Grubstakers - Episode 65: Bill Gates (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 14, 2019

You asked, and we delivered we have Bill Gates in our hot seat. Learn all about what ruthless ways both as a teen and a adult Bill gates bent the arms of the system to his will escaping trouble time and time again to become the richest person on the planet. This 3 part series will be continued on our Patreon. Patreon episodes are released onThursdays. Enjoy! As a cousin of one of the hosts I don't know how much longer my employment will last. They say don't bite the hands that feeds, but this seems like biting off the utter of life. Holy cow what a bad move. I have said too much please forgive me Krishna!

Hey everyone, welcome to Grubstakers, the podcast about billionaires. This week we are covering William Henry Gates III, otherwise known as Bill Gates, otherwise known as Trey. Because of this, we've chosen to create a three-part series on the most philanthropic billionaire whose catchphrase is, that's the stupidest fucking thing I've heard. Find out how Bill Gates embraced, extended, and extinguished his competitors, enemies, and friends to become the richest person on the planet. All that and more, this week on Grubstakers.

First they think you're crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world. Berlusconi flatly denies that any mafia money helped him begin a start in the dynasty. I have always had a thing for black people. I like black people. I'm telling you, these stories are funnier than the jokes you can tell. I said, what the fuck is a brain

scientist? I was like, that's not a real job. Tell me the truth. But anyway. Sound good? Almost, dude. I got the loot, Steve! In five, four, 3, 2... Show love! Hello, welcome back to Grub...

Hello, welcome back to Grubstakers, the podcast about billionaires. I'm Sean P. McCarthy. I'm here, I'm joined by my friends... Yogi Poliwog. Andy Palmer. Steve Jeffries. And this week on Grubstakers, we're finally doing it. We're talking about the big man himself, the greatest philanthropist in human history, the man who made you know what that sound is.

We're talking about Bill Gates this week. That's right. William Gates. The reason I'm in this country, the reason this podcast exists. The reason we didn't have to go down and settle for blue microphones, this kind of choppy sound quality. We could get the real shit because of Yogi's dad's essential work on Microsoft Excel, which we'll get to. And, you know, like, well, Bill Gates, first of all, Forbes net worth as of May 2019, $100.8 billion. Wow. And that's why he's the greatest philanthropist in human history.

Because this man has been trying to give his money away for... Did you say $100.8 million? Billion. Billion. Yes. Yes. Recursive function there. I sorry uh yeah no so this man has been trying to give his way his money away for 25 years now and he has been so successful at it that he gets richer every

single year um but bill gates you know it uh he's so successful at it that when we started this he was the second richest man in the world and now he's the richest um but yeah like so i guess the story of bill gates to to my mind it's uh a lot of luck is i guess where we would begin it and and you know i think it's there's so much in it in the story of bill gates and microsoft we're going to break this up at least two parts possibly three parts we'll kind of go through it chronologically and just see how long it takes us to go through it. So you'll follow with us. But I guess just to kind of say a couple things up top is, first of all, you know, we're all aware of Windows software and how perhaps they just decided the Sherman Antitrust Act doesn't really apply anymore. And that is why every single computer has Windows.

And they did some kind of skullduggery to make sure that other applications do not run as well on Windows as their proprietary ones, such as Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office Suite, and all this stuff. And we'll get into all that. All great products, mind you. I think some of the best in computing. And one thing I want to let the listeners know, Sean, is that as a Microsoft insider, a legacy child, I have some Bill Gates dirt that's a bombshell that you will only hear on this podcast

if you listen all the way through. So be warned. Some incriminating information about Bill Gates will be coming very soon. Yes, and Andy will share the text messages Bill sent him on the Patreon. And so the other thing is like Bill Gates and— If you're a vendor for Microsoft, he sexually harasses you. Bill Gates, the other thing that should be noted,

and I do want to cite citations needed the podcast they did a great two-parter on um the bill and melinda gates foundation because and essentially we were talking initially about doing an episode on the bill and melinda gates foundation i don't think we should because they already did i think you should listen to theirs but then every three minutes just play an annoying sound effect that doesn't make any sense. And then if you do that, then you will experience what our episode about

the Bill and Melinda Cates Foundation would have been. Well, to be fair, Sean, if they're using a Windows computer, it's making the noises on its own. I can't do this. Pitch-shifting Windows sounds. We all went down to Bontoc

down the Lake Geneva shore with Zappa and the mothers we didn't have much time this episode just got pulled for copyright oh but essentially my point about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation...

It's not a copyright thing. It's just too fucking stupid. That's why we got sued for dumbing down humanity. My point about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation... An insult to Deep Purple. ...was essentially that every profile you see of Bill Gates in the media is, this guy is the greatest philanthropist of all time. He's saving Africa. He's saving all of us you know stopping global warming whatever else because he does have a giant private philanthropy and then of course this one eludes the idea maybe he doesn't

deserve all that money in the first place maybe it would be better in the public's hands but but second it like what gets me what about uh all the things he created on his way to becoming the wealthiest person in the world? Yes, his creation of that $50,000 he used to buy DOS OS. But my point was essentially a reason, and the Citation Needed episode makes this point very well, a reason that the coverage is so uniformly good is that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will fund newspapers like The Guardian,

like Microsoft went in a big multi-billion dollar infrastructure cable spending thing with Comcast, which of course owns NBC, MSNBC, and they'll fund all sorts of media verticals, all sorts of think tanks, research, et cetera, et cetera. So the point is like part of the reason why every single story you see about Bill Gates is this man is such a selfless philanthropist giving away his $100 billion that he still has for some reason is because he's funding a lot of media properties that have an interest

in being nice to him because, you know, whatever X million dollars he gives them is a significant part of their revenue in this current time we are in where media outlets are under attack and have very precarious funding sources. So I guess that's just kind of what I wanted to say up top. Sorry, could you repeat that? I just, that was, I couldn't hear it over the clamor of another 500 people being laid off from Huffington Post. That's what the police sirens outside were all about right there. And by 500, I mean the six remaining people looking at Huffington Post.

