Woz gave a lecture in one of my classes years ago and I came away impressed. He was obviously a brilliant engineer. "Naivete" is generally used in a negative manner but he had just enough naivete to get through life happy. He talked about all the chips he redesigned as a teen and it did not sound like bragging at all. We need more Woz's and less Jobs in this world.
It's not naive to try and be good and not exploit every situation to the best outcome for yourself, that's the whole point. How can people believe him to be so brilliant but also naive? Don't they see it? It doesn't take a smart man to see an apple and take it all for himself.
But what is the "best outcome" when you have your house paid off and ample savings? He got ripped off by Jobs early on, but Jobs also let him do the work he wanted -- it's rare to have someone as good as Woz was also understand marketing. Jobs is deified too much, but he did bring something to the table in their business relationship.
Anyways, he seems to have protected himself well later on, was able to do good (stories of him giving stock to ppl left out early on, that kind of thing) -- people hyperfocus on one very specific thing (Jobs ripping him off in the atari days) when it's a small point in a much larger life.
Its naive not to program defensively.
There's a pretty significant difference between the statements: "You shouldn't say Woz is naive, because what Woz is ought to not be seen as naive" and "You shouldn't say Woz is naive, because most other people wouldn't understand him as naive" and it's unclear to me which of those to statements you mean.
I too have been lucky enough to hear him speak, and he very much does have this naivete of youth in the way he speaks. He has this very simple and straight forward way to view his contribution, along with a very simple motivation of "it makes me happy" that does feel naive.
I don't think he's nearly as naive as he comes off, but I think he wants to be seen as naive, because his personal philosophy is one that places naivete in high regard. He wants to follow happiness, and happiness can oftentimes be a little naive.
> but I think he wants to be seen as naive
Where does this need come from, to be skeptical or suspicious? Of someone so clearly above board?
Wozniak doesn't need to prove himself to anyone. Maybe he feels comfortable enough in his shoes to be very open about himself, and so motivate people to be true to themselves. At least that's my interpretation.
> along with a very simple motivation of "it makes me happy" that does feel naive.
Why does that feel naive to you, though? To me, that seems like an issue with your definition of naivety.
I debated with myself on whether to use "naive" but it seems the most appropriate description. I barely know Woz outside of a 3-hour lecture but it appears that Jobs took advantage of his naivete, lying to him on multiple occasions. It worked out (financially) for Woz and he seems to have a great attitude about it, one of the reasons I admire him. He seems to successfully walk the line of not caring if people take advantage of him while not getting wrecked. I think it fair to consider that a facet of being naive.
I think "innocent" and "guileless" also bracket the sense you're going for, but they don't quite fit either.
Like, he doesn't see the malice in other people, but its not because he's innocent/naive of such intents, nor does he lack the skills to look for it (guileless), but because (as you say) he doesn't care if people take advantage of him, up to a limit.
Properly calibrated, that's really admirable.
I think “grounded” might be a better term vs being naive in this context. People can suck, sometimes a person who sucks is going to take advantage of you, and it’s a choice to handle it in a mindful, positive way. Monk vibes.
He's a lot better off than Jobs now!
It’s not being unaware (naive) but rather a lack of cynicism. I think that’s an important distinction to make. It takes an extra dose of intelligence to avoid cynicism when you are at that level. Cynicism isn’t wisdom, and its absence isn’t naïveté.
I've long highly valued this kind of naivety, so if it's not naivety, it's a shame.
> Why does that feel naive to you, though?
The 3 ladders. People on the sociopaths (Elites) ladder think of everyone else – the clueless (educated gentry) and economic losers (labour) – as naive.
The clueless ladder comes off as most naive. Labour knows they're losing and focuses on their own thing. Sociopaths know they're winning and focus on power accumulation. The clueless don't notice any of this and focus on bettering the world or whatever.
https://alexdanco.com/2021/01/22/the-michael-scott-theory-of...
"If you’re so smart, why aren’t you kind?"
Because people take advantage of your kindness and leave you feeling used.
I think this is a cynical take-- you can be kind without being a doormat.
It's a very difficult balance to strike imo. People do take niceness and humor as signs that you're not quite as "professional". Of course, other people don't make this mistake, but we don't live in a vacuum - sometimes the jellybrains have control over our promotions.
The difficulty is why it requires intelligence to achieve. It is easy to be mean, and easy to be kind to your own detriment. Being kind while still thriving yourself takes thought.
That's because niceness and humor are often just a mask for being unsure, inconcise, or at worst plain unkind. Being kind is much harder, it requires thoroughly judging the situation, including considering own interests, and then responding in a genuine manner.
Unfortunately it's this attitude which perpetuates those kinds of actions. Of course it never starts off that way, it starts off as just wanting to protect yourself from harm, but you can eventually justify just about anything with the argument that its necessary for your "survival" (not literal survival, of course, but you get the idea).
"If I don't exploit this person's kindness now, I'll fall behind those who do and they'll use that leverage against me" gives you some idea
Actually everyone starts off kind. That many people ends up that way speaks to the core of the human condition.
I really hate that you’re downvoted here - it’s a sad truth, too many in this world are here to “get the bag” and will do this to you. Over and over.
It's the sad reality of the society we live in. Money matters the most. Nothing else.
Kind people always get taken advantage of at work. Others take credit and then left abandoned once there's no more value to the company. I guess that's just capitalism.
You need to move into a different industry/society. These things are not ubiquitous.
Agreed. We call those people assholes. We try our best to avoid hiring those people and we weed them out of our company as fast as possible if they're discovered. We also try to have as flat a structure as possible so nobody is taking credit for anyone else's work and ideally many of us are working together so we all share the glory or frustration when something goes well or not.
I do think the flat hierarchy thing is commendable for many reasons.
That said, don't think that just because you (try to) have few bosses that there isn't some form of hierarchy in which people don't take credit for other people's work.
Sure, maybe there's no boss by title that people suck up to and take credit for stuff to look good to them. But there very definitely will be the "alphas" in the group that everyone looks up to and wants to look good to and the taking credit for stuff will be done to impress those people.
So, if you weed out this kind of stuff successfully well enough, again, I commend you. But I doubt it's as complete as you may want to think. It's just a different looking game of favours and sucking up to with less easily visible (can't just look at title to figure out who to suck up to) lines.
For some people this will be positive as they're good at figuring out who to suck up to in that situation while others may need the title to figure that out. I bet many socially awkward / socially less aware people find it easier to navigate titles they can read in an org chart than sniffing these out of the "sociosphere".
It requires ones own mind to fell “taken advantage of” - if one is smart enough to be kind, one most remember to be kind to oneself as well, and not care about what the sad critters gets from the leftovers.
Stoicism promote exactly this virtue of understanding that you are in control of interpreting your own feelings.
more people need to be like Woz and we need more Jobs in the world. Jobs was a person who bullied through the ego centric system and paved a good single way forward.
Remember when MS office did not include a pdf outputter because they didn’t want to hurt adobe’s feelings? Remember that? Would that have happened with a bully like Jobs? Who went nuclear on all of those analytics companies because they put analytics without declaring it?
Jobs caused a lot of divorces with the iPhone. He did! But he cut through people’s ego like scissors and in a creative field that can happen a lot. He didn’t have ego though.
> Would that have happened with a bully like Jobs?
To assume that ms wasn't headed by bullies requires a striking ignorance of ms' history.
You made me lol. Microsoft’s feats of assholishness and bullies is pretty legendary.
> He didn’t have ego though.
False. Steve Jobs had a massive ego and was by no means a saint. He got a girl pregnant and tried to skirt the responsibility. That's not someone with no ego.
Steve Jobs was also a genius and his bullying pushed a lot of people to excellence.
Someone can be both a genius on the one hand and a total shithead on the other. That's called being human. <3
I met Jobs as a high schooler at Westfield Valley Fair with a "Programming in Objective-C for iPhone" book in hand during like the iPhone 3G era, and he refused to sign the book lol
I really hate to say it, but I had a different experience. Woz came to the fintech company where I work for a lecture and Q&A. I was super excited to see him, like a Little Leaguer meeting his favorite baseball player. However, Woz came off kinda rude, like "Everyone else is wrong. I'm right about everything." Maybe he was just having a bad day, or he didn't really wanna speak at my lame fintech company but somehow got roped into it. Or, maybe it's a case of "Never meet your heroes", but I was kinda disappointed. Woz and Kevin Mitnick were my two heroes as a young nerd.
Less Jobs, more Woz
More of either of them works for me. Compared to Musk or Zuckerberg or Andreessen or Altman or Bezos or any other 2025 tech fucko, Jobs is Woz.
Please don't kid yourself
All of these men today are the way they are because they are trying to emulate Jobs
They absolutely 100% are trying to emulate Steve Jobs. But the version of Steve Jobs they have in their heads is a caricature.
Steve Jobs wanted the world to see him as some sort of artistic, cultured genius. The only aspects of Steve Jobs that today's crop of tech CEOs seem to emulate are his wealth and arrogance.
