So I just read Bill Gates’ 1976 Open Letter To Hobbyists, in which he whines about not making more money from his software. You know, instead of being proud of making software that people wanted to use. And then the bastard went on and made proprietary licences for software the industry standard, holding back innovation and freedom for decades. What a douche canoe.

  • FriendBesto@lemmy.ml
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    5 days ago

    Gates hides behind his psychopathic greed and thirst for maniacal influence and power behind charity, what few people know is that the Bill’s foundation is an excellent exercise of venture philanthropy, where seeking profits comes first over everything else, at the expense of you know, philanthropy. They admit this.

    It is something a lot of billionaires do, the Zuck has one, many do. They are not charities at all, in the practical sense but they are tax shelters. Gates will say that he has no day to day control, but he does help lean it where he wants it to go, plus you know who does by proxy and by earmarking the major donations? The Gates and Melinda Trust Fund. Who controls that? Bill and Melinda Gates and until a few years ago, also Buffet.

    Bill is smart. He wants to make a shitload of money on vaccine tech? Sure, have the foundation give earmarked donations to the WHO that can only be used for that, then GABI, his other arm of the foundation can serve as the middle man for that cash. That’s before he invested hundreds of millions in big pharma and then what? = Profit. He does the same on education? = Profit. He pushed fake meat, invest a bit on it --relatively speaking to him-- and then, on the side, becomes the largest if not second largest farm land owner in the USA who then leases that land back to farmers. = Profit.

    How come most people do not know most of this, because he also “donates” hundreds of millions to big media, you know, out the kindness of his heart. You know, so why would they report or say or rpeort anything negative of the guy? Quite the opposite. Remember Covid, why is a billionare on the news telling you what to do? Why him? Why any billionaire? Luckily, the link below tells us who they bribe, I mean, help with generous donations to their yearly budgets. And this is a couple of year old but the trend continues.

    Revealed: Documents Show Bill Gates Has Given $319 Million to Media Outlets](https://www.mintpressnews.com/documents-show-bill-gates-has-given-319-million-to-media-outlets/278943/)

    You question any of this? How dare you you? You bigot, conspiracy theorist! Admittedly, that narrative keeps most people from looking at his BS critically.

    Hey, remember when people cared about the environment? Nah, Gates said that we have to focus on Energy production instead now. Wait the guy who is now heavily investing billikns in AI and power hungry data centers wants more energy? You don’t say!

    https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate

    Luckily for us he already had created a seeding/funding program where such initiatives will be invested on and much profit will be had on this exact front, and most will fall for it, because they always do.

    https://www.breakthroughenergy.org/

  • Eyedust@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 days ago

    My PC repair teacher hated Gates. The first story he told us about him was about how he essentially obtained DOS for a literal pittance, turned a massive profit on it, and never credited the original creators.

    I might’ve skewed the story over the years of trying to keep it in my memory, but if I did it just goes to show how much I hate Bill Gates.

  • comradegodzilla@lemmy.ml
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    7 days ago

    Billionaire being a selfish person? Who woulda known? But yes, even though he donates a lot of his wealth, becoming a billionaire is a sign of being a sociopath.

    • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      7 days ago

      His donations are a tax dodge. Besides this billionaire philanthropy is a way to say that the people should not dictate how funds are allocated to things like medical and scientific research, international aid, etc. it’s saying that we instead are okay with our wealth being extracted to pseudokings and allowing them to make these decisions on our behalf. Should we research aids? Space? Should we give food aid to foreign nations experiencing famine? We don’t get to decide, let’s hope one of the oligarchs shines their light on these plights.

