
Terry Davis Confirmation: Man killed by train had tech following - DoreenMichele
http://www.thedalleschronicle.com/news/2018/sep/07/man-killed-train-had-tech-following/
======
zxexz
This is such a shame. I always loved watching his videos, and his website, and
was always in awe at the source of TempleOS. The world, all of us here on HN
included, could have treated him with more compassion.

My heart goes out to his family and those close to him, including all those
who offered him the housing he refused. Terry has achieved well more than most
of us could dream of, and honestly has left more of a net positive in the
world than most of probably ever will. TempleOS singlehandedly got me
interested in OS Dev, and the no doubt more than a few others as well, and
with any luck many more in the future.

RIP Terry. For some reason, and I don't know why I find this somewhat
shocking, but of all prominent deaths in recent memory, his death leaves me
feeling the most emotional.

~~~
pen2l
> RIP Terry. For some reason, and I don't know why I find this somewhat
> shocking, but of all prominent deaths in recent memory, his death leaves me
> feeling the most emotional.

It hit me really hard too.

I think it's because some of us witnessed that his spiral downward was partly
because of him getting trolled by the 4chan crowd, we witnessed his
helplessness, we witnessed him getting bullied.

He was a star, but he had his demons. It's such a great tragedy, to lose him
now, and to have lost him earlier as well.

~~~
sam36
>He was a star, but he had his demons

His blunt honestly with stuff in his own life helped me in my own. We've
certainly all screwed up.

------
CaliforniaKarl
To everyone who reads this on the Peninsula, this number should be in your
phone's address book: +1 (877) 723-7245.

That is the number for Caltrain Transit Police.

To everyone who reads this in the City, this number should be in your phone's
address book: +1 (415) 553-8090.

That is the number for SFPD Dispatch.

To everyone who reads this in the City, or the East Bay, this number should be
in your phone's address book: +1 (877) 679-7000.

That is the number for BART Police.

If you see anyone go on to the track—who (for Caltrain) is not crossing and
going on their way—you need to call the above number—or 911—immediately. Be
sure to provide a location relative to a station (such as "100 feet North of
Redwood City station"), or the city name and nearby street. Transit Police in
particular, I believe, have a direct link to Caltrain Dispatch, who can make
certain signals (normally those near switches/crossovers) fall to red, or at
least warn nearby trains.

Similarly, when you're standing on a platform, you should not be looking down
at your phone. Listening to music, fine, but you should always be looking
around. If for no other reason, than so that you can make sure you don't
accidentally get bumped by someone else.

~~~
always_good
Isn't this just a feel-good post?

I have no clue what you expect to do with police phone number to prevent train
suicide. People don't just camp out on the track for an hour before the train
comes. It's a last second ordeal.

~~~
jetrink
From the article:

"According to a police report on the death, on the evening of Aug. 11, Davis
was walking along the railroad tracks, with his back to an oncoming train,
when he turned and faced the train before it hit him. The train engineer
considered it a suicide, according to the report."

In this incident at least, there might have been enough time to halt trains on
that section of the tracks until police arrived. There are signals beside the
track and radios in the driver's compartment. This happens semi-regularly in
my city. The train operator will come on the PA and announce that we are
standing while police attend to a person on the tracks at the next station.

------
drcode
[https://pastebin.com/MtswwMSB](https://pastebin.com/MtswwMSB)

~~~
vermooten
Thank you :)

~~~
RickJWagner
Ditto. My thanks as well.

------
chongli
I don't think it's really fair to characterize his death as a suicide. Given
the nature of Terry's illness, he may have been unaware of what was going on
at the time of his death. The police report just sounds strange.