We were mentioning, we're recording in Brooklyn, New York. It's a very rainy, drizzly day. And we think Bill Gates was using the weather machines because he knew we were doing this episode. Trying to keep us from joining up. This is where that $5 billion on cloud seeding technology came into. He perfected it in the Pacific Northwest where we all grew up. It's like the Mr. Burns, send in the hounds, but he just goes, send in the clouds.

One other weird thing they talk about with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is essentially they have like genetically engineered mosquitoes going around which like i mean you know maybe seems like a good idea but it's also kind of weird where it's like africa is essentially their laboratory for genetically engineered mosquito experiments yeah i mean like we can talk about everything that they've done that is potentially good for society, but it is riddled in we're doing experiments in third world countries that are for good, but maybe 50 years from now you'll find out aren't. And they're a big partner of Monsanto and a major agribusiness. Of course, now if you try to genetically engineer your own mosquitoes, you are liable for a lawsuit from Microsoft.

Even though they got the genetically engineered mosquitoes idea from some... Xerox folk? Yeah. Yeah. Right. From some open... It was originally an open source genome. Right, right, right. But they patented it.

Yeah. But yeah, no, and I guess, so we'll kind of start chronologically with Bill Gates and maybe we'll circle back to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation a bit towards the end, you know, like, but we're going to start with how he made his money and then we'll kind of get into a little bit

of what he's actually doing with it. But, you know, Andy was mentioning their disputes with Linux. And I think researching this episode has taught me that I am the kind of communist that wants people with guns to come to your house and force you to install Linux. Just kick in your door.

Yeah, there should be like IT infrastructure check-off that come to your house. And they're spying on people who are still using Windows. That's a big part of the show. It's like, oh, they shot my dog, but this Ubuntu kernel runs like a dream.

I never realized I could boot up my PC so quickly. As soon as they leave, you're like, what the fuck? I can't even play Fortnite. But yeah, and this is like what we'll kind of go through is Microsoft's entire strategy for keeping Windows the dominant platform has been they have at every point viewed multi-platform programming languages or softwares as an existential threat. So we'll kind of talk about later what they did with like Java. But the idea is like if a program works on every operating system, if it works on Linux, Apple, Windows, well, Windows might be kind of shittier than the others.

So more people might switch to the others so microsoft can maintain their dominance um they even have a a name for this which is like embrace extend extinguish right where they'll uh kind of take a product that works on multiple platforms then they'll add some proprietary shit onto it so now there's like a proprietary thing that only works on windows and suddenly you know this thing that's supposed to work on all these different platforms no longer it has a separate component for windows essentially so you know we'll go through kind of how they did that stuff and how they you know fought linux and all these these different things and when you look at that it's pronounced linux and when you look at oh really linux oh uh when you look at their strategy it is have you seen the the webcomic userfriendly.com i have it taped onto my screen so it's always on on my

screen oh why don't you just have it as a background well linux doesn't allow me to do that no i want it on the front i printed it out taped it. This will be an episode where we actually can pronounce everything. You know, when you look at the embrace, extend, extinguish strategy, it really boils down to how tyrants look at the world. It's literally infiltrate, observe, adopt, and then destroy. And when we look at Bill Gates' tactics from the early years of Microsoft to today, it is essentially we're going to change the world and destroy everything, and I need every ounce of blood, sweat, and tears to be put into this company,

and no substitutions. There was that thing that a lot of people said early on, which is that Bill Gates didn't want to be the richest person in the world. He wanted to run the world. So I guess owned? I do like how Bill Gates got the idea for um embrace extend extinguish uh from the molotov ribbon trot pact but i guess we'll just kind of start uh chronologically and get to you know how things uh actually came to be where you know almost every pc

runs windows and you know bill gates is worth 108 100.8 billion dollars and um it's an interesting thing where you know everybody on this podcast is uh grew up in or near seattle you know so um i guess i was gonna say bill gates grew up in laurelhurst and i guess if you're familiar with seattle you immediately think oh fuck that fuck that guy. Right. Wait, is that north of Seattle? Yeah. Okay, I don't give a shit. No. The thing about Bill Gates' story is that he's so rich that his upper middle class upbringing seems like rags to riches.

Like the jump he made from a kid who could afford to go to Harvard to the richest person in the world is such a distance that when you look at his upbringing, it's like, man, he didn't have millions upon millions, actually billions of dollars at this point in his life. What a poor, poor Bill Gates. So are we going to start at the beginning? Well, I would start at the very beginning. Wait, what's the other sound effect that goes with that? There you go.

But so, when I say it started at the beginning, it's essentially Bill Gates on his mom's side. And I do want to say, I read... I read a lot of the book Hard Drive by James... I'm discovering the effects that come with this keyboard. It's great. The book Hard... This one's a phaser.

The book Hard Drive by James's a phaser. The book Hard Drive by James Wallace and Jim Erickson and also the sequel Overdrive by James Wallace is my primary source for this episode. But from this book Hard Drive, they talk about Bill Gates' great-grandfather on his mother's side

was a banker known as J.W. Maxwell. He was for a time the mayor of South Bend in Washington. He founded National City Bank in Seattle, and he was such a successful banker that he left Bill Gates with a $1 million trust fund when Bill Gates was born in 1955.

According to my book, Gates, How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry and Made Himself the Richest Man in America, the trust fund thing was not true what i told you that on this on the slack he's denying the trust fund uh well no this other book denies the trust fund i don't know what i mean he it sounded like they interviewed him in this book or at least there are segments where here's the reality there are conflicting thoughts on bill gates's trust fund regardless he had access to people who had up to a million dollars to leave him at birth.

Yeah. So regarding the trust fund. Well, I think the trust fund is true. And you know what? Here's why I think it's true. Bill Gates would have sued them into oblivion for writing hard drive if it wasn't true. That's fair point. So,

and then on his dad's side, there was his great grandfather, William Henry Gates. And then there was his grandfather, William Henry Gates, and then his father, William Henry Gates. And then,

Bill, Bill Gates, Jr., I think. All prominent Republican lawyers. One of the great things is his, I believe his great-grandfather was a literal grub staker. Oh, yes. He moved up to Alaska during the gold rush and like grub staked for miners, which basically means, you know, you invest in mines and then if they find anything, you take most of the profits. And at the same time, he also did the thing that's like the real gold rush whenever there's a gold rush, which is selling overpriced pickaxes and shit. Sure, sure. And I think he might have been a landlord, too.

