Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Pillette, and
Speaker 1: I am an editor here at how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as usually as senior writer Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: father wears his Sunday best mother's tired, she needs arrest.
Speaker 1: The kids are playing up downstairs. I never could get
Speaker 1: that line. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. I have
Speaker 1: a feeling madness. I tell you madness. I figure it's
Speaker 1: a colloquialism, but I'll settle for that. Sott. Yes, you
Speaker 1: happen to know who lives at eighteen thirty five seventy
Speaker 1: three Avenue, Northeast, Medina, Washington. Well I do, but I'll
Speaker 1: pretend I don't know who that would be. Bill Gates. Ah, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: Bill Gates, the billionaire, the founder of Microsoft, the amazing philanthropist.
Speaker 1: I mean his philanthropic efforts have been phenomenal. That that's
Speaker 1: just me being genuine. The guy has given billions of
Speaker 1: dollars to charities. I'm sorry when you say phenomenal, I
Speaker 1: start singing phenomena in my head. So so we had
Speaker 1: some people right in on both Facebook and an email
Speaker 1: over well pretty much since we've done our did our
Speaker 1: episode about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, Ages and Ages ago.
Speaker 1: You guys might not remember those, but we did a
Speaker 1: pair of podcasts about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates because
Speaker 1: the two have very interesting parallel lives. The development of
Speaker 1: Microsoft in the development of Apple have almost the same
Speaker 1: timeline but very different pathways. Anyway, we had several people
Speaker 1: right in and say, Hey, I heard that Bill Gates
Speaker 1: has this really cool house and it's really technologically advanced,
Speaker 1: and I want to know more about it. So we
Speaker 1: did some digging and we've got some information. Now we
Speaker 1: should point out that neither of us have been to
Speaker 1: Bill Gates's house. Nope, and neither has Tyler. Tyler, you
Speaker 1: haven't been, have you? Okay that Tyler just said he
Speaker 1: has not been. Um, Josh and Chuck, strangely enough, have
Speaker 1: yet to go to Bill Gates's house, but that could
Speaker 1: change by the time this podcast goes live. Anyway. Um,
Speaker 1: what we do know we know from various articles. One
Speaker 1: big one was in u S News and World Report. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I hadn't actually read that article before doing research on it,
Speaker 1: and it is a few years old now. Um, but
Speaker 1: they do give you an idea. They even have some
Speaker 1: illustrations of what the house looks like. Of course there
Speaker 1: are photos, um, mostly you know, taken either from a
Speaker 1: boat from Lake Washington or from an airplane flying over
Speaker 1: our helicopter flying over the estate. Yes. Yes, his pool
Speaker 1: house is bigger than my house. Yeah, that was one
Speaker 1: of the interesting notes I read repeatedly across various websites.
Speaker 1: I should also say that kudos to U. S. News
Speaker 1: and World Report because you created an article that has
Speaker 1: been plagiarized widely on the internet. Um. That is a
Speaker 1: problem when you're looking for multiple sources of information. Chris
Speaker 1: and I were looking through lots and lots of different
Speaker 1: sources and we kept coming across the same paragraphs, I mean,
Speaker 1: exactly the same word for word, with the same titles
Speaker 1: and everything. And I'm thinking, where the heck that was
Speaker 1: Which one of these was the first? And it turns
Speaker 1: out it was this U. S. News and World Report article. Um.
