[HN Gopher] Steve Wozniak: Life to me was never about accomplish...
___________________________________________________________________
Steve Wozniak: Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about
happiness
Author : MilnerRoute
Score : 403 points
Date : 2025-08-14 18:19 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (yro.slashdot.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (yro.slashdot.org)
| johndoe0815 wrote:
| Happy Birthday, Woz!
| lordleft wrote:
| 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?
| duxup wrote:
| 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.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| personally hoping for a cultural shift back to smaller
| decentralized communities
| duxup wrote:
| 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.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| 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.
| ModernMech wrote:
| /. was done after the Slashdot Beta mess. Never recovered.
| ghssds wrote:
| 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.
| fibers wrote:
| jesus this takes me back
| GloriousMEEPT wrote:
| _slides a bowl of grits down the front of his pants_
| ec109685 wrote:
| 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.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| You forgot Cowboy Neal, you insensitive clod!
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| 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.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| just checked, my last comment was in 2014... damn
| kevstev wrote:
| 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.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > 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.
| lbrito wrote:
| 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)
| daedrdev wrote:
| 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.
| nunez wrote:
| 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.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| 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.
| deeg wrote:
| 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.
| ModernMech wrote:
| 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.
| namrog84 wrote:
| 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.
| vjk800 wrote:
| 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".
| prmph wrote:
| Nah, plenty of millionaires and even billionaires who have a
| license to print money are unhappy.
| Loughla wrote:
| Are they though? I know that's a trope (poor little rich
| kid). But is that real life?
| pstuart wrote:
| 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.
| ivape wrote:
| Why do we have to keep saying Jobs was not a good person?
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| A lot of people have PTSD from ~2021 and are still looking
| over their shoulder
| cm2012 wrote:
| He really was an asshole in his life in ways that are
| considered notably anti-social.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is helpful to at least push back a little bit on the
| pass that rich/famous people typically get.
| soganess wrote:
| 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."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Brennan-Jobs
| t-3 wrote:
| 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.
| teachrdan wrote:
| > 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.
| soganess wrote:
| 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.
| foobarian wrote:
| > Is being a neglectful or unloving parent equal to being
| a bad person
|
| It absolutely is, in my opinion
| majkinetor wrote:
| 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.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| > Is being a neglectful or unloving parent equal to being
| a bad person?
|
| Umm . . . yes?
| nimbius wrote:
| 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.
| kulahan wrote:
| 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?
| antonvs wrote:
| 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.
| kulahan wrote:
| 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.
| sssilver wrote:
| I'd hang out with you.
| perching_aix wrote:
| > 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?
| MaKey wrote:
| > [...] but who CARES about the other stuff?
|
| I care about someone fucking over his business partner.
| kulahan wrote:
| 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.
| Loughla wrote:
| Alternate option: I also don't approve of those people
| either?
| recursive wrote:
| 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.
| 8note wrote:
| 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
| perching_aix wrote:
| 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.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| 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...
| perching_aix wrote:
| 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.
| gooseus wrote:
| 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.
| kulahan wrote:
| 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.
| brandall10 wrote:
| 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.
| kulahan wrote:
| I had no idea - I'll be diving into this next! Thanks so
| much for the suggestions!
| kube-system wrote:
| 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.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| For the same reason people dislike Elon Musk and really
| like Jensen Huang.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Let's start with:
| https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-
| bastards-29236...
| pyrale wrote:
| _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.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Because so many people worship him like he's God
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| 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.
| jraph wrote:
| 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.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| 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
| jraph wrote:
| > 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.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| you have admirable discipline and restraint
| jraph wrote:
| Thanks for the compliment! I'm glad you took it
| positively.
| rurp wrote:
| 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.
| threetonesun wrote:
| 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.
| microtherion wrote:
| 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.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| 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.
| cma wrote:
| 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.
| lazyeye wrote:
| 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?
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > 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.
| pstuart wrote:
| Absolutely -- without Woz apple never would have been a
| glimmer in Jobs' eye.
| vasco wrote:
| 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.
| moolcool wrote:
| "If you're so smart, why aren't you kind?"
| glitchc wrote:
| Because people take advantage of your kindness and leave
| you feeling used.
| jameson wrote:
| 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.
| albumen wrote:
| You need to move into a different industry/society. These
| things are not ubiquitous.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| 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.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| 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".
| moolcool wrote:
| I think this is a cynical take-- you can be kind without
| being a doormat.
| kulahan wrote:
| 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.
| turtlebro wrote:
| 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.
| lokimedes wrote:
| 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.
| delusional wrote:
| 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.
| antonvs wrote:
| > 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.
| Swizec wrote:
| > 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...
| deeg wrote:
| 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.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| 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.
| bearl wrote:
| 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 naivete.
| petsfed wrote:
| 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.
| kragen wrote:
| He's a lot better off than Jobs now!
| techpineapple wrote:
| I've long highly valued this kind of naivety, so if it's
| not naivety, it's a shame.
| firefax wrote:
| 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.
| bko wrote:
| [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?
| croes wrote:
| What do you consider the positive and negative effects of
| people like Jobs?
| CjHuber wrote:
| I mean are the iPhone and computing that feels frictionless
| really a net positive for society?
