Anthropic forms $200M partnership with the Gates Foundation • Hacker News Board

Re: Anthropic forms $200M partnership with the Gates Foundation

#101

Post by kev009 » Thu, May 14, 2026, 8:33 PM UTC

kridsdale1 wrote: post #47

kev009 wrote: post #46

I'm a fan of Anthropic's product but this is incredibly tone deaf and makes me reconsider the judgement of their leadership.

Why?

Why should an outlaw with virtually unlimited resources be given oversight of money for any purpose whatsoever? Just because he has enough money to avoid consequences and the ability to constantly try to launder tarnished reputation doesn't negate the fact that this is completely optional and unnecessary. Out of however many billions of people on Earth, we can't select people with a clear record to administer public benefit operations? Absurd.

Re: Anthropic forms $200M partnership with the Gates Foundation

#102

Post by cout » Thu, May 14, 2026, 8:42 PM UTC

nathan_compton wrote: post #74

honeycrispy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The polarizing vaccine mandate is one such example of alignment.

I don't know of a single leftist who would call Gates a leftist. Liberal, perhaps, in the economic and social sense, but not a leftist in any way shape or form. I don't know why its so hard for people to distinguish between these two very different groups.

Blame Rush Limbaugh and others for conflating them in the 90s.

I don't know if people generally know the difference before that, but personally it's only been recently that I've been exposed to sources that distinguish between left and liberal.

Re: Anthropic forms $200M partnership with the Gates Foundation

#103

Post by xmcp123 » Thu, May 14, 2026, 9:08 PM UTC

adzm wrote: post #85

bombcar wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MA hate is real and well deserved but there actually was a period of time where IE was the browser of choice for all the right reasons. People forget that part, but Microsoft has really made good products when they want to.

Plus IE got the box model right in the first place. It really was a good browser and had an interesting design with COM / MSHTML for embedding. The problem really was that it stagnated and had no real competition until Chrome (even though Firefox was slowly gaining traction) Plus during this time there was little competition on the desktop market in general. iPhone and smart phones, and the Apple resurgence, was yet…

The problem was that they had no interest in having their browser abide by the standards that existed.

Re: Anthropic forms $200M partnership with the Gates Foundation

#104

Post by dyauspitr » Thu, May 14, 2026, 9:11 PM UTC

shevy-java wrote: post #25

Evil & Evil unite. To explain: first, they did not pay proper taxes, in particular the older Evil here. But even more importantly, in the USA a foundation can own patents, among other things. They need to give out a certain % on a yearly basis, but basically it is a corporation.

Gates is probably the least evil person I can think of. The truly decrepit evil lies in the halls of our government now.

Re: Anthropic forms $200M partnership with the Gates Foundation

#105

Post by dyauspitr » Thu, May 14, 2026, 9:12 PM UTC

chabes wrote: post #83

dyauspitr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d much rather have someone spike my food with antibiotics than anything else.

What purpose does a statement like this serve? Like most, I’d much rather my food not be spiked at all.

The purpose is overlooking a great man’s great achievements with some piddling nonsense no one cares about.

Re: Anthropic forms $200M partnership with the Gates Foundation

#106

Post by tombert » Thu, May 14, 2026, 9:51 PM UTC

dyauspitr wrote: post #105

chabes wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What purpose does a statement like this serve? Like most, I’d much rather my food not be spiked at all.

The purpose is overlooking a great man’s great achievements with some piddling nonsense no one cares about.

I think secretly drugging your wife is something a lot of people care about, actually.

Re: Anthropic forms $200M partnership with the Gates Foundation

#107

Post by tombert » Thu, May 14, 2026, 10:26 PM UTC

dyauspitr wrote: post #104

shevy-java wrote: post #25

Evil & Evil unite. To explain: first, they did not pay proper taxes, in particular the older Evil here. But even more importantly, in the USA a foundation can own patents, among other things. They need to give out a certain % on a yearly basis, but basically it is a corporation.

Gates is probably the least evil person I can think of. The truly decrepit evil lies in the halls of our government now.

Even if you forgive him drugging his wife, which you shouldn't, he's not exactly a good person.

Read through the antitrust stuff that happened in the 90's. He's not a good guy. I know he puts on this persona of "geeky nice guy", and I'll admit that I fell for it too long, but he's a multi billionaire, and like other multi billionaires he is not a good person.

If he is the "least evil person you can think of", then you're not thinking very hard.

Re: Anthropic forms $200M partnership with the Gates Foundation

#108

Post by baobabKoodaa » Thu, May 14, 2026, 10:41 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #107

dyauspitr wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gates is probably the least evil person I can think of. The truly decrepit evil lies in the halls of our government now.

Even if you forgive him drugging his wife, which you shouldn't, he's not exactly a good person. Read through the antitrust stuff that happened in the 90's. He's not a good guy. I know he puts on this persona of "geeky nice guy", and I'll admit that I fell for it too long, but he's a multi billionaire, and like other multi billionaires he is not a good person. If he is the "least evil person you can think of", then yo…

Oddly specific to call out multi billionaires. So a single billion is fine? The threshold is at 2?

Re: Anthropic forms $200M partnership with the Gates Foundation

#109

Post by tombert » Thu, May 14, 2026, 10:46 PM UTC

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #108

tombert wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you forgive him drugging his wife, which you shouldn't, he's not exactly a good person. Read through the antitrust stuff that happened in the 90's. He's not a good guy. I know he puts on this persona of "geeky nice guy", and I'll admit that I fell for it too long, but he's a multi billionaire, and like other multi billionaires he is not a good person. If he is the "least evil person you can think of", then yo…

Oddly specific to call out multi billionaires. So a single billion is fine? The threshold is at 2?

I'm not going to blame a fellow pedant for being pedantic :)

You could probably amend this to "billionaires", instead of the qualifying "multi billionaires".

ETA: You know, I was thinking, just because I qualified it with "multi" in front doesn't really imply that single-billionaires aren't evil. I didn't specify that serial killers are evil either, but I don't think me not specifying that implies that I think they're fine.

Re: Anthropic forms $200M partnership with the Gates Foundation

#110

Post by cma » Thu, May 14, 2026, 10:51 PM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #92

mikeyouse wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s donated something like $100 billion already… there’s no chance he’s buying farmland as an inheritance tax dodge.

He has also said it many, many times, he's not leaving his kids anything.

I was thinking Buffett said that and Gates was still leaving some. I don't know why the farmland then. Maybe to get easy access to veterinarian antibiotics.