Grubstakers - Patreon Leak: Episode 68: Bill Gates Part 3

Episode Date: November 15, 2019

Originally posted on May 23rd 2019, but you all have been so wonderful we decided to release this on the free side. No more free treats this month, because you'll spoil your dinner and vomit on our windows again. If you like our show rate and subscribe, and if you dislike it let us know by giving us a low rating, unsubscribing and telling everyone you know about the show and why you don't like it. Our second Patreon episode, which ends our trilogy on Bill Gates. We cover the Windows 95 launch, how Bill Gates handled the 2001 United States v. Microsoft Corporation antitrust lawsuit, and how Microsoft lawyers suppress the modern day Bill Gates/Paul Allen's of the world to maintain their monopoly.

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 to start 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. It's fun. I thought about it.

Four, three, two. Hello, welcome back to Grubstakers, the podcast about billionaires. This is your Patreon episode for the week. I'm Sean P. McCarthy. Yogi Poyol. Andy Palmer. Steve Jeffries. And we're closing out the saga of Bill Gates III.

This is the part three, the last part. No, this is part three. Oh, he is the fourth? Yes. Okay. Yeah, we forgot to mention this in the first one, but his dad was Bill Gates III. Oh.

And then he went off to fight the Nazis, and he knew that some drill sergeant would be like, oh, the third, you fancy. And then he would use a word people can't well shouldn't use anymore that's a patron episode andy we should let our listeners know they're paying to hear these words okay say it yogi i don't know what the word is okay so so he changed to junior and now they call um they then growing up they they called Bill Gates Trey, to mean the third, even though he was the fourth. That's interesting.

So did his father go around telling people they were going to release version four two years before they were actually going to do it? But so where we left you on part two is essentially, you know, by the 90s, early 90s, Bill Gates, Microsoft are dominant players in the industry. They have, you know, Windows. We mentioned, you know, they take the graphical user interface from the Xerox labs. They use their dominant position on IBM PCs to push a lot of other applications like WordPerfect and Lotus into really marginal shares of the market. So by 92, 93, 94, they are the major player in operating systems, but also their MS Office suite is the kind of major business software. So they're like one of the most valuable companies in America.

And it kind of brings you up. This book I read called Overdrive by James Wallace is a sequel to Hard Drive. And essentially that tells the story of Netscape, the internet company, part of the Department of Justice investigating Microsoft for antitrust. And, you know, it starts with the Windows 95 launch. So I think that's what we'll talk about on this last part is, you know, those cases and then maybe a bit about what has been going on with bill gates since then when they made the decision to undermine word perfect instead of just competing with them directly you think they just realized like we cannot go toe-to-toe with this level of clip art. But so it is interesting

and like I don't know how much time we'll have on this episode. For clip art? So much time. Oh man. I'll go into Monday talking clip art. An interesting thing that I got from the book Overdrive is employees at Microsoft keep referring to projects

that they work on as a quote unquote death march. So Windows 95 is the programming of it is described as a quote death march. And then, of course, on the launch, August 1995, it's kind of buggy and crappy anyways. But it's not solitaire. Yes. But so, you know, and then the other major story is Microsoft and Bill Gates essentially missing the Internet or not understanding what the Internet is. So they're releasing or they're building Microsoft Network as well, MSN, which the idea is essentially in the early 90s, Bill Gates is all in this kind of – everybody's talking about the information superhighway. Like it's important, you know, the Internet's so ubiquitous.

It's hard for us to go back and think about this, but 92, 93, all the Time magazine articles are about the information superhighway. The idea is you'll be able to use your television as a smart device where you can order movies and research and do all this stuff. A lot of stuff you can do.

We'll go to work in our flying cars. A lot of stuff you can do now, but the technology wasn't there yet. But people were kind of fantasizing about the Roku smart TV thing in 1993, and they were totally missing what was about to happen with the World Wide Web. It's weird to imagine the Roku being something people fantasize about. They'll have a little remote that's rounded. It's got purple on it, too.

So it is just kind of like, I mean, you know, we'll see how much time we have to talk about just Microsoft's abusive labor practices, but from the book, Overdrive, they talk about creating MSN, and the idea is, like, they make this kind of standalone a standalone server where you can like log on and pay Microsoft money to get like content from those various content providers they've signed deals with. And it is also the programming. The programming of MSN is also described as a quote death march. The lead developer has a brain aneurysm and has to hurry back to work from the hospital to finish it.

And then they release it and it's buggy and awful. And also it's completely obsolete as soon as it launches because Netscape browser is like, why the fuck would I pay you money to log onto a server when I can just go to the internet for free and get tons more content? At the hospital, Bill Gates sent him a letter that looks like

condolences and stuff. He actually opens it up and it's just a debug report. It's like, this is what we found on the latest debug. The fun thing about working as a vendor for Microsoft or a contractor is that instead of having

these death marches to like a finish line, there's no finish line. Right. But yeah, so MSN has to be redesigned as a website instead of a standalone server almost immediately after it launches. So, you know,

it's just like, and you know, there's also stories about like windows 95 employees having to keep like a sleeping bag in their office, you know, there's also stories about, like, Windows 95's employees having to keep, like, a sleeping bag in their office because, you know, they're just, like, working 80-hour weeks for the betterment of Mr. Gates. And this is something that happens time and time again in the 90s. They, like, think of some— Only 90s kids will remember working themselves to death. No, but, like, Microsoft continues to, like, make shit that, like, they're like, this is going to revolutionize the future.

But they're just slightly too early or a bit too clunky in some ways to where all of the efforts and the sacrifices made by their employees go kind of to waste. Like the concept of like a tablet device is introduced during this decade. The concept of like the home computer being your main nebula system for your home entertainment. Like all these types of ideas were rolling around in the 90s, but it was just too early to implement them correctly. I was about to shit on tablet devices, and then I realized that Stephen's using one right now. No, go for it.

I'm just going to say, oh, the revolutionary tablet devices. But no, Stephen. So you didn't have a joke? But yeah, so this brings us to, you know, the August 1995 is the launch of Windows 95. Interestingly enough, according to this book, Overdrive, well, first off, they pay the Rolling Stones $12 million for the rights to Start Me Up

because they add the start menu. And kind of like the standard Windows interface comes from Windows 95. And then they launch it. You've all seen the video, but... The dancing. start me up because they add the start menu and kind of like the standard windows interface comes from windows 95 launch it you've all seen the video but the dancing yeah just imagine uh the worst dancing you've ever seen and then it's worse than that in the ill-fitting seats i think all right let's stop it before we have to pay 12 million dollars balmer's the hero of that one just waving his arms i think that's balmer well there's a couple bald guys on here this was when no one had any muscle definition go to the

end where bomber's yelling because that's the best part oh it's just them dancing go to the end where he's uh making gates his wife sign a prenuptial um but so the the important thing is, oh, yeah, and this launch, August 1995, apparently Jay Leno is the emcee of this launch. And would you guys like to hear a joke, Mr. Jay Leno? Yeah, but do the impression. Yeah, I'll tell you. Monica Lewinsky's in the news. Did he have material before Monica Lewinsky?