      Meanwhile it buys great PR to rehab an image. Bill gates is “the nice billionaire” who sends people 10k of Microsoft shit he didn’t even pay for through reddit secret Santa (eg an ad buy). No one then cares that was instrumental in making computers full of proprietary bullshit, destroying interoperability, eliminating competition and killing open source efforts (look up embrace, extend, extinguish if you want to get angry about 90s and early 2000s Microsoft), or even that he probably raped kids on epsteins island

        • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
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          7 days ago

          Nobody cares about a Nobel Prize. He buys up vaccines using his “charity” and then puts them all behind a patent wall. And bill uses his influence to do capitalist psyops, like doing climate change denial through channels like Kurzgesagt.

  • pyre@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    yeah, but on the other hand, he fucked up the entire reduction system in the US.

  • ronigami@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    He’s missing out on his redemption arc. But I doubt if put in his shoes that anyone would pass up the opportunity he had.

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    7 days ago

    He was friends with Jeffrey Epstein after he was convicted for child abuse. Bill Gates is just an awful awful billionaire.

    • Aljernon@lemmy.today
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      7 days ago

      I’ve read that rather than little kids, Gates was interested in Epsteins influence with other members of the elite because Bill has an obsession with getting a Nobel Prize. Doesn’t absolve his character but I haven’t heard any rape allegations from victims yet.

      • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
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        Bill’s wife was very mad that Bill kept hanging out with Epstein and cited it as one of the divorce reasons.

        She refused to elaborate and told people they should hear the rest from Bill himself. So I think we all know where this is going.

        • Aljernon@lemmy.today
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          6 days ago

          I’m not defending Gates, I’m saying he allegedly had other motivations. Definitely could have been a 2 birds with 1 stone for him.

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        6 days ago

        I didn’t say he did. Is more of Billy at the height of his wealth and influence he couldn’t ditch Epstein. He has no good bone in his body.

  • PhAzE@lemmy.ca
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    7 days ago

    He’s totally fine… when he has his billions and complete unlimited financial safety, and never has to have a worry about spending ever again. Take all that away and his monster comes back out.

    J/k, once corrupted, always corrupted.

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    7 days ago

    More of a total goatse of a man, an impressive gaping emptiness that consumes and gets ass all over everything while making us all look at it.

    Except the wedding ring. He’s too much of a pedophile to keep one of those.

  • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works
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    8 days ago

    AstraZenica COVID vaccine was going to be opensource but he used with weight as a donor to pressure the university to sell it to a firm he had ownership instead

    • Maerman@lemmy.worldOP
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      I read about that, yeah. All hail Mammon; money above all. Sometimes I think wealth changes something in a person’s brain, like psychologically or neurologically. It’s as if they get so detached from reality that they lose all empathy and sense of community. I’ve heard the term ‘affluenza’ used as a joke, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense as a legitimate thing.

      • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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        8 days ago

        It takes a certain kind of personality to even become a billionaire. You don’t become a billionaire by being kind and ethical

          • Townlately@feddit.nl
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            8 days ago

            I’m sure the threshold varies, but I would back research that attempts to pinpoint or at least narrow down what amount of wealth starts to change your brain chemistry for the worse.

      • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works
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        8 days ago

        Its any position of power in my experience. People get power, justifying in their mind that they and people like them should be in power. Even games about being in charge run into that problem. Maintaining power becomes a major part of the game at some part.

        • FlyingCircus@lemmy.world
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          There’s plenty of wealthy people who aren’t psychopaths, but they are all broken in some way. Usually it’s because capitalism has completely alienated them from our natural communal instincts and taught them that the individual is god. Many are capable of empathy, they just choose to do the selfish thing because they’ve been told their entire lives that “taking care of number one” is a virtue.

          Of course, the impacts of their behavior are the same as if they were psychopaths, so this isn’t me excusing them. But it’s important to know what capitalism does to people and how it requires us to ignore our natural instincts, because the wealthy (the ones capable of empathy, anyways) are the same as the rest of us, only luckier.