Speaker 1: I had actually originally read about this his house in
Speaker 1: a Sky magazine article years and years ago, but the Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the whole size of it is enormous. According to
Speaker 1: that U. S. News and World Report article, if you
Speaker 1: add up all the buildings, because there are several on
Speaker 1: his on his estate, if you add up all the buildings,
Speaker 1: you get to about sixties six thousand square feet of building. Yes,
Speaker 1: the average home is around two thousand square feet, yes,
Speaker 1: which is still larger than my house. Yeah, but you know, yes,
Speaker 1: and his garage is like three times as large as
Speaker 1: the average house. Yes, it's silver six thousand square free
Speaker 1: actually one of his one of his garages. He has
Speaker 1: three of them, all right, So look we're jumping ahead
Speaker 1: of ourselves, so let's give you a quick overview. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: sixty six thousand square feet of residents if you add
Speaker 1: up all the buildings together, which U. S. News and
Speaker 1: World Report is very helpfully points out. Rather, they point
Speaker 1: out helpfully that, um, that's one point five acres one
Speaker 1: of half acres of just rooms. And uh it has
Speaker 1: seven bedrooms, twenty four bathrooms including ten full baths, six kitchens,
Speaker 1: and six fireplaces. So yeah, this is uh it's on
Speaker 1: Lake Washington. Um. If you were to get in a
Speaker 1: boat and go from Seattle across the lake. You would
Speaker 1: eventually hit his his house and then be very politely
Speaker 1: escorted off property, assuming you weren't invited. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: certain that he's very hospitable towards invited guests, but the
Speaker 1: uninvited type, I assume we meet a a friendly but
Speaker 1: stiff resistance. That's just me guessing. I have not tried
Speaker 1: to get into Bill Gates's house. I learned my lesson
Speaker 1: after going to Coubertino. Uh, that's a that's a joke.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to get into Steve jobs This house either.
Speaker 1: He actually has Between the two would be more frightened
Speaker 1: of Jobs. Um. Yeah, there's approximately ft of waterfront for
Speaker 1: the property, which costs around twenty five thousand dollars a foot.
Speaker 1: As I recall, I read an interview where he he
Speaker 1: specifically pointed that out. It was kind of interesting. It's
Speaker 1: built into a hillside. So the while there are there
Speaker 1: is this huge square footage involved, most of that is
Speaker 1: not visible or a good portion of it is invisible
Speaker 1: because it's built into a hillside. Um, and that was
Speaker 1: partly in order to improve energy efficiency. It was actually
Speaker 1: thoughtfully done. It was like, you don't I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: this enormous estate, but I want to do it in
Speaker 1: a way that is responsible. Yeah, there are there are
Speaker 1: signs that heat. Uh. And the developers took developers, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: it just hit me. Um, they took some pains to
Speaker 1: make it green, or at least greener than than you
Speaker 1: might expect for such a large place, and including the
Speaker 1: fact that there's an estuary, which is uh, you know,
Speaker 1: there's an artificial stream and wetland area. Um designed basically
Speaker 1: there there's some there are some retaining walls around the house. Um,
Speaker 1: and there's some water runoff and the estuary is designed
Speaker 1: to mitigate that somewhat. Yeah. Actually, one of the architects
Speaker 1: and designers for his estate, Jim Cutler, was the one
Speaker 1: to convince Bill Gates to include the wetlands as part
Speaker 1: of the design in order to mitigate that runoff problem
Speaker 1: that you mentioned. And according to an interview I read, uh,
Speaker 1: Cutler said that it took it took some convincing because
Speaker 1: Bill Gates pointed out that waterfront property and around Seattle
Speaker 1: is very expensive. He said, well, I paid for this
Speaker 1: waterfront property. You want me to turn into a swamp.
Speaker 1: Cutler said, well, this is a way for you to
Speaker 1: connect back to the world. It's a way for you
Speaker 1: to provide a disappearing resource because more and more people
Speaker 1: are building homes along the lake and destroying the natural wetlands.
Speaker 1: This will create wet lands that will allow salmon to spawn.
Speaker 1: It will allow wildlife to come back into the area.
Speaker 1: And according to Cutler, he says that the wet lands
Speaker 1: is now Bill Gates. One of Bill Gates's favorite UM
Speaker 1: parts What favorite features of his of his home? Pretty cool? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Color also had a couple of other interesting things to say. Um.
Speaker 1: For one thing, the a lot of the house. The
Speaker 1: house is made up of various materials, but a lot
Speaker 1: of the the wood of the house is a Douglas
Speaker 1: fur that's recycled. It actually comes from an old warehouse
Speaker 1: and lumber mill. And when Cutler talked to Bill Gates
Speaker 1: about this, back when they were first talking about building
Speaker 1: the house, that was when you may have heard about
Speaker 1: the spotted owls. You remember that the spot owls in
Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest they were in uh they were in
Speaker 1: danger because their habitat was being destroyed in lumbering lumbering.