Believe it or not. He goes, Bill, you know, there's so much memory on this thing the Windows 95, so much memory it can keep track of all of OJ's alibis. That is an actual joke Jay Leno told at the Windows 1995 launch. Man, he deserves every car

he's ever owned. I can't believe Bill Gates would just stand there and laugh along as they are joking about a double murder that to this day is unsolved. The Tonight Show with my birthright. But yeah, so they released... I'm going to run that sit into the ground. Hey, Bill, I initiated some merger talks with Conan

and I think I'm going to steal his technology and his jokes. He stole the algorithm that has been generating late night jokes. He stole the algorithm that has been generating late night jokes. Just when you think this joke can't get any worse, I'll hand it off to Jimmy Fallon. Bill, I noticed that you started hot mail here,

but I don't see anyone more attractive than you, Bill. I'll give you a B for the joke and an F for the impression. That's fair. But so it should be noted, essentially, yeah, so Windows 95, it launches. They have this MSN that's kind of obsolete because what happened here is in 1993, Mosaic Browser was launched. It was these kids at the University of university of chicago um in one of their research labs they came up with mosaic browser and the basic idea is um some guy in uh switzerland at i think the cern laboratory i think it's the large hydron collider laboratory or whatever

whatever uh some guy came up with essentially the world wide over there. But, uh, so there's, there's some initial browsers that exist in the early nineties, but they are text only browsers. So mosaic is essentially the first browser that can display, you know, images. It has like a user interface. And, um, so these kids in 1993, they launched mosaic and they release it free on the internet and it becomes like extremely popular where you know uh tens of thousands of people a month are downloading this initial browser connecting to the internet and this is really the birth of the internet and then um the university licenses this mosaic to a bunch of different companies but uh in particular one of the uh the kids at the university of chicago

uh goes with this um silicon valley v VC and they found Netscape. You know, so of course, you know, they have the millions of dollars. So they in late 1994, Netscape. That's the Navigator, right? Yes. In late 1994, Netscape releases their browser. Netscape Navigator? Yes. They give it away free on the internet. And because they have like these millions of Silicon Valley VC money, you know, they like... You can use that to do a search on Northern Lights, right? They have like 75,

70% of the market share for browsers by like 94, 95. And so it is something where we mentioned MSN. Bill Gates is really caught, Microsoft in general is really caught asleep at the wheel here and like some people within Microsoft kind of see what's going on.

Now would you say that Netscape was the company that put America online? No, I think that was a different company. I can't remember their name but... Time Warner? No, it's not that something about being online in this country i don't know guys let's move on but uh essentially like another uh some people within microsoft were kind of saw what was going on and tried to warn

bill gates like one guy at microsoft told bill gates they should uh give a browser away for free with windows and bill gates called him a communist, unquote. And then a year later, they would do exactly that. But so, you know... What a visionary. Yeah. And so essentially, like, the story of the 90s is Microsoft initially totally losing out on market share

to Netscape, and then kind of realizing what's going on by late 95 and doing a complete 180. And also just kind of using their dominant market position to destroy Netscape. Eventually, the story ends with Netscape getting bought by AOL and then going under, but the Netscape code is given to the Mozilla Foundation

and Mozilla Foundation launches Firefox browser. Because it's kind of an interesting thing where essentially Microsoft... Which is what we use to research on the show ever since we did the Google episode. Microsoft by... This is a DuckDuckGo pod. So in late 1995,

Microsoft had licensed one of the other mosaic companies called spyglass microsoft licenses their browser which becomes internet explorer uh and then in late 95 microsoft announces hey we're gonna give this shit away for free too because you know netscape they don't have any windows revenue coming in their revenue is essentially they give it away for free, but for commercial products, they charge, whereas Microsoft's like, it's all free. And then, of course, they use their dominant position with the PC market and also some rather shady practices

with their operating system, which we'll kind of get into. What year is this, Sean? So 95, Microsoft launches IE, and then from 95 to 2000, they're doing a bunch of shady shit to make it so everybody uses IE. So, they're essentially trailblazing the tactics that all other tech giants will use, which is, when you find out what your competitor does, if you got more money than them, offer what they do for free until you run them out of business. Basically that.

And so, what happens is, like like by the year 2000, about... The year 2000. By then about 90 to 95% of all browsers are Internet Explorer. And this interesting thing happens where from... And it's universally beloved. Fun thing I found researching this um from about the year 2000 to 2006 i believe so in that in that entire time period one update for internet explorer is released now now would you say is internet explorer sort of like microsoft edge yes but so

it's it's interesting where like by 2000, it's like 90, 95% of the market. So they have no competition and then innovation and browsers disappears until Firefox comes out in 2004. So, but you know, and we'll kind of get into what happened with the Justice Department because this does become an issue. But I did want to mention one other thing that we didn't really talk about on the previous episode, which we made a little joke, but essentially Microsoft gets a reputation for using merger talks as a way to steal technology.

Like essentially throughout the 80s and 90s, if they want to steal a company's application or whatever, they'll say like, hey, we want to buy you out or hey, we want to invest. And then they'll have the company come in and sit down and kind of go over their technology. And then suddenly they'll be like, we changed our minds. And then three months later, you'll see that they have reverse engineered your product. Yeah.

I mean, if you go through the history of their mergers, I mean, in a four year period from 1996 to 2001, they made over 30 mergers, like a good-year period from 1996 to 2001, they made over 30 mergers, like a good deal of them. Wow. Or just this tactic of like a fake, they're fake friends. Right, right, right. So it's like a friendly merger talks, and then it goes nowhere. And they talk shit behind their back.

Yeah. And, you know, so Novell is among the various companies that accuses them of... That's pronounced novel. Yes. Among the various companies that accuses them of essentially initiating bad faith merger talks to steel technology. And this is among the many tactics that they'll get chided for. And another one is, according to according to the overdrive book, Microsoft, uh,

we, we mentioned the, uh, original equipment manufacturers, the deals they have with all these PC makers where they'll, they already pay the license fees for windows. So of course they might as well install windows cause they're already paying for the thing.

