Bill Gates, Microsoft's onetime supreme lord and the current chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation took to Reddit Monday morning to allow users to ask him anything.

The tech pioneer was asked about everything from tech skeletons to personal finance - and even if he still jumps over chairs. "Less than I used to," Gates replied, and lamented that he's no longer as hard core as he once was. But from the tone of this back and forth, and the velocity of his answers, Gates proved he is still very core.

ON SOPA & Internet Freedom

When asked what his thoughts were to SOPA and a free and open Internet, Gates said the "Internet has benefited from having lots of free stuff and lots of commercial software." He danced around the SOPA issue, and instead discussed freemium versus pay models. More telling was his closing line about security and privacy, arguably one of the biggest unsolved Web issues: "I am surprised how little progress has been made in the identity space," Gates said, "but it will improve."

Some Redditors weren't that pleased with his answer, though, claiming Gates "sidestepped the question," while others defended him.

What's Next In Tech?

Not surprisingly, many participants wanted Gates' predictions on the next big innovation in tech.

"Robots, pervasive screens, speech interaction will all change the way we look at 'computers,'" Gates wrote. "Once seeing, hearing, and reading (including handwriting) work very well you will interact in new ways."

Biased he may be, but Gates is a Bing man, calling it "the better product at this point. Try the challenge. I am biased but the work to make Bing better has been amazing."

What kind of computer does Gates use? Do we even have to ask?

"I just got my Surface Pro a week ago and it is very nice," Gates said. "I am using a Perceptive Pixel display right now - huge Windows 8 touch whiteboard. These will come down in price over time and be pervasive."

Not convinced? Check this out:

Microsoft What Ifs

When asked what half-baked Microsoft product was never fully developed or released, Gates answered that his former company once worked on a "client/cloud store that was part of a Windows release that was before its time."

Redditors guessed it was the WinFS, to which Gates responded: "Correct!" He went on to say that "Vista was what eventually shipped but Winfs had been dropped by then."

On Coding And Steve Jobs

So does Gates still code? "Not as much as I would like to. I write some C, C# and some Basic. I am surprised new languages have not made more progress in simplifying programming. It would be great if most high school kids were exposed to programming."

Did Gates and Steve Jobs, arguably the two biggest Silicon heavyweights of their time, get along? While the outside word sees them as frenemies, Gates said they were closer than we knew.

"He and I respected each other," Gates explained. "Our biggest joint project was the Mac, where Microsoft had more people on the project than Apple did, as we wrote a lot of applications. I saw Steve regularly over the years, including spending an afternoon with him a few months before he tragically passed away."

How Does Gates Pause?

When not saving the world or glued to the Web, how does Gates disconnect? The answer includes tennis, bridge and reading. And a bit of nerdy travel: "I like to tour interesting things with my kids like power plants, garbage dumps, the Large Hadron Collider, Antarctica, missile silos (Arizona)."

Of course, Gates also donates millions to philanthropic causes, mostly geared toward helping children. He's even put a number on how much money he's leaving his own children: $10 million.

"I definitely think leaving kids massive amounts of money is not a favor to them. Warren Buffett was part of an article in Fortune talking about this in 1986 before I met him, and it made me think about it and decide he was right. Some people disagree with this, but Melinda and I feel good about it."

Gates' Favorites?

So what didn't you know about Gates that you're still burning to learn?

Favorite bands: Weezer and U2.

Favorite book: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, by Steven Pinker.

Photos courtesy of Bill Gates/Reddit

Today on Reddit, private commercial spaceflight company SpaceX set its software engineers loose in an AMA. On the site, AMA stands for "Ask Me Anything", and an AMA thread (found on /r/IAmA/) is a no-holds barred session of questions and answers in real-time via Reddit's nested comment system.

In the past, even President Obama stopped by an AMA for a little while to chat about the White House homebrew recipe.

At SpaceX, the engineers design code for rockets and spacecraft and the code that goes into the manufacturing process. They basically make this happen:

Want to be a professional rocket-launcher with equity in one of the hottest companies in the hottest emerging industries around? In the AMA, members of the SpaceX team explain how they scored one of the sweetest programming gigs ever, describe what it's like to work with Elon Musk and take a quick jab at North Korea, (naturally).

1. What Happens When Things Go Wrong... In Space

2. On How Big The Code Base Is

3. No Really, Pyongyang - Is That You?

4. Linux Powers SpaceX

5. On The Scope Of SpaceX's Computing Power

6. Want To Be An Astronaut? Learn C++ Instead

7. What's Next For That Whole Space Exploration Thing

8. When Can We Go To The Red Planet, Already?

Image courtesy of NASA

Aaron Swartz, Internet activist, pioneer and innovator, died on Friday. He was 26. 

Swartz committed suicide in his New York apartment, according to his family. 

(For more on the case, see The Persecution Of Aaron Schwartz, by ReadWrite's Jon Mitchell.)

