
An Interview with _why the Lucky Stiff - sant0sk1
http://waferbaby.com/setup/2009/02/13/_why
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river_styx
The best part about _why: if this guy completely loses his mind one day, no
one will notice any difference.

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Shamiq
I have to say, reading that short interview left me saying "what the hell..."

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bprater
The man never fails to amuse.

And I absolutely agree, I love seeing hand-written copy.

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anuraggoel
Not if you want to quote lines from his interview on HN.

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jonursenbach
Which is why the word needs to adopt Comic Sans so we can easily quote lines,
but also read text like it's handwritten copy.

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whughes
I would prefer a high-CPU usage, extremely inefficient embedded Flash text
display applet. It's the Web 2.0 way of doing things.

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r11t
It seems _why is a very enigmatic figure and his real identity seems to be not
known. However I respect his desire to stay anonymous despite the fame he
deserves for being a very creative and respectable hacker.

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kragen
I think his real identity is very well known, isn't it? He's why the lucky
stiff. (Admittedly my Argentine friends might complain that since we don't
know the number of his Documento Nacional de Identidad, we don't really know
his identity. It's really hard to explain to notaries and the like that my
_new US passport_ came with a _new passport number_ , and that does not mean
that I am _not the same person_.)

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petercooper
His real name was on his Wikipedia entry for a brief period. At the time I
confirmed with others that it was true, but then it was removed and hasn't
been back since. I've not been able to find it with a casual browse (and I've
forgotten it). This is all the more amusing since he wrote the foreword for my
book :)

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dag
The page history says that his last name might be Malsky.

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jodrellblank
A 14" laptop running Windows XP. Is it irrational that I have even more
respect for him after learning that?

No multicore, multihead powerhouse, no HN open on another screen, no very
tweaked Linux install...

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herval
_why is an ARTIST! I wish the interviewer asked what he thinks about calling
software engineering - and the classic 'building bridges' comparison... :-)

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burke
For all the interesting things _why does, I've always maintained that it would
be completely unsurprising if he was in fact an entire group of hackers. He
must never sleep.

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pavelludiq
Yes, when XP came out it was beautiful, wasn't it :D I still used the classic
theme though. Im not that much of a windows user any more, so it doesn't
bother me that it looks like it came from the 90's, and im a 90's kid, so
there :D

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whughes
I preferred the Watercolor skin they dropped.

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ryan-allen
Brilliant :) On another note I miss the BBS, and Major Mud.

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FraaJad
The server is not responding to me. Is there a cached copy elsewhere?

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KevBurnsJr
Solid gold.

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shiranaihito
I wonder if he expends too much energy on being Quirky.

He goes by a Quirky name, writes Quirky & Poignant guides, and responds to
questions in a Quirky way. Overall, he's really quite Quirky.

He's unique and intelligent, we get it.

But for once, it would be nice to see him talk about something like a normal
person.

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herval
Don't we have too many normal people out there already, saying the same stuff
in their lookalike blogs...? (or maybe _why IS one of those guys as well, uh?)

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jamesbritt
"Don't we have too many normal people out there already, saying the same stuff
in their lookalike blogs...? "

False choice. There _are_ smart, innovative thinkers expressing themselves
with a notable lack of quirk, and a better signal-to-noise ratio.

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herval
so does one thing have to eliminate the other?

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jamesbritt
No, of course not, but they seem to be related in the mids of many people.

There's a great collection of short stories, Mathenauts: Tales of Mathematical
Wonder, that has (as I recall) a tale of some institute that was hiring
mathematicians. The candidates affected assorted behavioral quirks so as to
come off as sufficiently bizarre, and, hence, brilliant.

It seems a common stereotype.