          • IronBird@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            as someone who recently escaped the labor trap (that is what capitalists call it…wages are suppressed for a reason…), the shift from needing to work and not is…profound.

            no wonder so many rich cunts are batshit psychopaths, nobody born into $ can ever truly know this feeling of relief (and the resulting stress, just from your brain leaving “survival mode”…hierarchy of needs stuff, then realizing just how fucked everything is, how powerless you still are even as new-rich to change anything…)

        • LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          Where do you see that? That isn’t anywhere in your link. The only reference to AZ is that they partnered with one of the companies that Gates invested in.

          • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works
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            4 days ago

            His foundation owns stocks in Immunocore who is an Astra partner.

            Edit: immunocore does not own Astra that was a lazy read on my part

            • LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world
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              5 days ago

              No they don’t dude. AZ doesn’t have a parent company. Immunocore has about 1 billion dollars in assets, AZ has about 100 billion. Stop making stuff up.

              • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works
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                My bad partner “Immunocore’s specialty, however, has been working in oncology. Its therapies induced industry giants including AstraZeneca (NYSE:AZN), Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY), GSK (NYSE:GSK) and Genentech to partner with the biotech over the years.”

                • LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world
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                  That’s completely different though. So they partner with all the big pharma companies, which makes sense given their research. Unless you think he’s secretly on the take from AZ (idk how you would even attempt to bribe Bill Gates), he does not benefit at all financially from the Oxford/AZ deal and there’s no sign of wrongdoing.

      • dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        8 days ago

        who cares if he didnt profit? “I convinced this man to make money off of the sick and he did it and profited off of a global contamination, but at least I also didnt get a kickback right? He was just gonna give it away the fuckin idiot!”

        such a swell dude. totally not a shitbag human

        • LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          Listen m8 all I do is try to do is stop the spread of misinformation. If X thing is just as bad as Y… just say he did X thing. No need to embellish the story.

        • Saapas@piefed.zip
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          I care when someone claims that they did. It’s important to gets the facts straight imo. They commenter you’re replying to didn’t imply Gates was a good guy or something.

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    And for any of the people saying “he changed”.

    One of his most recent “philanthropic” ventures was to partner with Nestle (good start) to “modernize and increase yields” of the dairy industries in impoverished countries.

    The two organizations then sold modern (likely non-servicable) equipment and entrenched them in corporate supply chain systems geared towards export and making it much harder to trade locally (not sure how that part worked, but was in what I read).

    For a grand total of… 1% increased dairy yields.

    Then 3-4 years later they pulled out, leaving heavily indebted farmers without the corporate supply chains and delivery systems they were forced to switch to, and making it very difficult to switch back to the old ways of working, so they can’t sell nearly as much locally.

    Who do you think will buy up those farms when the farmers go bankrupt and have to sell ar rock bottom prices.

    • untorquer@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      His work on malaria in Africa focused on bed nets to the explicit exclusion of larvacide control of mosquitoes. Millions of preventable cases over the last 30 years.

      Then there’s the circumcision to fight aids.

      Guy’s a fuckwit.

      Behind the bastards

    • Phegan@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      He is doing what the robber barons did, they are trying to clear their name before they die.

  • fuzzywombat@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Obviously Bill Gates is a household name and in the tech community everyone knows who is Steve Ballmer. However not many people know who Paul Allen is even though he was one of the founder of Microsoft at the very start. In 1982 Paul Allen was diagnosed with cancer and Bill and Steve were worried that if Paul died the shares of the company would go to someone else along with control of the company. While Paul was literally getting cancer treatment, Bill and Steve were scheming to dilute the shares of the company to wrestle the control of the company away from Paul. Fortunately for Paul he survived the cancer. It really doesn’t put Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in very good light though. I remember reading about this from Robert X. Cringely’s blog about two decades ago and I heard Paul Allen wrote about his version of this story in his memoir before his death.

    Edit: I tried to find the original Robert X. Cringely’s story from back in 2006 but looks like that link is broken but he did referenced it in 2011 when Paul Allen’s book was released.

    https://www.cringely.com/2011/03/30/i-told-you-so/