But that was that's kind of the beginning of the Gates family And this is essentially a through line to Almost all of the billionaires we've covered It's reaching an industry first And then figuring out the markets And then overcharging for what you're providing And becoming essentially a monopoly very quickly I do like that

The modern equivalent of selling overpriced pickaxes During a gold rush is taking the podcast rush And then selling overpriced merch, which will be coming soon to the Grubstaker store. But yeah, so like, and you know, regardless of whether or not the billion, the million dollar trust fund is true, I believe it. But regardless, his family. You know that feeling when you're in Alaska and you think you've hit a gold vein right right um but it comes up empty i was gonna say that that was the last sound that into the wild guy heard that's when you pass on you see the blue screen of death. But seriously, folks, he's in hell.

Don't challenge God. It won't end well. But regardless of how much Bill Gates had for trust fund or whatever, his family was super plugged into like washington state high society and politics like just as an example bill's mother and father met through a bill's friend and future washington state senator brock adams uh the washington state governor in the 1970s dan evans was a family friend who helped them paint their picketball court so i mean it's like you know and his dad bill gates his dad, Bill Gates' dad, was a significant lawyer and a significant figure in local Republican politics.

He was apparently almost appointed to be a federal judge, but the Democratic senators in Washington State at the time, which included, like, Scoop Jackson, they blocked his appointment because he was such a hardcore Republican. Oh, really? Wow. So they didn't want him on the federal judiciary. So then he swore that he would go to the liberal bastion of the University of Washington and in 2006 give the worst commencement address for my graduating class. Just the most boring, navel-gazy bullshit about how you need to give back to your community. Anyone even knows

who you are because you squirted out the richest man in the world. Believe in yourself. I'm just imagining Andy in the audience for that commencement speech being like, I wasted three tabs on this. Just bored

out of his mind while shapes dance across his eyes. All these shapes are old and rich. But yeah. I'll put it this way. There was a speech before that from the student body president where he forgot what he was saying halfway through.

What? And was like, oh, I'm sorry. And he like lost his place and a bunch of people booed. That still wasn't the worst speech of my graduation. You know what's so frustrating about all that? I got rejected

from that school and they're hiring idiots that can't even finish a fucking speech. I think the part of it is like, it's just like some frat guy where his whole frat voted for him and he got to do the speech for the whole school yeah that makes sense I'm just trying to imagine booing a commencement

speech oh yeah I love heckling a commencement speech it's so great free bird but yeah so I think like the point is that Bill Gates's family was you know pretty fucking rich to begin with and well to do and connected which which will be essential to the story because as we'll get to his mother sits on a united way charity board with the ibm chairman which we'll we'll get to in a minute but it's pretty that is the summary of the story of how

bill gates got a hundred100 billion right there. But so Bill Gates is, you know, he grows up, he's in the Boy Scouts. You know, I guess they wanted to like socialize him because he's kind of like a nerdy introverted kid. So they put him in the Boy Scouts. It turns out he's insufferable and gets in trouble a lot and everyone doesn't like him. So they decide, you know what, we're going to straighten you out. And with very heavy hearts, they send him to one of Seattle's most expensive and exclusive boarding schools for middle and high school.

Yes. Instead of going to Sean and Stephen's alma mater, where he would have gone otherwise, Roosevelt High School. Yes, so he attends Lakeside Private Prep, and this is also relevant because, of course, he's born in 1955. Now, I read, okay, I just realized, we could probably just skip to the end here. I read this science book. science book yeah uh it's

called outliers and it actually overview went over this story and it said that as a kid uh bill gates was near some computers at the university of washington and he uh tippity typed on them for 10 000 hours and that's how he became a super code genius and became uh the richest man in the world because he's the best coder ever because he did 10 000 hours on computers and so he just went sonny balwani 10 million lines of code yeah yeah he snorted them so uh that's the podcast i'm andy palmer 10 000 hours is also how long it takes you to install windows 95 um but but i guess and so andy does mention this this computer time because this is relevant here because you know he's a kid born in the 50s growing up in the 60s uh computer time

was not universal during that time period. So Bill Gates attends the private prep school, Lakeside Private Prep. And while he's there, him and he meets Paul Allen there, but they get infinite teletype computer time. And what a teletype is, is basically at the time, even at a private school, they couldn't afford to have a whole computer in there. So what they would have are these teletype machines where it's basically a kind of typewriter that also connects to your phone, which then goes through the phone line,

like the old internet modems into a mainframe to communicate the messages you're sending there. And then the mainframe at some distant place where they have computers will then do all of the computing and send stuff back. And the, the result of that is that computer time is fairly expensive. Like you, especially for the time it was,

you know it was on the scale of like, you know, a couple dollars a minute or something like that and uh so being able to just access a computer even through a teletype was was quite an expensive ordeal yeah and they like racked up a whole bunch of bills right this isn't yeah people our age this isn't like a computer lab no where you played you know organ trail right it's essentially a room that has i I mean, almost computer parts, if we look at it from today's perspective.

And they were able to, I mean, here's the thing. It was basically like a keyboard hooked up to a phone. Yeah. These are rich kids that are playing with the technology of tomorrow, that people around them, let alone using it, can comprehend the future of what they're touching, essentially. Yeah, I guess a good analogy might be like, you know, taking flight lessons in a jet or something.

Yeah, precisely. It'd be like Orville Wright and Wilbur looking at what a spaceship does. Well, no, I mean in terms of, like, cost. Like, it's sort of like, you know, you're a teenager and you're like, well, I want to learn to fly. And your parents are like, all right, we'll rent you a jet. Or your school has a jet rental program. Some of the parents pooled their money to get a jet. And now you can learn to fly in that.