Speaker 1: In lumber lumber yards, people were cutting down the trees
Speaker 1: that the spot owls were living in and because we're
Speaker 1: you know, walking very heavily through there and it was destructing. Yes,
Speaker 1: they were lumbering through. That was that was my mistake,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that we managed to have to highlight it. Um.
Speaker 1: It doesn't bother me at all. I do it all
Speaker 1: the time. So at any rate, you know, I just
Speaker 1: love the mental picture. It is pretty funny. I think
Speaker 1: these lumbering owls. Actually, I just imagined these enormous ones.
Speaker 1: At any rate, let's get back to the topic at hand,
Speaker 1: uh cutler. Bill Gates really wanted the Douglas fur as
Speaker 1: part of the wood being you and Color said, well,
Speaker 1: you know it's we got to find a way to
Speaker 1: do this in a responsible manner and found a guy
Speaker 1: who sold um reclaimed would essentially recycled wood, and told
Speaker 1: Bill Gates, hey, if we if if you buy, if
Speaker 1: you build a sawmill to in order to uh to
Speaker 1: um produce this repurposed wood and you know, cut it
Speaker 1: down to the right size and everything, we could build
Speaker 1: your house out of it. And Bill Gates thought this
Speaker 1: was actually a great idea, and he set up a
Speaker 1: sawmill for salvage lumber. It was called g. R. Plume
Speaker 1: and Company and Corey to Cutler. It costs a couple
Speaker 1: of million dollars to build, and Bill Gates funded it.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't you know, it was not just to
Speaker 1: build his house. It's also the idea of being able
Speaker 1: to reuse wood so that you don't have to cut down,
Speaker 1: you know, adult trees. That's pretty phenomenal too. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that that is um and I ironically enough, I
Speaker 1: guess in the way of the the Douglas fur that
Speaker 1: is used in Mr. Gates house, uh comes. It's five
Speaker 1: years old apparently, um, but it came from an ancient
Speaker 1: lumber mill. Uh so, and as part of the construction
Speaker 1: process they really polished it up and made it look
Speaker 1: really really nice. Um. The house, by the way, is
Speaker 1: in a large style, um so they used that in
Speaker 1: a stainless steel roof, and uh they made the hardware.
Speaker 1: They analyzed the hardware, so all the the metal furnished
Speaker 1: UM finishings basically look sort of used but are still
Speaker 1: you know, very very up to date. Yep. It's got
Speaker 1: lots and lots of like the above ground parts, any
Speaker 1: we have lots of glass that kind of most of
Speaker 1: the windows face west so that you get the beautiful
Speaker 1: sunsets over Seattle. And then, uh, the the house itself
Speaker 1: has a very sophisticated computer system running all the way
Speaker 1: through it. This is probably what most of our fans
Speaker 1: were curious about, was the computer system running on are
Speaker 1: in the house. Yeah. Um, it turns out this is
Speaker 1: a what we know of. It sounds like it's pretty sophisticated,
Speaker 1: pretty cool idea. And actually, Chris, you pointed out a
Speaker 1: few episodes ago and a neat update that the house
Speaker 1: could have using the the software from Connect, the capabilities
Speaker 1: of Connect. But we'll we'll get into what the original
Speaker 1: design was. We don't have any way of knowing whether
Speaker 1: or not Gates would upgrade. I mean I would imagine so,
Speaker 1: but we don't know, right because neither of us are
Speaker 1: on speaking terms of Mr Gates. Yeah, that's the That's
Speaker 1: the thing. The U. S. News and World Report, UH
Speaker 1: profile of the house is several years old. The house
Speaker 1: is built in the late ninety nineties, you believe, or
Speaker 1: mid to late nineties, and UH from the U. S.
Speaker 1: News and World War part article, you might get the
Speaker 1: feeling that the technology is somewhat dated because the report
Speaker 1: said that it's running. Um. The system that runs the
Speaker 1: house uses Windows nt uh, which you might go, ha
Speaker 1: ha ha, how old. I'm sure that it's probably been
Speaker 1: upgraded once or maybe even twice since that article was
Speaker 1: just unlivable terrible, um. But you know, honestly, it's designed
Speaker 1: to be Bill Gates's vision of the House of the future,
Speaker 1: so there's still some many things that I'm sure even
Speaker 1: if it were still running on Windows NTI. UM, I
Speaker 1: haven't seen anything that's newer than that that actually tells
Speaker 1: tells us whether or not the computer systems have been upgraded.