• Wojcicki admired Jobs while Youtube had the most depraved and moronic comment section on the internet
• Huffman admired Jobs while Reddit had a 'watch people die' subreddit
• Zuckerberg admired Jobs while nuts used Facebook to livestream the Christchurch massacre and Whatsapp to incite mobs to kill Rohingya
• Bezos admired Jobs while Amazon was promoting dollar-store junk on every page
• Musk admired Jobs while Grok was dubbing itself 'MechaHitler'
Those examples are embarrassing enough, though we could go on an on with more. There's no version of Steve Jobs who would allow such garbage to tarnish his image.
Are you sure you don't have a caricature of Jobs in your head?
Apple did a lot of controversial things under Jobs.
* The raids for leaks * The no cold call agreements * etc
They aren't deifying jobs, Jobs was an asshole, but when you confabulate what you think is your tech god and then larp as that, you make a worse version of everything.
Taste is hard to cultivate. You have to care about things like art to cultivate it. As a result all of these dweebs are trying to ape Steve Jobs and they're just succeeding at his worst traits: arrogance and cruelty and a lack of empathy.
> The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products.
Not that I wish it on any of them, but getting cancer changes you.
Present-day Apple could use some more Jobs, though.
Without Woz and Jobs there’d be no Apple (as the name was because of Jobs weird eating habits), but most definitely without Woz there’d be no Apple.
Everything Jobs was though and the people around him and those that worked before him were important for the state of Apple as he left it.
But Woz is my fav also, and if there were many, many makers like Woz, and there are, that would be fantastic, and it is.
Woz, I love you, man.
He's earnest and legitimately excited about it and you can pick up on that. It's always fun to talk to people like that regardless of their interest.
[written from my iPhone]
I think the net effect of people like Jobs is a huge positive in this world. Why do you judge people that did great things by the standards of everyday interaction. You think this could be related? Perhaps there is something unpleasant about the person that had some effect on his ability for greatness? Or do you think people are like a video game with knobs where you can turn down "don't be a jerk" without affecting anything else?
I don’t see human interactions having a “net effect”. If someone is nice to me 99% of the time, and 1% screams obscenities at me, the 99% does not excuse the 1%.
Bad behavior is bad behavior full stop.
Try slapping someone and then follow it up with “but I wrote X software that benefits Y amount of people”
> If someone is nice to me 99% of the time, and 1% screams obscenities at me, the 99% does not excuse the 1%.
That's true! But neither does the 1% spoil the 99%, or make it unimportant. People are very bad at seeing the good and the bad in a person; they want to distill it down to one single data point of "he was good/bad". But that isn't remotely just, and it's worth pointing out whenever people skew too far towards glossing over flaws or refusing to acknowledge the good.
Right now, the zeitgeist is to refuse to acknowledge the good in someone if they did something the speaker considers bad enough. So, one has to frequently nudge people to not forget the good even as they acknowledge the bad.
There's bad behavior among a lot of people who did great things.
Do you feel the same way about MLK based on his FBI files?
If everyone was super nice and pleasant we would likely wouldn't have made any progress.
I don’t know about the FBI MLK files. But if I were to meet MLK or Ghandi or <insert widely recognized figure> and they were an asshole, I wouldn’t excuse or overlook their behavior.
The underlying ideas here are greatness and individuals ascribed to doing great things.
Without any evidence I suspect an extremely large majority of progress is done by normal individuals whose names we’ll never know.
Hard disagree, I think I here are great men and they drive history. Its nice to valorize the every day working man, and I'm likely such a person. I mean a lot to my family and maybe a handful of others but I won't shape history no matter how hard I try. I can only hope to make the world better by bringing up well adjusted children that contribute to society. And that's fine.
What do you consider the positive and negative effects of people like Jobs?
I mean are the iPhone and computing that feels frictionless really a net positive for society?
They are just tools. How society uses the tools is not the fault of the tool. A hammer is just a hammer and someone can use it to drive nails all day long or one person can smash skulls with it. It does not make the hammer a negative for society.
Just because theZuck and his ilk made apps that dominate the use of the tool does not make the tool bad. Being able to use maps the way we can now is definitely a positive. Having a single device that does that, plus allows communication with anyone you know, plus take very decent images/videos, allows for access to the whole internet all while fitting in your pocket is absolutely a net positive for society. It's those shitty apps that make you question it, and you should not confuse it with the net effect. The net negative are the shitty apps.
You can't ignore the responsibility of the tool's designers and sellers like this, and a phone cannot be likened to an utterly simple tool like a hammer.
Facebook is just a social network. The Facebook app is just code. What matters is how people decide to use them.
… This doesn't work very far.
This doesn't mean smartphones are useless or don't have positive points of course! :-)
Sure I can. I just did.
It is not the iOS devs' fault that theZuck makes a shitty app designed to destroy people. It is not iOS that allows theZuck to do that. It is the algorithm created by theZuck's minions. It is the tracking that theZuck's minions have created that feed that algorithm. The iOS devs are playing cat&mouse games with theZuck's minions to not allow iOS to willingly participate in that data collection.
The modern mobile device is an amazing achievement. After all, theZuck came along well before these devices and he and his minions were already up to their shenanigans before their apps were released.
Also, I have none of theZuck's apps on my devices, and do not willingly participate in his shenanigans. I don't have Dorsey's Musky app either, or any of that social crap at all. This forum is the closest to theSocials as I get. My phone is definitely a net positive in my life. You will not convince me otherwise. Because other individuals have made poor choices in their use of the device does not make mine bad. I will agree that theSocials are a net negative for society. So if you want to "fix the glitch", remove theSocials and it'll be clear the devices are a net positive
Edit: Because you clearly edited yours. "Facebook is just a social network. The Facebook app is just code. What matters is how people decide to use them."
This is where we disagree. I fully believe that Facebook et al should be treated exactly as bigTobacco. They have/are deliberately tweaking their product to make it as addictive as possible. This is a knowingly and deliberate act. It is known that they have done studies to see if they have the ability to mess with people's mood/well being. They know the effect their product has on people, and they continue to modify it to be even more effective.
> Sure I can. I just did.
Of course you did and were able to. But I think you're wrong :-) you know I meant this.
I get your point but I think it is a bit naive.
> Because you clearly edited yours.
Yep, sorry, I can see how this impacted your answer. I notably removed the part were I said I think it's important that engineers and salespeople should take responsibility in what they do. I do think so.
> I fully believe that Facebook et al should be treated exactly as bigTobacco. They have/are deliberately tweaking their product to make it as addictive as possible. This is a knowingly and deliberate act. It is known that they have done studies to see if they have the ability to mess with people's mood/well being. They know the effect their product has on people, and they continue to modify it to be even more effective.
But I do 100% agree. That's my point.
Facebook is not innocent in the design of its apps.
The same way Apple is responsible for the design of the iPhone.
But it is not the iPhone that is the problem. It is theZuck's app. That's like saying that the telephone is evil because people use it to scam people. No, the scammers are evil. Quit victim blaming.
We seem to be focused on the iPhone, but what about a Pixel or a Galaxy? They're just devices. People use them for shitty things does not make the device shitty just for existing. You're throwing the baby out with the bath water here, and gleefully acknowledging it.
And the idea for a pixel or a galaxy came before the iPhone? Also what I was referring to was Steve Jobs general attitude to computers. Honestly if they were still the boring business machines the world would be a better place IMO
>Why do you judge people that did great things by the standards of everyday interaction
Because I don't want to live in a world of things built by socially maladjusted misanthropes, I want to live in a world build by kind and social people they made with their own hands.
There is something incredibly servile and pathetic in the psychology of people who latch onto perceived great men instead of looking to their neighbor. Like the kind of people who spend their day on twitter hoping that Elon retweets them and gives them attention.
I'm not familiar with his personality, what is he naive about? like the kind of person that ignores sort of political and business machinations and chases personal interests?
Jobs was not a good person but we wouldn't be talking about Woz today if they had not paired up.
He was a visionary and "got" tech -- Apple's success with him (both times) and the floundering in between demonstrate his value to their story.
Again, not a nice man and not worthy of worship but definitely of respect for what he delivered.
> we wouldn't be talking about Woz today if they had not paired up.
The exact same thing is true in reverse. Jobs was a phenomenal salesman, one of the greatest to ever live. But without someone to actually make the products (and Woz was phenomenal at that), he would've had nothing to sell. You need both the business guy and the product guy to have a successful partnership.
> The exact same thing is true in reverse.
This is an odd thing to say when Steve Jobs achieved most of his success after parting ways with Woz. Jobs was the product guy at Apple. He laser focused on every detail to make sure that the experience was perfect.
Jobs wasn't an engineer, but there were plenty of talented engineers at Microsoft working for years on Windows Mobile (before Windows Phone) because it was so unintuitive. By contrast, the original iPhone was a decade ahead of it's time in terms of design. It had pinch-to-zoom, a proximity sensor to prevent accidental touches during calls, a light sensor that adjusted brightness, and an accelerometer for landscape and portrait mode. These features were originally considered gimmicks, but it turned out to be indispensable.
