Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Emails I Received, the Collection

daniel.haxx.se

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–15 of 15 posts

Re: Emails I Received, the Collection

#11

Post by ryandrake »

psittacus wrote: post #2

Not to cast any shade on Daniel, but perhaps as a warning of sorts? Actually reading through the emails was only sporadically fun — a lot of them are from people who seem like they need urgent help and obviously aren't getting it. His "summary" is "somehow they help me remember that the world we live in is super complicated" and while true, it was more of testament how confused a lot of people are, how lost. And how…

I don’t think this is about understanding computers vs not understanding them. We are seeing these particular ones because of a computing related misunderstanding but there are a lot of disturbed or confused people out there in general not getting help.

The Internet (and social media) has shined an uncomfortable light on how widespread our education and mental health crises are. I’m not going to hold myself up as an expert or doctor but jeez there seem to be a lot of people out there that have totally lost the plot yet they have Internet so we can all see them struggling with reality.

The whole COVID thing didn’t help either. It helped to normalize and mainstream: weird conspiracy theories, antivaxxers, unhinged behavior in public, and the Internet was right there with it, hand in hand, taking us further down the crazy train.

I used to think people going through mental health crises were few and far between but now whenever I’m in a crowd I start thinking to myself you know, 10% of these people probably have a tenuous grip on reality and 1% might just have an outburst right here.

Re: Emails I Received, the Collection

#12

Post by Sabinus »

orf wrote: post #4

Some of these emails are from disturbed and/or desperate people. [1] and [2] for example. I’m all for having a smirk at some clueless people now and again, but some of these strike a darker tone and it’s a bit unsettling. At the end of the day it’s sort of his fault for having a domain called “haxx.se”, regardless of if that was his intention or not. Putting emails online of poor people who have found their way to em…

I think you're being a bit uncharitable with the intentions of the author.

From the author in the comment section of the blog post from your first link:

'I’m showing this email here on my blog as an insight into what it is to be Daniel, author of curl. I don’t understand how you can make this into “making a profit of”, since this is just an email someone sent me and I’m not revealing any details to allow anyone to identify who this person is.'

Re: Emails I Received, the Collection

#13

Post by orf »

Sabinus wrote: post #12
orf wrote: post #4

Some of these emails are from disturbed and/or desperate people. [1] and [2] for example. I’m all for having a smirk at some clueless people now and again, but some of these strike a darker tone and it’s a bit unsettling. At the end of the day it’s sort of his fault for having a domain called “haxx.se”, regardless of if that was his intention or not. Putting emails online of poor people who have found their way to em…

I think you're being a bit uncharitable with the intentions of the author. From the author in the comment section of the blog post from your first link: 'I’m showing this email here on my blog as an insight into what it is to be Daniel, author of curl. I don’t understand how you can make this into “making a profit of”, since this is just an email someone sent me and I’m not revealing any details to allow anyone to id…

> I’m showing this email here on my blog as an insight into what it is to be Daniel, author of curl

The only insight I can draw from this is that “Daniel, author of curl” has to sometimes ignore unwanted emails?

Re: Emails I Received, the Collection

#14

Post by psittacus »

ryandrake wrote: post #11
psittacus wrote: post #2

Not to cast any shade on Daniel, but perhaps as a warning of sorts? Actually reading through the emails was only sporadically fun — a lot of them are from people who seem like they need urgent help and obviously aren't getting it. His "summary" is "somehow they help me remember that the world we live in is super complicated" and while true, it was more of testament how confused a lot of people are, how lost. And how…

I don’t think this is about understanding computers vs not understanding them. We are seeing these particular ones because of a computing related misunderstanding but there are a lot of disturbed or confused people out there in general not getting help. The Internet (and social media) has shined an uncomfortable light on how widespread our education and mental health crises are. I’m not going to hold myself up as an…

Certainly, the problem is bigger than just computers. I was trying to say that if you don't understand how computers work your chances of getting confused are higher since they are ubiquitous and often the interactions with them are so poorly designed that it's easy to get confused.
Post reply on HN