Speaker 1: But it's still far The functionality is far more advanced
Speaker 1: than most of the stuff that most of us have
Speaker 1: in our homes because it's got the ability to recognize
Speaker 1: individuals and taylor what's going on uh in the house
Speaker 1: around them based on the identification of the person in question,
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah. Essentially, every person gets to build their
Speaker 1: own profile, and the profile will as they move through
Speaker 1: the house, the house adjusts to the person, which is
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. It reminds me actually of did you
Speaker 1: ever see the show Eureka? Yes, Eureka had Sarah. Sarah
Speaker 1: was the home of the Sheriff of Eureka, and Sarah
Speaker 1: was an automated house. My wife could tell you the
Speaker 1: entire what the acronym stands for. I don't remember. It's
Speaker 1: like self automated residents something or other. Unfortunately I don't
Speaker 1: have the whole thing. But anyway, Sarah would could identify
Speaker 1: people as they walked in and set the profile properly. Well,
Speaker 1: Gates's house can do the same thing. Now. The way
Speaker 1: it works in Gates's house is that um it runs
Speaker 1: on well, at least originally anyway, runs on r f
Speaker 1: I D chips radio frequency chips. So each person gets
Speaker 1: a badge or a pen of some sort, pen p
Speaker 1: I in of some sort that has an r f
Speaker 1: I D chip in it. And then you create your profile.
Speaker 1: So you tell the master computer system that you know,
Speaker 1: I really like Beethoven, I really and you know, Beethoven's
Speaker 1: Seventh Symphony, second movement is my favorite piece of classical
Speaker 1: music in particular, I want that in heavy rotation, but
Speaker 1: in general Beethoven, maybe some Mozart, etcetera, etcetera. And then
Speaker 1: as you move through the house, if you weren't wanted
Speaker 1: to listen to music, it would start playing. And if
Speaker 1: you went to a different room, the music would follow you,
Speaker 1: so the music system would shut down in the room
Speaker 1: you have just left and start up in the room
Speaker 1: you just walked into. But it goes well beyond that.
Speaker 1: It goes into everything from let's say you watch you
Speaker 1: were watching a movie in one of the rooms, and
Speaker 1: then you need to move into a different room, and
Speaker 1: the television would come on and the movie would pick
Speaker 1: up exactly where it left off when you were in
Speaker 1: the other room. Or even the climate controls. Let's say
Speaker 1: that you like it a little cooler than everyone else
Speaker 1: in the house, so you've established that it should be
Speaker 1: at seventy degrees, which in whichever room you're in, the
Speaker 1: climate controls would adjust automatically as you move through. Because
Speaker 1: all of these different systems were tied into the master
Speaker 1: computer system and could be customized for a particular person.
Speaker 1: The question I have, of course, yes, how do you
Speaker 1: rank those R F I D chips so that if
Speaker 1: multiple people are in the same room, because these rooms
Speaker 1: are enormous. Some of these rooms are bigger than like
Speaker 1: a basketball court. So you sit there and think, well,
Speaker 1: if I'm the only person in this room, I'm going
Speaker 1: to feel mighty lonely. So assuming there's more than one person,
Speaker 1: I wonder how it determines which person's profile wins out. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I know who's gonna Well, I know
Speaker 1: who wins overall. Yes, exactly, exactly. Chris and I are
Speaker 1: both married, and we always know who wins in the end.
Speaker 1: It's always going to be the wife. But let's say
Speaker 1: she's not in the room, or that Bills not in
Speaker 1: the room. Let's say it's two guests. I wonder whose
Speaker 1: winds maybe the first? Yeah, I'm sorry, that's that's microsoft
Speaker 1: if Bomber. If Bombers in the room, you defer to
Speaker 1: him out of fear. You don't want to be Limb
Speaker 1: from Limb. No, he's gonna call us one of these days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we won't be able to understand anything. I'll just
Speaker 1: be screaming. Come on. I respect the heck out of
Speaker 1: him as a salesman, as as a businessman. He's far
Speaker 1: more intelligent than I am. But man, that guy intimidates
Speaker 1: the heck out of me. Just watch go to YouTube.