It's not enough to have great engineers. Imagine a world where Bret Victor gets hired by MS and spends five years in Redmond.
[O]rganizations which design systems (in the broad sense used here) are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.
Absolutely -- without Woz apple never would have been a glimmer in Jobs' eye.
Eh, there's no way to know for sure but I would bet that there are a lot more people who could have been swapped out for Jobs with similar success than the reverse. It's generally thought to be harder to find a brilliant innovative technical person for a startup than a business one. I also see a lot more passable Jobs imitators around the industry than I do Woz imitators.
If you think there is anyone in tech today who is a passable Jobs imitator I'd suggest going back to watch some of his talks and Apple keynotes. He was not perfect (no one is), but he understood why we as humans use technology better than any one of his stature today.
Empirically, every Apple product you're using today was designed without Woz' involvement, and nearly every one of them still shows traces of Jobs' involvement.
Conversely, Woz started numerous companies after parting ways with Jobs, and I can't think of a single one that had a lasting impact.
It's not really a level playing field to compare Jobs running an established company with a devoted fan base, to Woz starting companies from nothing. One is much easier than the other.
When Jobs was fired by Apple, he started NeXT (platform where the web was developed) and Pixar. The Apple desktop platform, one of the existing products referenced, still has a lot of heritage from NeXT. I think Jobs was an asshole too but he did start outside companies that did well and still have a major lasting contribution today.
What's actually "nice"? Is it creating an industry and livelihoods for millions of people (directly or indirectly)? Or is it smiling and making people in the room feel comfortable?
Why do we have to keep saying Jobs was not a good person?
the guy who tried to use fruit juice to cure cancer and routinely refused to register his automobile?
the guy who never acknowledged his kid until a court forced him to pay child support?
He outright lied to Wozniak over payments and shares.
https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-wozniak-gave-early-app...
He put himself on the organ waiting list in multiple states when it became apparent that his quack medicine wasn't working to cure his actually perfectly treatable (compared to most) Pancreatic Cancer. He took a liver from someone out of state and died with it. They changed the law to prevent this happening again.
How did you find info that the organ donor law changed from a successfully donated liver across state boundaries? (I've not seen that before)
I found an article that this successful use of a donor organ, rather than waste it, was celebrated, and motivated a pro donor law in California.
https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-does-it-after-alm...
The guy lied and didn't register his car and handled his own sickness in a way you don't like? The horror!
Sure, complain about him forcing his way onto lists if we're willing to accept that all humans are truly equal (I'm fine with this concept), or being mean to others, but who CARES about the other stuff?
> The guy lied and didn't register his car
this was done so he could park in disabled spaces
which is pretty scummy
He died early because of his own stubbornness and irrationality. It's a reflection on his judgement.
People like Jobs get attention because they're obnoxious. If they never existed, the world would be no worse off.
So? Who cares why he died? Is it wrong to die for a reason you disagree with? If the world is no worse off without him, then wasn't his judgement neutral at worst, and good at best?
It's weird how much he gets under the skin of people so desperate to pretend they're at the top of the moral totem pole, or at least definitely above the one guy they've ever seen a tell-all story on.
edit: it's almost like, in the current social meta of "doing no wrong is more important than doing good", there is a need to denigrate any approach that doesn't feel extra cozy and warm and loving. But I dunno - he headed up some of the most iconic products in history. He had a helluva team and made things work. I gotta be honest, I don't really care if he said scary and mean things.
> under the skin of people so desperate to pretend they're at the top of the moral totem pole
I never understood this kind of thinking, and have always found it particularly heartless & puzzling, until one day I stumbled upon something I myself had no visceral reaction to but other people clearly did. It looked like they were being fake about it, either completely, or just in an exaggerating way.
Turned out no, I was just not in the headspace required. Which makes sense cause I mean, let's be honest: what do you think is more likely? The majority of people secretly and intentionally all just messing with you, or rather them just actually saying what they think, and then you just not being able to relate to it?
I’d hang out with you.
> [...] but who CARES about the other stuff?
I care about someone fucking over his business partner.
That's pretty dumb. There are literally thousands upon thousands of companies you purchase from every single day where this happens or has happened. Why do you only care about Jobs?
Answer: because he was the only one brave enough to be this transparent. Literally all you're doing is encouraging everyone to hide this behavior as much as possible, and never EVER own up to it.
I'd day this ship has sailed when he became a celebrity.
Comment on him positively, you're now contributing to elevating his person into something beyond human (etc.).
Comment on him negatively, and now you're just using him as a scapegoat (etc.).
It would seem like the real devil is in the asymmetry of significance, not in the people in question, or even the traits.
Alternate option: I also don't approve of those people either?
in what way does critiquing steve jobs convince the people being screwed over to not share?
i want courts to make it right, not for the swindlers to be confident talking about how they swindle people without consequence.
"owning up to it" is making it right, not chit chatting
It's possible to care about the practice of deception and also talk about one case.
Personally, I don't give much credit for "bravery" when it's expressed in terms of "being transparent" about being an asshole.
He really was an asshole in his life in ways that are considered notably anti-social.
Because if the future household names don't want to be referred to as "not good" people forever, they ought not sacrifice being a good person for their fame and success.
It is helpful to at least push back a little bit on the pass that rich/famous people typically get.
You don't have to say it, what do you mean by we?
Others may say it, but there's a difference between being annoyed that other people say something, and turning your comment in such a way that others saying it looks like you're being prevented from saying what you want.
From the wiki on his daughter:
"After Lisa was born, Jobs publicly denied paternity, which led to a legal case. Even after a DNA paternity test established him as her father, he maintained his position. The resolution of the legal case required him to provide Brennan with $385 per month and to reimburse the state for the money she had received from welfare. After Apple went public and Jobs became a multimillionaire, he increased the payment to $500 a month."
"Despite the reconciliation between Jobs and Lisa their relationship remained difficult. In her autobiography, Lisa recounted many episodes of Jobs failing to be an appropriate parent. He remained mostly distant, cold and made her feel unwanted, and initially refused to pay her college fees."
> and initially refused to pay her college fees
I don't understand this part, in America, you cannot enter the college for free even with good grades?
Is being a neglectful or unloving parent equal to being a bad person? Maybe he was a bad parent, maybe he was an overly demanding and overbearing boss, but it's not like he was killing people or selling weapons. He sold phones and mp3 players and computers. He almost certainly contributed to making the world a better place by many objective criteria. I don't know why he's labeled as a "bad person" when there are hordes of people who foment and profit from war and killing and don't contribute at all to human productivity, creativity, or wellbeing but are lauded.
He maintained the position that she was not his daughter, even after DNA test proved that claim wrong. Bad person. The worst. There can't be discussion about this. Unloving and neglectful are not even in the same category.
I see your point.
Speaking only for myself, when I call someone a "bad" person (I am wary of calling anyone "bad," but that is the language used in this conversation), I mean that they treat others poorly. They may contribute immensely to the world (as Steve Jobs did), but that is orthogonal to whether they are a good or bad person.
I know others have a different calculus, and I am not trying to convince anyone. Still, being a bad parent, especially after you have asked to reconcile, is... well... a person I would be hesitant to associate with regardless of how much I loved my iPhone 2G, or how cool the Lisa looked in the early 1980s.
> Is being a neglectful or unloving parent equal to being a bad person
It absolutely is, in my opinion
> it's not like he was killing people or selling weapons.
Well, if your standard is that no one is a bad person until they are literally murdering people or selling war machines, then no, of course not.
But as a parent myself, I think it's fair to say that if you, as a multimillionaire, stoop to doing the bare legal minimum to support the child you created, who was at one point living in poverty because you failed to support her before, then yes: you are a bad person.
There are obviously many other ways in which Steve Jobs was a bad person! He kept obtaining temporary license plates because he wanted to park in handicapped spots without getting tickets. He orchestrated a salary-fixing cartel that artificially depressed wages for many thousands of engineers in Silicon Valley, all so that he and his other obscenely rich friends could get even richer. And he had his devices manufactured in China under horrendously exploitative conditions again, so that he and his shareholders could make an extra buck. (on top of the billions they already had)
But if your standard of being a "bad person" (not even evil!) is murder or complicity in it, then you could make a strong case that Steve Jobs was not a bad person, altogether.
> Is being a neglectful or unloving parent equal to being a bad person?
Umm . . . yes?
No (my parents weren't great at parenting, but I know for a fact they are not bad people). It means you failed at parenting. It could also mean you were not a good person once upon a time. We're passing final judgement on a man's entire life, after death. Be careful what role you assume (God).
Let’s start with: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
There was a Walter Isaacson-authored biography which was extremely open and honest. Jobs wanted everything fully exposed, to include how terrible he was to his children, how intimidating he was to his employees, and how overpowering he was in business meetings.
