Just one day ago I had no idea who Ian Murdock was. He's name was not known to me even though I used to develop commercial software that shipped his creation inside. Had used his creation as my operating system for years.
So thank you Ian Murdock for helping me professionally, economically and just making my life better. And here's to all those great minds that do wonderful things to help us all out, even though most do not know you at all.
Oddly enough, I was reading Ian Murdock's blog post about Linux history just before the holiday kicked in. I knew roughly who he was and what his contribution to Linux had been but I had not realised how much he had done since Debian.
A point of analysis for the inquiry: can Twitter make a full dump of tweets available to journalists and investigators? Historical data is available to organizations who pay for Twitter's full data feed subscription. Many people who write/tweet from a mobile phone will use auto-correct. There were unusual spelling errors in the recent batch of tweets. Were these spelling errors consistent with his past spelling errors? Did his past tweets have spelling errors, or did they include words which are typical of auto-correct (i.e. correctly spelled but wrong within tweet context)? Did the tweets originate from a mobile phone? Any clues from gait analysis of the phone's accelerometer?
If observers are going to use a few tweets as a proxy indicator of evidence for mental state, those tweets should be evaluated within the context of all prior pubic tweets, including a history (or not) of tweeting under the influence. Furthermore, did Ian reach out to other members of his large technology community on channels other than Twitter? Those communications could also be proxy indicators of his perceptions, wishes and intentions. He must have reached out in person and 1:1 for support.
The highest priority is to understand what Ian would want at this point, using all available recent/historical data from all available online and offline channels. This does not mean that all data must be public, only that Ian's trusted confidantes be the ones to review both private and public data, at an appropriate time. But all public data should be consolidated by capable journalists.
A carefully structured public/private analysis can inform our individual and collective response to future incidents. Such tragedies have happened enough times [1] that we need proactive and preventive cultural and data-driven guidance within the technology community, the same way that opsec has become critical to journalists.
Palantir may have this in their analysis toolbox. Will they offer an on-demand SaaS/cloud version? Imagine the feedback loops when applied to HN or other social poster history! Or in real-time analysis of draft comments.
And it is remarkably true that the Debian project is like a unicorn. Very few projects are truly a community effort, and at the same time truly democratic. Linux has a BDFL (Benevolent Dictator for Life) as Drupal, Wordpress and many other projects.
I didn't always agree with Ian, but he was one of those people for whom that would be a clue to revisit and reevaluate my own point of view. No nonsense, and the the wheels were always turning. Five levels deep and six steps ahead. Deep respect. RIP.
After even mild police harassment, I have experienced extreme emotional discomfort.
It can be very upsetting to be face-to-face with uncompromising power.
This is intensified when it includes a collision of worldviews (you think you're right, they think you're wrong).
And it must be even worse when it involves physical injury.
I am fascinated that he has dedicated the end of his life to pointing out that police violence hurts white people and black people equally. Ironically, I am upset that he used the slur N____r in his final tweets, because it would have really united people in the cause against police violence. However, I think it just shows how unbelievably emotionally distressed he was. That poor man.
This type of violence is happening to lots of people all over the U.S. The internet is bringing some light to it and we've got to get a grip on it. We have to calm the flip down and remember we're here on Earth to enjoy it as a gift, not win contests and hurt each other.
I imagine Ian felt something like that "egalite, liberte and fraternite" based on his immense gifts to the world, but when he saw that world view get shaken, that despite his contributions, he could still be beaten down by uncompromising, self-righteous power, it might have cast serious doubt in his mind. God damn it.
Is it conspiracy to wonder why he would consider that? What happened to make him think that is an option and to select it. Maybe hit in the head, or some credible threat on things he ares for.
This reminds of a case a few months back, give or take, but I can't quite remember. Similar circumstance of altercations with police and then sudden suicide. Does anyone else recall?
I have spent too long building software that is bent or rippled because I feel the need to deliver it for today.
It's a selfish decision, and is not a valid memoriam, but I intend to take a leaf out of Ian's book, and build software and communities for the long haul - how will this look in 12 months or 12 years, when today's pressures have vanished in the wind.
It's not much for someone who built so much, but it's all I have.