And that's how they became the Bill Gates of doing 9-11. I was going to say like, you know, what I did with my public school computer lab was we had this class we had this class where we didn't really have child porn on all the computers we didn't have to do much so we got Civilization 2

on all the network computers in the lab and then one class a day we would just play Civ 2 for an hour and that's how i got 10 000 hours with civilization and became the sixth best person i know at playing civilization um well it's good that that didn't start an unhealthy obsession into adulthood yeah western civilization too essentially we mentioned paul allen a moment ago and they met at lakeside and and Paul Allen is about

three or four years older than Bill Gates, and so Paul Allen... Not anymore. Yeah. But Paul Allen essentially was looking at the computer pieces that were being produced, and bringing up to Bill the concepts of the future, and Bill

kept having the business side of the... in mind, I having the business side of the, uh, uh, in mind, I guess is the best way to put it. Um, so Paul Allen would be like,

Hey, this ship's coming out and these pieces coming out, we could make, make something with this. And Bill would be like, no, not yet. And then Paul Allen basically describes that his mom was like a librarian lady and his dad,

uh, was, um, Oh fuck. I got name. I can't remember. Well, it was enough to pay for the,

whatever, whatever. One of his parents made enough money for him to also go to this private school. Yes, right. Whereas Bill Gates' parents are like essentially both lawyers. So when it comes to what Microsoft became, Paul Allen certainly put forth the concepts of what tomorrow could be.

And Bill Gates was like, well, let's murder everyone to get that dream. It is interesting. I mean, it's kind of like the Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak story, where Steve Wozniak's the programmer and steve jobs is the guy like here's how we destroy the fabric of society with this i'm exaggerating but they're essentially there's the douchebag and the slightly less douchebag yeah um so yeah so they learned how to um code in basic which was developed at dartmouth um and it was a very uh let's say simple language um that it was it

wasn't as complex as something like there weren't that many programming languages at the time um but basic was the one that was kind of meant for education. It wasn't as involved as something like FORTRAN. And so they learned to... I'm involved in FORTRAN. So they learned to code it in BASIC, but then... FORTRAN, it's the language exclusively used for making bomb threats against schools. You can write a program to make bomb threats to nfl stadiums

wait i did want to i did want to stop you real quick though one other thing on this computer programming time uh because like first of all as we mentioned if you went to a public school in this time you would have no access to computer time like Bill Gates and Paul Allen did. So it's like, okay, how did they get their 10,000 hours programming? They went to a rich fucking school where they get computer time as opposed to any public school that the vast majority of the country goes to. If you went to a public school at this time, your experience would be more of guys in white t-shirts with cigarettes rolled up on their sleeves, pulling a switchblade on you. And then you roll down a hill and there's like this big pipe. And you realize that there's this clown that's been killing all the kids in your small town.

And you and your friends have to have to kill that clown, but adults can't see the clown. No one believes you, but it's really this ancient creature from, that's always kind of been in the town um you'd be you'd be spending more of your time at like the stick fights on roosevelt way and then all the while the lakeside kids are just getting better and better at basic well mind you it's not just the fact that they're at this private school it's also that they broke into these computers and they stole a C-cubed administrator password and logged onto the lakeside.

They realized they could fuck with like the grades and the pay scale and everything. And like they would get in trouble for the stuff. And Fred Wright, the head of the lakeside computer group then, was like, he was mad. But at the same time time there was no punishments for crimes that had never been committed before so it's like i mean there are just good at computers you know what i mean yeah what they essentially did is they they mostly used it just to steal computer time like they got administrative because you know as students they would have a limited amount of computer time right and so they would just be able they would find out a way to hack

it which those computers it's not like hacking was like right right the mate like something neo would do in the matrix it was just like you know you might type in like a slash admin and it's like hey do you want to do the computer for free right right and you're like yes and it's like i've been hacked um i'm in yeah one one illustrative thing from hard drive about that was essentially like some of the parents some of the rich parents for lakeside private prep they had like a fundraiser to raise money for computer time and they raised about like three grand and you know whatever dollars it was. Steven? They raised about $3,000. Just from selling their stuff? Because they were all rich,

and so they just had expensive stuff they could sell. Going through their couch cushions, they found several coins from the 1870s. There's stock under there. I was in these private schools. There's always random auctions and fundraisers and part of you

is always like, where, where's all this shit coming from? But at the same time, you're like, I'm a child. I should probably

get my grades up before I start questioning capitalism. That's how they get you. That's right. Oh, but yeah, so they raised like $3,000 for computer time

and Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and two other students blew through it in like two weeks. So then the University of Washington, they got a computer and a thing and they're like all right so we need to like test the limits of this and get someone to break it so they brought in like bill gates and paul allen to basically break their computers and so that's based that's more or less how they got so much computer time as they the

udub just brought them in to kind of run the machines into the ground and so that they could then debug them and fix them and um they had essentially unlimited time out the udub teletypes we're spending 15 minutes on arguably the most innocent crimes that bill gates and paul committed yo when they were in high school they fucking broke into the computer lab, yo. Look, this is 10,000 hours. This is part of it. This is how you learn. This is part of it, yeah.

This is how you get better and stronger. So, like, a lot of kids had access to this time, but not nearly as much as Bill and Paul did during this era. So, after high school, he gets into harvard which is really difficult if you come from a rich kid private school two other things before harvard um well actually a couple things just from the book uh his parents get him a brand new mustang in 1970 a 1970 mustang when he turned 16 years old so you know even if he didn't have a trust fund, he grew up pretty well. He's apparently a congressional page for a minute because, you know, like we said, his parents met through this future senator.

So I think he was a congressman at the time and they had connections. So he spent some time as a congressional page. And I believe, I think this is before he went to Harvardvard he was a programmer at a government defense contractor trw um it must have been before because once he uh is this pre-harvard you're saying i think it's pre-harvard yeah bill and paul worked on a handful of contracts before they they started working for what became microsoft in albuquerque which we'll talk on in a moment yeah and uh one of one of the people who went to Lakeside with him described him as an extremely annoying person. He was very easy to sort of dislike.