It regularly referred to a "distortion effect" he could create, by essentially "gaslighting" (to use a common turn-of-phrase) people into doing things they thought they couldn't - often at great emotional expense. Essentially, he was somehow able to become a target of hatred, causing his employees to team up together "against him". It was extremely effective, but created a lot of copycats who just ended up abusing the hell out of their employees without getting the desired effect.
Realistically, he's just the only person we're getting a truly honest tell-all from. I'm not sure he's really that much worse than most people, I think we're just all judging him much more surgically.
I encourage anyone who is fascinated by Jobs to study the life of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
There's a good argument that FLW was a supercharged version of Jobs - wildly charismatic, visionary, uncompromisingly obsessive about the most minute of details, and could be manipulative and cruel. What we see w/ Jobs and Lisa, FLW was even worse as in 1909 he just up and abandoned his family of 7, seemingly out of the blue, to travel through Europe w/ his mistress. This was a national scandal at the time.
In his houses, he did all decorations (including providing art from his large personal stash) and built all the furniture and would go on tirades against his clients if he found out if they moved or replaced anything after they moved in, usually cutting off all further ties if they did not give into his demands. Also a fun fact is FLW had an obsession w/ Japanese woodblocking, similar in a way to Job's thing w/ calligraphy.
On top of that, their life took a similar arc where each had incredible success early in life that eventually crumbled under their own ambition, spent a time out in the wilderness, then went through a resurgence toward the end that greatly eclipsed their early success. Regardless, throughout his lifetime he maintained he was the best architect in the world, perhaps in history.
FLW actually wrote an autobiography during his time in the 'wilderness' (basically running an architecture cult in the desert) in the early 30s, and much of it is fanciful bluster, a bunch of half truths and exaggerations, almost as a means to save his legacy. You read it and kinda feel sorry for the guy. Yet, five years later as he turned 70, he created Fallingwater which led to so much work, that the last 20 years of his life he produced over twice as many commissions than he had done to that point. In fact when he died he was in the middle of actively working on 60 projects, most notably overseeing the construction of the Guggenheim.
I had no idea - I'll be diving into this next! Thanks so much for the suggestions!
His flaws were probably significant contributors to some of the traits that made him successful. He held some extreme opinions and was neither afraid to nor was unsuccessful in steamrolling others. This brought revolutionary ideas to market at a time when consensus was stacked against those ideas.
Because so many people worship him like he's God
Why do you think people feel pressured into saying that, rather than e.g. just generally plain agreeing? And why is this a binary?
The sheer amount of conspiratorial, loaded questions on HN these days is absolutely staggering.
No, you don't have to keep saying Jobs was not a good person.
For the same reason people dislike Elon Musk and really like Jensen Huang.
A lot of people have PTSD from ~2021 and are still looking over their shoulder
He was flawed, like all of humanity. We just aren't allowed to acknowledge his accomplishments anymore because he didn't personally engineer every Apple product or similar stupidity that is also used eg to diminish Musk.
both are criticized for similar things and it's not because they didn't do all by themselves.
Nobody is perfect but this doesn't excuse everything.
> We just aren't allowed to acknowledge his accomplishments
Nobody prevents you from acknowledging anything.
I am specifically referring to their accomplishments, inane takes like "Musk isn't an engineer, he doesn't have anything to do with the success of SpaceX" or "Jobs doesn't deserve any of the credit for Apple's products" are common.
Don't be obtuse, while you aren't "prevented" you are certainly shouted down/shamed on social media
> inane takes like "Musk isn't an engineer, he doesn't have anything to do with the success of SpaceX" or "Jobs doesn't deserve any of the credit for Apple's products" are common
I haven't seen these things said, but apart from HN I don't do social media. I'll believe you that these claims are stated. They are of course shallow.
I bet it depends on how you present stuff. How you "sound". Or when you choose to present facts.
Here, for instance, it looked like you dismissed the criticisms towards those guys. You stated that these guys have their flaws like everybody. You diminish their issues and that's exactly what will make people strongly disagree with you. In many people's heads, those guys are huge assholes, really not comparable to your random person. You'll need to have this in mind when discussing this stuff. If you do it like this, people might not listen because you may sound like a guy who is a fan of two huge assholes at the same time to many of us (even if it's false).
Even if what you state is true, if it sounds like you take the defense of these billionaires whenever they are criticized for other things, I can certainly believe you will be shut down. They have / had a lot of power, it can seem way off to defend them, they really don't need your help.
There are good and bad timings, and effective ways to state facts and others, not.
You'll need to read the room. Of course.
And toxic places also can't be saved. Just flee.
you have admirable discipline and restraint
Thanks for the compliment! I'm glad you took it positively.
When I was a student, we tried to get him to speak to at our school, but Woz wanted mucho $$$$ to speak. But it seems plenty people will pay what he asks. I guess if my job were to just go around talking about random shit I'm interested in, and I can make $10M doing that, I'd be the happiest person ever too. I don't think it's about naivete.
Edit to clarify: I'm not saying he doesn't deserve to get paid, I'm saying his being "the happiest person ever" is directly correlated to his ability to collect millions just shooting the shit in front of a fawning audience.
it's a bit of work and effort to give a talk. And he is rich enough to not need to do it for the money. Time is important. If he'd be doing it for free he'd probably get too many requests. Adding a high $ can simply help filter down to a reasonable thing.to only the largest locations and highest number of people.
I dont want to do contract work but people ask so I just quote an unreasonably high number and on occasion someone bites. I dont need the money so I need an easy filter.
A person whose every interest and opinion gets validated by the world would indeed be very happy. Imagine just talking about whatever the hell happens to interest you to people and everyone paying attention and even paying you good money for that.
It's a bit related to how billionaires tell everyone to "just work on whatever makes you happy and it's all going to be fine".
Nah, plenty of millionaires and even billionaires who have a license to print money are unhappy.
Are they though? I know that's a trope (poor little rich kid). But is that real life?
Yes. Money does make you happy (really, the pursuit of the money does not as it is not what we are evolved to be happy about)
> We need more Woz's and less Jobs in this world
In this day and age, most people are attracted to "influencing". For better (giving back to society, educational) or worse (pranksters, grifters, "manosphere").
One notorious case is "Zara Dar", a PhD dropout to OF creator. Seemed to have high potential in the industry then something just flipped (money? too difficult? not fond of the grind?) and decided to go to OF.
The new world, with its hypercapitalistic tendencies, take advantage of the worst of us. It's one of the reasons for the rise of kakistocratic administration in the United States.
I love seeing all the positive comments here on HN regarding Woz.
I worked at Apple for a good amount of time, and the general rhetoric from Apple folks still there is that Woz is “insane” and not to be trusted.
I personally always found that to be so far from the truth, and the root of it really was how much Apple people didn’t like him speaking open and freely about the company (failures, success, and everything between).
You're either talking about people who worked with him at least forty years ago and had a problem with him, or people who are talking out of their ass. No doubt about which this is, but I wonder why.
You must have worked in a very odd and isolated department. I never heard that rhetoric, even once, throughout my tenure. Nor have any of my old colleagues who still work there and are quite well known internally (notorious patents, features / tentpole DRI, etc).
From your post history, you left Apple in 2018, so I doubt you have up to date knowledge.
Woz bought 2 Model 3s thinking he would be able to rent them out as robotaxis. I'm sure he's a nice guy but I have no idea why he's (still) held up as some kind of tech guru.
He's in the arena trying things
> I worked at Apple for a good amount of time, and the general rhetoric from Apple folks still there is that Woz is “insane” and not to be trusted.
Are you sure they werent talking about the other Steve? Are there any stories or examples from your co-workers? I've also only ever heard good things about him as a human and engineer.
Nobody calls Woz “Steve”, he’s almost always referred to as Woz.
And no one says Woz is not to be trusted or insane... so I was just curious about the stories you heard. Where as people have said insane and untrustworthy about Jobs.
I think that $10 million is a great answer for "how much money is more than you'll ever need".
Significantly more than that, and you're a hoarder.
Maybe I'm not creative enough but I've tried this thought exercise with friends and it's a fun one.
The question is, try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go.
So then you start with big ticket items (like maybe a yacht or a house). That gets you to your first $500m. After that, stuff gets WAY "cheaper" where you just run out of things generally before even hitting $1bn.
And then at the end of it we try to imagine what it's like having stuff worth $250bn. And there's just no way to make that tangible.
I did try this with my son and he said he'd buy an A-list soccer team. But I feel that starts to get into "buying companies that make you MORE money" territory.
At a much smaller scale, it seems to be that $10mn is so much that you could live in a $2m house (good by any standard in any location), have a stable of cars, have full-time help, fly first class or even private everywhere, and vacation as much as you want. Or am I off by a lot given inflation?
I'm of the "only way to win is not to play" mind with this exercise. I would peel off 10-20 million to eliminate lifetime financial concerns for my circle, and immediately go MacKenzie Scott on the rest, trying to put it towards maximum societal benefit.
Need to get that set up before the yacht brochures start arriving in the mail. Before the dark whispers take hold...
i would do the same, except give every extra dime to dogs and cats (and other animals in need). i'd make sure none of my wealth would go to help other humans.