Kind of disappointed that HN isn't putting a black top banner to show respect to Ian like they did with Steve Jobs and others. I've been using Debian for more than 15 years and it runs half of the web today, the International Space Station, Tesla motor vehicles and more. Ian's impact on the world and our community is simply incalculable. It also looks like he wanted to use his suicide to grab people's attention on the issues of police brutality, serving humanity even through his death. Thank you Ian.
Please, let's don't do this. Is it an Internet thing? "why hasn't Obama said anything yet?", "why did the Muslims not distance themselves?", "why is there a national holiday for x but not y".
Symbols are cheap, but not very important. Let's not make the absence of symbols into a huge thing. State your grieve, I'll grieve with you, but let's not get angry at other people who don't show their grieve the way you expected it.
The "collective identity" component of this comes from the group of HN readers collectively deciding to upvote this to the top story for an extended period of time. I'm not sure what would be added to that by a single admin making a decision by fiat.
No, you can't just say that without backing it up. The Guardian (good, left-leaning UK paper) can't go more than a few days without a deadline like "We're all [name of someone who just died and who you've never heard of and won't again] now" or whatever. People get forgotten and all that matters is how much people have changed reality whilst alive (or what impact they have after they're dead). Just printing their name or a little slogan or icon or whatever...it literally means nothing, either at the time its printed or afterwards.
That statement was about collective identity. Everyone has a collective identity.
You are free to choose your own collective identity. Do whatever you want. If you say that you are not part of any collective identity, I'm not sure about that...
I try very hard to avoid any collective identity for myself, even to the extent where a lot of people would say "I am a [verb]er," I consciously prefer "I [verb]."
The collective identity mindset opens people up to manipulation, guilt by association, and undeserved praise by association (which sounds nice but can lead to poor decisions based on a distorted sense of self). Any benefits are comparatively small. You can still go [verb] with the [verb]ers without merging your identity and worldview with theirs.
Hopefully, they aren't working today either. With any luck, the people who could put a black banner have a chance to spend a couple days with friends or family to celebrate the new year.
Symbols are literally everywhere you look. The sentence you just read is nothing but a chain of symbols which got resolved to an overall concept. 2 + 2 = 4 means nothing except to a human.
You're right -- symbols are cheap. However, they're the very threads our world is weaved with. Off topic I know, but I always think it's important to keep in my mind.
A friend respond to the uproar (by some) after the recent Paris attacks that Facebook had not offered temporary logo profile picture for other recent atrocities: "Don't have a go at mourners in a funeral that they didn't go to other funerals."
Agreed. I didn't see the black thick line on HN yesterday evening, but I was really expecting it to be there today. Its absence genuinely makes me sad.
Yes, the reactions on HN in general have been kind of underwhelming compared to Steve Jobs for reasons I can understand although for me Ian's death has hit harder than Steve's. My guess is that many here are young, mostly devs that have been using Mac all their dev life and before that windows. For the older folks who do dev ops or were around in the 90's and early 2000's and who cared about free software, Debian really had a huge impact on us and so we feel more sad about Ian's death than the rest.
I don't know. I'm only 26. Still it hit me harder than Jobs' death. I used to own a PowerBook in high school / first uni year. At that time I was already using Debian on my servers. Since then I also use it on my laptops.
I chose Debian because it is technically awesome, and also because it is politically awesome. Be it the Debian manifesto, Debian's social contract, Debian Free Software Guidelines, the way the Debian project is organized (e.g., the use of the Schulze/Condorcet method for electing the project leader), etc. All of this is the result of the work of the many people in the project/community that Murdock created with his ideals.
I thought that would count for something for everyone, especially among HN folks.
I worked closely with him at Progeny, and I've long admired Apple and Steve Jobs. Both deaths hit me pretty hard.
Ian reminded me a bit of Steve; he had a similar ability to look a few steps ahead, anticipate technology trends, and he was quite charismatic.
Orthogonal to the above: I remember when Ian first got an iPod and started downloading music from iTunes. He was astonished at the convenience. "How has no one done this before?" is nearly an exact quote.
Steve Jobs is more famous and thus known by more people. I use Apple products on a daily basis and I use Debian only once in a while. Yet I feel more sad about Ian's death.
And while many Mac users attribute their OS to Steve Jobs, I bet most Ubuntu users never heard about Ian (or Mark Shuttleworth for that matter).
Looking at the subthread spawned from this comment, I'm partial to flagging all of it. Some of your responders may end up later regretting the things they said.