Cause of the deals that Microsoft has the market position to negotiate. Um, Microsoft starts arguing that offering them discounts for the ones who pre-install Internet Explorer. So because they have such a dominant market share, they're able to really wipe Netscape off the map and, you know, do some shit. Netscape Navigator?

Yes. But so basically, in 1994, the initial Department of Justice thing starts up where we mentioned on the previous episode how their word processor, their spreadsheet thing kind of fucked over the competition. So the idea going back to the 90s is that essentially Microsoft should have been, under the Sherman Antitrustrust act broken up into an operating system and an applications company right and bill gates said you know like essentially over my dead body the overdrive book it says uh bill gates had a meeting with vice president al gore during the early clinton administration and said if they broke up microsoft into the two companies he would move microsoft overseas and flee the flee the country what an inconvenient

truth yeah go for it you know the thing that no that like people are finally now like all catching on to is like whenever those billionaires are like we're gonna leave the country everyone's like oh but wait you already don't pay taxes in this country right and also they're just bluffing oh yeah they did a meta-analysis of like different studies on on um this is a bit off tangent but um big big big businesses threatening to leave wherever whatever municipality they're under if uh there's like some legislative action against them and like they just they don't do it. Oh, wow. And, you know, of course Bill Gates

is threatening to flee to the libertarian paradise of Denmark and set up his company where there will be no regulation in the European Union. I'm just picturing Bellevue and Redmond without Microsoft. I think it's paradise.

Just getting downtown in less than two hours not having just new york's financial district with nothing positive with like no transit um just like all of those art deco buildings not being knocked down for a post-modernist nonsense architecture right uh but so you know so it's not comedians who use powerpoint giggles comedy club hey do the uh windows break sound when i say this okay for uh my next joke it's uh this slide oh Oh, God. Okay. Okay, I need about 15 minutes here. Okay, let's try it again.

All right, here we go. Okay. Okay. My name's Paul. Some people call me Paul Masturbator, to which I say, thanks, Dad. That was mean. He's always nice to me. Fuck him.

Comedians who use PowerPoint? Do you mean the Andrew Yang presidential campaign? But so, essentially what happens is the Department of Justice in 1994 makes a lot of noise but they really offer Microsoft a really toothless consent decree which is essentially like Microsoft will sign on the dotted line and say hey we did some illegal stuff anti-competitive stuff. It's

particularly you know as we mentioned others Sherman Antitrust Act there is a provision regarding restraint of trade so you can't really Wait this is they couldn't even get a deal that said they deny all wrongdoing? Actually, no, you're right. They did deny wrongdoing. Oh, okay.

I was going to lose some respect for Microsoft. Microsoft's never the bad guy, guys. So 1994, the Department of Justice does this really toothless consent decree, which is like, hey, we did some bad stuff. We won't do this kind of sabotaging other operating systems or other applications again. We mentioned on the previous episode

APIs, so they would have all this... They're like, Seattle's already been ruined. It's 1994. My mom's dead. And it's like, another thing, you know, this is 1994. The Department of Justice is getting a bunch of pressure to not fuck with Microsoft before the Windows 95 launch where it's like you know hey we don't want to this is

going to be so good for the economy and all these other vendors who are working with microsoft are like hey you can't fuck with microsoft before they release windows 95 you know so it's like you know i mean it's a real harvey wein. But this is the Bill Clinton administration, they're DOJ, and they have... I don't know my job. Yeah, in 94, they have... I'm just going to keep this on mute so I can watch Steve Ballmer flail.

In 94, they have this consent decree. Microsoft agrees to six years of monitoring from the Department of Justice. They say they won't do these kind of bad things with other applications again. And then they immediately do it with Netscape and other browsers. Of course.

Wait, Netscape Navigator? Yes, Netscape Navigator. But funnily enough, a few days. So initially, there's a guy named Stanley Sporkin, which if you've read the Jesse Isinger book, The Chicken Shit Club, which I recommend, it's about why nobody was prosecuted for the financial crisis, essentially what has happened to white collar crime enforcement. But they talk about this guy named Stanley Sporkin, who was in the 1970s, a head of the SEC, who actually, you know, was like a bit of a bulldog and went after corporate crime pretty aggressively and um then he got appointed to the federal judiciary and just by sheer chance he ended up being the federal judge who had to approve this initial consent decree with microsoft so he read the book hard drive which i read for most of for

research for this and he was like yeah this is a fucking monopoly right you know so it's like why are you just letting them stay a monopoly if they just say like, hey, we won't do it again in the future, you know? Right. So he throws out this consent decree and then the Department of Justice joins Microsoft to sue...

Getting me too. To appeal to enforce the consent decree. And then an appeals court takes him off the case and then they say, okay, fine. The consent decree can go forward in 95. And then just a few days after this consent decree is finally signed, Bill Gates plays golf with President Bill Clinton. Oh. So, you know, no.

Couple of Bills on the links, eh? Yeah. Want to hang out on the islands for a time of time too, Sean? No, Bill. Bill Clinton's like, this is going to take a hit to my legacy, but at least I'll get to hang out on islands from time to time too sean no bill bill clinton's like this is gonna take a hit to my legacy but at least i'll get to hang out with bill gates now bill tell me more about the combat zone in boston uh but so essentially you know and they sign this consent decree and then immediately they start fucking over Netscape Navigator.

But they have consent. Yeah. You know, and like there's, there's a ton of different stuff that they're doing to actually make this happen. But like as a, one thing is,

you know, if you install, if you install Internet Explorer from like the basic version, according to the Overdrive book, it would crash if you attempt it to use any other browser. And it was like Eric Schmidt, the Google CEO, was at Sun Microsystems at this point. He actually gave these interviews for Overdrive. And he talks about essentially like the initial version of internet explorer didn't do this but then the beta version uh suddenly adds it so that if you start trying to install another browser it will crash and not

work and then you know they did this stuff where we mentioned the um they gave another browser like netscape navigator yes that one uh and then they gave these discounts to these um pc manufacturers and they uh made it borderline impossible to uninstall Internet Explorer from Windows. Because like, oh yeah, so the way they got around the consent decree was they agreed to like not as aggressively pre-bundle software

with their operating system. So they pretended that Internet Explorer was part of the Windows operating system. You know, it is just like... No, this optional spoiler is crucial to the engine of the car. But so, in 1998, the

Department of Justice finally has... When you get consent and some shit is pre-bundled. Right, right right right in 1990 sign up to this In 1998 the Department of Justice finally has enough and they they sue Microsoft just from wiki they say it's um They accuse it of violating section 2 of the Sherman antitrust act They say that the one reads that section.