Speaker 1: Go to YouTube and look look up bomb Steve Bomber
Speaker 1: on YouTube, and you will see some videos of something
Speaker 1: A very intense man, Yes, intense is probably the best word. Uh. Anyhow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I got off on a tangent there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your fault. I actually went looking for the acronym for
Speaker 1: for Sarah, which which I found. But before I do that,
Speaker 1: I found that. UM actually an article on device, which
Speaker 1: you know is sci fi with the channel that shows Eureka.
Speaker 1: But um, they did a little piece on it just
Speaker 1: just this July. They called this ambient intelligence when your
Speaker 1: environment can know about you and know what's going on
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, basically make things the way you
Speaker 1: like them and taylor the environment around you. UM. And
Speaker 1: there's a group at the University of Essex and the
Speaker 1: United Kingdom that are working on a technology uh which
Speaker 1: is called I Space. UM. Yes, very appily. As some
Speaker 1: of the contents point out on the HDS it is
Speaker 1: a work aside. But they're basically trying to find ways
Speaker 1: to adapt technology like the stuff that you find in
Speaker 1: UH bill Gates home to the average person and how
Speaker 1: to make that possible. Course we've run into people like
Speaker 1: the eyelink on the she leg locks where you can
Speaker 1: have control over that and the other automated home devices.
Speaker 1: But um, I think the the idea is to make
Speaker 1: them much more usable for the average person and hopefully
Speaker 1: affordable because this stuff is expensive. And it's passive, right.
Speaker 1: I mean passive in the sense that you don't have
Speaker 1: to pick up a remote control and tell it to
Speaker 1: do these things. Right, It actually is sensing what's going
Speaker 1: on and you know, hey, Steve's in the room now
Speaker 1: I need to make you know, go ahead and turn
Speaker 1: on the coffee maker. You know, with this particular blend
Speaker 1: of being or whatever. You know, so passive from a
Speaker 1: user perspective, but active from the actual device perspective. Wow,
Speaker 1: messed in my head. Well, it's because when I said passive,
Speaker 1: I realized that, well, it's actively doing something. I meant
Speaker 1: passive from the from my like, if I were walking
Speaker 1: through the room, I'd be like, I don't have to
Speaker 1: do anything, exact and everything for me. By the way,
Speaker 1: SARAH stands for self actuated residential automated habitat. There we are,
Speaker 1: I was, I was. I only got two of those
Speaker 1: words semi rights. But but no, there there are other
Speaker 1: things that I thought were kind of strange. Um because
Speaker 1: according to the the article by Richard Folker's from This
Speaker 1: is the US News and World War War thing, you
Speaker 1: can you know, tell it you want to watch a
Speaker 1: particular TV show and you can walk through the house
Speaker 1: and the TV show will be on in whatever room
Speaker 1: you happen to be walking into. And I'm thinking it's
Speaker 1: going to be difficult to watch if you're moving from
Speaker 1: room to room. But okay, but I'm thinking, like, let's
Speaker 1: say that, you know, I mean, I can think of
Speaker 1: an example. Let's say that you want you know, you're
Speaker 1: you're watching in the living room, and then you think,
Speaker 1: I could really go for a grilled cheese sandwich right now,
Speaker 1: I'm going to walk to one of the six kitchens
Speaker 1: within this estate and make myself a grilled cheese sandwich.
Speaker 1: But then you're thinking, but that do I pause the
Speaker 1: I want to be able to watch this this show
Speaker 1: while I'm making my sandwich, But unfortunately, the kitchen is
Speaker 1: approximately a two mile walk from the living room. So
Speaker 1: how am I going to be able to do that?
Speaker 1: I'm just exaggerating for comedic effect, obviously, But then if
Speaker 1: you have again a television screen in said kitchen, there
Speaker 1: you go. Problem solved. You go into the kitchen and
Speaker 1: television pops on. It picks up right where you left off,
Speaker 1: and then you can make your sandwich while being entertained.
Speaker 1: And uh, I'm sure people are gonn right to me
Speaker 1: and barrate me for you pronouncing sandwich as sandwich. I
Speaker 1: hope not. Some other elements that they have at this house.