Seriously, comparing two deaths like this is not a good idea, not when it's so fresh. Both Ian and Steve impacted the computing world in a huge, if different way, and both deaths are tragic. We've honored Steve Jobs then, this is the hour of honoring Ian Murdock. Black bar be damned.
I had been a lurker for ~2 years and a registered user for ~3 years, so about ~5 years in total. I don't believe that HN adequately represents either independent developers, non-corporate FOSS community or web developers ("JS hipsters").
My only problem with representation here is that if you have differing opinions than one of the other groups, you get downvoted into oblivion. Hell, saying anything that goes remotely against the tide gets you downvoted.
I can understand what he means though, because most people that downvote me are "JS hipsters." Since these people comment the most, they have the ability to control the conversation, and thus leave a larger visible proportion of representation.
Everyone has this policing tone, too, and it's obnoxious.
Nah, one has to learn to stop caring about downvotes that much. You can very well express contrarian views on HN, and yes, you sometimes have to pay the price in blood^H^H^H^H^Hkarma. Like with all worthy causes. What matters is that people will engage your argument constructively, if you write it in a substantial and civil way.
Case in point: only yesterday 'miguelrochefort had the guts to post advocating a completely contrarian view on privacy[0]. That particular comment, predictably, got downvoted, but it didn't stop a thoughtful discussion from spawning. As long as this happens, HN serves its purpose.
--
Also, how do you know that people who downvote you are "JS hipsters" and not someone else? :).
Because it's (possibly) a suicide we don't honor his death? Will we also prevent him from being buried in the church grounds? We don't want the holy place besmirched by a mortal sin do we?
I personally think part of it is political. I don't think HN will display a black banner when Stallman dies, for instance.
You don't honor a death. You honor a life, at the moment of death, because death is moment when you realize you didn't pay enough attention during their life.
> things are a bit different when someone takes their own life
This is a golden example of stigmatizing mental illness. If he had cancer, it would have been a "real" tragedy, but because he (likely) had some kind of mental illness/breakdown that led to the same result, it's "different".
You know, personally I think what Steve Jobs did - aside from gaming the system to get first dibs on his new liver - was tantamount to murder. He got a new liver, and then didn't follow standard treatment for his cancer, resulting in his own death.
The liver he (effectively) stole could have gone to someone else who could still be alive today. Doesn't that make you sick ? It's tantamount to killing an innocent life.
Edit: The more I think about it, Steve did take his own life. I'm sure at some point, his doctors told him "if you dont do this [follow treatment regimen], you'll die". So he committed suicide too.
If anything I feel it's exactly the opposite. Ian was having a mental breakdown of some sort when he apparently committed suicide, and was not in his right mind.
Steve on the other hand was in full control of his facilities when he willfully refused treatment that might have saved, or at least extended his life. When he finally realized his mistake it was too late.
> BTW, much has been said about Jobs refusing standard cancer treatment and choosing a potentially less effective one
Steve Jobs very well may be alive today had he chosen to undergo typical cancer treatments since his was discovered moderately early.
He ate carrots and drank herbal tea, at protest of doctors and medical professionals, right up until even he realized his course of action was foolish. He panicked and tried to undergo dramatic procedures, but it was too late.
> You are essentially claiming that mental illness is less respectable than physical illness.
Not at all. But this case with Ian doesn't appear to have been caused by mental illness, rather it appears to have been the result of heavy binge drinking ("black out drunk") (and possibly drugs, due to his erratic and abnormal behavior and statements), and people do very stupid things in that state (including commit suicide even though their sober selves wouldn't permit it).
This isn't an Aaron Swartz case where Ian was pushed to the very edge over a period of time, and systematically had his life and everything to look forward to ripped away by a system built purely to destroy him. Ian's death was the direct result of his actions over the period of a weekend, heavily influenced by alcohol (and possibly drugs). That's a different case entirely.
It's a little more difficult to feel the same sort of pain for someone who was upset at the consequences from their own actions (try to break into someone's home, police are going to arrest/ticket you... do it a second time on the same night, and you definitely will be arrested).
It's apparent, in Ian's drunken stupor, he fundamentally believed he did nothing wrong and everyone was out to "get him". This is indicative of a drunk and/or someone on drugs (inability to see cause and effect, and rationalize about one's own actions).