They accuse it of illegally maintaining its monopoly position in the PC market, primarily through the legal and technical restrictions it put on the abilities of PC manufacturers, these OEMs we mentioned, and users to uninstall Internet Explorer and use other programs such as Netscape, Navigator, and Java. And basically, what happens throughout this trial is kind of funny because the original judge rules that, of course, it's a monopoly, it's in violation, and should be broken up.

Right. And then they immediately appeal it, and the appeals court decides that, yes, it is a monopoly, all these things are true, but no, it should not be broken up. So it's like two different courts found that it is in violation of this Sherman Antitrust Act. But they decided to not break it up and just do another consent decree.

So, yeah, that's all about how the federal government enforces. So what is a consent decree in this context? It's kind of like what they do with the banks, where it's like they, oh yeah, they turn it over to a neutral arbitrator is supposed to get access to their source code to make sure they're not hidden APIs in it anymore. They stop doing these special deals with OEMs so that they have to pre-install Windows, you know? And it's like, at this point, it's essentially giving them an exemption to the Sherman Antitrust Act, which we've been doing, where it's like, hey, we found that this is a monopoly,

but no, this does not need to be split into two companies. We'll just do some less extreme enforcement. Oh, so just make it so that you can put other programs on Windows. Yeah. I think from the, I'm looking at their stock price, and from the time that that appeal resulted in a second consent decree to 2000, their stock price rose about 600%.

What? Yeah. There's some market turbulence. Right, right. They didn't know what would happen. Yeah, yeah. With whether or not it's a monopoly, which it is. I mean, that makes sense.

You beat the DOJ and people go, let's put our money into this. But so, oh yeah, and two things from this trial I just want to kind of go through. Microsoft submitted at least two fake videos as evidence during this trial. Really? So again, just from Wiki, but they included, Microsoft submitted a fake video as evidence that, quote, demonstrated that removing Internet Explorer from Microsoft Windows caused slowdowns and malfunction in Windows. And this was the idea to try and pretend that this was part of Windows. In the videotaped demonstration, then Microsoft Vice President Jim Alchin stated to be a seamless segment filmed on one PC. The plaintiff noticed that some icons

mysteriously disappear and reappear on the PC's desktop, suggesting that the effects might have been falsified. Alchin admitted that the blame for the tape problems lay with some of his staff. What? A fucking snake. They're like, wait a minute. In the first part of the video, there are links to porn in the corner, but then in the second link uh they're like wait a minute in the first part of the video there are links to

porn in the corner but then the second link they're gone and uh and then microsoft submitted a second inaccurate video into evidence later the same month as the first the issue in question was how easy or hard it was for america online users to download and install netscape navigator onto a windows pc microsoft's videotape showed the process as being quick and easy, resulting in the Netscape icon appearing on the user's desktop. The government produced its own videotape of the same process, revealing that Microsoft videotape had conveniently removed a long and complex part of the procedure, and that Netscape's icon was not placed on the desktop, requiring a user to search for it.

And then Microsoft admitted that their own tape was falsified. So, you know, you can get in a lot of trouble if you submit false evidence to a federal courtroom. Oh, tons of trouble. You could, unless you're Microsoft. And the other thing from this trial that I just wanted to go through real quick is Bill Gates has to give a deposition. So there's like videotaped deposition of Bill Gates

you can watch on YouTube. And I just, we're not going to go through all of it, but perhaps we could just summarize what you will see if you watch the hours and hours of a video of Bill Gates giving deposition. Define what is meant by definition. So that's Bill Gates saying define what is meant by definition.

And then... No, I have an answer answer the answer is i don't remember so basically that again and again is uh bill gates gave really evasive testimony and um and you know like i've watched maybe like 40 minutes of the thing i would describe it as a sovereign citizen video except the guy is a billionaire because that was actually the guy taking the deposition who said define what you mean by definition and it was because bill gates was arguing about the definition of definition and then he starts going like yeah you know i would think of that more of a common usage and just like use the most ridiculous semantical arguments and you know whenever Bill Gates is asked a question he'll like filibuster like at one

point the guy says like so um Steve Ballmer forwarded these two separate emails and Bill Gates is like am I being detained it is true it's like it's not as entertaining as a sovereign citizen video because the guy has too much money to get tased at the end.

Yeah, no one smashes his window. Yeah. But so, yeah. Oh, yeah. So the guy asking questions for the deposition brings. So they keep, like, accusing Steve of Bill Gates of, you know, lying because he'll like filibuster or argue about the definitions or make misstatements and then they'll just say like, here, take a look

at this email that you sent that we subpoenaed. And then he'll just be like, you know, I don't remember whatever the drop is. You people are trying to get me on some obscure submitting false evidence law that I've never, I mean, I've never heard of it. Wait, Sean, do you want to ask me why I didn't

do more research for these episodes? Andy, why didn't you do more research? No, I have an answer. The answer is I don't remember. Oh, yeah, but so... Hey, Andy, why are you making the drop sound so weird? No, I have an answer. The answer is I don't remember.

But so, yeah, the drop sounds so weird. No, I have an answer. The answer is, I've got one right away. But so, yeah, so, and it's like, you know, we could go through, like, chapter and verse, like the defined definition argument, the, oh, yeah, and so at another point,

the guy brings his attention to two emails that Steve Ballmer had forwarded and refers to them as three separate emails. And Bill Gates starts going like, no, this is one email. And, you know, because it's like he's arguing that like forwarded emails are all the same email. And you just hear the guy getting more and more frustrated. He says it multiple times like, Bill, we can be here as long as you need to be um oh and then uh another great one is that he brings his

attention to an email bill gates had sent and he's like now did you type in that this email was high priority and he's like no bill gates goes no i didn't and then he's like well the well the email is is clearly marked high priority he's like yes, yes. And then the guy goes, well, who typed in high priority? Bill Gates goes, the computer. The computer typed in high priority. Listen, all my emails are high priority. Everyone knows this. But yeah, so it's like, again,

just sovereign citizenship where Bill Gates will just argue about definitions and filibuster like the entire time. And it didn't really, and it like, it sort time and um and it didn't really and it like it sort of worked but it didn't really work where as we mentioned bill gates was found guilty or microsoft was found guilty twice by two different federal courts of violating the sherman antitrust act is just the appeals court decided breaking it up would be too extreme of a remedy and um oh yeah it is worth mentioning part of why they got away with this

was the judge in the first case was, he was caught essentially talking to a journalist off the record. And one other interesting thing that happens is the judge from the first trial, part of why Microsoft is able to get away with this is they find out he was speaking off the record to a New York Times reporter. And the judge from the first trial referred to microsoft

he compared them to quote stubborn mules who should be walloped with a two by four and he he also compared them to quote gangland killers uh referring to a murder case he presided over four years earlier and so basically the appeals court admonished him because you're not supposed to speak even off the record to journalists about cases you're presiding over. And when the case was over, Bill Gates walked out to Rough Rider's anthem. But yes.