Swartz was best known for creating RSS when he was 14 and later as a founding member of Reddit and Demand Progress. 

Swartz was facing legal challenges in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts from an incident in 2011 following the unauthorized download of 4.8 million scientific and literary papers from the digital database JSTOR through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. If found guilty, Swartz could have faced 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

By reports, Swartz had been dealing with depression - in part due to his legal troubles. To its credit, JSTOR had more or less forgiven Swartz for the transgression and recently made a limited supply of its digital archives available for free. MIT and the U.S. District Court were not quite as forgiving.

At the time of the indictment, Demand Progress issued a statement calling Swartz’s actions akin to, ”checking out too many library books.” In a now-infamous statement, the U.S. District Court said, "stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars."

The family, friends and partner of Swartz issued a public statement on Saturday, calling his death the “product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death.” The full statement is below.

Our beloved brother, son, friend, and partner Aaron Swartz hanged himself on Friday in his Brooklyn apartment. We are in shock, and have not yet come to terms with his passing.

Aaron’s insatiable curiosity, creativity, and brilliance; his reflexive empathy and capacity for selfless, boundless love; his refusal to accept injustice as inevitable—these gifts made the world, and our lives, far brighter. We’re grateful for our time with him, to those who loved him and stood with him, and to all of those who continue his work for a better world.

Aaron’s commitment to social justice was profound, and defined his life. He was instrumental to the defeat of an Internet censorship bill; he fought for a more democratic, open, and accountable political system; and he helped to create, build, and preserve a dizzying range of scholarly projects that extended the scope and accessibility of human knowledge. He used his prodigious skills as a programmer and technologist not to enrich himself but to make the Internet and the world a fairer, better place. His deeply humane writing touched minds and hearts across generations and continents. He earned the friendship of thousands and the respect and support of millions more.

Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death. The US Attorney's office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims. Meanwhile, unlike JSTOR, MIT refused to stand up for Aaron and its own community’s most cherished principles.

Today, we grieve for the extraordinary and irreplaceable man that we have lost.

On Sunday, MIT issued a public response on the death of Swartz, in an email to the press from MIT president L. Rafael Reif:

“I want to express very clearly that I and all of us at MIT are extremely saddened by the death of this promising young man who touched the lives of so many. It pains me to think that MIT played any role in a series of events that have ended in tragedy,” 

“I will not attempt to summarize here the complex events of the past two years. Now is a time for everyone involved to reflect on their actions, and that includes all of us at MIT. I have asked Professor Hal Abelson to lead a thorough analysis of MIT's involvement from the time that we first perceived unusual activity on our network in fall 2010 up to the present. I have asked that this analysis describe the options MIT had and the decisions MIT made, in order to understand and to learn from the actions MIT took. I will share the report with the MIT community when I receive it,” Reif wrote.

Swartz’s funeral will be held on Tuesday, January 15th at Central Avenue Synagogue, 874 Central Avenue, Highland Park, Illinois 60035. The specific time of the funeral as well as remembrances and donations can be found at the site http://rememberaaronsw.com

NOTE: As of Monday, the Justice Department has dropped its charges against Swartz today, citing his death

Top image courtesy Wikipedia.

YouTube personality and musician Alex Day made his plea on Reddit on Wednesday: help my new song "Stupid, stupid" top the charts on Christmas Day in the UK. Or don't. But if you "really wanna see it beat the traditional label acts this Christmas in the UK and beyond," then please pre-order his track on iTunes as soon as possible, as it goes live December 16. 

Is Alex Day The Future Of Music?

Alex Day is what Forbes calls "the future of music." Day has no manager and is signed to no label, and yet has still managed to get two singles in the top 20, and sell more than 300,000 downloads in 2012. All through YouTube.

Day employs no middlemen so doesn't have to divvy up his profits, which is why he is the "[embodiment of] the musician - the artist - of the future: self-sufficient, self-funded, and self-motivated." The death of the current music industry is nigh, and Alex Day is leading the hit men.

Despite being a digital do-it-yourself musical prodigy, Day did admit to the Guardian he would sign with a label if they provided him with "tour support and marketing," but otherwise, "if it means I can release the singles I want to when I want to, then I obviously just rather do it myself."

Popular Success

Getting his new single to No. 1 won't be easy, but Day's last Christmas track, 'Forever Yours,' reached the No. 4 slot last year, and made it into the Guiness book of World Records for the highest performing unsigned single in history. To date, Day's YouTube channel has seen more than 102 million views, with 597,000 subscribers. 

So far, Reddit has responded kindly to Day's plea, with his thread receiving more than 300 upvotes. His video on YouTube for his single, uploaded today, is already trending, with the viewcount frozen at the auspicious viewcount number of 301. Influential YouTubers, like the New York Times best-selling author John Green, have been tweeting his video too.