A wise leader surrounds themself with people they can truly trust in. In this message we see a glimpse into the dynamic between Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold, and my main takeaway is that Bill truly trusts Nathan here, enough to be vulnerable and speak openly about his worries.
While it's humorous and perhaps even enlightening to think of him as a "child king", I don't think he was only "seeming hurt" here or manipulating (unless you count all forms of emotional appeal as manipulation). Being honest and straight is a very effective way to lead those close to you.
It's also the leader's job to worry about threats like this and direct the attention of his advisors.
I'm just not seeing your pangloss-like explanation in the real world. Gates' words are very carefully crafted. He's not being vulnerable, he's being a leader and that means engaging in the Machiavellian action of manipulation and dishonesty to get the outcome he wants. Nathan knows he's being yelled at without being yelled at, its face-saving for both of them. This is saying "Why the fuck are you sleeping on Java, your future here depends on fixing the Java problem and telling me how you're going to do it," without saying that.
That's what I was trying to point out in my original comment. The "nice" and "hurt" leader is a common ploy and it gets results.
I see where you're coming from in the general case; I think it has been well established that leadership positions attract people well described by the dark triad. However, I don't agree that being a leader has to revolve around manipulation and dishonesty, and I've certainly seen this in the real world.
Even if Bill Gates has the dark triad traits I do not think they were on display in this particular email exchange. I truly don't think they were engaging in any "face-saving" here -- Nathan had been working for Microsoft for 10 years at this point, leading Microsoft Research and rising to the first ever Microsoft CTO. They coauthored a book called "The Road Ahead" in 1995. Bill has called him the greatest hire he made at Microsoft.
From every single source I've come across it seems clear that Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold are friends and share a deep mutual respect. No wonder they are still working together in 2021! You'd think after a lifetime of supposed abuse Nathan would have stopped working with him after becoming a billionaire, right?
Last time there was a bundle like this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14791255) dsacco wrote an awesome comment with recommendations on which books to pick up. Any chance for another round?
The entire $15 tier is worth it, except for maybe the IDA Pro book if you have no interest in either reversing or using IDA Pro. It's mostly a software reference.
Book of PF & Absolute OpenBSD are somewhat essential if you have interest in OpenBSD, but the latter is skippable if you're a seasoned neckbeard/sysadmin.
I can't really say anything else about the lower tier books, but the 35% off coupon is quite nice.
Speaking of BSD. While the OpenBSD guys are not on the Humble charity list, The FreeBSD Foundation is, and both Peter N.M. Hansteen and Michael W. Lucas (the authors of the two of the respective books you mentioned) seem to be into FreeBSD also.
So to anyone else buying the bundle primarily for the books on OpenBSD, and who happen to support FreeBSD also:
3. When you go to pay for the books adjust the sliders so that you give some percentage (I chose 100%) to charity and under charity adjust the slider for The FreeBSD Foundation (once again I chose 100%).
Good advice on setting your charity. I'd be hesitant for mass amount of people going 100% charity as this needs to be worth it for both starch and humblebundle in order to get similar deals :)
I feel like it may be a yes, but just to ask: would the OpenBSD books be of benefit for someone wanting to get started with FreeBSD? I'm guessing the answer is more likely a percentage, somewhere > 50%.
If you're using PF instead of IPFW on FreeBSD, for that book yes.
I would actually say maybe/maybe-not for the other book. MWL writes great stuff but the book is sort of specific to OpenBSD (and even a little bit outdated then: sudo vs doas). You could probably get the same out of deep reading of man pages. If you don't know your way around man or BSD init yet, then yes, pick it up.
The physical books from this list I own are actually great (Metaploit guide, Pentesting, Book of PF, Art of Exploitation, The IDA Pro Book, and Practical Packet Analysis). I am buying this bundle because I'd love to have PDFs of these, and I'm thinking the other books must be good if they're bundled with these others which I find useful.
I'm not the only one who think Safari is a joke compared to the competition. While IE6 was much much worse than what Safari is today, I feel like history is repeating itself again. And ES6 support is irrelevant when the main goal is to make sure websites renders and behave correctly, which is more painful for Safari than the other browsers.