Speaker 1: According to various articles, the uh, there's a pool, a
Speaker 1: huge pool. Yes, seventeen by sixty foot swimming pool has
Speaker 1: an underwater music system installed in there, so you can
Speaker 1: actually listen to your music while you're swimming underneath the water. Yes,
Speaker 1: I would recommend perhaps the swimming pool cues if you're
Speaker 1: going to be listening underwater. Nice just a guess, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would. I would recommend the aquabats. That's a nice little,
Speaker 1: uh little hey. If you haven't heard the aquabats, go
Speaker 1: check them out. Any perhaps fish, Yeah, but you would
Speaker 1: drown if you would never come up for air fish
Speaker 1: because their jams last approximately three days. But the pools
Speaker 1: an indoor outdoor pool. You can actually go. You can
Speaker 1: swim under the wall, under a glass wall and emerge outside.
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty cool. Uh. There's a from the entry,
Speaker 1: there's apparently a grand staircase that is eight four steps tall.
Speaker 1: That is a very grand stair two ft long and
Speaker 1: sixty three ft high. Um, there's also an elevator, so
Speaker 1: if you need an elevator, you can have one. There's
Speaker 1: a they have a theater inside the house, Um, seats
Speaker 1: twenty and uh there's a library that is bigger than
Speaker 1: Chris's house. Yes, don't remind me square feet library. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, this is the images I saw for the library, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, we're all um they were all uh
Speaker 1: computer generated images. It wasn't like an actual photograph of
Speaker 1: an illustration. Uh. They looked amazing. And supposedly the library
Speaker 1: even has a pivoting bookcases, which is awesome, one of
Speaker 1: which hides a bar and uh I get ripped to
Speaker 1: read read Bill Gates's autobiography, that is the place to
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah. Actually, there's apparently some information about the
Speaker 1: house on the road ahead. Oh okay, so I wish
Speaker 1: I have not read. But I really wish I had
Speaker 1: known that before today. Would have been helpful to know
Speaker 1: before we started recording Plette. However, there is a very
Speaker 1: famous book in that library, apparently the Codex Lester. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's by one of my favorite guys in the whole
Speaker 1: wild world. It would be a Leonardo da Vinci. I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if I wonder if it has the code in it.
Speaker 1: The code, Oh that code, yeah, you know, the Da
Speaker 1: Vinci code. I hear a lot about it. I mean
Speaker 1: they've already got the swiveling bookcase. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: just a little bit longer. Can you imagine a scavenger
Speaker 1: hunt in his house? Holy cow? Um, But he paid
Speaker 1: thirty point eight million dollars for that book, which is
Speaker 1: a sixteenth century notebook. It's Da Vinci's notebook. It is
Speaker 1: Da Vinci's No. Oh my god. Oh we have solved
Speaker 1: the mystery right here. On tech stuff. Uh yeah, there's
Speaker 1: also all these flat pal displays that are throughout the
Speaker 1: home that will well, this is another thing that's tied
Speaker 1: into the r F I D chap Right, it's the
Speaker 1: it will display art that you like. So let's say
Speaker 1: that you go and you tell that tell Bill that,
Speaker 1: uh I call him Bill, You tell Mr Gates or
Speaker 1: you very politely mentioned at Mr Gates like I happen
Speaker 1: to really like art from the late Renaissance, and then
Speaker 1: he You can have your chip program so that every
Speaker 1: time you're walking through an area, it will automatically load images.
Speaker 1: Uh as if they were framed paintings from whichever era
Speaker 1: or artist you happen to like, and your experience is
Speaker 1: even more accustomized. It's pretty when I don't know, of course,
Speaker 1: might I be like, can you generate stuff from the
Speaker 1: Calvin and Hobbes milieu. I just sort of assumed that
Speaker 1: it would show pictures of Mr Garf uncle and Mr
Speaker 1: link Letter. Oh yeah, that's kind of art. That kind
Speaker 1: of art. Actually, I think I'll probably say Berkeley Breath,
Speaker 1: We'll go with that early Bloom County. Yeah, it's it's possible.
Speaker 1: I suppose, um you know, because I know that the
Speaker 1: r f I D uh initially used a pin you
Speaker 1: know that you'd wear on you think Star Trek communicator.