Saying you’d donate to pets is one thing but saying it will never go to a human is so out of touch with the world. I’m sure you have great intentions but I just don’t see how you can take that approach.
... and, hopefully, before the professional arm candy starts "accidentally" bumping into you in line at the coffee shop.
What a shallow, dismissive and sexist thing to say.
I don't understand folks with these answers. I would want $1T or more. I could easily invest it.
- I want to build a human cloning startup to build whole-body, HLA-neutral, antigen-clean, headless clones. Taken to the extreme, this cures all cancers except brain and blood cancers, and it could expand the human lifespan/healthspan to be 200 years or more.
- I want to build directed energy systems to manipulate the weather and climate.
- I want to build an open source cloud, open source social layer, open source social media and actually get them real traction against the incumbents. Distributed media exchange layer that is P2P, not federated. Rewire the internet to be fault-tolerant and censorship immune.
- I want to train frontier AI models and make them open. I want to build massive amounts of high quality training data and make it all available (with a viral license).
- I want to build open source hardware. Tractors, automotive EVs, robots, stuff you can hack and own and exchange and print parts for.
- I want to build infra for my city.
I couldn't stop coming up with ideas for things to build.
But, alas, I'm still stuck here at the bottom wondering why a compound in Hawaii could be cooler than these things.
$10M being enough depends on a lot of things:
1. Do you have children, and if so, are they going to expensive private schools or have other expensive hobbies
2. Are you planning on stopping working, and how many years do you need to support at what lifestyle
3. Debt
4. Do you support others, like parents, etc
5. Do you have health issues, or will you, that will be expensive to support
There are more factors but these are just some that prevent 10M from being enough.
It also matters whether we are considering it a static $10 million or considering reality.
In reality, if you have $10 million, you put it in the S&P500 and make an average of 10% ($1 million) per year. Far more than inflation and more than enough to cover those things you're talking about unless you have a pretty extreme medical condition or very expensive hobbies.
I agree with this directionally, however I think you'll make more like 7.2% per year, and inflation will be about 2.5% per year. You'll also likely pay about 30% in federal and local taxes in the USA on it since you're actually selling it to live on it (more on taxes later). So you'll pay 2.2% in taxes. So on average you'll get 7.2 - (2.5 + 2.2) = 2.5% of income. If you have $10M, you can withdraw about 250K a year in today's dollars every year. i.e next year you can withdraw 256.3K or so, and keep doing this to keep your current standard of living. In down years you may want to adjust / tighten belt a tiny bit to not veer off track too much. And you can get cute with taxes but not recommended. That loan interest will add up over time, and when it's time to actually pay those loans, you'll still sell stock and pay taxes on it, unless your offspring inherit both.. and who knows what the laws will be then.
The 7.2% number is already adjusted for inflation. Historically the stock market has gotten about 10% nominal return, 6.5-7% real.
Agreed, but would caveat that the historical market returns happened as the world's dominant economic and technical powerhouse. The current trajectory is looking different, to put it mildly. The US is undermining nearly every advantage that led to such strong growth. Barring some massive pivot in the near future, medium term economic growth will most likely be lower.
inflation was double-digits in the 70s.
and the S&P was flat at 1.6% for the decade
despite some pretty amazing technical innovations pocket calculator and microcomputer (Altair 8800), first email, pong, floppy disks (they were the standard for 20 years), VCR, cell phone (1973 Motorola), barcode scanners, rubiks cube, ...
> and the S&P was flat at 1.6% for the decade
Nah not really.
Nominally S&P500 did 23% in the 70s, and 2.08% annualised, but financial returns are not just the stock prices, they're also dividends.
If you include and reinvest dividends, you'd have made 83% in the decade and 6.2% per year.
Its true inflation was high though, and an investment in Jan 1970 would've in real terms returned -1.1% a year after adjusting for inflation. If you continued investing equal amounts each year from 1970 to 1980, it'd actually be about -0.5%.
But no investment would've meant you lost half of all your money due to 7% average inflation, so investing would've been a pretty good idea, offsetting almost all inflation in the worst decade 50 years ago.
Also it's common knowledge to do a stock/bond split. Bond returns fared a bit better. -- and it should be said, the following decade inflation came way down and in nominal terms the S&P500 did +364% with dividends reinvested.
I do agree with your general point though, you can't just rely on a 10% annual average and spend that amount. The commonly referenced safe withdrawal rate (WR) of 4% is 2.5x less than the average S&P500 return for a good reason (based on a ton of monte carlo sims that indeed would lead to disastrous results at 10% WR in the 1970s).
Except the market is a bubble. It's going to pop within 10 years as the boomers retire and die. Thats assuming low inflation. With significant inflation the younger folks might afford to prop it up.
Even if that’s the case, with 10 million you have 100 years of 100k+ a year even if you can only barely stave off the rate of inflation.
Almost all your points are eliminated if you just live in a developed country.
I’m very, very far from rich, yet
1. University costs nothing for everyone
2. Good social safety net, but yes, having own retirement savings is very important.
3. Not for school or medical, the two biggest reasons in the US.
4. Free healthcare for all, aged care, etc.
5. Free healthcare for all.
It’s eye opening to see that the American dream is now “live a quality of life that dozens of countries take for granted”.
sure but all of those are not that sustainable long term. Denmark made retirement age 70 and that will change in the future because your social economy is not sustainable. This also includes a lot of government things in USA.
$10M and more buys true freedom and reach to global travel and countries. All of those free things in Europe require certain level of native labor and population aging fast is not helpin that across globe.
The US is $37 trillion in debt. It’s pretty clear doing it terribly is not sustainable.
Meanwhile dozens of countries are doing the above without immense debt.
Lifestyle is the only real issue past a few million, particularly if you own your home (and at 10m you certainly would). Beyond that its all status oriented which is where the "should be enough" bit comes in; if its status your after then theres never really enough.
after few million you start securing the retirement and few decades. like what if you live up to 100 or more? Anything below $3million means no retirement now or money has chance to be all spent in next 2-3 decades. After $10Million it's all enough
I feel like $5M should be enough to cover your first 100 children, but then the next 100 should be cheaper as they get the hand-me-downs.
I don't know if you intended this to be only spent selfishly. But if you look to how the old robber barons spent their money they did things like giving the US a large portion of it's public library system. I don't think it would be hard find things to do like this that make everyones lives better.
> try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go.
Hmm. Doesn't include ongoing costs. The yacht for example will cost $1-4m a year simply to own it, and that's ongoing cost forever. The jet will have a similar figure. A $45m mansion isn't cheap to keep running either. Purchase these things and suddenly you're on an unsustainable financial path with a $1b completely liquid net worth. Forget about charitable giving. $20m of gifts annually put you deep in the red.
It seems like a lot then I think about how California’s EDD department gave 50 billion to criminals in 2020/2021 and then it feels less ginormous.
My answer because I don’t see it: climate change research. A billion isn’t much but if it can help save the planet that would be worth it to me personally.
This made an impression on me:
https://www.spend-elon-fortune.com/
Buying all this stuff that seems expensive, but then seeing that it barely makes a dent in a truly wealthy person’s fortune.
Of course, he wants even more…
It's a clear sign of a simpleton when a person thinks of Nintendos and other stupid gadgets as "how you would spend Elon's money"
I wanted to buy a thousand tanks for my own private army, but it's a pain to buy them one by one.
>try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go.
I'll bite. Private island, superyacht, G7, prime mansions in LA, NYC, London, Singapore, collection of old masters, part owner in an NFL team, establish a foundation and trusts for the kids/grandkids, trip to space. Easy
I mean, can I not just spend the money to buy a better society in which to live?
Museums. I love museums. They all need more support. Kids need more places to do field trips.
Libraries ... they are experiencing budget cuts everywhere now as cities prioritize police spending.
Parks.
Homes for people that can't afford them. Seriously, one of the most effective possible cures for homelessness is to set up a program that helps people cover their rent for a month or two if they get into trouble.
Health care. Like, there's got to be a pile of people that need urgent health care and can't afford it, right?
Education. Adult education, too.
Science and research.
And most, maybe all of these, aren't even things that necessarily need an entirely new organization to spearhead them, or some kind of dramatic social change. They are all things that exist right now and need more funding than anything else. You could hire a small team to just look up all kinds of programs all day long and write checks for them and it would be enormously impactful.
I just... the answer to this seems so blindingly obvious to me, and then I read the rest of the comments, and I really wonder when exactly the hacker ethos got co-opted by the crab mentality.
The "number" is always part of a big debate. There's no right or wrong.
Usually, they say that you can maintain your wealth (adjusted for inflation) indefinitely by using the so-called "safe withdrawal rate" [0], which people put between 1% and 4%.
So, say that you have $1M in wealth, and you pick your SWR at 2%. It means that you can use 2% of that, or $20,000, every year, knowing that your wealth will keep growing at least by the inflation rate, for a long time (30 years, or 100, or whatever).