And I think that probably me and a lot of people took a little extra pleasure in sort of bumping him while passing him in the hall and basically giving him a little bit of a hard time. In public school, the guy would have been killed. I do remember the transition, because my parents had me at a private Catholic school for like two years. And then it transferred out to public school.

I don't know what you're suggesting. But yeah, no, the transition to public school from private school is rough and i am actually grateful that i made that transition otherwise i would be like bill gates we're not getting any we're not getting laid anymore or yeah i was i was no longer getting violently molested um but yeah no i mean it is just something where like andy said there's so many anecdotes in these fucking books about people being like yeah bill gates is a fucking prick or was a prick like there's a story i think it's in hard drive it was essentially like um some guy in a classroom asked a question that bill gates thought was like obvious so bill gates was like mocking him and acting like he's an

idiot and the guy who uh the author interviews like yeah i went right up to his face and i grabbed him and i told him to stop being an asshole and uh i don't regret it at all yeah gates like early in microsoft he got a reputation for just saying that's the dumbest thing i've ever heard right that's his catchphrase yeah and um apparently not having a lot of friends also he also like constantly throws i mean you know i sure throws... I'm sure it's mellowed out now that he's older, but he was constantly throwing temper tantrums for basically his whole life. They described when the government announced

they were investigating him, he threw a huge baby temper tantrum. I think that some of the mellowing out is genuinely... I hate to be this crass, but liberal propaganda. I think he's always been a dick, and he's still a dick, but the only reason we think he's not is because the media outlets are like, look at how nice this old man is, and he's giving his money. Oh yeah, he goes on talk shows and is like, I'm Fleece

Dad, and I go on Reddit, and I'm trying to stop malaria. There's a great thing where Ellen had him on, and she was asking him how much shit cost, and she's like, how much shit cost. And she's like, how much do you think a banana costs? And he's like, $9? No concept of what groceries would cost. Oh, he must have been coached in that because that's a literal Arrested Development joke.

Oh yeah, that's right. Do you guys think he was bullied too much or too little? Too little. Because bullies play a really important role in our society. As far as moderating these future monsters feel like that's a stand-up As far as moderating these future monsters It's like a stand-up bit

Right, right, right Oh, actually that was a Greg Giraldo bit It was Bill Gates How many lockers do you think that guy had to get shoved in To make $100 billion Yeah, yeah, yeah So Greg Giraldo made a bullying is good bit about Bill Gates So Steven, you're hack

No, I'm saying there's an optimum level Oh, yes So Greg Giraldo made a bullying is good bit about Bill Gates. So Steven, you're hack. No, I'm saying there's an optimum level. Oh, yes. Well, are you saying there's some sort of terminal velocity on bullying? Yeah, I mean, eventually you face diminishing returns. There's a laugher curve for bullying. I mean, you could bully them much less and get the same amount of good. Let's not put too much stock in this because Greg Giraldo is dead. Steven Jeffries, not a hack.

Delete that. But yes, the lesson from Bill Gates is that if you don't get what you want, you should cry and scream and throw a temper tantrum, and then you will be the second richest man on earth. First now. Bezos is worth more than him, isn't he? Not after that divorce, son. Not after he put his dick in the wrong place.

Yeah, he regained his title. God damn, I didn't even realize. Yeah, buddy. Fuck, the world has changed since we started this podcast. That's right. But, yeah, so, oh, and then one other thing that happens like while he's in school. So he has a friend. I just found this random thing interesting.

He has a friend named Kent Evans, who's one of his closest friends. And like him and Paul Allen and Bill Gates are all like programming together, talking about starting a company. They like set up some early company ideas. Kent evans dies while he's still at lakeside he dies in like a rock climbing accident or something yeah skiing or something yeah but it is just kind of like a weird story of like yeah there was one more potential billionaire who just disappeared off the face of the earth yeah apparently he was like this precocious kid that kind of gave Bill Gates his weird business sense. Huh? Um,

yeah. Well, Sean, we will cover in the story. There are literally maybe six to 12 different people that along the way, Bill Gates smashed and they were a part of Microsoft and or a part of Bill's original story. And had they not liquidated their shares or something,

they would also be billionaires today. That's the first time we said smashed and not as a euphemism for sex. I meant it for sex. He fucked them to death. Bill Gates set up the skiing accident. Playing 12-dimensional chess. But yeah, I think Gates uh gates and paul allen named um some building maybe an auditorium

at the private school after their their friend who passed away um but yes so i guess that brings us up to harvard uh oh but but i guess i mentioned they worked at trw this government defense contractor and we mentioned they got essentially infinite computer time by debugging at university washington and so and then they get this programming job so the point of all this is they have access they learn how to program and they are able to do that because unlike public schools their elite private school gives them the access to computer time which is very expensive in order to to learn how to become programmers. And Gates gets accepted to Harvard. The coal mining program was shut down. And at Harvard, Gates finds himself really frustrated because he was used to being the

smartest guy in the room. And it turns out... He finds himself really frustrated because he keeps getting the brown tabs of acid when he wants the uh the better stuff well gates gates discovered that like being the smartest guy at like a small rich kid school in seattle isn't the same thing as being the smartest guy at a slightly larger rich kid school in boston well actually one of the things that i in i in pa Idea, man, is that basically Paul Allen, Bill Gates was like, I'm the smartest motherfucker around. And Paul Allen, who'd been to Wazoo for a year at that point, was like, Bill, you're going to get to Harvard.

There are going to be more smart people than you. He's like, nah, I don't believe it. And then the break after, Bill Gates was like, my professor his THD when he was 16 and like all of my mathematics are theoretical and the homework load is 30 hours a week and on top of that like I mean essentially Paul

Allen describes in this book that Bill Gates is probably one of the smartest people but at Harvard he's not because at Harvard they're getting people that are the smartest of the smartest from everywhere. So, you know, small pitch, big pond type of thing. And yeah, like, I remember in Hard Drive, they talk about like, he was...

