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For Microsoft, Windows 10 Charity Begins At Home
theodp writes: "We're investing $10 million in organizations that are upgrading the world," Microsoft announced on in its new Upgrade Your World website, which was created in conjunction with the Windows 10 launch. "We've identified nine global nonprofits, and we'd like your help choosing the 10th." The missions of the selected nonprofits include fighting global poverty, preventing children living with HIV from needlessly dying, increasing access to quality education for children in the developing world, conserving the lands and waters on which all life depends, and ensuring that all kindergartners learn 'computer science.' To paraphrase Sesame Street, can you guess which cause is not like the others? If you guessed Code.org, which wants CS made a "core" K-12 subject in U.S. schools, you're right! Coincidentally, Code.org's biggest donors include Microsoft ($3M+), Ballmer Family Giving ($3M+), and Bill Gates ($1M+). And Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi, who once reported to Satya Nadella, is coincidentally a sometimes jogging partner of Steve Ballmer, as well as the next-door neighbor of Microsoft General Counsel and Code.org Board member Brad Smith, whose FWD.us bio notes is responsible for Microsoft's philanthropic work. Code.org emerged on the scene shortly after Smith suggested that action on Microsoft's 'two-pronged' National Talent Strategy to increase K-12 CS education and the number of H-1B visas could be galvanized by 'producing a crisis'.
Checking the site there are other causes listed that are far more important in my opinion:
Nokia Anonymous provides psychological counseling and moral support to victims who have spent billions on a cellular phone, only to spend billions more in an endless cycle of abuse.
the Explorer education program Teaches its members to become acid compliant, and learn to quit bad behaviors like ActiveX and browser preference stealing. Ultimately the explorer programs goal is to help its mentally challenged students to learn simple things like HTML5 and even simple forms.
The Steve Ballmer Institute: No one knows what condition afflicts steve ballmer. Hes a man once known to hurl furniture in fits of paranoid delusion, only to emerge days later caked in sweat and howling a chant of 'developers' over and over, in a schitzophrenic episode. The Ballmer institute seeks to heal by studying and, in time, formulating a treatment for this rare and profoundly sad disease.
Good people go to bed earlier.