Author here. Thanks for all the comments, I've been hesitant to post this to the court of public opinion, yet curiosity about what the HN community would think caused me to push the button. My lawyers - who were really excellent - represented me (on contingency!) because it seemed the chance of a judge not accepting a motion to dismiss (for a variety of reasons I don't want to detail here) was non-zero. And the process of discovery would be very costly for NVIDIA with depositions from many executives who have better things to do.
As a 14 year old in 1995 I advised family to put the proceeds from the sale of a house into Microsoft stock, which based on a cursory search would have ended up as some absurd number. One online calculator I'm looking at says $204,000 of stock in 1994 would be $41.2 million today after multiple splits and increase in share value. But nobody takes investment advice from 14 year olds who've spent too much time reading USENET and talking to people on IRC.
Even if they'd only put a fraction of it into MSFT and held it until only 2003 or 2004 it would have been far more than enough to retire on comfortably.
When i was 7 in 1997 my parents had a little stock ticker widget on their desktop that showed how much their stock investments were worth. Obviously it was a long time ago but I remember often seeing MSFT going red. I didn't know much about anything at the time but I knew that the windows machine i were playing on was made by Microsoft. So I asked my mom what red means and she said it means the company is not doing well and they will sell it. I remember saying something like "but Microsoft is on every computer at school I think you should buy more"
But no one listens to a 7 year old about investments! (Nor should they in most cases, i think i told her to buy more yahoo too)
I dont know how much they held or how much they sold, or if they even sold at all, just a fun memory triggered by your comment:)
As I can recall from my memory, my suggestion was also prompted by the marketing hype machine surrounding the retail boxed release of Windows 95 as a hot new thing. And by that point in time it had become quite "common" for middle class households to have a desktop PC which had a CD-ROM drive, sound card, decent "multimedia" capabilities. And people were legitimately eager to upgrade to Windows 95.
It was sufficiently mass market and popular that it was everywhere in Pacific Northwest (Portland to the Canadian border region) television and print media. It was enough of a cultural phenomenon that I remember seeing media coverage of people who lined up outside the retail boxed software store at midnight to purchase it.
Oh how times have changed :) i actively avoided upgrading to Win 11 before I decided to jump to Linux for home, and im still not on Tahoe for my work computer
Eric_Gullichsen · · focus · HN ↗
djmips · · focus · HN ↗
walrus01 · · focus · HN ↗
Even if they'd only put a fraction of it into MSFT and held it until only 2003 or 2004 it would have been far more than enough to retire on comfortably.
abustamam · · focus · HN ↗
But no one listens to a 7 year old about investments! (Nor should they in most cases, i think i told her to buy more yahoo too)
I dont know how much they held or how much they sold, or if they even sold at all, just a fun memory triggered by your comment:)
walrus01 · · focus · HN ↗
It was sufficiently mass market and popular that it was everywhere in Pacific Northwest (Portland to the Canadian border region) television and print media. It was enough of a cultural phenomenon that I remember seeing media coverage of people who lined up outside the retail boxed software store at midnight to purchase it.
abustamam · · focus · HN ↗