I think that went a little something like this. But yeah, so just other stuff like they made it extremely difficult to remove Microsoft Internet Explorer from Windows 98 like they did not put it on the remove programs list and you know they've designed Windows 98 to work quote unpleasantly with Netscape Navigator strike that's what I learned yeah but and then just like for those interested in the legal aspects this is unpleasantly with Netscape Navigator. With Counter-Strike? That's what I learned. Yeah. And then just like for those interested in the legal aspects, this is called illegal tying, where you tie two products together.

But so essentially they're found guilty of all this, but it's decided that breaking up Microsoft into the operating system and the applications companies would be too extreme a remedy. So they have another consent decree. They stopped doing some of these OEMs. They submit some of these OEM deals. They submit their code, their source code to a neutral body so that developers can get access to it

and not have get fucked over by these hidden APIs that only Microsoft knows about. I think when they did these OEM deals, they were like, this is the end of the world. As we know it. That was, they wanted the song, The End of the World As They Know It, by REM for the Windows 95 launch,

but REM, to their credit, does not license their music. So they could not get it. Nice. But it was not the end of the world because they were able to pay Mick Jagger $12 million for Start Me Up. And so this kind of brings you up to speed where it's like, I think, 2001 or 2002. Even though Keith Richards should have gotten a slice of that.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. So essentially, this appeals court says, yes, Microsoft is in violation, but no, breaking them up would be too extreme a remedy. So November 2001, the Bush administration comes in. God forbid Bellevue and Redmond get all shitty. Uh,

November, 2001, uh, the Bush DOJ comes in and, they immediately reach out to Microsoft to settle the case. Um, and essentially they have to, well,

we've kind of mentioned the terms of this, uh, and, uh, and you know, essentially it affirms, it gives them an exemption to the sherman antitrust act and uh and you know we see the results where we've mentioned by 2000 windows internet explorer is is you know 90 95 of the market and uh and then it just does not receive an update. And like for six years, browsers just suck ass.

Right. Until Firefox comes out and later Chrome. So only, yeah, tabbed browsing is just a dream in the sky for about five years, even though it could have been made. But so I guess with the time we have left here, Bill Gates, he leaves as Microsoft CEO in 2000. He's still involved, but 2006, he moves to a part-time role at Microsoft.

This is where the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation really becomes established. But essentially he- And he decided to do for malaria what he did for software. Announce that a cure would be released next year yeah and then have several decades pass without any movement on that front be completely unable to debug it yeah um but so just like interesting stuff from all this time um uh oh i guess we should just kind of mention a little bit more about uh what we've uh talked about here which is again the department of justice went on this but

um embrace extend extinguish right and i just want to kind of quote uh from a youtube comment of all places actually i think explains pretty well what happened in the 90s with java because you know we we talked about what Microsoft did with Internet Explorer, but they did a similar thing with Java and some other programs where essentially Microsoft Windows is kind of a shitty OS. So if a program works... Hold the phone. Yeah.

If a program works on every OS, like, you know, Mac and Linux and all the others, if it works on every OS, it's kind of a threat to microsoft right because people it was a shitty os but then they came out with windows 10 so it's kind of a threat where microsoft does this you know embrace extend extinguish where they will release proprietary shit for it so just quoting from a youtube comment that i think explains this pretty well in In the 90s, Sun Microsystems created Java, the programming language that was supposed to work on all applications and in fact Netscape embraced it. And the idea is that, you know, you can write a

code in Java and it'll work on every OS. And this is a threat to Microsoft. So in the 90s, Sun Microsystems created Java, which has two components, the programming language and the runtime. The runtime, the Java you install, lets you run things written in Java on any device regardless of the OS or CPU. Write once, run anywhere. That was a huge threat to Microsoft. Why write Windows programs when you could write Java programs and they'd run on any

computer? Right. So Microsoft wrote their own Java runtime called MSJVM and made it part of Windows. It extended Java to do Windows-only things, meaning there were now, quote, Java apps that could only run on Windows, destroying the whole point of Java.

This became part of the antitrust trial because it ruined Sun's products. In a separate case, Sun sued Microsoft and won. And that was from a YouTube comment. I thought it explained Sun's products. In a separate case, Sun sued Microsoft and won. And that was from a YouTube comment. I thought it explained it pretty well. But it is just kind of important where Microsoft again and again uses their dominant market position to engage in anti-competitive practices that make consumers worse off.

People refer to the Windows tax, where every computer people buy costs that much more because they've cut all these deals with the original equipment manufacturers that say, hey, whatever amount of computers you sell, you have to give us a cut to license Windows because we are the dominant OS. Thankfully, Java never became buggy and slow and very easy to hack from outside malware. In interviews in the early 2000s to late aughts, I guess, with Bill Gates, he talks about the Windows asset within Microsoft as like, well, you have to manage it really closely and very carefully, and that means just finding new ways to extract rents from from uh potential vendors and also businesses oh yeah if they're forced to use

windows so can i talk about like some of their business um strategies of course from from my so from my experience i was a um it was called a licensing support specialist and basically we would have these big price sheets for um companies because microsoft's main source of revenue is from companies that have to run uh microsoft products i'm just imagining microsoft lawyers listening to this and frantically running to find out if andy palmer signed an nda it's it so i don't remember whatever um so they basically they make all their money um from selling to you know corporations uh and the the types of things we dealt with were like uh orders of 250 or more and so they had different ways of extracting rents one of them was you would buy, say, the license for Office or Windows, but if you just bought the license, you wouldn't be able to upgrade it if they went from Windows 7 to Windows 8.

Sure, sure. Cool. And so what you would buy is the software assurance, which was way more expensive. Same thing for Office. you buy a software assurance and that meant for three years at essentially the cost of the slightly less than buying the original program like every year right you if they upgraded office or if they upgraded windows you would be able to upgrade with them and obviously their tactic is their strategy is to just keep on upgrading.