> It's apparent, in Ian's drunken stupor, he fundamentally believed he did nothing wrong and everyone was out to "get him". This is indicative of a drunk and/or someone on drugs (inability to see cause and effect, and rationalize about one's own actions).
Seems a little harsh given the few details we have to blame it all on Ian being drunk. Most drunk people don't kill themselves, it's obvious something else happened we don't know about. All I know is that for now, I trust Ian more than I do cops specially after events such as these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Andy_Lopez
What the fuck? You just casually throw it out there -- "Oh, drugs may have been involved" -- based on a Twitter feed that's somewhat incoherent after the person just went through a traumatic experience?
Please, don't "venture a bit" and "go a bit further" - if you have nothing to say, keep mum.
It is my understanding that he was beaten by police officers, and the randomness of the twitter feed was the result of head trauma, or some other injury he had sustained during the attack.
> It is my understanding that he was beaten by police officers, and the randomness of the twitter feed was the result of head trauma
Unfortunately that does not appear to be true.
The cause of death is not known at this stage, but it is not
believed to be suspicious. A spokesperson for Docker said
it was a "private matter."
According to the San Francisco police, officers were called
to Steiner and Union St in the city at 11.30pm on Saturday, December 26,
following reports of a man trying to break into a home – that man was
identified as Ian Murdock. He reportedly fought with the cops, and was
given a ticket for two counts of assault and one for obstruction of
an officer. The techie had been drinking, according to the police logs.
A medic arrived to treat an abrasion to Murdock's forehead, and he was
released so he could be taken to hospital.
A few hours later, on Sunday, December 27 at 2.40am, police were
called again to reports of Murdock banging on the door of a neighbor
at the very same block. A medic arrived to treat him for any injuries.
Officers then took Murdock to the county jail where he was held in a cell.
Murdock was bailed later that day, on Sunday, after a bond,
said to be $25,000, was paid. He died the next day.
It's clear something may have been wrong prior to any incidents occurring (why was Ian out in the streets alone, very drunk, trying to break into a home?).
There are multiple police reports from each of the calls to him. Conspiricy theorists will just claim the reports have been doctored or whatever, but in reality the police wouldn't of known who it was before responding to the call, and probably still didn't know who it was after responding to the call. What is clear is Ian, very dunk at the time, did resist arrest and assaulted the officers (per the report).
Each time he was treated by a medical professional and deemed OK to be released. He didn't go to the hospital like advised, instead seemingly opting to continue drinking and running about in public at 2:40 AM banging on people's front doors.
There are many cases of real police brutality - this is not one.
The reports don't have to have been "doctored", they can very well have not been true to begin with.
Not sure why this would require them to have any idea who Murdock was. This isn't necessarily related to him being the inventor of Debian. Maybe he was just talking back to the cops and they exaggerated it to "resisting arrest" in the report.
I mean, the reports may well be true and Murdock may well have been suffering from some mental issues (the Twitter posts seem to bear this out). But it's nuts to think we can just trust the police and that if they say something wasn't police brutality then that's the end of the story.
Watching the news in the US from the UK, it's pretty clear that you (in the states) long ago reached the point where it's not even paranoia any more. The police there killed more civilians in a few weeks of the year than the UK police have killed here in hundreds of years. They murder and lie about it; it's going to be interesting to see what happens now that it's routinely caught on camera, but to suggest that there's anything tin-foil-hat crazy about suggesting that the police might have done something wrong here which has resulted in someone's death betrays a naive (at best) comprehension of the situation there today.
OK well I suppose then it is fair to say that on average 150 police a year die in the line of duty from criminal action, yet in the UK, here is a list of all that have died since 1900: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_police_officer... The police in the US face many more people with guns, so comparing it with the UK is absurd. I have lived in the UK it is a lot different there in regards to violent crime, and gun crime is basically unheard of.
To put this in perspective there are more deaths per year in the NYPD than all of UK, Iceland, Japan and other countries that are used to make non equivalent comparisons.
The police do indeed do wrong things sometimes, but to imply that the higher rate of citizen killings here is due to some police malfeasance or conspiracy is indeed tinfoil hat.