We'll never know what he was feeling that night. It's so sad that he's gone.

~~~
sonupundir
These were my first thoughts too.

Even in otherwise (mentally) healthy people such accidents happen with some
regularity but with the history of this particular illness afflicting him and
the nature of the incident (walking away and then turning back before impact)
makes the police's statement sounds dismissive and reckless at best and a
coverup for the train company and/or avoidance of some significant workload
(investigation of an avoidable death by train company vs a suicide of a
mentally ill person) for themselves.

People with such illnesses typically hear voices and at any given time they
could be engaged in a rather deep conversation with them(selves). Even if he
was not listening to music and such or was otherwise distracted by something
else it would not be surprising for a person of his illness to not being able
to hear the train approaching. When he finally heard it, he apparently did
turn but it was - unfortunately - too late.

Someone with more insight into the manner of train suicides would hopefully
weigh in with more informed opinion but as far as I understand the typical way
is to _jump_ (not always literally) in front of the train.

Simply walking away from the train provides ample opportunity for an alert
driver to stop or slow the train both of which are undesirable for the
suicidal person and one (the slow train running over you) could be much worse
than the other options.

Rather it seems the train driver _failed_ (some one with more technical train
knowledge would correct me here if there are some other reasons for not
applying brakes in train even after seeing an - apparently - oblivious man
walking away from the train) to stop the train in time and prevent an
avoidable death.

I could be wrong but there is the possibility that it would be much desirable
for the train company and easier (given the history of his illness) for the
authorities to dismiss his death as suicide rather than hold the person(s)
responsible for the accident accountable for their actions.

~~~
Gibbon1
I once saw an young man with some sort of psychosis so distracted that he
walked into traffic at 5th and Folsom. And didn't realize it until he was
halfway across.

Other hand a friend of mine with psychosis threw himself in front of a BART
train.

Also with a train there nothing to engineer can do since the coefficient of
friction between the steel wheels and track is like 0.05 vs close to 1.0 for
rubber and asphalt. The engineer can't stop the train in time. These accidents
take a bad toll on train engineers.

------
slededit
Thanks. I'd heard the rumors but no confirmation. It's sad to hear he's gone.
The development world has gotten too corporate, in the 90s/00s you could be
different. He's a holdout from that era.

------
jcahill
The family unintentionally memorialized the facebook account of an impostor.
This significantly added to earlier confusion.

------
henkdevries
Article is behind a pay wall.

Man killed by train had tech following By Neita Cecil As of Friday, September
7, 2018

