Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide • Hacker News Board

Re: Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

#81

Post by dpark » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 9:04 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #78

dpark wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is moronic. Even if you believe that all police are bad actors, it doesn't make any sense that they would be randomly attacking Murdock as he described. Is it impossible? No. Is it far, far less likely than Murdock having a psychotic break and lapsing into paranoia and confusion? Yes.

> This is moronic. Please don't break the HN guidelines with name-calling like this, no matter how wrong another comment may be. Your comment would be much stronger and more convincing without that first bit.

Fair enough. I clearly violated the guidelines since the "don't do this" example is exactly what I did. I can't say that's my mistake, but it is my fault.

Re: Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

#82

Post by JoeAltmaier » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 9:07 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #76

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe different from a violent angry large man battering down your door just to get at you? Offers of tea are reputedly less effective in that case.

I didn't know it was different when I offered him a cup of tea. He'd already kicked in the roof hatch and was inside the house. I'd have done the same if he'd been kicking the door. > Offers of tea are reputedly less effective in that case. No, they're not less effective, and this might by why the US police kill hundreds of people each year, especially people with mental illness. You might want to read some of the de…

Ok I don't know, I wasn't there. But on the face of it, somebody sneaking in through the roof, and somebody violent at the front door who doesn't care if he's seen or heard, seem different things entirely.

Re: Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

#83

Post by lllorddino » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 9:17 PM UTC

Autopsy?? The article clearly states the police found him with a cable around his neck.

Re: Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

#84

Post by SFJulie » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 9:27 PM UTC

dpark wrote: post #42

madaxe_again wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He may well (in fact, probably was) beating at his neighbour's door in the first instance - but the second, you'll have to take their word for it. If you read the autopsy, specifically about the blunt force trauma, either he put up on hell of a fight, or they did indeed paste him.

> you'll have to take their word for it. I'm pretty sure if you care to check, you can get the police report for the second incident and go ask the relevant neighbors. The likelihood that the police were waiting for Murdock to show up at his home so they could randomly attack him seems vanishingly low. Excessive force I could believe. Police with nothing better to do than randomly assault an upper-class white man rep…

I may beg for a godwin point pointing this but, the upper white man was also suffering a mental condition.

And as much as poors, coloured, and psychotics or people suffering from mental diseases have a tendency to be treated in a rather unfavorable way by the police forces.

They are weak, and not liked by some citizens.

And, I think I am gonna win my Godwin Point here stating that making hierarchy in discrimination is exactly what have led to the tolerance to nazi's final solution.

They did send the homo, the unionists, the ill and crazies, the opponents (whistle blowers of the time) and then the gipsies and jews.

Yes it is true the jews and the gipsies paid the highest price, but they got the acceptation of their camp by sending in a dis-unified populations some «legitimate» persons.

I am pretty much saying that when this kind of shift in sorting the true/fake victim from the bucket of all the victims happens there is a slippery slope.

Concerning ian's death, the twitter were looking like he was actually assaulted and was fearing police.

With more information, it looks now more like a suicide. Still some stuff remain unclear, but I am no detective, nor judge so I have no insights.

Still, I saw a lot of friend coders falling into drugs, one committing suicide and some losing their mental health/balance. So, I am still curious about this story.

Re: Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

#85

Post by pjlegato » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 9:28 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #15

> Your offensive inaccurate slavery imagery notwithstanding. Offensive, but, given two PoC shot dead in 48 hours by police, certainly not unfounded. Racism is deeply embedded in (US) police, and it deserves to be called out. > it seems plausible that he did assault officers, and that they did have a right to use force against him to end that assault Funny enough, British cops don't (need to) carry guns. German cops c…

German cops are not brutal? If you cause ANY type of disturbance on the street in Berlin, they simply dispatch a massively overwhelming number of riot police to come and beat the living crap out of you.

I saw numerous riot police deployed in full gear several times per month when I was in Berlin, more every single month than the grand total of all the riot police I have ever seen during several decades in the US -- and always dispatched to what seemed to me like very minor incidents, such as 20 people holding an anti-gentrification protest, peaceably holding signs and chanting. But if they don't have a formal permit (which must be obtained months in advance...) out come the billy clubs.

Maybe they use guns less often, but those clubs are not for show.

Locals told me with a mix of irritation and pride that the Berlin police are the second-roughest in Europe, after Belfast.

Re: Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

#86

Post by mywittyname » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 9:31 PM UTC

Tomte wrote: post #77

downandout wrote: post #75

A neighbor told the city's investigators that Murdock had just split up with his girlfriend and was facing eviction How is someone so well known in the software industry so hard up for money that they are facing eviction? Far lesser engineers than he have never had problems earning enough money to get by. The whole thing is very sad, and clearly money wasn't his only problem, but it's one issue that someone with his…

There are other reasons to get evicted besides not paying rent. We don't know why the landlord wanted him out.