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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.
| jraph wrote:
| 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! :-)
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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.
| jraph wrote:
| > 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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.
| CjHuber wrote:
| 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
| callc wrote:
| 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"
| bko wrote:
| 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.
| callc wrote:
| 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.
| bko wrote:
| 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.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > 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.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >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.
| xyst wrote:
| > 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.
| nashashmi wrote:
| 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.
| pyrale wrote:
| > 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.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You made me lol. Microsoft's feats of assholishness and
| bullies is pretty legendary.
| _mu wrote:
| _> 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
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Less Jobs, more Woz
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| 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.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Please don't kid yourself
|
| All of these men today are the way they are because they
| are trying to emulate Jobs
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Not that I wish it on any of them, but getting cancer
| changes you.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| 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.
| layer8 wrote:
| Present-day Apple could use some more Jobs, though.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| 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?
| loveit___ wrote:
| 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.
| LandoCalrissian wrote:
| 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.
| davidmurphy wrote:
| Love to see this.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| 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.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| Say it ain't so!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Mohamed_clock_incident
| irchans wrote:
| 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.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| I myself have been suspended for having a "weapon". The
| weapon in question was a bent paper clip. No I'm not kidding.
| platevoltage wrote:
| You probably remember when the cops would get called if you
| were caught with a cell phone or a pager at school.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| 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.
| trallnag wrote:
| 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
| softwaredoug wrote:
| 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...
| codyb wrote:
| Catch-22 is a fantastic read as well!
| mrtksn wrote:
| Steve Wozniak is one of the kind of people that makes you happy
| knowing they exist.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| 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.
| atonse wrote:
| 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?
| tempestn wrote:
| Remember you need enough left over to throw off an income to
| maintain your yacht and private jet. Those things aren't
| cheap.
| atonse wrote:
| Fair enough. So then I'd just fly first class or use
| Netjets all the time?
| bee_rider wrote:
| But surely you are creative enough to come up with the
| "buy a jet" solution (just, too sensible to actually go
| with it).
| qaq wrote:
| Art
| atonse wrote:
| Yeah but doesn't art and similar collectors items usually
| make you MORE money?
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| 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...
| azinman2 wrote:
| $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.
| dbingham wrote:
| 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.
| phkahler wrote:
| 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.
| jama211 wrote:
| 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.
| dkural wrote:
| 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.
| rurp wrote:
| 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.
| bakkoting wrote:
| The 7.2% number is already adjusted for inflation.
| Historically the stock market has gotten about 10%
| nominal return, 6.5-7% real.
| stripe_away wrote:
| 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, ...
|
| https://www.modwm.com/lost-decade-of-the-1970s/
| NoLinkToMe wrote:
| > 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).
| cloverich wrote:
| 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.
| testing22321 wrote:
| 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".
| dpkirchner wrote:
| 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.
| ethersteeds wrote:
| 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...
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| ... and, hopefully, before the professional arm candy
| starts "accidentally" bumping into you in line at the
| coffee shop.
| echelon wrote:
| 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.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| 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.
| gizmodo59 wrote:
| 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.
| sseagull wrote:
| 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...
| orthoxerox wrote:
| I wanted to buy a thousand tanks for my own private army,
| but it's a pain to buy them one by one.
| artursapek wrote:
| 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"
| dcminter wrote:
| 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 :)
| danschuller wrote:
| 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.
| kleiba wrote:
| Nice house, nice car, allowance for everyday stuff (food,
| bills, etc.) and travel, and a little bit of money for
| retirement.
|
| The rest: charities.
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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...
| xyst wrote:
| > 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.
| jama211 wrote:
| 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.
| Natsu wrote:
| > 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.
| saclark11 wrote:
| Sounds like you'll love "Spend Bill Gates' Money" [1]
|
| [1]: https://neal.fun/spend
| which wrote:
| 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
| jama211 wrote:
| Not to be that guy as I think your point is fantastic, but
| 1bn dollar yachts exist, probably just to break your
| question! Haha
| jp57 wrote:
| 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.
| ponector wrote:
| 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.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go.
|
| High end audio equipment. Done. Next!