You know, that's why there's like a new version of office every year. Sure, sure. Is that that way they can keep selling the software assurances, which is where all the money is. Because if people could just buy a license and sit on that, that would be great. But if there's a new version of office that's out every year and suddenly things aren't backwards compatible with like new office programs. When things are not backwards compatible. Yeah, when things aren't backwards compatible uh suddenly you're shit out of luck um and then they also just introduced uh the or i mean not just introduced this like 2011 the cloud uh programs office 365 um which you know they turned it from uh from every three years to every month you pay for a subscription to use a word processor,

is Office 365. Essentially, they're repackaging and reselling the same product with different ramifications and conditions based on how much money you've given them. Oh, go ahead. Well, like these subscription services, I'm pretty sure in the business division, and like if you look at their quarterly reports, and I found some charts like detailing how each of the business divisions have gone,

like the Microsoft business division has like gone way up, whereas like online services and also the operating system just the windows asset has been like mostly flat or slightly declining yeah windows isn't much of like a money maker for microsoft it's largely office is where they make money and part of that is like excel word everything like that and 360 yeah which like Excel. Since Mr. Paliwal Paliwal. Paliwal, go on. Paliwal built it. There hasn't been

like, you don't get a new version of Excel and you're like, oh shit. Now it highlights a new kind of blue. Like there aren't real upgrades to it. It's the same product. They'll just tweak something and then make it so everyone has to get the new version. So, power user here.

Yes. Go on. I do like index match over VLOOKUP for Excel. It's a great one. That was in 2013. Otherwise, no. Basically the same. Right. I like open source software.

It's true. That would be a lot better. But yeah, so, Andy Andy were you a temp or a Permatemp or because that's another thing I was a Contractor you were a contractor okay yeah Which or as we're Known on the Microsoft campus VDASH trash Because there's a V for Vendor and then a dash before your official Microsoft

Email address And so that Meant that like, you couldn't just walk into the cafeteria. You had to walk behind someone who actually worked for Microsoft and looked like you're supposed to be there and then confidently let them hold the door for you.

But so I would like to, in a future episode, maybe we'll do a more serious dive on Microsoft's labor practices but one other thing we should mention is uh in 1992 Microsoft was sued in a class action lawsuit by uh permatemp employees there were like uh 8500 employees uh who was yeah it must have been a permatemp probably well essentially they said that like um they were just classified as temporary employees despite the fact that they worked alongside regular employees doing the same work

and worked for long terms doing the exact same thing and they were just constantly extended as temp employees. So they wouldn't get the benefits, they wouldn't be paid as well. And it was just kind of labor, blatant labor abuse where it's like, hey, we're just gonna define people doing the exact same thing as permanent employees and uh oh yeah like uh especially for like v dash what we were doing i was making uh like 40 000 and the the amount that the company i worked for got for me uh from microsoft was 80

000 oh so they're just skimming half of it right off the top. Very cool. Yeah. None of the health benefits. Andy, what was it that drew you to the works of Karl Marx? Well, I'll tell you what it wasn't. Free Coca-Cola, an asset to, even the Microsoft vendors get free Coca-Cola. And that's, I don't know,

I'm probably going to have like organ failure when I turn 40. But a side effect of the Permatemp lawsuit is that now contract employees at Microsoft are banned from participating in team morale events and other activities that could be construed as making them as, quote, employees. And they are also limited to 18-month contracts, after which they have to leave for six months before returning under another temporary contract uh and that's just from wikipedia but you know uh yeah no morale wages of destruction for my memory working as a licensing support specialist yes morale wasn't something we had in abundance um even though we had people appointed the office morale officer uh to basically be given no resources and try to make people happier uh the bleakest job i got some about xbox i want to mention real quick before we go to that of course there's this great article in wired called the The Young and the Reckless, and it's about these cruel kids who essentially hot-rotted their Xbox

early on and figured out how to hack into Xbox game codes and just steal information from companies and make cheats and stuff. And so when they got... One of these guys, Pacora... Did they figure out what the Covenant's deal is?

What? What's the deal with the Covenant? Why are they fighting so much? I'm not sure. They hacked Xbox's source code and it was just a 12-year-old saying the N-word. These guys, they hacked Xbox's to basically make them play whatever they wanted to.

And they even got so far as to hack into the Call of Duty series and make their own mods within it and charge people to play in their servers, which had unlimited ammo and you could fly and shit. If you shoot someone, their buddy starts, like the character buddy crouches down and starts crying over their body. I mean, when this guy Pecora got arrested, he'd been... There's a little meter in the bottom saying how much you believe in God. And? Well, let's just say that once you get out of that foxhole and see what man can do to another man it drops pretty low well i mean essentially these people did create kind of these type of things um but

pakora when he got arrested was uh indicted for conspiracying to steal as much as a billion dollars worth of intellectual property and like the amount of uh hacking these kids did was pretty intense they were they essentially hacked into the people that made Gears of War and leaked it before it came out, among a whole bunch of other things. They were manipulating FIFA so that it would automatically play games

and then selling. Whoa, are you saying that there is corruption in FIFA? Yes, there is corruption in the video game FIFA. They made it more realistic. Yeah, right, right, right. So, I mean, this guy and a handful of other people figure out the inconsistencies of the security. I'm imagining at the halfway point of a FIFA game, the game stops because you see your manager getting arrested.

So, this guy gets arrested and, like, a whole heap of other people. But one of the ways they did it was that in 2006, a guy figured out that some recycling facility was selling Xbox DVD drives very cheap. And then when he looked at them, they were these dev kits, which were the keys to getting into the Xbox code and breaking into it. So because Microsoft didn't fucking realize they should destroy these properly or reuse them within the company, and they're like, oh, just give them to this random recycling company. This dude figured out that he could get them.

And so I think about eight to nine people got arrested for all these activities. But a few of them... Microsoft used their attorneys to destroy these people's lives. Yeah, well, a few of them killed themselves. Of course. A few people killed themselves.

They were charging like $50 to $150 for those Call of Duty servers where you could have superpowers, like you could fly, walk through walls, sprint with a whole bunch of speed, shoot bullets and never miss their targets. You know, they basically created the... Well, okay, but let me play devil's advocate

because how dare these kids come in, take another person's code, repurpose it, and then sell it for a huge markup. That is not what America is about. That's not what Microsoft does. Also, if FIFA were being

honest, in their games, they would have part of the stadium collapse because it was made by slaves from sri lanka and um among other countries but sri lanka yes yeah that's one of them well i know whenever uh kids take my product and improve it rather than go into some sort of deal with them to uh pay them for their work i actually like to use the federal carceral system and my billion dollar lawyers to kill them. Like basically, I wanna really mention this.