Pissing off the neighbors could have something to do with it.

I mean, what are the chances this is the first time he's acted crazy?

Re: Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

#87

Post by gmarx » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 9:37 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #40

gmarx wrote: post #39

Does anyone know if there is a relationship between Aspergers/Autism spectrum and suicide? I know one person who I think is on the spectrum, doesn't know it, and suffers serious depression at least in part due to her lack of social success.

Yes, there's a correlation between ASD and both attempted suicide and completed suicide. That might be because of the increased risk of depression in ASD, or the increased risk of physical health problems, or it might be something about the ASD itself that makes it harder for people to get help. The numbers are surprisingly hard to find, and other diagnoses are probably higher in the list. Here's good quality informa…

Thanks!

Re: Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

#88

Post by jcranmer » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 9:45 PM UTC

madaxe_again wrote: post #25

dpark wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're pretty incoherent. His retelling has a really jumbled timeline. Part of that might be missing context if he was replying to other tweets but they aren't linked. The ones that are linked don't look much better, though. His tweets to @jackstormwriter don't make much sense unless the archive somehow lost most of the ones from @jackstormwriter. He also claimed that the police assaulted him at his own home, while…

He may well (in fact, probably was) beating at his neighbour's door in the first instance - but the second, you'll have to take their word for it. If you read the autopsy, specifically about the blunt force trauma, either he put up on hell of a fight, or they did indeed paste him.

If you read the tweets, and then the autopsy, you'll wonder which wound was so serious it needed stitches, considering there are only three minor lacerations, and absolutely no mention of stitches anywhere. If he's telling the truth about police brutality, then why did he need to make up needing stitches?

Re: Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

#89

Post by dpark » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 9:53 PM UTC

SFJulie wrote: post #84

dpark wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you'll have to take their word for it. I'm pretty sure if you care to check, you can get the police report for the second incident and go ask the relevant neighbors. The likelihood that the police were waiting for Murdock to show up at his home so they could randomly attack him seems vanishingly low. Excessive force I could believe. Police with nothing better to do than randomly assault an upper-class white man rep…

I may beg for a godwin point pointing this but, the upper white man was also suffering a mental condition. And as much as poors, coloured, and psychotics or people suffering from mental diseases have a tendency to be treated in a rather unfavorable way by the police forces. They are weak, and not liked by some citizens. And, I think I am gonna win my Godwin Point here stating that making hierarchy in discrimination i…

To be clear, I'm not saying that it would be okay for the police to assault Murdock if he were not white, or not wealthy, not male, or anything else. My point was that if someone believes that the police are systematically targeting the less privileged, then they wouldn't have targeted Murdock.

And while yes, Murdock appears to have had some kind of mental illness during all this, it's unfair to say that the police "targeted" him because of that without any evidence. It would likewise be unfair to accuse the police of targeting Murdock for being a black woman (if he were a black woman) absent some evidence to support that.

Aside from Murdock's somewhat-incoherent twitter claims, there seems to be nothing supporting the idea that the police "targeted" him in any way or otherwise abused their power. So far it's purely speculation, and given that it's been six months, I have to assume no evidence will appear and the accusations of police misconduct here will remain baseless speculation.

I understand your concern about ignoring complaints from the mentally-ill and other underprivileged groups being a bad precedent and a slippery slope to broader abuse. I agree and would not advocate for ignoring these sorts of complaints. I think each complaint should be given due consideration. In this particular case, with the information that has been made broadly available, I don't personally see evidence to support any claims that the police did anything wrong.

Re: Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

#90

Post by mschuster91 » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 10:01 PM UTC

pjlegato wrote: post #85

mschuster91 wrote: post #15

> Your offensive inaccurate slavery imagery notwithstanding. Offensive, but, given two PoC shot dead in 48 hours by police, certainly not unfounded. Racism is deeply embedded in (US) police, and it deserves to be called out. > it seems plausible that he did assault officers, and that they did have a right to use force against him to end that assault Funny enough, British cops don't (need to) carry guns. German cops c…

German cops are not brutal? If you cause ANY type of disturbance on the street in Berlin, they simply dispatch a massively overwhelming number of riot police to come and beat the living crap out of you. I saw numerous riot police deployed in full gear several times per month when I was in Berlin, more every single month than the grand total of all the riot police I have ever seen during several decades in the US -- a…

Berlin is a failed state.

The riot police in Berlin is abused by Interior Minister Henkel as his personal bully crew to provoke left-wing activists, in order to produce riots on the streets, which Henkel can then again use in his election campaign (you can google "Rigaer 94" for more details). I'll be in Berlin on Saturday for the big rally, I'm pretty sure it will be yet another display of police brutality. All in order to fuel a personal election campaign.

It's disgusting and a shame to German police.

(disclaimer: I'm Bavarian, and have a cop in the family)