Speaker 1: I I that's how I always saw it like that
Speaker 1: from the next generation. Uh, but you know, theoretically you
Speaker 1: could have an r f I D chip implanted in
Speaker 1: you and then you wouldn't have to carry anything. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, if you have to deal with the ethics
Speaker 1: of implanting r F I D technology within a human being, yeah,
Speaker 1: which has been done? Which has been done? It's an
Speaker 1: ethical question, Yeah, certainly, but you could you could certainly
Speaker 1: do that. Um, I can just imagine that that process
Speaker 1: when you walk through the front door. All right, now,
Speaker 1: hold very still. It's like this is going to sting
Speaker 1: like crazy for about an hour. Yeah, it's like you
Speaker 1: want to get into it. You know, your study and
Speaker 1: you left your badge at the other end of the house,
Speaker 1: and it's like, you can't get in, but it's me.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Dave Nice Nice. Bill Gates's house is guarded
Speaker 1: by how fantastic um getting back to the house, there's
Speaker 1: other there's obviously other really big rooms. There's a formal
Speaker 1: dining room that can seed up to twenty four people. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a reception hall that can actually hold up to
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty people. The reception halls is kind
Speaker 1: of a separate building. It's designed for things like if
Speaker 1: you were to have like a big corporate getaway where
Speaker 1: all the executives would come to all the Microsoft executives
Speaker 1: wouldkind of Bill Gates's house. He could do a presentation there.
Speaker 1: You can have a full catered meal there. There's actually
Speaker 1: one of the kitchens is connected to that hall, and
Speaker 1: there's also this enormous screen in that um that hall,
Speaker 1: it's uh, what was it? It's twenty two ft wide
Speaker 1: video display made up of twenty four rear projection television monitors,
Speaker 1: each with screen. Actually, that may have changed too. I
Speaker 1: remember reading about another display that was some of similar size,
Speaker 1: but it was using digital projectors as opposed to rear
Speaker 1: projection screens, so it may be that that's changed. Um.
Speaker 1: There's an activities building that's nine d square foot, so
Speaker 1: if you want to be in one of the smaller rooms,
Speaker 1: you can go there. That's got a putting green. It's
Speaker 1: also got it's also the one that's connected to the
Speaker 1: boat docks. Yes. Uh, there's the three garages we talked about,
Speaker 1: including the sixty hundred square foot garage that can hold
Speaker 1: more than ten cars. Uh. There's a guesthouse. The guesthouse
Speaker 1: is just under two thousand square feet, so if you
Speaker 1: are a guest, and Bill Gates wrote much of his
Speaker 1: autobiography there, um in the guesthouse seat. That was the
Speaker 1: first building that was built on his residents, and it
Speaker 1: was sort of the testing grounds for all this technology
Speaker 1: to make sure that would work on a larger scale. Uh.
Speaker 1: The exercise room is twenty five hundred square feet, bigger
Speaker 1: than some of the gems that you've seen. I'm sure,
Speaker 1: um and apparently has a trampoline room with the twenty
Speaker 1: foot ceiling ceiling. Can you imagine bouncing high enough for
Speaker 1: twenty ft high was like a legitimate concern. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know the strength of that trampoline either. Well little
Speaker 1: isn't known that Bill Gates can leap from a standing
Speaker 1: position fifteen foot straight up in the air. Now we're
Speaker 1: getting into Chuck Norris here, because only when he's wearing
Speaker 1: punkistadors they run tight. Uh. That always a lie what
Speaker 1: I just said. Yeah, we are getting into kind of
Speaker 1: a Bill Braski Chuck Norris sort of thing. When we
Speaker 1: start talking about like that, um and you might wonder
Speaker 1: how much is this property worth? Well, in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: the property taxes on the home were reported to be
Speaker 1: one point oh six three million dollars on a total
Speaker 1: assessed value of one forty seven point five million dollars,
Speaker 1: so almost a hundred and fifty million dollar home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, I mean again, we talked about this
Speaker 1: and you think about, Wow, that's that's like, that's excess
Speaker 1: right there. Compared to some of the opulent, crazy mansions
Speaker 1: in the past. It's pretty modest. I mean, the the