These kids invented what Call of Duty is now, basically. Like the concept of Call of Duty now, you can like jump as high as you want, you can do a whole bunch of crazy cool shit, and in the same vein that the iPhones were innovated because of. Jump as high as you want? You could do a whole bunch of crazy cool shit. And in the same vein that the iPhones were innovated because of... Jump as high as you want? Yeah. Like fly? Well, yeah, but also yes, flying is one of those

things, but you can also call it jumping if you land at one point, Palmer. But yes, flying was a part of it. Why are you dicking me on this fly shit, Andy? Just jumping as high as you want. That's just flying. Jesus Christ, Andy. I'm just trying to get through this fucking shit, Andy. Just jumping as high as you want. That's just flying. Jesus Christ, Andy.

I'm just trying to get through this fucking Wired article. Okay, guys, if you... Give us your opinions on whether jumping as high as you want is flying. Grubstickerspodcast at gmail.com. We're literally doing

the Samurai Jack are you flying? No, I jump good argument right now. That's the Toy Story 1 argument. No, that's falling versus flying. Thank you. Anyway, so... Why can't our troops fly? That's why I don't respect the troops.

It's jetpacks. It's all... How many troops use jetpacks? In the future, maybe all of them. I mean, you could just shoot a jetpack and explode. We're getting way off track here. I think Microsoft has that contract with the Chinese military. These kids invented their own brand of BASIC. Yeah, essentially.

That's what was going through my mind the whole time. It's just like, okay, they took BASIC code and did their own version of it. I mean, they did more fraudulent stuff that did warrant it, like them getting arrested. Later on, this W viral article you can read wired article you can read yourselves but they're making they wrote a they wrote a line of code you listeners they wrote a line of code giving you homework they wrote a line of code that when you execute it it causes you to have a 20-year prison sentence and then kill yourself right right

right um killer app the like these kids were making a couple million dollars From these alleged services Whether it's the FIFA coins Sounds like they deserve to die Whether it was the FIFA coins Or the Call of Duty stuff This one dude made 16 million dollars

And this kid was facing 8 years In prison If they take the plea of 3.5 Either way, fuck them. They can keep trying to give me a plea. So, like, the reality is, is these kids were doing exactly the same shit

Bill Gates and Paul Allen were doing. But the full extent of the law fucked them in the ass. Imagine going to prison for Call of Duty and then Fortnite takes over. Well, and that's the whole fucking story, though, is that Bill Gates, through all these anti-

Fortnite, I know. Through all these anti-competitive practices we've mentioned, but also just using your billion-dollar lawyers to destroy the lives of anyone trying to do open source or other programming, you are, Bill Gates became a billionaire and then strangled the ability for any other Bill Gates to emerge because he used his position in the market to lock it down and be a complete dick with our

fucking vicious carceral system, which doesn't really care about justice. It just cares about what an expensive lawyer you have. And you look at, sorry to cut you off, but just you look at the initial thing where they got to keep basic after some big company sued them david versus goliath that's how they got their story and then they spend the rest of their lives being the fucking goliath against all these other davids trying to innovate and do open source and other things yeah yeah and we don't uh you know it's uh we don't necessarily want another bill gates to emerge but we want we want you know open source open source developers are going to be good entrepreneurs probably and try to try new things

and you know we want innovation and for more on um this topic check out the webcomic user friendly uh has a lot of um cutting cutting satire against not only Bill Gates, but the Microsoft Corporation as a whole. But so there is one other thing I want to mention quickly here before we wrap up. And it is essentially, we've mentioned open source. So there's what's called, if you go to opensource.org, you can read the Halloween documents.

And these are in 1998. Various internal Microsoft emails were leaked to the Linux community which showed them viewing Linux as an existential threat and how they would combat it and like one Microsoft executive describes how Linux is actually better or just as good as Microsoft and that recent case studies provide very dramatic evidence that commercial quality can be achieved slash exceeded by open source projects. And they talk about how the usual Microsoft tactics of FUD, spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt won't work against open source.

So he talks about how they have to do what we've talked about, which is embrace, extend, extinguish. They talk about extending these open source protocols and developing new protocols and, quote, decommoditize protocols and applications, unquote. And so the entire idea is that they have, for their entire business career, viewed Linux as a threat, and they should because Linux is better,

is the lesson of this episode. One of the other huge open source platforms of today is GitHub, which Microsoft unfortunately bought out. And so now you have like, you know, one of the most widely used platforms for just like collaborative projects and version control and stuff.

And now it's owned by Microsoft. And one other thing from the Halloween emails is that it reveals that Microsoft had funneled about 86 million or in 2018 dollars, 114 million into what's called the SCO group, which was a company that was spent until 2016 filing frivolous lawsuits against Linux for patent theft. And when I say frivolous, I mean, in 2016, it was thrown out with prejudice because it was a frivolous lawsuits against Linux for patent theft. And when I say frivolous, I mean in 2016,

it was thrown out with prejudice because it was a frivolous lawsuit. But the idea was Microsoft spent like 100 million bankrolling lawsuits to try and fuck over open source Linux software. But so something we might take a deeper dive in on a future episode, maybe we'll come back for Steve Ballmer or just something else about,

we've mentioned their labor practices. But another thing is like a major part of Microsoft business has been, well, if you look at the Snowden leaks, they're like one of the most enthusiastic cooperators. They signed that consent decree. But so just as an example, and you can go through all these different examples,

but just one from the Guardian. Well, I'm glad that they'll finally get taken down for their monopolistic practices so microsoft was participating in the prism data collection thing that the nsa was doing and just from the guardian after microsoft bought skype the nsa tripled the amount of skype video calls being collected through prism oh wow so you know and you know uh we mentioned uh just uh in april microsoft got busted for working on these uh facial recognition technology uh research papers with a a university funded by the chinese military essentially doing a joint venture with the chinese military to do these facial recognition stuff and you know having multi-million dollar contracts with ice

well ice is you know uh terrorizing immigrant communities and deporting people you know i remember one of our uh friends uh who used to work at microsoft who worked on uh link which was um as you all know their their classic um uh inter-office chat program uh-huh uh but he he said that like he was there right when they um bought skype and he was like a programmer so he was like looking at the the source code and everything he's like oh man skype it's got this stuff that you know i can't go into it but he was just like this like just realizing that like looking back it's like oh he was probably seeing the nsa code right right that he just couldn't talk back, it's like, oh, he was probably seeing the NSA code. Right, right, right.