George Bush is there, so what are you going to do? Right, right, right. These are some of the smartest people around. Hey, Bill, I'm going to need some sort of software to keep track of people, but they can't know about it. Could you get started on that, Bill? I got to do some cocaine over at Skull & Bones. Also, I'm at Yale.

He went to business school. Yeah, he went to Harvard Business School. Oh, okay. Yeah. But so Bill Gates, like from Harvard, you know, he's like a smart guy, but Hard Drive talks about like he was no longer the best in like his math classes and stuff. Right. You know, like initially he wanted or he at least considered becoming, you know, a Ph.D. in mathematics, you know, math professor and stuff.

But he gets into these classes and he's no longer the best. Math's too hard. That must have been rough for you, Bill Gates. Not being able to hack it in the math and science courses. Now when I'm a smart dick, I'm just a dick more than I'm smart.

I'm just going to say that's a classic thing that coders aren't actually that good at math sometimes. Oh, interesting. No, it's just straight logic. It's not like... Ten people just unsubscribe from our Patreon. Steven talking shit on coders again.

Stimulers. Well, it's more like sti. But yeah, so his uh his harvard days um like this book hard drive kind of describes him as like an asocial asshole uh but he spent a lot of time on the computer lab and he also spent a lot of time playing the red light district of boston yes the combat zone of boston which was apparently according to wikipedia the name given in the 1960s to the adult entertainment district in downtown Boston he said he was just there to people watch well he's not lying um but yeah so uh and that would uh uh start his lifelong affinity for

strippers which will uh oh is that real well it's an interesting thing i i guess i'll give it away now in the overdrive book they talk about how um while he was dating but before he was married to melinda french now melinda gates he would uh have strippers come over for uh naked pool parties with him and his friends oh really god in the seattle area at his mansions. You know what? You better charge extra for that. We'll follow up in more depth on that later. But... Now he just hunts them on his island. This Medina compound. He said, I was people watching.

That was back when I considered them people. But yeah, so he's... Back then you had to make sure you didn't get caught when you killed him and also like i mentioned lsd he's there's this interesting playboy interview but he was taking some acid at harvard um and i just want to quote it people might be familiar but playboy asks him ever take lsd he says my errant youth ended a long time ago. Playboy, what does that mean? That means there were things I did under the age of 25 that I ended up not doing subsequently.

Playboy says, one LSD story involved you staring at a table and thinking the corner was going to plunge into your eye. Gates smiles. Playboy, ah, a glimmer of recognition. Gates. That was on the other side of that boundary. God, even his acid stories are boring. That's all that...

I mean, that's a boring truth. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Nothing like watching his father give a commencement address. Is he microdosing when he bought DOS? Watching his father give a commencement

address and suddenly becoming convinced that you're listening to the voice of God. God sucks. Nietzsche was wrong. God's not dead, but he sucks. That's how Andy became a lifelong atheist. Nietzsche. Yeah. We's not dead, but he sucks. That's how Andy became a lifelong atheist. Nietzsche. Yeah. We're trying to get through this episode.

We didn't make it great. Okay. So at Harvard, while he's at Harvard, this company called Altair comes out with what's considered the first personal computer, though uh steve jobs and wasniak tried to claim that the apple one was the first uh personal computer it was this company altair where essentially what they had was a box with a processor and a bunch of um just electrical components and they wouldn't they would for slightly more than, um,

just like an IBM processor, they would, uh, ship you all the components and then you had to solder it together yourself. Right. And then once you turned it on, you had to flip a bunch of switches for it to start up and then it didn't really do anything.

Yeah. Uh, all it did was it had kind of some flashing lights and uh but a lot of people wanted to own one just because owning a computer was kind of the ultimate status symbol so what bill gates and paul allen kind of realized was like oh well we know this code basic uh we can adapt it uh to be used on this Altair personal computer. And so they begin working on this and call up the company MITS and saying like, oh, hey, we've got this thing we can put on the computer.

And eventually MITS was like, yeah, sure, whatever, come down. And so then they got their code ready, which is basically, obviously BASIC already existed. So it was an adaptation of an already existing coding language and in idea man it says that uh bill's code was 45 30 was monty's and 25 was paul so three people created the altar basic language yeah and monty davidoff is the other guy and so paul allen flies out to uh mits he realizes that there's a crucial bit of code at the beginning that they forgot and so he writes it on the plane and then compiles it by hand which is the process of turning um written code into ones and zeros right uh and so he gets there um he demos it for the altair company and they're like oh

sick uh and they hire him and start a contract uh with microsoft to run their um basic program and what also happens is they start so they start shipping basic with their computer for like some extra money uh and people get it because it allows them to actually do Basic with their computer for some extra money. And people get it because it allows them to actually do something with the computer. And immediately, people start pirating the Basic, which basically means just copying the punch cards. Right. Can I back up a bit for a minute?

Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to do my impression of Bill Gates with his friends at the Combat Zone in Boston. Okay. Hey, Bill, that chick is wicked naked over there. That's Bill Gates' boner. Yeah. But one other thing I do want to mention in this time period of the writing of Basic is

first we mentioned Monte Davidoff, the third guy. He's essentially been written out of the company history. Like the way Bill Gates tells the story and Paul Allen used to was essentially that the two of them wrote it. But, you know, Monte Davidoff had a very essential role and he's kind of been written out of the history because, you know, it sounds better. But the other point was they wrote this program on Harvard's PDP-10 computer, and this computer was provided by DARPA. It was literally a United States Army computer that was given to Harvard. They tell this story in hard drive.

Because there were anti-Vietnam protests at the time, the Army had to pull up an unmarked truck at 4 a.m. and unload this computer onto the Harvard campus so that it wouldn't be you know protested and all this stuff but but i guess the point here is uh essentially you know bill gates uh well if we don't want the gnome chomsky to walk over and mutter no this is used for the social control too and yeah actually well chomsky speaks very well about how essentially like a lot of defense spending is a subsidy to private industry where uh because you know you can justify any taxpayer spending on um you know defense quote unquote that of course they can just do all this in uh impossibly expensive r&d that private companies like microsoft would

would never be able to do. But then companies like Microsoft can take and privatize the profits of this public research, which is, again, exactly what happened here, where this is a DARPA computer that they're writing this program on. And that would actually be, you know, we're about to get into some of the pirating of BASIC. But that would be one of the arguments people used is like hey you wrote this program on a government funded computer uh stop bitching at us about you know how much computer time costs or whatever it was and also like basic itself was um you know they didn't invent it it was invented in 1964 at dartmouth uh you know which a private university, but it's still, there

was likely some grant funding. That's different than assembly, right? It's telling assembly what to do? Yeah, it's telling assembly what to do. Assembly is one level lower. Okay. So it's as basic as you can almost get. Right.