Speaker 1: rooms are huge doubt they could house many, many, many people,
Speaker 1: and the technology is phenomenal and probably much more advanced
Speaker 1: than what we've laid out here, because you know, Bill
Speaker 1: Gates is a fairly private man. He's not going to
Speaker 1: necessarily publicize the technology that's in his home. I'm sure
Speaker 1: he has some Microsoft surfaces in there were around. These
Speaker 1: were first built, right, but you think about some of
Speaker 1: the other like massive homes built by millionaires and billionaires
Speaker 1: over the past, like the Hearst Castle or the built
Speaker 1: More Estate. These homes truly have access down to an
Speaker 1: art and a science. I mean, they're they're crazy. If
Speaker 1: you've ever toured any of those homes, they use your
Speaker 1: mind boggles, and how opulent and over the top they are,
Speaker 1: not necessarily like the Hearst Castle I think of as
Speaker 1: being a little tacky, and the built Ware Estate is
Speaker 1: a little less tacky, but both are way over the top, uh,
Speaker 1: compared to those Actually Bill Gates's estate, and you've got
Speaker 1: to remember he's worth several billion dollars is understated. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: I mean I find that admirable and the fact that
Speaker 1: he took energy conservation into consideration when building, when you know,
Speaker 1: having the house designed and everything. I think that says
Speaker 1: a lot too. It speaks about a very responsible approach
Speaker 1: to designing this massive estate, right Yeah. I mean it's
Speaker 1: certainly not something that that had to be uh taken
Speaker 1: into account. I mean he's you know, he could have
Speaker 1: built a house many times the size of this one
Speaker 1: and still not even dented the amount of money that
Speaker 1: he has on hand. Um. So you know, it's pretty
Speaker 1: impressive in because there's so much high technology woven into
Speaker 1: the house. Um. I think that uh um, and probably
Speaker 1: is why people find it so fascinating. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: they're there are other tech personalities who have had uh,
Speaker 1: you know houses mentioned, but I always hear Bill Gatesman
Speaker 1: house mentioned as the one that people want to know
Speaker 1: about because it's got, you know, the ability, it's got
Speaker 1: that interactive nature to it where it knows who you
Speaker 1: are and what you're doing. It's kind of creepy but
Speaker 1: also cool and yeah. Like like we said before, Chris
Speaker 1: had pointed out earlier that the Connect technology might be
Speaker 1: used now instead of r F I D because connect
Speaker 1: as you know, I'm sure he knows if you've listened
Speaker 1: to our podcast about it has cameras in it that
Speaker 1: can identify a person and link that person to a profile.
Speaker 1: So you could just theoretically switch out the r f
Speaker 1: I D readers with a series of cameras that are
Speaker 1: designed to recognize faces, and then you no longer even
Speaker 1: have to issue a pen to anyone when they enter
Speaker 1: the home. They would just walk around and the home
Speaker 1: would detect and identify the people as they walked around
Speaker 1: and adjust settings from there, which is again sort of
Speaker 1: creepy but also kind of cool. Um, So, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that's a possible. We don't know for sure. We
Speaker 1: don't know that he's done that at all. It's just
Speaker 1: a guess. Yep, yep, And it would certainly be easy enough.
Speaker 1: I'm sure to have a couple of folks from Microsoft
Speaker 1: come over and, you know, maybe plug some things in
Speaker 1: for him. Do you guys want to help me out
Speaker 1: with that? Hopefully, hopefully he doesn't have to wait long
Speaker 1: for tech support. I wouldn't imagine. So can you imagine
Speaker 1: if your house showed a blue screen of death? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that'd be rough anyway, Bill, if you're listening, Um, we
Speaker 1: would love to tour your home, either of us or
Speaker 1: both of us. We we would find we would be
Speaker 1: greatly honored. And uh and and um, I like the
Speaker 1: Ramans and uh punk music in general, just so you know,
Speaker 1: and and really, my art, let's just go with Andy Warhol.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go with Warhol for my art, okay, And
Speaker 1: so just keep that in mind, Billy and uh the
Speaker 1: rest of you. If you guys have questions, if you
Speaker 1: have comments, suggestions for future episodes, you can contact us
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