David William Plummer (born August 9, 1968) is a Canadian-American programmer and entrepreneur. He created the Task Manager for Windows, the Space Cadet Pinball ports to Windows NT, Zip file support for Windows, HyperCache[2] for the Amiga and many other software products.
2025: The guy that wrote Windows’ Task Manager at Microsoft is creating burner accounts to get the OS installed.
I promise real humans made Windows. Like, a lot of them. It’s not that weird.
But beyond that, trust me, that is this guy’s entire personality. I believe he uses his Microsoft access card with his picture as an avatar image. Which I’m now realizing I’ve judged him for when it’s probably in reaction to getting this type of reaction a bunch.
Well that’s the thing though, he claims he did a bunch of stuff at Microsoft and all of it is conveniently very fun to say in a YouTube video for views but literally none of it is verifiable. It would be fine if he was trustworthy but he’s also going around claiming “as an intern, I shipped a lot of major features” which that’s just straight up false, interns don’t do that.
At the very least, I would take all claims made on his wikipedia article that are not immediately followed by a citation with a massive grain of salt.
The fact he then went on to sell registry cleaners and support contracts is telling.
I mean, he didn’t show up from the ether to make this tweet, he’s a semi-well known youtuber, his anecdotes about his time at Microsoft have been reported in specialist press often and to my knowledge nobody at Microsoft ever went “hey, we don’t know who that is”. No matter how many grains of salt you take on uncited Wikipedia content, there are enough citations there to verify his identity, from local newspaper coverage of his career to links to public talks mentioning his background. He has frequently namedropped coworkers at the time, who to my knowledge haven’t contested his accounts. The Wikipedia page in question isn’t even a hagiography, bringing up his failed companies and legal issues surrounding them.
I don’t mind skepticism, but this is paranoia. Is it possible the guy is a bullshitter whose wide reaching lies have somehow not triggered a rebuke from the people he has specifically named? I guess weirder things have happened. Would you be questioning his background if he was saying something you don’t perceive as disagreeing with you? Absolutely not.
I have no more reason to question this guy having worked at Microsoft (and on the Task Manager specifically, which is a really weirdly mid-tier thing to brag about for twenty years if you didn’t do it) than to think Niccolo Venerandi didn’t contribute to KDE Plasma because he has a Youtube channel. It’s just a strange way to react to this.
Brother, he got away with it for years without being called out. Are you stupid? Did you really think I meant that he was never called out for it? Sometimes the shit you nerds say is downright incredible.
I hadn’t heard anything about this - quite interesting in context of the discussion, and also in that it only has a grain of truth.
His company was sued for violations of the Consumer Protection Act (for making shitty misleading ‘you may have a virus! Click here for free scan’ popups and shady apps like ‘RegistryCleaner’, as you allude), which they settled for $150k plus $40k in court fees.
He was never charged with fraud nor convicted - that is something much more serious.
You shouldn’t, and i don’t wish to either. I just don’t understand why there was a need to take his already shady and shitty behaviour and embellish it to say he was convicted of fraud, when the truth would have been adequate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Plummer
2025: The guy that wrote Windows’ Task Manager at Microsoft is creating burner accounts to get the OS installed.
I’ve been doing that whenever I had to do a Windows installation in recent years. But I don’t plan to ever install Windows again.
Would you really believe any of that?
He has made this video with Dave Cutler. I strongly doubt there would be any reason for Cutler to give an MS PirateSoftware any free endorsement.
https://youtu.be/xi1Lq79mLeE
Instead I look at the sky and I feel nothing
You know I hate to be alone.
I want to be wrong.
Tonight the sky is empty
But that is nothing new
You’re gonna need to be more specific
Why wouldn’t you?
What do you believe the existence of a dormant Microsoft account does on your device?
Wait, believe what?
I promise real humans made Windows. Like, a lot of them. It’s not that weird.
But beyond that, trust me, that is this guy’s entire personality. I believe he uses his Microsoft access card with his picture as an avatar image. Which I’m now realizing I’ve judged him for when it’s probably in reaction to getting this type of reaction a bunch.
Well that’s the thing though, he claims he did a bunch of stuff at Microsoft and all of it is conveniently very fun to say in a YouTube video for views but literally none of it is verifiable. It would be fine if he was trustworthy but he’s also going around claiming “as an intern, I shipped a lot of major features” which that’s just straight up false, interns don’t do that.
At the very least, I would take all claims made on his wikipedia article that are not immediately followed by a citation with a massive grain of salt.
The fact he then went on to sell registry cleaners and support contracts is telling.
This is astoundingly weird.
I mean, he didn’t show up from the ether to make this tweet, he’s a semi-well known youtuber, his anecdotes about his time at Microsoft have been reported in specialist press often and to my knowledge nobody at Microsoft ever went “hey, we don’t know who that is”. No matter how many grains of salt you take on uncited Wikipedia content, there are enough citations there to verify his identity, from local newspaper coverage of his career to links to public talks mentioning his background. He has frequently namedropped coworkers at the time, who to my knowledge haven’t contested his accounts. The Wikipedia page in question isn’t even a hagiography, bringing up his failed companies and legal issues surrounding them.
I don’t mind skepticism, but this is paranoia. Is it possible the guy is a bullshitter whose wide reaching lies have somehow not triggered a rebuke from the people he has specifically named? I guess weirder things have happened. Would you be questioning his background if he was saying something you don’t perceive as disagreeing with you? Absolutely not.
I have no more reason to question this guy having worked at Microsoft (and on the Task Manager specifically, which is a really weirdly mid-tier thing to brag about for twenty years if you didn’t do it) than to think Niccolo Venerandi didn’t contribute to KDE Plasma because he has a Youtube channel. It’s just a strange way to react to this.
It’s easy to lie about this stuff and not get called out by the company or employees. See: PirateSoftware
Yes, famously never-called-out PirateSoftware
You are not immune to propaganda
Brother, he got away with it for years without being called out. Are you stupid? Did you really think I meant that he was never called out for it? Sometimes the shit you nerds say is downright incredible.
This is ableism.
Wait,.did PirateSoftware not actually work at Blizzard?
His dad worked at Blizzard, Pirate basically got a free job through him, then passed all his work onto coworkers.
He has been making Youtube videos for years, if he was a fraud, which you imply, someone would have found evidence of it
Took years for pirate software to be outed as a fraud, he also ran a YouTube channel for years pretending to have been a game dev at blizzard.
Except Pirate isn’t fraud as in stolen valor, in the case of him it was just the house of cards of over embellishments finally caught up with him.
David was in Microsoft early and for a long time. Thinking he’s lying about that part is a bit rich.
He was actually convicted of fraud. Remember “Your computer has a virus. Install my (shady) app to fix it” banners in 2000s? That was also him.
I hadn’t heard anything about this - quite interesting in context of the discussion, and also in that it only has a grain of truth.
His company was sued for violations of the Consumer Protection Act (for making shitty misleading ‘you may have a virus! Click here for free scan’ popups and shady apps like ‘RegistryCleaner’, as you allude), which they settled for $150k plus $40k in court fees.
He was never charged with fraud nor convicted - that is something much more serious.
Ah so the guy is a POS, so why should I listen to him.
You shouldn’t, and i don’t wish to either. I just don’t understand why there was a need to take his already shady and shitty behaviour and embellish it to say he was convicted of fraud, when the truth would have been adequate.