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| 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.
|
| [0]: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Safe_withdrawal_rates
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| 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.
| deepsun wrote:
| > try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go.
|
| https://neal.fun/spend/
| missedthecue wrote:
| 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.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| >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
| eps wrote:
| > _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.
| thaumaturgy wrote:
| 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.
| bearl wrote:
| 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.
| renewiltord wrote:
| 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.
| jppope wrote:
| 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.
| artursapek wrote:
| 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.
| anon191928 wrote:
| 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.
| threatofrain wrote:
| 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.
| qaq wrote:
| Depends on where person wants to live
| threatofrain wrote:
| You can live in the Bay Area.
| qzw wrote:
| 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.
| delusional wrote:
| > 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.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| >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
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| 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.
| gota wrote:
| 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
| dfee wrote:
| And a couple of homes. In the Bay Area, that's another $10MM
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| 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.
| zarzavat wrote:
| 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.
| delusional wrote:
| 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.
| kube-system wrote:
| Earth has about 3 acres of habitable land per person.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| 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.
| ..
| dismalaf wrote:
| 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.
| csallen wrote:
| 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.
| nicbou wrote:
| 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.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| 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.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| 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.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| More than that should be taxed at a 100% marginal tax rate.
| Eliminate endless greed as a motivator.
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| 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."
| bko wrote:
| > 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?
| Trasmatta wrote:
| 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?
| bko wrote:
| 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.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I still think you're confusing happiness with pleasure
| jstummbillig wrote:
| 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.
| bko wrote:
| 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.
| aylmao wrote:
| > Happiness does not mean good and fulfilling.
|
| it does
| bko wrote:
| 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
| buttercraft wrote:
| Yeah, I also think you're mixing up pleasure and
| happiness.
| aiono wrote:
| 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.
| aylmao wrote:
| > 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.
| jdelman wrote:
| You don't think Wozniak is using "happy" to mean "fulfilling"?
| This is a strawman.
| mclau157 wrote:
| 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
| justin66 wrote:
| Love Woz but Woz U is definitely a sell out.
| cole-k wrote:
| 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.
| lysace wrote:
| I randomly rewatched _Pirates of Silicon Valley_ (1999) last
| night. Recommended.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Not even when you created that Woz coin in 2021? Whatever it was
| called...
| zamadatix wrote:
| 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.
| bryceacc wrote:
| huh, does everyone forget this happened?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25330613
| sn0wtrooper wrote:
| Wow, I didn't know that. Disappointing.
| windowshopping wrote:
| 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.
| stusmall wrote:
| 1) Love to see this 2) Totally checks out that the woz is still
| active on /.
| mocmoc wrote:
| 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
| gabrielsroka wrote:
| The rest of the story. https://slashdot.org/story/445414
| testfrequency wrote:
| 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).
| ProAm wrote:
| > 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.
| testfrequency wrote:
| Nobody calls Woz "Steve", he's almost always referred to as
| Woz.
| ProAm wrote:
| 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.
| justin66 wrote:
| 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._
| Fricken wrote:
| 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.
| jasoneckert wrote:
| 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.
| preommr wrote:
| 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.
| mnadkvlb wrote:
| 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
| itsthecourier wrote:
| 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
| c4pt0r wrote:
| https://www.juliensauctions.com/en/items/23156/steve-jobs-co...
|
| that's cool!
| MilnerRoute wrote:
| 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...
|
| https://youtu.be/3FzuZdZLt54?si=l1hyv_ouGOcYD-ez
| judah wrote:
| 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
| craigmoliver wrote:
| Apparently he was so happy with integers that Apple had to
| license Basic from Microsoft.
| WillAdams wrote:
| 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:
|
| https://www.folklore.org/MacBasic.html
| WorldPeas wrote:
| 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
| nunez wrote:
| 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.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| 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.
| squigz wrote:
| "It's not binary, you can be decent and gifted at the same
| time"
| dileeparanawake wrote:
| Sounds like an accomplished life
| aatd86 wrote:
| The question is would he have been happy if he hadn't been
| successful?
| xorvoid wrote:
| That would be my guess. Or you can even consider that him
| focusing on happiness led to success.
| xorvoid wrote:
| (For his definition of success, which I would agree with, but
| not everyone would)
| alkyon wrote:
| Success in itself is not a sufficient condition of happiness.
| How many unhappy billionairs are out there?
| markus_zhang wrote:
| 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.
| fsiefken wrote:
| 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...
| billy99k wrote:
| Easy to say when you have so much money, you don't need to worry
| about your next job.
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