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I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

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Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#51

Post by Grue3 »

mansr wrote: post #37
akuchling wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lee is a noted Internet crank, very sure he's completely brilliant and everyone else is a moron. I remember his flaming about the quality of the Python documentation, e.g. https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2005-April/310...

He used to be trolling all over Usenet. There's a good chance he's made a very bad impression on just about anyone now in a position to hire him.

Yeah, I remember him trolling in the Lisp newsgroup, which makes it hard for me to take his Emacs advice seriously.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#52

Post by hyperpape »

mansr wrote: post #41
thegeomaster wrote: post #33

I don't think anyone should judge him based on the small amount of information available. I understand that his situation is mostly his fault, but there may be other things at play. Why be so fast to condemn someone when an unfortunate sequence of events could've put some of us into a similar situation? I'm not defending Xah Lee's irresponsibility nor I am defending people who condemn him, I just want to say that we…

He spent decades trolling everyone and everything on Usenet and mailing lists. He had it coming.

I hope that the world will have more mercy on you than you give. Xah has been a pain in the ass for a lot of people, but I do not wish anyone to be left without healthcare or homeless, regardless of what they have done. Even criminals get locked up and fed.

Opinions like yours simply have no place anywhere.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#53

Post by graycat »

There may be some government and/or privately funded social services in the area that could help him, e.g., emergency rent money, housing, food, counseling.

His Web site with 240 K visitors a month, with some ads, should be enough to help him significantly.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#54

Post by dkersten »

DennisP wrote: post #20
danso wrote: post #7

Almost sent the OP money through PayPal, but I saw this at the bottom of the post: > i won't actually be able to draw money from paypal, due to bank/IRS problem. Which is confusing because in a few lines above, this is written: > if you can help, paypal to xah@xahlee.org Can someone who knows the OP provide more context to all of this?

Sounds like a case for bitcoin.

How's he going to buy his noodles with bitcoin?

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#55

Post by Singletoned »

nkozyra wrote: post #17
wfjackson wrote: post #11

Edit: He seems to have a lot of interest and worked a lot on good documentation, which is the bane of the typical OSS project. Why doesn't Red Hat/Google etc. throw some money at him to write docs for underdocumented OSS stuff? Sounds like win win for all. It's hard to find really smart developers that are interested in writing documentation.[End edit] If you don't really know him, his LinkedIn profile shows more det…

Is he a particularly noted person? Maybe just in the emacs community? I don't know who he is and that resume is pretty skimpy. It seems that his biggest need right now is self-presentation and that's a pretty tough thing to acquire on short notice. I'd also say there would likely be way more opportunities for someone of his skillset outside of the valley, where the skimpy resume probably looks even skimpier by compar…

He's certainly 'notorious' in certain circles. He used to be considered a troll in certain newsgroups, because he's very argumentative.

I think he is in some ways the prototypical hacker. He's very good at what he does, but he struggles to do anything with financial value, and he's got very bad interpersonal skills.

He's done quite a lot of Emacs work, particularly around trying to make it easier to work with. His work was very helpful to me when I was starting out with Emacs, so I've given him some money. His documentation saved me weeks of work over the years, so giving him a days wages is a no-brainer.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#56

Post by danso »

akuchling wrote: post #21
cognivore wrote: post #3

Is there context here I'm missing? The screen shot with the legal fee leads me to believe so, but I can't sort it.

Lee is a noted Internet crank, very sure he's completely brilliant and everyone else is a moron. I remember his flaming about the quality of the Python documentation, e.g. https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2005-April/310...

Holy shit I've been on HN too long...I've forgotten what real Internet flamewars/trolling was like.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#58

Post by laichzeit0 »

akuchling wrote: post #21
cognivore wrote: post #3

Is there context here I'm missing? The screen shot with the legal fee leads me to believe so, but I can't sort it.

Lee is a noted Internet crank, very sure he's completely brilliant and everyone else is a moron. I remember his flaming about the quality of the Python documentation, e.g. https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2005-April/310...

Not that it was a particularly well written "critque" of the documentation, but I've felt similar frustrations when tyring to work through the NodeJS documentation.

Generally when you're used to something that's several orders of magnitude better, e.g. Java docs and you're then forced to work with turds after that it takes some getting used to. Sometimes you never get used to it. Come to think of it.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#59

Post by FeloniousHam »

wfjackson wrote: post #11

Edit: He seems to have a lot of interest and worked a lot on good documentation, which is the bane of the typical OSS project. Why doesn't Red Hat/Google etc. throw some money at him to write docs for underdocumented OSS stuff? Sounds like win win for all. It's hard to find really smart developers that are interested in writing documentation.[End edit] If you don't really know him, his LinkedIn profile shows more det…

Seems like traffic numbers like that would at least pay some income through ad views.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#60

Post by nkozyra »

dbaupp wrote: post #43
philbarr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 8 thousand visitors per day. 240 thousand visitors per month Could he set up Google Ads on there - automatic, passive income that just goes straight into his account?

Any estimates for how much income that would provide?

Not very much.

If we give an aggressive pages-per-visit of ~2 and 3 ads and a semi-aggressive RPM of $4 you're talking about ~ $150/mo.

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