If you have $10M, you can spend $200,000/year.
Clearly, it depends on your lifestyle how much you need to have saved in order to FIRE (Financially Independent, Retired Early).
All of this assumes that for the next 30, 40 years, we will not see any catastrophic or monumental changes in how the financial system works.
The best part of this game is that it takes time to spend the money, if you can't manage to spend more than 4-5%/year then your wealth will actually be growing.
For reference, on $1bn that's $40M/year or about $100k/day in earnings if you just have the cash in a money market account.
Remember you need enough left over to throw off an income to maintain your yacht and private jet. Those things aren't cheap.
Fair enough. So then I'd just fly first class or use Netjets all the time?
But surely you are creative enough to come up with the “buy a jet” solution (just, too sensible to actually go with it).
> try to spend $1bn on stuff
Buy an election.
If not, buy a newspaper, a TV network or a media outlet with a good outreach.
Then you can get you 1B back tenfold.
or just look at how many big yatcht Gabe newell owns and try to calculate cost of maintaining them for a year. That alone easily requires $1billion invested in somewhere so returns can maintain the ownership + trips. Also now he now owns shipyard too.
What's the point of having several yachts? You cannot be on board several of them at the same time anyway.
It would seem that accumulating stuff is a waste of time at a point much lower than one billion. On the other hand, giving every Debian maintainer $500 a month is ~$5M a year. Add in Gentoo, Alpine, and other things I like and you're looking at probably double that total. Ivy admission for kids is a few million a year for 5-10 years... Retaking Artsakh would be north of $3 billion
Sounds like you'll love "Spend Bill Gates' Money" [1]
I've always been given to understand that making a small fortune (out of a large one) was the main goal of owning a bookshop. I'd try that :)
Nice house, nice car, allowance for everyday stuff (food, bills, etc.) and travel, and a little bit of money for retirement.
The rest: charities.
I hear what you are saying: consumables and normal luxury items are hard to spend a lot of money on (houses, cars, boats, planes, clothes, food, etc)... if you however were to choose to spend a lot of money on the R&D required to reducing human suffering you'll find that the money will go like its on fire. Build a new drug, create novel ai tech, driverless cars... $1B would feel like you need to clip coupons for the grocery store.
There was a long Reddit thread[1] a while ago that describes what people in various wealth tranches spend their money on. It's very long, but the TLDR is: They don't buy "things" so much as they buy Experiences, Access, Influence, Time, Political Power, and so on.
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2s9u0s/comment/c...
> try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go.
High end audio equipment. Done. Next!
That's only if you spend your money on stuff. I wouldn't spend it on stuff, I would fund things like ambitious art and architecture projects. If you can't think of ways to allocate $1B you're probably a very boring person, and if your first thought is "yachts" then you're definitely one.
This is crazy. I could easily spend a billion dollars without even thinking. That doesn't even get you a novel drug. Like, if I made $100b I have a shit ton of things I could attack with that.
Even a trillion dollars I could probably spend. I like sailboats so a yacht sounds nice, but I cannot believe it even a fraction of the satisfaction of developing some research, or of having the fundamental research itself done.
Yachts and houses are boring. Can't you think of anything you'd rather do with your life than live in a house and go sailing? You can do that without money!
A million dollars is, roughly speaking, a person-year of dedicated professional services from a world-class professional of almost any profession. There are a few exceptions, like stockbrokers, surgeons, and some kinds of lawyers. But a billion dollars buys you, say, 1000 person-years of the best professionals.
For millions of dollars, you could have your own vaccination program, your own particle accelerator, your own web browser, your own steel mill, your own religious cult, your own pyramid, your own AI research lab, your own permaculture experiment station, your own rare book collection (which you could digitize), and so on.
That's leaving aside personal consumption of things like a diplomatic passport from a foreign country, a private doctor, a comfortable apartment in a former missile silo, and a helicopter to get to it with. Your yacht isn't going to do you much good if you get arrested in a foreign country on trumped-up charges because you unintentionally insulted the wrong guy's daughter, or if your cancer goes undiagnosed until stage 4.
When you have that much money, you're not interesting in buying things anymore, you're interested in buying power, people.
You want to buy a social network.
Or see if you can swing an election to your favor.
That's what you do with $Bs. It's usually not very good.
That is not so hard. Try to buy/build something really big and price tag easily goes to 1bn.
A skyscraper. An eco-friendly village. A ship. A spacecraft.
> The question is, try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go.
That gets a lot easier to spend if you decide you want to explore space or something.
Not to be that guy as I think your point is fantastic, but 1bn dollar yachts exist, probably just to break your question! Haha
Art
Yeah but doesn't art and similar collectors items usually make you MORE money?
High dollar art is primarily used as a way to hide wealth. Most of it sits in warehouses at duty-free ports.
https://www.ams-tax.com/blog/post/the-secret-world-of-art-ta...
> Maybe I'm not creative enough
> So then you start with big ticket items (like maybe a yacht or a house)
You answered your own question. Very boring and selfish answer, and just serving yourself (ie, greed).
Your son has more creativity than you.
If you are given $1B in hard cash, and the first thing you do is spend it on yourself. You are probably the worst person to ever get a windfall.
That was an example - not what they’d choose to pick themselves. You misread their comment and then came down hatefully upon them for it. Shame on you.
I'd like to build something interesting so I want more. Some people want to buy homes, happiness, and family prosperity with their wealth. If that's the case then $10M is too much. That's multiple homes territory.
But if you want to build something for society and not die doing it then you might need more than $10M.
Isn’t that backwards? Most people need to build a business to make the $10M+ in the first place. Are you talking about a nonprofit or an airplane/movie business (both famous for turning large fortunes into small ones). Otherwise you probably should follow the advice from the “Producers”: never put your own money in the show.
I think you have conflated 'build something for society' with 'build a business' which is very hacker-news-core. My mind immediately went to building infrastructure and schools in rural Nepal, not building a b2b saas that raises customer acquisition rates by 8 %.
You are exactly right. If you want to build something big from scratch you will likely need to control that thing, which in our system means ownership and wealth. If you don't own it, someone else will own/control it and you could lose your ability to execute on your vision.
>how much you'll ever need
If that's the case then it's no longer just for you, so I think that's fair
Depends on where person wants to live
You can live in the Bay Area.
> I'd like to build something interesting so I want more.
My dad built tents for diabetes research in Africa, I think that's pretty interesting and helpful. He's never had even a million dollars.
You need way less than you think.
There's lots of things I'd like to do that would cost more than $10 million. Maybe if you're saying I personally only have $10m but control $1t?
Things I'd do if I didn't have to raise money, find investors, etc.
Bribe/payoff whoever I had to and then build a real transit system in LA,SF,Seattle as one example.
Consider making a museum/expo-center that's like the Lucas Museum (https://www.lucasmuseum.org/) but centered around Video Games and/or Interactive Digital Art.
Most rich people don't "hoard" money like Scrooge McDuck. They're generally spending it on:
1. Equity in companies or loans to the government.
2. Expensive food, homes, clothes, hotel stays, travel, child care, etc.
I would measure it in multiples of the median income. At 5-6x I imagine that you can buy anything you want but not everything. You are still somewhat price sensitive but rarely bothered by a setback or an expensive meal.
Actual numbers aside - I couldn't posssibly respect and admire Woz's statement more than I did.
My English may not be enough to express it but above all else it exhudes a "clarity of purpose" that is remarkable
Would buying a good chunk of land make you a "hoarder"? Depending on where you are 20 acres can be more than $10 million even before you build a house etc.
Definitions of wealth often exclude primary residence for this reason, it depends a lot on where you live, and it's also not very liquid. There are poor people who own large houses (but can't sell for whatever reason), and there are rich people who don't own any house at all.
Earth has about 3 acres of habitable land per person.
There's an argument to be had about how if that was viewed as hoarding and taxed appropriately, land would probably be a lot cheaper.
Our lord and savior already answered your question 2000 years ago in Matthew 21:33-46
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+21%3A33...
Reminds me of this old post. Once you get to a certain level of wealth, it isn't about money, it is about power.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ifiwonthelottery/comments/9qv4e1/po...
Having more money than that is not for your personal expenses and comfort, but to finance projects at a large scale.
That's why they need more than $10 million for space exploration, or for setting up giant factories to make any kind of goods, for developing massive infrastructure, for warfare, etc etc.
I agree. With $10 million I'd immediately buy a decent chunk of land in the middle of nowhere, build a modest home + a guest home or two, have a hobby farm, and retire with a solid $8 million or so left. Invest, live off interest, done.
More than that should be taxed at a 100% marginal tax rate. Eliminate endless greed as a motivator.
It’s so disappointing to constantly see this type of evil envy driven nonsense posted on HN. Capitalism has delivered humanity unbelievable prosperity and improvements in living conditions.
Anyone finding themselves agreeing with ideas like 100% marginal taxes needs to look deep into their own soul and understand where it originates from and then go back and learn history and read authors like Hayek, Mises, and Sowell.