A man killed by a train in The Dalles in mid-August had a Youtube following
and was a “minor celebrity” in the computer world for doing the Herculean task
of writing his own operating system, a fan said. Terrance Davis, 48, was
killed Aug. 11 near West First and Terminal Avenue. He’d been homeless for
some months and was schizophrenic. He spent 10 years writing his operating
system, Temple OS, because God told him to, according to a 2014 tech magazine
story on him titled “God’s Lonely Programmer.” John McColl, a computer
engineer from Sydney, Australia, said he hoped Davis would be remembered for
his achievements and not his mental illness. He said it was “kind of hard for
a lay person to understand what a phenomenal achievement” it is to write an
entire operating system singlehandedly. “It actually boggles my mind that one
man wrote all that.” He compared it to construction, saying a man could build
a house by himself, but this was “like building a skyscraper by yourself.”
McColl was one of several fans of Davis who called the Chronicle to confirm
his passing. One video of Davis, in which he says he’s the smartest programmer
in the world, has been viewed over 44,000 times. Commenters call him a
“programming legend.” One noted that while Davis proclaims himself the best,
he “built his own everything so I can’t really argue with him …” Another fan,
Kate Blue (not her real last name), said she wanted to keep anonymity because
Davis was controversial. “He had been repeatedly banned from Youtube because
his schizophrenia caused him to say things that are very offensive. He
couldn’t help it,” Blue said. “He was actually a genius.” “I’m talking with
some friends of his online right now and they’re devastated,” she said. Blue,
a computer engineer from Phoenix, said Davis’s operating system runs on a very
specific part of a computer processor and is something unique that no one else
has done before. “It’s extremely quick. It’s very fast. It can only do a few
things but what it does it does very quickly.” The operating system is
rudimentary looking, like something from the early days of personal computers.
In the 2014 article, in Motherboard, Davis said all the aspects of it were
dictated by God. Blue said Davis could’ve been a Steve Jobs or a Steve Wozniak
were it not for his mental illness. “He did not want to be medicated, that was
his thing. And anytime he was given medications he would refuse it,” saying
they “stifled his creativity and turned him into a lump.” McColl said he
talked regularly to Davis, and when he was talking about computers, as he did
with McColl, he was always lucid and showed no signs of delusional behavior.
Another fan, a clinical psychologist from Iowa who asked that his name not be
used, said Davis worked as a lead engineer at Ticketmaster and lead software
engineer at Graphic Technologies before his mental illness pushed him out of
the workforce in the early 2000s. He was homeless for a time in 2004, and did
so to evade being hospitalized, the psychologist said. He also became homeless
earlier this year for the same reason. Davis told him he became homeless “to
escape the dog catchers.” He’d been living with his sister in Phoenix, the
psychologist said. During his homelessness, his fans helped him, bringing him
supplies. But he refused offers of housing, including from fans in Atlanta and
Houston. Davis went to California, then headed to Portland sometime in April,
and then walked to The Dalles, the psychologist said. In June, The Dalles
Police Department got a courtesy notification from the Portland Police
Bureau’s behavioral unit that Davis may be heading there and could be a
danger, since he said if God told him to kill, he would. Police never found
Davis at that time and never got any complaints about him, said The Dalles
Police Capt. Jamie Carrico. According to a police report on the death, on the
evening of Aug. 11, Davis was walking along the railroad tracks, with his back
to an oncoming train, when he turned and faced the train before it hit him.
The train engineer considered it a suicide, according to the report. The
psychologist said none of Davis’s fans thought suicide was possible, and they
hadn’t seen signs of depression. He said Davis had posted hours and hours of
videos over the years, but because he believed God’s 11th commandment was to
not litter, he deleted a lot of his videos “littering” the internet just
before his death. He posted one last video, a few hours before his death. In
retrospect, that video may have hinted at depression, the psychologist said.
“He said something about it must’ve been a shock to these people in The Dalles
that such a vile person was among them and that he learned how to purify
himself. “The last 20 seconds of the video I think are interesting because he
leaned back and he said ‘It’s good to be king. Well, maybe. Sometimes I think
I’m just a weird little person walking back and forth.’ And that’s it. He’d
never shown that kind of personal doubt before.” The psychologist said he
developed an interest in Davis as a person. “I’ve been trying to put it into
words for a long time now because what he had to say a lot of times was
extremely crazy and delusional and inflammatory, but it also, sometimes he had
things to say that were really profound. “The one that I keep remembering is,
he said, ‘If you seek to lose your life you’ll save it, if you seek to save
your life, you’ll lose it.’” Davis’s website, TempleOS.org, notes that in the
wake of Davis’s passing, his family has asked supporters of his to donate to
organizations working to ease the pain and suffering caused by mental illness”
such as The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation and the National Alliance on
Mental Illness.

~~~
tdumitrescu
> sometimes he had things to say that were really profound. “The one that I
> keep remembering is, he said, ‘If you seek to lose your life you’ll save it,
> if you seek to save your life, you’ll lose it.’”

Profound and all but...that's just a Jesus quote.

------
esaym
"This is not an issue of mental health in America. American society decided
that Terry Davis was not a threat to himself or others, and thus permitted him
the freedom to choose whether he would get help for his condition or not. That
freedom may be clouded by his condition, but it is a freedom he is afforded
none-the-less. Terry Davis is a success story in America being tolerant of the
mentally ill." \--random internet guy

------
ezoe
That's so sad. Although he is not a person I'd like to meet in person, his
TempleOS was something ordinary person can't write it.

------
pen2l
Shine on you crazy diamond

------
jpeg_hero
Oh, man, this hits hard. So tragic on so many levels. I am taken aback.
Seriously will take some time to compose my thoughts.

OS on straight bare metal— a dream we morals can only speculate in our docker,
VM’d, noisy neighbor lives. The purity of that. Protected memory, pashaw.
Multi user?, svga? Bloat.

C code on a terminal line strait into ring 0.

He died as he lived.

------
GW150914
I’d heard that he died here, but suicide? Oh man, this makes me so sad for him
and his family. Past the illness, he was interesting and smart, and it sucks
that he felt like he had no other way out. TempleOS was one of those things
that nobody else would have even tried to make, and most who tried wouldn’t
have been able to.

------
anon1234123
rip

------
yellowapple
Still no black bar. Disappointing.

