TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van • Hacker News Board

Re: TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

#91

Post by WillReplyfFood » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 2:22 PM UTC

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #25

pavel_lishin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you mean? TempleOS is undoubtably a pretty interesting achievement, both in the artistic and technological sense - but Terry has serious mental issues, and we shouldn't overlook them as "oh, that's just how artists are".

In fact, if you do a careful study of history, many of the best artists have "serious mental issues". The question is, how do we define "serious mental issues" and "art"? I don't think its a coincidence that people with off-the-charts creativity are mentally different than most other people. If your thought process is that far removed from others in regards to art ("creativity"), then it only stands to reason that yo…

You cant say that- because if you imply that non neurotypical behaviour makes for great artists, you are basically telling alot of people that they will never be great artists.

Re: TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

#92

Post by WillReplyfFood » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #28

galfarragem wrote: post #5

In a recent HN thread fellow HNers were asking what is a real artist: this is it.

Let's not romanticize mental illnesses and lack of responsibility and guidance.

Why not? What is so bad about reminding people of the good that could come from this, if it were not for the missing pieces.

Re: TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

#93

Post by moron4hire » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 2:30 PM UTC

As far as I can tell, Terry Davis has been given multiple chances to get well. He chooses to be sick.

It's tragic, but you can only lead a horse to water, you can't make it drink. I've been on the side of trying to help a family member get better. It's impossible to help someone who doesn't want help. And it's one of the hardest things in the world to give up on someone who doesn't want help. You question your decision for the rest of your life. And sometimes you go back, and get reminded almost immediately you did make the right decision.

Also as far as I can tell, the only reason most people care about anything involving him is because of some stories about him being a "heroic" programmer. Not that they've had any realistic confirmation of that experience, because they almost certainly haven't tried any of his software. So there seems to be this perverse, backwards reasoning that "Terry says terrible things, but it's ok, he's sick, but he chose to be this way, but it's ok, he wrote his own OS".

It's terrible that anyone should have to live this way, even the worst people in the world. But I'm not terribly convinced that the concern I see expressed is anything other than asshole programmer worship. Take away, "he wrote his own OS", and I just have a really hard time imagining very many people giving two shakes.

Re: TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

#94

Post by digi_owl » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 2:31 PM UTC

fb03 wrote: post #86

Putting aside all the "mental illness/nutjob" talks that everyone likes to focus on so much, I would just wish that someone somehow would be able to connect with him and channel his genius (it is clear that he is quite good at what he does) into some project with a proper objective and guidance. Bram Cohen has Asperger's and he could create BitTorrent which is widely used. I wonder if Terry Davis would create some ga…

Aspergers is a walk in the park compared to what Terry is dealing with.

Re: TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

#95

Post by WillReplyfFood » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 2:32 PM UTC

rurban wrote: post #36

This was 3 months ago. Apparently he lives happy in his van.

Yes.No.

Schizos have the wanderlust, they try to discover new territories- but they end up socially self isolating- and to reduce the suffering - drugs.

Re: TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

#96

Post by DougN7 » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 2:34 PM UTC

mrob wrote: post #27

sharpneli wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying "I don't have any doors in my house, just open frames. So I'm not affected by the weaknesses in locks."

If lack of doors was standard, everybody would see the open frames, and culture would adapt to them. Weaknesses in computer security are much harder to spot. Spectre has been possible for decades without mainstream attention. It's this lack of understandability that I think is dangerous. Many people will assume systems are secure just because they don't see an obvious way to exploit them, and because the complexity h…

I might believe that stance if you can think of any human scenario where there is value and nobody tries to take advantage of it.

We can’t have nice things/utipia as long as some people are evil.

Re: TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

#97

Post by digi_owl » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 2:36 PM UTC

senatorobama wrote: post #53

Who are the kiddies who keep stirring him up?

Say hello to the offspring of Anon...

Re: TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

#98

Post by digi_owl » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

grawprog wrote: post #88

I've read through a lot of Terry's posts on 8chan and his rants that got him banned from a few websites. He's totally fucked but a genius. I've tried TempleOS. It made my brain hurt to look at it and it really wasn't intuitive in any way at all. I like the concept of the OS, a full OS where everything is in the same memory space. But, it's way too annoying to really play with anything in TempleOS.

Any OS from the era of cooperative multitasking should have much the same behavior, iirc.

Heck, even DOS with a few TSRs could come close.

Re: TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

#99

Post by reeteshv » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 2:46 PM UTC

zichy wrote: post #87

reeteshv wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That paragraph is prefaced by the definition of the word Drama. If we want to avoid drama, we should stop sharing a significant number of recent events, e.g. the Meltdown and Spectre drama, launches, touchdowns and failures of SpaceX, a majority of anti-Google comments, etc.

What are you talking about? Do you grasp the basic difference between a security vulnerability and a mentally ill homeless person?

I understand your scepticism about my ability to grasp basic differences, considering that we have never met nor interacted before.

Hence, this clarification...

As per my understanding, there is plenty of Drama in the security vulnerability incident - Intel CEO selling a large chunk of stock after the company was informed of the vulnerability; the differing views on the actual performance impact of the patches, the discussions on whether it was a genuine oversight error or corporate greed that led to the situation in the first place, etc.

The reason I mentioned this along with the original article is simply because I was trying to clarify that there have always been dramatic posts/comments on HN.

Therefore, sharing an article from r/Drama sub-reddit didn't seem sacrilegious to me.

I apologise if I have offended your sensibilities...

Re: TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

#100

Post by krisives » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 2:47 PM UTC

zichy wrote: post #44

If you want to draw attention to a schizophrenic person who needs help, maybe linking /r/Drama is the wrong way.

He needs all the compassion and exposure to legitimate people as possible. His worldview is warped by 13 year olds who think racism is edgy and fun. Posting it HERE isn't the tragedy, trust me, as there are entire armies of trolls that collaborate to torture Terry. It's messed up.