Tell HN: Tim May, Author of “The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto”, Has Died

The following is from Lucky Green's announcement on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/lucky.green.73/posts/10155498914786706):

Tim May - Cypherpunks co-Founder, Discoverer of Radiation-Induced Single Event Upsets in Integrated Circuits, Uncompromising Firearms Proponent

Word has reached me that my dear friend, co-conspirator in many things and for many years, fellow Freedom Fighter Tim May passed away earlier this week at his home in Corralitos, California.

Death appears to be from natural causes pending autopsy. I.e. Tim did not die in a hail of bullets as so many who didn’t know Tim all that well and largely from his public writings had predicted.

(...)

Tim’s realization that any Manifesto, Constitution, or Bill of Rights wasn’t worth the paper it was written on absent a broadly armed (and heavily armed) population left many of his critics and admirers alike confused. As with so many of his assertions, Tim was correct in this analysis, though his assertion that “private ownership of firearms is a public good” will likely not be as soon widely accepted as his assertion that “private ownership of strong crypto is a public good” was. As such, Tim leaves behind a very large firearms collection.

Please raise a glass of Bourbon, can be any brand, doesn’t have to be the expensive stuff, it didn’t have to be for Tim, to Tim May!

Ad Astra, Tim!

RIP

RIP Tim. I remember him as one of the guiding forces of the early Cypherpunks.

The Manifesto:

https://activism.net/cypherpunk/crypto-anarchy.html

> Just as the technology of printing altered and reduced the power of medieval guilds and the social power structure, so too will cryptologic methods fundamentally alter the nature of corporations and of government interference in economic transactions. Combined with emerging information markets, crypto anarchy will create a liquid market for any and all material which can be put into words and pictures. And just as a seemingly minor invention like barbed wire made possible the fencing-off of vast ranches and farms, thus altering forever the concepts of land and property rights in the frontier West, so too will the seemingly minor discovery out of an arcane branch of mathematics come to be the wire clippers which dismantle the barbed wire around intellectual property. > > Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!