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Near, the emulator developer of bsnes, higan, and more, has died

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Re: Near, the emulator developer of bsnes, higan, and more, has died

#71

Post by ALittleLight »

kbenson wrote: post #63
ALittleLight wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did Kiwi Farms do? I tried looking up their comments on him[1] but only sampled some at random rather than reading all of their comments. It certainly seems cruel and mean spirited. Some more recent comments are flippant or celebrating the suicide - but it isn't clear to me that they did anything other than be mean to Near online. Am I missing something? 1 - https://kiwifarms.net/threads/byuu-byuu_nyan-setsunaku…

There's a lot implied in the doc linked from twitter, if not spelled out. Particularly troubling is the alleged targeting of friends and family. That said, it's one side, and not even from the source, but from someone's interpretation/understanding of what happened to the source, so I'm being careful to not assume much. The quick-take might be the correct take in this case, but that doesn't mean I'm comfortable with…

I would edit this into my parent comment, but can't edit it any more. Further reading I found this post from the Kiwi Farms operator that shares an email from Near explaining a little more on the situation.

https://kiwifarms.net/threads/byuu-byuu_nyan-setsunakun0.430...

Re: Near, the emulator developer of bsnes, higan, and more, has died

#72

Post by hrdwdmrbl »

Where about the police in all of this? Isn’t it their responsibility to pursue harassment like this? Aren’t the actions of KF already illegal? It seems to me that society still doesn’t take the internet seriously. We still expect to be scammed on eBay and don’t report it. Scams and fraud are everywhere. Abuse like that is rampant. I’m serious, where are the internet police? Yes it’s going to be hard when the people live in another country but so many times the perpetrators do actually live in the same country and basically live with impunity!

Re: Near, the emulator developer of bsnes, higan, and more, has died

#73

Post by falcolas »

TheFreim wrote: post #29

Very sad that they are gone, byuu's work on emulators has been very useful. Weird to hear about things like this and realize that people are real on the other end of the computer. Skimming through, I don't see a reason why they were harassed by Kiwi Farms. I don't get it, what caused that?

From reddit discussions, it appears that it was triggered by some political posts Near put up (and since took down/stopped posting) close to a decade ago.

KF apparently didn’t like the posts, and set them up as a virtually permanent target.

So stupid.

Re: Near, the emulator developer of bsnes, higan, and more, has died

#74

Post by falcolas »

umvi wrote: post #23
philpem wrote: post #11

Posted this on the other thread ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27653450 ), I'll copy it here... I don't really know what to say here. I didn't know them personally, but I saw their work and was truly stunned. Most people don't achieve in their entire lives what Near (aka Byuu) did in their comparatively short one. To say I was impressed is an understatement. I simply don't have the words. What happened, shoul…

> There needs to be a wider discussion of responsibility of hosting providers for the actions of their customers How about holding the actual bullies accountable instead of shifting accountability to the ISP/Host? What happens in real life (i.e. outside the context of the internet) if bullies harass someone with hate mail until that person commits suicide? Does the blame shift away from the bullies to USPS or FedEx f…

Cloudflare has already proven willing to stop supporting sites based on their content.

They’ve opened the doors, so it’s not unreasonable to expect that they could/would/should do it again.

Re: Near, the emulator developer of bsnes, higan, and more, has died

#75

Post by falcolas »

ta2162 wrote: post #51
user-the-name wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a "tragic loss", it is murder. And justice is needed.

What makes it "murder"?

Do you not consider the targeted harassment by an organized group of people with the premeditated goal of getting them to commit suicide to be homicide?

I do.

Re: Near, the emulator developer of bsnes, higan, and more, has died

#76

Post by [deleted] »

dexwiz wrote: post #13

Kiwi Farms is vile. I stumbled upon it while researching someone who turned out to be a target of one of their hate campaign. Its a PHP Forum-style site, but with entire sub forums dedicated to small groups and event specific people. Long running topics would be an entire persons hate campaign against them. The members seem to have a strange, self-claimed moral authority. The posts are a mix of records of what they h…

[deleted]

Re: Near, the emulator developer of bsnes, higan, and more, has died

#77

Post by ta2162 »

falcolas wrote: post #75
ta2162 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes it "murder"?

Do you not consider the targeted harassment by an organized group of people with the premeditated goal of getting them to commit suicide to be homicide? I do.

That's not the definition of murder though, even if you feel like it is. I know we're in a post-fact world, but you don't get to magically decide what words mean.

Re: Near, the emulator developer of bsnes, higan, and more, has died

#78

Post by falcolas »

ta2162 wrote: post #77
falcolas wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not consider the targeted harassment by an organized group of people with the premeditated goal of getting them to commit suicide to be homicide? I do.

That's not the definition of murder though, even if you feel like it is. I know we're in a post-fact world, but you don't get to magically decide what words mean.

And yet people have been convicted of murder for using similar techniques. There’s explicit examples in other comments to this article.

Intent matters.

Re: Near, the emulator developer of bsnes, higan, and more, has died

#79

Post by ta2162 »

falcolas wrote: post #78
ta2162 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the definition of murder though, even if you feel like it is. I know we're in a post-fact world, but you don't get to magically decide what words mean.

And yet people have been convicted of murder for using similar techniques. There’s explicit examples in other comments to this article. Intent matters.

>And yet people have been convicted of murder for using similar techniques.

No they haven't.

>There’s explicit examples in other comments to this article.

No there isn't.

Re: Near, the emulator developer of bsnes, higan, and more, has died

#80

Post by d3nj4l »

For those who were not aware of their accomplishments, this article by them is a great starting point into the level of detail of higan development: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/04/how-snes-emulators-go...

A monumental loss. I never knew them personally, and generally didn't keep up with development, but they were a truly magical person and didn't deserve this in the slightest.

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