~~~
jpeg_hero
He was shadowbanned here. So maybe the black bar is shadow banned.

Towards the end he said some racist nazi shit. Hard for people to accept that
was a symptom of his mental decline. Hard to be tollerant about that.

I first discovered him circa 2006 when the OS was called LoseThos.

I prefer to remember him from those days when he provided this community with
such a breath of fresh air- rather than during his end days.

Remove the shadow ban. Give him a black bar.

~~~
esaym
>racist nazi

Just an fyi, there is a large conspiracy basically stating that he was "made"
this way by internet trolling. Similar to the outcome of "Chris Chan".

Terry in many cases showed great fondness over several popular
internet/youtube girls to which end he would live stream himself trying to
email and make contact with them. And to this, trolls would spoof a response
email somewhere along the line of "I only date black men with huge ____s ".

You can see a similar situation involving Dianna "physics girl" here:
[http://ia800600.us.archive.org/31/items/TerryADavis_TempleOS...](http://ia800600.us.archive.org/31/items/TerryADavis_TempleOS_Archive/videos/2017/2017-08-02T06%3a18%3a12%2b00%3a00%20-%20MAH01776.mp4)

It is very possible that through this trolling is what lead him to get kicked
out of his parent's house and subsequently dying on a set of train tracks.

~~~
gammatrigono
This is the saddest thing I've seen all year, easily worse than any gore
video. I can't believe this is real.

~~~
Born_Again
It saddens me that people are more comfortable watching videos of gore than a
person suffering from a mental illness.

It saddens me that America lacks mental health awareness.

> I can't believe this is real.

About 1% of Americans suffer from schizophrenia [0] and for many of those,
this video shows what they and their family face on a daily basis. You and the
people around you probably don't ever experience what happens in those gore
videos, but we are surrounded by people who suffer from schizophrenia and
other mental disorders.

There is currently no cure for schizophrenia and the best treatment is therapy
and antipsychotic medication. If the person who is suffering from
schizophrenia decides to pass on the medication and therapy (for reasons
related to the disorder or because the side effects are worse than the
benefits), it can be difficult to prevent situations like the one in the video
of Terry from happening.

Imagine you are in a room with 100 other people. It is likely that someone in
that room has experienced paranoia or groundless thinking similar to what you
saw in the video. Both them and their family have to learn how to deal with
the symptoms and often do not get enough support. I encourage everyone to
educate themselves on mental health and consider donating to an organization
that supports people with mental illness [1].

Terry uploaded a video the day before he died [2] and also removed all of his
previously uploaded videos from YouTube. That leads me to believe that he
committed suicide. I don't know much about his situation, but I can't help to
wonder if he would still be with us if he was given more support and resources
to help him deal with his illness.

Thankfully Archive.org [3] has saved a great amount of videos and links
related to Terry's life if anyone would like to learn more.

[0] [https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Mental-Health-
Conditions/Sch...](https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Mental-Health-
Conditions/Schizophrenia)

[1] [https://www.nami.org/](https://www.nami.org/)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH41gGBVpkE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH41gGBVpkE)

[3]
[http://ia800600.us.archive.org/31/items/TerryADavis_TempleOS...](http://ia800600.us.archive.org/31/items/TerryADavis_TempleOS_Archive/)

~~~
jpeg_hero
Goddamn that hurts.

I’m going to puke if I see one more tweet from Fred Wilson saying “the startup
community needs to be open to talking about mental health” and then he talks
about some trendy, socially acceptable “depression”.

I had someone I cared about on a 5150 hold. That shit breaks your heart when
you know you need much more then 48 hours, and you are helpless.

Terry had people that cared about him, and what ended up happening to him is
an indictment of the system.

The system failed Terry and those that cared about him.

~~~
esaym
>The system failed Terry

"This is not an issue of mental health in America. American society decided
that Terry Davis was not a threat to himself or others, and thus permitted him
the freedom to choose whether he would get help for his condition or not. That
freedom may be clouded by his condition, but it is a freedom he is afforded
none-the-less. Terry Davis is a success story in America being tolerant of the
mentally ill." \--random internet guy