Wow. Yeah. So, yeah, basic is, so the thing with like a coding language like basic is that you can um it's it's printed in words that you can so you can just look at it and read it and the words will make sense you know you need some a little bit of like training to understand what it's saying but it's not like you're looking at ones and zeros and trying to figure out what's going on there it's it's yeah you're not writing in assembly you're writing in a more of a natural language to tell assembly what to do yeah yeah um but yeah so you were talking about they go to new mexico bill gates and paul allen do and

they're working for altair is like the first of these personal computers because you know obviously at this time computers are giant things that exist in entire rooms or basements you know and then you have this very basic but functional personal computer and it needs an operating system so not even an operating system it just needs to well i guess it would be kind of an operating system for the time but it's it's it's not even that it's not to like it it's you it's almost more fundamental than that but um yeah sorry yeah and so you're talking about you know bill gates goes down or paul allen goes down there and then bill gates joins him and um my

understanding from hard drive is they make the argument that essentially paul allen did uh most of the work because bill gates like wrote this initial program but of course you know we mentioned paul allen having to make these changes on the napkin, but also Bill Gates's program and, you know, Monty Davidoff's. But the program was buggy. So Bill Gates goes back to Harvard, but Paul Allen is still down there in New Mexico working for the company. So he's the one who has to like debug all of Gates's program and make it functional. So it's like, you know, the argument is like all three of them worked but if one person did the most it was paul allen because he had to actually make this thing from an initial idea into a functional product and then when they formed microsoft uh it was originally 50 50 between

gates and allen that's right but then gates said uh i'm gonna let's do it 60 40 where i have 60 and you have 40 because you're still employed at MITS. Well, and I think it was like Bill Gates was like, well, I wrote some more code for this, so let's make it 60-40 for right now. And then later on, Paul Allen did more work and was like, hey, let's renegotiate the thing. And Bill Gates just went, never bring this shit up to me ever again.

What a nice guy. The thing about Idea Man that I really like, though, is that literally Paul Allen thought he wouldn't finish it before he would die. So it's like ruthlessly honest about a lot of things that happened but then if you look at the interviews from the book tour Paul Allen did because I don't know why the fuck he thinks he needs a book tour but clearly that's a publisher's decision every question about Bill Gates not liking stuff in the book I think it's his I think he has enough money to when the publisher says you should do a book tour, you can say no.

But I mean, you can see on Paul Allen's face, he's like, I didn't think I was going to have to answer any of these fucking questions. So I guess these are the answers I'm going to give you. It's hilarious. Bill Gates was like, yeah, let's split it 60-40 because I'm going to have more time to enjoy the money. Well, that does come up later, yeah. But, oh, and then so, you know, so Bill Gates is back at Harvard. He drops out after his sophomore year.

Paul Allen's down there working in New Mexico on this Altair computer. He's like lead on the software side, you know, fixing all of Gates and Davidoff's code. But then you were mentioning the pirating thing, which I found pretty interesting. Yeah, were mentioning the pirating thing which i found pretty interesting yeah so people start um pirating basic which again just means copying punch cards so they started implementing this policy where they would send out when people bought the computer

then mits would have to send out a form that they would have to sign promising not to pirate the software right and then they would have to send it back. And keep in mind, this is like Bill Gates and Paul Allen who cut their teeth coding by stealing computer time. Suddenly they care a lot about piracy. Well, so I have a nice little quote. First off, after the Altair PC comes out, these little hobbyist clubs spring up. And that's where Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak

meet each other in one of these homebrew clubs um but so the story is essentially like uh they uh they couldn't get basic or you know it was being overcharged or whatever the case may be so um these altair computers the company would do these road shows where they would you know bring a computer to um uh to demonstrate you know what it can computer to, um, uh, to demonstrate, you know, what it can do, but it'll be like more functional than the one they'll actually send you if you order it. So one of these hobbyist clubs, um, they actually go to this and then they like find. And it, what's brilliant too, it's like you have to put it together.

So if it doesn't work, they can just blame you. Yes. Yeah. So, uh, one of the computers they demonstrate has the functioning basic on it and like nobody's been able to get this so one of the hobbyists essentially goes to it and just copies down the basic code from the what is it the papers or the tape or however oh yeah yeah because it's like you know pre um however they do coding now i don't know wow um but so yeah they copy down the basic code from the uh the tape register and then they start passing it around these hobbyist clubs so it you know like spreads

like you know a virus through all these hobbyist clubs and then bill gates gets a very pissed about this and he writes this very petulant letter to uh the pirates in uh, which I just want to read a couple excerpts from. Please do. It's kind of funny because it also shows his future attitude towards piracy, but also the entitlement. And I would say for listening to this letter, just pretend it is true that he has a $1 million trust fund. So Bill Gates writes in the Altair newsletter computer notes he writes an open letter to

hobbyists and he says almost Bill Gates says almost a year ago Paul Allen and myself expecting the hobby market to expand hired Monty Davidoff and just on that point you guys cut him out of the founding stock and just said he was a hire. We hired Monty Davidoff and developed Altair Basic. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving, and adding features to Basic. Now we have 4K, 8K, Extended ROM, and Disk Basic.

The value of computer time we have used exceeds $40,000. Wow. rom and disk basic the value of computer time we have used exceeds forty thousand dollars wow as people point out in response to this uh you did it on a darpa funded computer and didn't have to pay for this computer time right uh so gates noted that well feedback from enthusiasts was strong uh quote most of these he says quote, quote, users, unquote, never bought Basic. Less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought Basic. And two, the amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair Basic worth less than $2 an hour.

