• downpunxx@fedia.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    18
    arrow-down
    24
    ·
    3 months ago

    This comment section, lmmfao. Sorry to disappoint you kids, but in the pantheon on tech bad guys Bill Gates doesn’t even rate. All told, all things considered, Bill Gates is a good and descent man.

    However, the claim that Gates visited Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands 37 times has not been substantiated.

    Crucially, the flight logs that detailed the use of Epstein’s private plane, including their destinations, do not show that Bill Gates ever visited the island, let alone on 37 separate occasions.

    The logs, according to a 2019 New York Times report, state that while Gates met Epstein a number of times, he only flew on the plane from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey to Palm Beach, Florida.

    A spokesman told the Times that Gates was not “made aware it was Mr. Epstein’s plane.”

    Gates has since said that he regretted associating with Epstein.

    [X]

    • thesmokingman@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      28
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      3 months ago

      Don’t let his Reddit Secret Santa PR campaigns blind you. He’s a rich guy with a fake story pulling the ladder up behind him and using his wealth to ensure things go his way, not the best way. Do just a little bit more digging than the superficial shit I’ve shared with you here and you’ll learn he’s really just a piece of shit.

      • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        13
        ·
        3 months ago

        You’d prefer if he was like the Koch brothers? Or Musk?

        He’s not a saint but he’s done a huge amount of good compared to other billionaires.

        How many other billionaires are talking about malaria in Africa?

        • thesmokingman@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          12
          ·
          3 months ago

          Read that fourth link and its links. Basically the Gates Foundation controls world health these days. If you don’t agree with it, you don’t move forward. Agreeing with it means you have to agree with Bill who, and this might surprise you, actually has no fucking medical training or education. His approach to lots of things really fucks shit up. It’s very debatable that the short-term impact (fighting things like malaria fairly well) is worth the long-term shitshow (see Gates attempting to lock down and profit from the ‘Rona vaccine).

          John Doerr has a hilarious anecdote in Measure What Matters that he intends to be seen as the power of rich white dudes making shit up but in reality is very telling. Bono makes some foundation for shit in Africa. Nothing works. Doesn’t do the things it wants to do. Suddenly someone has the brilliant idea to maybe include an actual African dealing with the problems they’re looking at instead of a bunch of rich people disconnected from everything. It’s presented as a revelation! The power of OKRs! In reality it’s fucking money blindness. Would I wish Gates were more like Koch or Musk? Fuck no. Why are you telling me I have to have a serial sexual harasser trying to kill things that make the world better because he can’t profit from them?

          • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            6
            ·
            3 months ago

            Read that fourth link and its links.

            Did you read it?

            “Clearly, the tens of billions of dollars the Gates Foundation has given away have helped people at times and, yes, saved lives”

            The article can be summarized as, " Why hasn’t he done more?"

            From the article:

            "Instead of celebrating the million-dollar gifts his foundation donates, why aren’t we interrogating the $184 billion that Gates isn’t giving away? "

            So, “He’s saved lives, but why hasn’t he done more?” Isn’t the big scandal you think it is.

            And yeah his COVID ip take was bad and he backed off.

    • grue@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      3 months ago

      The fuck are you even talking about? Bill Gates is a piece of shit for his underhanded and anticompetitive business practices; it has fuck-all to do with Epstein.

      • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        10
        ·
        3 months ago

        Gates was underhanded and anti competitive to other underhanded anti competitive companies. It was billionaires competing against other billionaires. Gates was a saint in the business world compared to IBM that came before it or Apple that it competed against as a peer.

        If Apple has been victorious in the 80’s instead of Microsoft, it wouldn’t have been, “MS has an unfair advantage over Netscape because IE comes bundled.” It would have been, “You can’t install Netscape because we’re Apple.” Netscape would have been reduced to a reskin Safari. Because that’s exactly what Apple did with the iPhone.

        • thesmokingman@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          3 months ago

          Embrace, extend, and extinguish wasn’t Microsoft against big corps. Someone else linked the Halloween Documents which come after this. In ‘76 Gates wrote An Open Letter to Hobbyists decrying any unpaid work and later stole everything from The Mother of all Demos (specifically its descendants at PARC) without compensation.

          I’m not sure what you’re on about in any of your threads defending Gates. Whataboutism doesn’t reduce any of his problems.

          • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            3 months ago

            The letter to Hobbiests was valid. An Altair was $2500 in today’s dollars and you still needed to spend a thousand more on i/o. If it was so trivial, they could have written their own Basic. Instead they copied it because they could. I get it. I have copied software utilities/games/etc too without ever caring that a small team spent months writing and debugging. That doesn’t make it right.

            MS in 1976 was not the giant global corporation it is today. It was maybe 10 guys.

            As to MS stealing from Engelbart, this

            https://www.quora.com/Did-Bill-Gates-get-Windows-from-Xerox

            claims MS stole from Apple.

            • thesmokingman@programming.dev
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              3 months ago

              I’m not coming down one way or another on stealing code from Gates. It was a drastic departure from how things worked at the time. I am saying you can’t write a letter like that and then not pay PARC.

              Both Jobs and Gates visited PARC and were aware of what Xerox was doing. Apple lost their suit against Microsoft for this because Xerox got involved. It’s so tenuous to argue it was stolen from Apple and that’s mostly based in Jobs fandom. Jobs was, surprise surprise, also a huge piece of shit and an incredibly, unapologetically deadbeat dad until his death.

          • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            4
            ·
            3 months ago

            Because capitalism is a messed up system. Warren Buffet has described our system as perverted in that he makes millions simply for owning while a teacher has to work for only thousands.

            I don’t see Gates donating millions to re-elect Trump like Musk. That alone makes him a good billionaire.

    • Deceptichum@quokk.au
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      3 months ago

      Oh wow downpunxxx has moved on from defending genocide to supporting billionaires.

      Anyone who lived through the 90s knows that Gates is Musk and Zuckerberg levels of shit.