The link on John Resig's tribute led me to a song written by _why http://goo.gl/xvAM5
I had no idea he was that good musically too. It's a bit quirky, but it really does show that he was an artistic soul above anything else.
Where’s _why?
181–190 of 191 posts
Re: Where’s _why?
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Serious question here: Where do you draw the line? What makes someone a “public figure?" Does publishing open source make you a public figure? How about speaking at a conference? Playing in a band under a pseudonym? Playing in a band under your real name? Commenting under a pseudonym on Hacker News? How about commenting under an identifiable handle like rbraithwaite? I honestly don’t have a pat answer to this questio…
My short (and overly legalistic) definition would be attractive public activity with a persistent identifier. By attractive, I mean designed to attract attention, however little. Nobody posts on HN in order to have a record of their private thoughts or avoid public engagement, for example; people post their thoughts specifically in order to share them. Insofar as one engages in acts designed to attract attention (not…
Well said. I agree that a person more genuinely seeking to be left alone would leave at least a short message stating their departure, if not explaining. Since that is the norm (in basically all human society, hacker and otherwise), deviation from that norm is unusual, attention-drawing, and mysterious. _why seems socially aware enough to know that, so it is reasonable to assume that something unusual and deliberate went on.
Re: Where’s _why?
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
Suppose you were writing about a rape? Would naming the victim, their current employee, partner's name, along with a picture, constitute harassment? You have no idea why _why needs privacy: destroying it was a somewhat evil act.
So just running with your analogy, you're saying that _why is like the victim of a shocking, horrible crime. One that thrust him unfairly in the public eye. And that evildoer was who? Apparently it was _why: he's the one who chose to create a very public persona. It really dumbfounds me when people make idiotic rape analogies. Rape is a violent crime that can leave victims emotionally scarred (and sometimes physicall…
No, I'm saying that _why was the victim of an assault and an unwarranted and offensive invasion of his privacy.
Re: Where’s _why?
#184Let’s see now. The article spends pages talking about _why and the author’s relationship with _why’s work. Great. It spends a page talking about _why’s desire for anonymity and reclusive nature. Good. It talks about _why’s “infosuicide” and notes that it happened shortly after he was “outed.” Fine. And then we get paragraphs detailing how this journalist stalked him trying to get him to comment about the article. Sen…
I think you're being a little too harsh. This story isn't for programmers. It's for everyone else that thinks the computer is a magic box. For us, it gives us a story about someone who is trying to learn how to program and about programming culture. I think the author did a pretty good job of taking a month and exploring both the nuts an bolts of programming and the people behind it. Sure, she still couldn't do much…
I am a programmer and I think of my computer as a magic box. It has very specific principles, but is basically magical in nature. The mystery of all of the things that I could possibly do with it is what keeps me programming. I like to think that there are others who share this intuition.
Re: Where’s _why?
#185Loved the article.
I would like to say only one thing: once you know _why's way of thinking and artsy way of hacking, calling him a sloppy programmer is unfair and frankly a little bit dumb.
He was a great programmer, he just didn't follow common wisdom, probably because the reasons behind his work were very different from ours.
Re: Where’s _why?
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
So just running with your analogy, you're saying that _why is like the victim of a shocking, horrible crime. One that thrust him unfairly in the public eye. And that evildoer was who? Apparently it was _why: he's the one who chose to create a very public persona. It really dumbfounds me when people make idiotic rape analogies. Rape is a violent crime that can leave victims emotionally scarred (and sometimes physicall…
No, I'm saying that _why was the victim of an assault and an unwarranted and offensive invasion of his privacy.
An assault victim! Oh my goodness! When exactly did he begin to fear violence? Was it when he received an email he ignored? Or a phone message he didn't return?
Given your standards, apparently I've been assaulted about 15 times this week. Do you think I should call the police?
Re: Where’s _why?
#187This is pretty funny; there's been some talk on twitter this week that we might have spotted _why @ PyCon 2012 [1]. [1] - http://cl.ly/1O141o140c3T1E2G0w2U
Yep - I was there... it looked like him (after someone pointed it out to me of course)
Re: Where’s _why?
#188I find it highly likely that _why is still among us.
Looking in the source for the Slate article, secretly hoping the author might have put sort of comment in for developers, I came across this:
Re: Where’s _why?
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would help me tremendously if HN offered the option to "fold" comments and children of those comments like on Reddit. I do this often to get past the meme threads and onto the real meat and potatoes. But, I think that may be outside the scope of HN's style or design of the interface.
javascript:(function()%7Bvar s=document.createElement('script');s.type='text/javascript';s.src=' http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.1/jquery.min... ; Save it as a bookmark and run it on each page.
I'd like to use this, but it has been corrupted by URL shortening. Viewing the source doesn't fix it.
Can you re-enter this as code (indent 4 spaces).
Re: Where’s _why?
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
"As a journalist, I think it would have been irresponsible not to inform _why of the article and not to try to interview him. (As a general point, you don't write articles about public figures, and he was absolutely a public figure, without giving them the chance to respond.)" There's a difference between "giving them the chance to respond" and what happened here. Being a journalist doesn't give someone an excuse to…
I think there are 2 issues here: digging deep to try to get a response from _why, and publishing his real name and employer. The first is debatable; exactly how much effort should a journalist put in to getting the story, particularly in a case where the subject didn't do anything wrong? Reading about the effort expended in this piece made me a little uncomfortable, but I don't know for sure whether I'd say it crosse…
My thoughts exactly. I think the digging was okay though, for the simple reason that she backed off as soon as he said he wanted to be left alone. And I don't believe a journalist doing research has to interpret silence or no-response as such, but when he communicated this, she let him be.
The second issue was absolutely over the line. It's not so much the name (which is sort-of public knowledge, although the Wikipedia citing issue makes it problematic), but publishing the other personal information really crossed the line, and the article would have been much better without it.
I don't think it's vindictive though, rather a very stupid oversight.
I also think it's too bad that the top comment conflates these two issues, because I think it's very useful to draw the distinction. Spending effort to reach a subject for comment strikes me as proper journalistic research--publishing the PI gathered in the process however, absolutely is not. Even tabloid journalists would simply just publish the comment, but not the addresses or names of employers used in acquiring said comment (be it for different, more competitive reasons, but still).