Sowell - “I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”
And a couple of homes. In the Bay Area, that’s another $10MM
I think the reason why so many of us look up to the Woz in the tech world is that he is genuine, in an industry where we see so much of the opposite regularly - and we want to be the same.
I really do wonder if this is still the case.
As a younger millenial I am somewhat familiar with the legends of yore. But not as familiar as someone older that was around when the tech world was much smaller and more intimate. Where people casually met a wild Stallman at random conferences.
Given how much bigger the software and tech world has gotten, with how much time has passed, and how much things have changed, I wonder if people still see Wozniak as tech hero and as part of casual tech culture knowledge.
There's an interesting job interview question: do you want to be more like Woz or S. Jobs? Elon Musk's management style is very Jobs-like: Motivates via manipulation and wow-factor of cutting edge, has grand visions, yet knows what factories and the market can and can't handle, tries odd drugs, etc. However, Jobs rarely stuck his nose into politics; Jobs mostly just trolled about tech.
I love the line they give Woz in the movie Steve Jobs. In the big final confrontation he says, "Your products are better than you are brother."
The movie is a fiction, but Woz apparently liked it a lot and thought that Seth Rogen did a phenomenal job playing him. So this attitude of his adds up.
"It's not binary, you can be decent and gifted at the same time"
Met Woz randomly at the San Francisco airport a few years ago[0].
One of the nicest guys in the world. Humble, kind, gracious.
[0]: https://www.facebook.com/share/1BHAeRQDGP/?mibextid=wwXIfr
This is a slight tangent, but I have not been on slashdot since the early aughts. I'm surprised that it fell into obscurity since technical forums like HN and reddit CS subreddits are thriving. Or maybe it still vibrant and I'm making assumptions?
I still check it out a few times a week, and the discussions have just fallen off a cliff, and that was the biggest draw to me as well. The articles are far less technical these days as well and tend to lean more political - and I see the draw there, those posts are the only ones that can attract over 100 comments these days, when back in its heyday pretty much everything had around 200 comments on the front page.
And it's a weird snakepit of conservative anger. On more than one occasion I have suspected bots have stolen accounts. Looking at post history on some particularly unhinged posts after the previous election, there was a pattern of people posting regularly in the 00s about only technical things and then going quiet for 5+ years and then only making comments about politics. It was fishy enough I sent some examples to the mods but never heard anything back.
It's a real shame, slashdot used to be a juggernaut, and it's just a shadow of its former self.
> it's a weird snakepit of conservative anger.
I've noticed that on teamblind as well (started to use it only recently). I didn't realize there was such hate towards foreigners in the US, especially, in the tech world which I assumed was more educated/progressive. Don't know if it's fueled by Trump or the other way around, but it's pretty scary.
Something like 80% of blind posters are Indians on h1b. Absolutely no judgements here, just saying (source: polls asking some variation of Are you Indian? appear all the time there)
Slashdot refused to moderate comments in an effective manner. Comment section was always full of bad memes that became stale:
* Lot of rickrolling. but replace Rick Astley by Goatse, Tubgirl, or LemonParty.
* Frist post
* BSD is dying
* GNAA
* Nathalie Portman
* Robotic Overlord
* In Soviet Russia
* Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these memes
* etc.
Then it becames fixated on SCO and basically became Darl McBride News, for years...
However, what was interresting was their qualified upvote system. You did not simply upvote or downvote, but needed to add a qualifier to it: +1 Informative, +1 Insightful, +1 Interesting, +1 Funny, -1 Troll, -1 Offtopic, -1 Flamebeat. I never seen such a system elsewhere.
You forgot Cowboy Neal, you insensitive clod!
I used to be a meta moderator there. But you're right, you need to have a strong "hand" or the communities like that fall apart.
Their original owners also sold the site.
slashdot stopped allowing easy new user sign ups a while back. Now its the same folks over and over, very predictable. A number of those old memes have died out, mostly. They really limited ascii art which helped too. There do seem to be a lot of trolls/psyops in the comments.
jesus this takes me back
slides a bowl of grits down the front of his pants
Skimfeed, my entry point into HN, still indexes /. threads, so I still check it out from time to time. Definitely not what it was in the cmdrtaco days, but it has gems in there sometimes still.
I've never been on slashdot before. And what stands out to me is it's really hard to follow the UI. It's better than the classic forum layout but it's still just not easy to read, I just can't see myself using it. Though I have similar opinions on new reddit and it is pretty popular so I think I don't represent the possible new user.
What seems more relevant is that I didn't know about it at all which seems common with many older internet sites dying a slow dead of no new users as younger audiences are literally unable to discover the site.
IMO Slashdot always had some very narrow focus points and the community pretty predictable.
Not a lot of variety in content or community compared to the digs or reddits of the world.
personally hoping for a cultural shift back to smaller decentralized communities
I like the idea, although smaller communities I find now a days to be far less formal and respectful than the slashdot heydays. The ride or die fans of a given thing or community sometimes are strange folks. People greatly upset by differing opinions and so on.
I believe it, as old ossified communities go. I remember a few old vbulletin spots that went through an exodus and often the ones who stick around are trolls, spammers, or odd ducks and people addicted to snark.
Yeah, that was my take too. I used to be on it regularly 15-20 years ago, great nitty-gritty tech plus usually good-natured snarky techy humor; but haven't even visited in over a dozen years.
just checked, my last comment was in 2014... damn
/. was done after the Slashdot Beta mess. Never recovered.
The most telling thing to me about Woz's personality was this walkthrough at the CHM. Note the section about the homebrew scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsB8Hxnb52o
Here's my Woz story... (from a ~decade ago)
I had gone to SFO to drop off my mom at the airport. After dropping her, I saw somebody who looked like Woz at the Delta First Class queue. I hung back to let him do his chat with the airline agents.
As soon as he was finished, he turned around and I was sure it was him. He had his trade-marked backpack full of electronics on his torso.
Approached him gingerly to ask, "Are you, umm, Mr Woz?"
If he seemed surprised / annoyed, he didn't show.
Then I got tongue-tied... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ In a brief second, the entire history of Apple came flooding to me...
I blurted at him that he was a boyhood hero of mine and just thanked him for his contributions, etc. (which is true, I do admire him)
He seemed surprised. He said folks these days have sports heros, and was glad to hear what I said. Inquired about me / my work (also tech), my brief journey, etc. Exchanged a few pleasantries. That was it.
I didn't have any elevator pitch or anything. I came away genuinely happy having met him in person.
I always think about this:
> At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10651136-at-a-party-given-b...
Catch-22 is a fantastic read as well!
Steve Wozniak is one of the kind of people that makes you happy knowing they exist.
The rest of the story. https://slashdot.org/story/445414
Woz was always the best Steve at apple
Easy to say when you have so much money, you don't need to worry about your next job.
1) Love to see this 2) Totally checks out that the woz is still active on /.
Happy Birthday, Woz!
Not even when you created that Woz coin in 2021? Whatever it was called...
I suppose that depends on whether or not he did it to get a huge pay day or if he just did it because he genuinely thought it was a cool way to try to encourage energy efficiency (but didn't make bank off that backing). Selling out isn't the same thing as not always picking the right thing.
Woz we all love you , for real. When I was a kid and I got to know who was this guy that invented RGB , that was always smiling… you changed our lives
The question is would he have been happy if he hadn't been successful?
I think worst case he is going to be a successful HP engineer, definitely not as rich but can probably still retire early and do some teachings.
Success in itself is not a sufficient condition of happiness. How many unhappy billionairs are out there?
That would be my guess. Or you can even consider that him focusing on happiness led to success.
(For his definition of success, which I would agree with, but not everyone would)
Apparently he was so happy with integers that Apple had to license Basic from Microsoft.
Unfortunately, he never got around to creating the floating point routines for the version of Basic he created for the 8-bit Apple computers which had unfortunate results:
huh, does everyone forget this happened?
Here I thought you were about to link something genuinely bad, like a sexual allegation, and you link him creating a blockchain coin (that was probably indeed useless) in 2020 at a time when all anyone was talking about in tech was how the blockchain was going to change everything and EVERYONE was launching blockchain-based apps.
Do you really think he did this with bad intentions? He almost certainly just thought it was cool and maybe would be useful or profitable. There's no reason to frame this as if it's a reason to ignore everything else about him. Completely disingenuous. Honestly shame on you imo. As if everyone who bought into the blockchain hype is a bad person.
I hope by the time you're 75 you don't have people linking a single failure to sum up and dismiss your entire character and the work of your entire lifetime.
It's kind of nostalgic. Man, back in the day people would flip out on you if you used the wrong technology: "You fucking microserf!"
There's a strange sense of joy I feel about someone being upset that he made a blockchain app. In some parallel universe we're still in the old world of the '90s culturally and engineers go online to yell at each other for which data structure they use. "You asshole! Did you just use distributed hash tables?!"
Wow, I didn't know that. Disappointing.
Sounds like an accomplished life
Love to see this.