That he just couldn't talk about. And he's like super, as we know, or he was at the time, pretty libertarian. And listens to the show. So shout out to that guy whose name I probably can't say. It's because I don't want to blow up a spot. Speaking of people whose names we can't say. Sean, you got some stuff? Right.

So yeah, we do want to shout out all Microsoft employees who listen to this show. And we're sorry that it's about to get banned from Microsoft servers. So you're going to have to start downloading it and then bringing it into work on your phone. I'm sorry you have to go to Redmond. But just like an interesting thing is Microsoft has really embraced, what do you want to call it? Woke corporate identity politics. We're cool now. Yeah.

And, you know, of course, the irony is this company that's helping, you know, China put a million Uyghurs in camps and ICE deport people, the NSA do PRISM spying. Every time you say that, I'm like, I don't think you can say that word anymore. But there's an all hands meeting

with a Microsoft executive vice president recently where he talked about how eye-opening it had been for him to read kimberly crinshaw which is a critical race theorist and how much intersectionality means to him and just like this kind of stuff where it's like um you know i don't really want to get into the debate of uh if let's say identity politics whatever you want to mean by that can can be incorporated into socialism. But in the corporate context, it is so toothless and antithetical because the entire part of it, it creates this environment of, let's say, schisms between labor where you're like, you know, Microsoft will send these internal emails about like checking your privilege and, you know, being called out, not getting sensitive about it.

And it's just like, well, it does have the very interesting effects of one making them look like a good corporate i think that microsoft should call in uh it has the effect of making them look like a good corporate actor on the one hand but the other thing is it creates divisions within labor where it's you know the labor pool where it's like you know if uh uh if people who um call you out like people it creates people who drive their uh private buses should if they're white males they should recognize their privilege basically all these fucking temp contractors they have making like less than or 15 an hour washington state minimum wage now. Yeah, the people who serve them coffees and get spit on should recognize their privilege.

Right, but it creates this idea where it's like, it creates incentive for employees to spy on and report on each other, where it's like you're kind of violating, you know, whatever, let's say, liberal identity politics, or you're talking in this way when you shouldn't be, and it just creates like, it has the very pervasive effect of creating a culture of spying, which is actually really good for a labor management dispute, because you can create labor fissures where people are like, you know, say half the company is white, half the company is non-white. You know, you can say,

hey, there's like a privileged division here you shouldn't think of yourselves as all employees you should think of you know the there's a progressive stack here and then even some of the managers will be less privileged than the employees you know and it is it's very um or if you're critical of the board right board happens to to now be more racially and ethically diverse, then you cannot criticize them. Also, they bought out Progressive Stack. It's a Microsoft asset now. They extended and extinguished Progressive Stack,

so you actually have to pay royalties to Microsoft whenever you use Progressive Stack now. Progressive Stack only runs on Windows. Now, Sean, I'm wondering, what are some things that you can't say at Microsoft? Well, it is a paywall episode. Okay. Well, that's not...

You know what that reply was? Fine. No, I have an answer. The answer is I don't remember. Now, instead of doing that, let's hear some of the phrases that you can't say at Microsoft. Let's talk about the implicit bias inherent in implying that a successful businesswoman... Listen, you fucking... I want some ethnic slurs.

Go. Let's talk about the implicit bias that is inherent in assuming a successful businesswoman like Bill Gates' mother would have to fuck the IBM chairman just to get him the MS DOS contract. Not have to need to. She needed that. She needed that dick. If her ass wasn't licked, we wouldn't have Microsoft right now.

Wait, Andy, what was the sound effect when Bill Gates's mother died? No, no, it was the other one. Um, but I guess that kind of... She died for me getting a little scholarship for doing...

I got a Mary Gates scholarship. Really? Yeah. I didn't know this. Yeah, I got $6,000 from that lady you have been slandering. I never said it was slander. I was saying she did what she needed to do to get the job done.

From that lady you have been telling the truth about. Andy got the Mary Gates scholarship and he's like, oh man, this sucks. You used to be able to fuck Mary Gates after you got this. Now she's fucking dead and you can't anymore. You can, it's just a lot weirder. So I guess that kind of closes out our uh

three-parter on bill gates but uh email us grubstakerspodcast at gmail.com of course there's so much to do with uh microsoft such a huge company recently actually an interesting story they um said that you do not own stuff you buy online at the microsoft store which is kind of an interesting legal precedent you know you, you buy music on, say, iTunes or PlayStation Network or whatever, and Microsoft is saying, actually, if you buy our shit, you don't own it, and we can take it away from you.

They did that with all their e-books recently. Yes, yes. So, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on, and hopefully we'll get back to that in the future. I would recommend, for follow-up on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, I do want to shout out the Citations Needed episode because it does kind of go through what a fake philanthropy effort that is

and how much Bill Gates has all this ill-gotten Monopoly man money and he launders his charity through these media outlets that he funds when in reality he gets richer every year and he's a $100 billion net worth, richest man on earth, now richest man on earth, who does not seem to be giving his money away fast enough. Dog, if they're paying money to hear us right now,

they've already heard that podcast. I would describe his charity efforts as vaporware. But thank you for listening, and we'll be back next week hit us up I will say when we started this podcast we might have been the

we might have been the explorer of podcasts but now we're the edge of podcasts and I just want to say that it has been an honor and a delight creating this

proprietary cut this and with that I'm Yogi Bailaw we'll be shutting this podcast down after Mozilla releases their podcast I'm Andy Palmer I'm Sean McCarthy. Steve Jeffries. I'm Sean McCarthy.

Good night. Thanks for listening. Thanks to you for supporting our Patreon. PBS, the propaganda wing of Bill and Melinda Gates and viewers like you. The new JFK, without the hole in his dome The new Don Trump is Bill Gates Not because his occupation, it's cause we respect his cake And cake mean it's stock, neck gross Young kids step it up, go for the most New cameras and police cars, take a picture Whoever the fuck, y'all fucking server is fucking whack man

Y'all gonna make me switch to Playstation if y'all don't help me get this shit fixed It's that difficult to play somebody online What the fuck is you doing Bill Gates? Fix your shit man What the fuck is you doing, Bill Gates? Fix your shit, man. What the fuck is you doing, Bill Gates? Fix your shit, man. What the fuck is you doing, Bill Gates? Fix your shit, man.