And then it's from the book Hard Drive. He then accused, yeah, $2 an hour. And then it's from the book Hard Drive. He then accused, yeah, $2 an hour. Can you imagine any contractor working for Microsoft making a sum equivalent to that from Hard Drive? He then accused hobbyists of stealing software programs. Is this, Gates now, is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalties paid to us,

the manual, the tape, and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you can do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? People with a million dollar trust funds, maybe. The fact is no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software,

but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. He then went on to add that those who resell basic software give hobbyists a bad name and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at. And then he closes this out by saying, I would appreciate letters from anyone who wants to pay up or has a suggestion or comment. Nothing would please me more

than being able to hire 10 programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software. And so basically he's demanding that people who have stolen the software start sending him checks. Oh, and then from hard drive only. Remember, he didn't invent basic. Right. He adapted it.

This is like complaining that they're playing your cover song on the radio. You're just sampling. And getting royalties. Yeah. Yeah, they're sampling your cover song on the radio you're just sampling royalties yeah yeah they're sampling yeah you're sampling right right and from hard drive only a handful of people who possessed pirated copies of basics sent gates money as he had asked them to do in his letter and uh they also make the what fucking losers some of them are like you know what he's right they're just ready for a life of licking the boot but uh kneelers yeah and one other thing uh uh from hard drive others argued the altruistic position that others argued the altruistic position that basic belonged in the public domain

an argument that had some merit since gates and allen had created basic using the pdp at harvard a computer funded by the defense advanced research projects agency but again totally ridiculous to suggest that uh government subsidized research should be in the public domain um and this brings us up to the uh the 70s he writes this letter in 76 and uh and i guess it should be noted mike, an important point here is Microsoft, the company, is founded in 1975. And they're originally a contractor for MITS who makes these Altair computers. In Albuquerque, New Mexico. Yes.

So they're working in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And, you know, this is important because Bill Gates and Paul Allen, you know, I mean, they're smart enough to recognize that software is kind of the future. So they, uh, they don't really give up the rights to their code or, or anything like that. Um, I think they, they do sign a contract with MITS, which, which says something about, um, the contract is, is null and void if, uh, MITS doesn't adequately promote their operating system and this will become relevant later. But so essentially Bill Gates is careful enough

to keep the rights to his basic software at this period in the 70s. And in the beginning stages of Microsoft, Bill essentially works people to the bone. Are we at this point now, you think? Well, they have like, what, three employees now in the 70s? Yeah, three to four people at this point. So there's a story, an idea, man, and he talks about this guy.

Bob Greenberg once put in 81 hours in four days, Monday through Thursday, to finish part of the Texas Instruments Basics. When Bill touched base toward the end of Bob's marathon, he asked him, what are you working on tomorrow? Bob said, I was planning to take the day off. And Bill said, why would you want to do that? He genuinely couldn't understand it. He never seemed to need to recharge. I mean, there's stories of Bill Gates. Wait, I got another one. At one point they um started offering uh

let's see employees got two weeks of vacation their starting salary was around 20,000 this was also uh in the late 70s right and uh they could take off um any religious holiday of significance at first uh but then it was informally rescinded after one employee actually took it. And then Bill Gates wrote in this memo, Microsoft expects a level of dedication from its employers higher than most companies. Therefore, if some deadline or discussion

or interesting piece of work causes you to work extra time some week, it just goes with the job. Any employees who want to maybe send me money for the time that they have pirated from me. It's just like this is and I'm sure like plenty of people who are listening to this have gotten like a douchey like CEO message that reads just like this uh like it's just the perfect like shitty boss uh thing and then he like he he would um be like oh i only have a salary of 16 000 where you guys all make 20 000 but like this whole thing of where it's like he by the way is like 75 to 80 000 yeah yeah i love i love just pretending people are too stupid to understand how equity works.

Yeah, yeah. And it's like you need to spend all your time working on this product that in the end really just benefits my bottom line. Like maybe it'll look good on your resume one day, but... Hey, look, just because I have a net worth of $100 billion doesn't mean I collect a salary here. They pay me $1 and I work harder than you,

and we're paying you $40,000. Are you 40,000 times better of an employee than I am? No, you're not. But yeah, so this kind of brings us through the 70s, but I think we might want to have a stopping point here because we want to divide this up. But so, you know, in the 70s, they're working on this Altair. They found it at the company Microsoft, but it is really the connection with IBM

that makes Bill Gates, Paul Allen billionaires. Right. And we'll get into that, how Bill Gates' mother's connection with the IBM chairman makes IBM seek out Bill Gates. IBM at this time is, of course, the dominant computer company in the United States and formerly in Germany, too. But I guess so next week, or not next week, on the following episode, we will continue the story with Bill Gates. And where can they find this episode? Oh, yes. This will be our first paywalled episode.

Hey, all right. You've been asking for it. Now we're giving it to you. Yeah, that's right. We know how to plug. We want to quit our day jobs. No one asked, we listened. Behind the paywall, all sorts of libelous dirt.

We will be slandering other leftist podcasters. We will be using the words you're not allowed to use anymore. Anything we can to make a buck and quit our jobs. That bombshell I was talking about earlier will be on maybe in the next episode. We'll see. I'll give you a clue right now. Illegal revenge porn behind the Patreon. The bombshell is actual dirt about Bill Gates and it's related to his hair. Find out more

behind our Patreon wall, ladies and gentlemen. God, we could do morning radio. After this commercial break, that's next. And with that, this has been Yogi. Andy Palmer. Steve Jeffers.

Wait, I did want to mention, Bill Gates, real genetic descendant of a grub staker, though. I think we can all agree on that. Yeah, yeah. First they think you're crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world all right see you next episode to go higher yeah let's go with 10 10 10 all right 19.97 it's expensive to do laundry

you're the one who charged his own brother for a Bluth frozen banana. I mean, it's one banana, Michael. What could it cost? Ten dollars? What could it cost? Ten dollars?