ignored by the VIP. The VIP chooses which questions to ask. In short reddit IAMAs are basically free marketing exercises masquerading behind some kind of idea of "we did it, reddit" - that the audience has some kind of power. It doesn't, it's basically a false idea.
The condom one is because the Gates Foundation held a competition [1] to redesign the condom to make condom use more prevalent in Africa (hopefully to help prevent the spread of HIV)
A few minutes ago, the top voted questions were about whether he uses Internet Explorer, Bing, etc. It is a bit disappointing to see such inane questions getting upvoted to visibility. All I can think of about that commenter is: You have one question to ask one of the greatest businessmen and philanthropists of our time, and all you can think of is some re-hashed 10 year old joke? I think in general, r/all is pretty stupid. However, many other subject-specific sub-reddits are awesome!
I find it depends on the subreddit. It's like HN, if there's a consistent effort at civility and on-topic discussion in a particular community, then it can be ok. All of the default subreddits are a disaster for discussion, some of the smaller niche ones are ok.
It's a consequence of the way comments on reddit are structured. The best top-level comment is displayed first, followed immediately by its (lower-quality) child comments, rather than the next-best top-level comment. One learns to simply read the top-level comment, read the response, then minimize it and move on.
Reddit is a large community, and the average post quality reflects that.
On such an important AMA, a mod should be able to cut off some of the child comments (just hide them under the [-] button), especially on the top answer. It would be like a haircut on a tree of comments, but it would look better than ruffled.
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.
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.
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.
Quote from Reddit: "I feel like he is probably one of the least qualified people to answer this question. When was the last time Bill Gates made less than $100,000 per year?"
Bill Gate's Response: "I never went for a big salary but your basic point is correct."
Indeed, this probably isn't the best question to ask Bill Gates.
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.
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?
I always enjoyed doing it to share my thoughts with the community, since they seemed interested. It's kinda like, why do you talk to people at parties when you have no immediate profit making venture to push? Because it's fun.
It's also a great way to stay connected with your base, even for someone like Bill, who is still trying to accomplish things that are easier with broad support.
His foundation makes a big "profit" by getting rid of these [1] myths. By "profit" I mean lives saved and/or enhanced. What better way of getting rid of myths than publicity?
If Reddit existed in the early 20th century, Andrew Carnegie would have done an AMA.
Gates has, among some geeks, a really nasty reputation. It's, in fact, so bad I am not sure we can even trust the philanthropist. For me, it's just too easy to imagine him as being a supervillain. ;-)
Everyone has a dark side. His darkest side got fed and exposed while at Microsoft and he has been paying for it ever since.
I can understand not wanting dishes lying around all the time and also not wanting staff around all the time.
I sort of see his job (what he chooses to make it anyway) as helping other people do good works by expanding their resources. I'm not sure that benefits from a 110% time commitment.
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.
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.
On the other hand it's not called 'I will answer anything' unfortunately. People are generally nice so a lot of 'comfortable' questions get a lot of votes rather than questions that could be seen as provocative.
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.
I don't think Bill timed it on purpose :) and it won't change most people's perception of the latest Windows (I hate it too, and respect Bill Gates a lot).
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".
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...
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 ;)
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.
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
[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/18d2n6