I heard Woz give a talk (or Q&A?) at a conference and it was very enjoyable, even for someone who doesn't know much about Apple's history.
If we are to believe his word about not selling out, then I must assume that https://www.efforce.io/company also brings him more smiles than frowns. I suppose if you change the definition of "sell out" you can conventionally sell out without meeting your own definition. That said, I am reluctantly open to being shown evidence that the company isn't a grift.
Woz is the FUCKING MAN.
He was on Dancing with the Stars, ffs. Before it got enshittified after Len died. (How did he even get that gig?)
He's doing it right.
i won a bid on Juliens for a book that was at some point given to Jobs by Woz.
the dedication reads:
"to the terminally ill, Woz"
I adore Woz, I hope my friends keep pulling a leg on me on my worst days too. Woz is all a man need in a good friend. exemplary
bonus: it's a computer science jokes book Woz wrote
to me life is about getting $10 million so i can be happy by not having to go to work everyday.
I love how someone took clips of Woz smiling his way through "Dancing with the Stars," and spliced them into a song about "doing it for fun," and for passion...
Love Woz but Woz U is definitely a sell out.
Some quotes relevant quotes from the net/youtube:
"I didn’t want to be corrupted, ever, in my life. I thought this out when I was 20 years old. A lot of basic ethics is truth and honesty, and I’m going to be an honest person. I’m not going to be corrupted to where I do things for the sake of money. I don’t want to be in that group (chasing power and wealth), I just want to have a nice life, a good life, maybe better than a typical engineer. But I gave away a lot of my money. I’m very comfortable with who I am, I’m not one of those private jet people. Part of my philosophy was everything you do should have an element of fun in it. I came up with the formula for happiness, what life is about. Happiness to me is smiles minus frowns, H=S-F. Increase your smiles, do a lot of fun things, enjoy entertainment, talk with people, make jokes. That’s creativity." -- The Guardian interview, 3 May 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2016/may/03/wisdom...
"My starting point was the desire to be a good person. So, I came up with a lot of different values, largely based on truth being the most important thing of all, and the value of what's called ethics. And I just said, I want to be in the middle, where I can associate with the maximum number of people. People are one of the most important parts of this life. Who you are, who your friends are, how you can talk to them—it was important to me because I was shy; I was an outsider. And I wanted to be in the middle, not one of these extreme "way up" people where you can only deal with other "way up" type people. Part of my thinking, was to be open-spirited to people. Part of that was not to build a hierarchy. [..] I wanted to build a philosophy, not a hierarchy. Just say, "Hey, I'm going to present how I think," and if somebody else has a different way of thinking, they just have a different mind. They're not bad, they're just different. So I developed a lot of these different philosophies for life, including things like the desire to make the world better with technology and computers. So, I didn't forget who I was. After a bit of success happened, it also goes to your head; you want to have more value and more money. That's good, that's fine. But I was just one who never sought those goals. I never wanted to be so above everybody else that I would kind of forget them and shove them aside. [..] I think more people should know who they are, decide who they are, think about it, and decide to be that person they want to be." -- Encuentro Nacional Coparmex 2017 in Queretaro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZVPz3T-8JA
"Seth Rogen, who portrayed Woz in the 2015 movie Steve Jobs, described him to Variety as “immensely lovable,” “sweet, compassionate, caring” and “the kind of guy you want to give a hug to.” Throughout his career – in numerous interviews and in iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon, his memoir written with Gina Smith – Wozniak has always been a fount of knowledge and wisdom, whether speaking on subjects like innovation and entrepreneurship, the importance of honesty, or Star Trek and The Big Bang Theory. Think of them as aphorisms by Woz or, as we like to think of them, Woz-isms."
3 Woz-isms:
“Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me – they’re shy and they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone – best outside of corporate environments, best where they can control an invention’s design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee. I don’t believe anything revolutionary has ever been invented by committee. Because the committee would never agree on it!”
“You need to believe in yourself. Don’t waver. There will be people – and I’m talking about the vast majority of people, practically everybody you’ll ever meet – who just think in black-and-white terms. Most people see things the way the media sees them or the way their friends see them, and they think if they’re right, everyone else is wrong. So a new idea – a revolutionary new product or product feature – won’t be understandable to most people because they see things so black and white. Maybe they don’t get it because they can’t imagine it….Don’t let these people get you down.”
“Start out with tiny projects that aren’t worth any money in the world, but that’s how you develop your brain and that’s how you learn. Every project you work on in your life – I just look at my own life as an example – is the prior project and a little better and a little more. And every technique you come up with for doing things better you keep forever in your head.” -–Interview with Prof. Alan Brown"
https://www.zurich.com/media/magazine/2022/the-wise-words-of...
I randomly rewatched Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) last night. Recommended.
I don't like idolization of rich people. Yea, Woz was great for the contribution to computing.
He did sell out though, launching a billion dollar crypto ico which is now at a valuation of around million dollar. Sure anyone would be happiest person ever.
/S
He also famously engineered a bomb hoax in highschool, down to building a ticking device that was heroically disabled by, iirc, the school principal. Today, such behavior would easily end in terrorism charges.
It is all laughing a fun, until you meet people whose futures were destroyed for doing far less in regards to fake weapons in schools.
Say it ain't so!
My son accidentally brought a knife to school at age 12 -- maybe a 4 inch blade. When he realized that he had a knife in his backpack, he told his teacher. He was suspended from school for about 3 days and we had a fairly pleasant conversation with the principal after the suspension.
I myself have been suspended for having a "weapon". The weapon in question was a bent paper clip. No I'm not kidding.
You probably remember when the cops would get called if you were caught with a cell phone or a pager at school.
I remember back in elementary school the YW in my class brought a huge kitchen knife with him in his backpack. He showed it to me. Later that day, he slightly cut himself with it in the toilet over a broken heart or something like that. Next day he was back to school. We called him sleeping bag because he was wearing his pants so low
When I was at university, one of my classmates was a cop. He was petrified because that day, due to schedule issues, he had all his cop stuff locked in the trunk of his personal car. At the time, having that sort of weaponry on campus was a big deal. He would have been better off comming to class in full uniform (the exception for cops would not apply if he wasnt on duty or at least in uniform.) He knew what might happen if someone discovered his handgun/taser/mace was on campus.
> Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about Happiness, which is Smiles minus Frowns
For me happiness is a terrible life goal. Sure it's nice to be happy, but its such a vapid meaningless emotion. If I were to optimize for "happiness" I would just cash out, abandon my family, move to Vietnam, play video games and eat Hot Pockets all day. It doesn't take much to ride out the rest of my years.
But the life I choose is hard because doing hard things is good and fulfilling. I often willfully forgo happiness because, you know, I'm an adult. Maybe I'm just stupid?
I think you conflate happiness and pleasure. Maintaining a family surely not always pleasant, but for the most people it makes you happier than being alone.
Abandoning your family does generally not sound like a recipe for happiness to me, given a somewhat healthy relationship.
If you think doing hard things is good and fulfilling, maybe that's what is happiness to you.
Happiness does not mean good and fulfilling.
Having a family is hard. For instance, people with children are consistently less "happy" than their childless peers, yet many choose to have children knowing that. If you optimize for happiness you may be optimizing for selfish empty shallow existence. I'm sure you can take a drug to make you "happy" but that seems foolish.
> Happiness does not mean good and fulfilling.
it does
Happiness in it of itself is not good. An addict might be "happy" in the throws of his addiction. It's not "good"
And it's certainly not fulfilling. It's typically surface level feeling of satisfaction. Were happy playing mindless videogames
But I guess everyone is entitled to their own definition
Yeah, I also think you're mixing up pleasure and happiness.
> If I were to optimize for "happiness" I would just cash out, abandon my family, move to Vietnam, play video games and eat Hot Pockets all day.
That sounds like hedonism, not happiness.
> But the life I choose is hard because doing hard things is good and fulfilling.
Fulfillment is a big component of happiness. Aristotle famously contrasted hedonism (seeking pleasure) and eudaimonia (meaning and fulfillment) in Ethics iirc and mostly agreed with you— happiness is found eudamonia, not hedonism.
I'll also mention, hedonism is most often associated with money, because pleasures can be bought, but eudaimonia is only achieved through meaning, wisdom, action, etc.
You don't think Wozniak is using "happy" to mean "fulfilling"? This is a strawman.
that is an upfront assumption about what happiness would look like, if you got a few months into that plan you would realize that meaning and fulfilment go farther with happiness
Why would abandoning your family make you happy?
I feel like you seem to have an entirely different definition of happiness than most other people. Are you confusing hedonism with happiness?
Happiness is a positive emotion, pleasure, or contentment. It tends to be episodic and reactive, arising from enjoyable experiences, satisfying desires, or reaching short-term goals.
I am "happy" watching Netflix (smile). I am not happy on a long vacation with screaming children (frown).
If you were to optimize for smile - frown, you would do more Netflix, less children. In fact childless people report themselves much happier than people with children.
I still think you're confusing happiness with pleasure