You can't explain away the massive discrepancy between the UK and the US simply by saying it's because the police face more people with guns, I'm afraid, although clearly the ridiculous US gun laws are implicated. There's simply no willingness to take the generally speaking white-cop-on-black-guy murder seriously; it doesn't require a conspiracy to explain it; the transition from slavery to lynching to today just hasn't been handled very well and therefore it's essentially still happening in slow motion. Sort that out and you'll address much of the problem. The other side of the coin is the whole US military industrial thing; the massive profits in being a provider to the military for their little ongoing adventures in muslim countries, and the sideline in providing much of the kit to police forces. This will only get worse as the divide between rich and poor continues to grow. There's no need for conspiracy theories to explain what's happening; no need to look for secret meetings; this is all out in the open and has been for decades.
Well, the US has far more citizens killing other citizens than than the UK, that should be kept in mind if you are on the verge of calling the police basically murderers. It's convenient that you don't consider how often police are murdered by citizens either.
I don't think it's naive not to be a conspiracy theorist. Sure, there are some cases of police murders and other misconduct but it's hardly the norm and it is rather spurious to think every run-in with the police lurks the head of a grand conspiracy or a cover-up.
When you watch the news in the US from the UK, keep in mind that many have a vested interest in telling a certain narrative.
The police ask to be police; I don't care about occupational hazards; I'm more concerned with people going to work and not coming back home because of a cops paranoia or attitude problem. And it's not interesting to me to determine which percentage of cops are guilty of misconduct; the problem is that the system as a whole is was not designed to protect justice or the citizens of the US but the people who run it and the people it was set up to protect (the wealthy) so you'd not expect it to do a very good job of protecting poor black people. Whether 1% or 60% of cops overstep the mark, murder, frame, torture etc? Not really a very interesting statistic.
The various news sources in the UK have no reason to attack the US police; i'm not sure where you get that from; perhaps it's something you say when someone receives information you don't agree with or find damaging to your beliefs. Statistics; simply the number of dead; don't really lend themselves to much to "narratives".
What paranoia? The police pulls shit like that all the time and calls it "assaulting an officer" is you dare say anything back. Including to 12 and 15 year old unarmed kids.
While we might have reasons to think otherwise for this particular case, the paranoia is very much guaranteed in the general case.
How does that in any way suggest the police didn't give him head trauma?
Just a lot of "the police say he did this", which is justification for why they arrested him (assuming they can be trusted, which we all know is not the case) but even if true doesn't explain what went down during the fight/arrest or how serious an injury resulted in the forehead "abrasion".
Medics checked him out each time, and cleared him. Are you suggesting Medics aren't to be trusted now too?
To what extent does this paranoia carry?
> How does that in any way suggest the police didn't give him head trauma?
How does this in any way suggest the police gave him head trauma? That's a straw man if I ever saw one.
The head trauma was a theory floated before the police reports where looked into (party because Ian was ranting about being "beaten" and "raped" by the police during his drunken rage). It's pretty clear that is not the case now. The most likely cause of death, was suicide (as announced by Ian himself just a few hours prior).
The man was out in the streets, alone, heavily drunk, and attempting to break into someone's home. This is a situation where we should want the police to intervene.
Just a few hours later, Ian was out in the streets, even more heavily intoxicated, this time pounding on random people's front door at 2:40 AM. This is a situation where we should want the police to intervene.
It's clear something was going on with Ian before all this started. What sequence of events led up to him being this drunk and disorderly in public at that wee hour of the morning?
Yet, because Ian, in his drunken rage, perceived the police as being out to just beat and rape him, people will cling to that theory and claim police brutality, without a single minute piece of evidence.
How many times has a drunken person mistakenly become violent against someone else who's trying to make them do something they don't want to do (send Ian home in this case)? All the time. The police reports read as just another drunk dude in the streets... it's a common story. Nothing unusual here.
It's curious times when we take the word of a drunk over official reports from multiple agencies and parties involved (police, paramedics, neighbors calls, etc...)
I was arrested at a protest once, and my police report said I was menacingly carrying a sharpened stick, amongst other things. This was meant to indicate a protest sign, which in fact I wasn't actually carrying... the police write whatever they want in the reports, and if there's a question of police misconduct, they should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
And of course when the coroner's report comes out in a few days and states suicide as the cause of death, cites enough alcohol in his system to kill a moose, and possibly drugs... we'll all reject it as part of the cover up, you know... because police brutality!
Sometimes things are what they are. Don't go looking for examples to fuel your anti-police paranoia just because it makes you feel good. It's tragic Ian passed, but there's no evidence he was somehow murdered by police.
> I appreciate the concern about evidence, but please stop fuelling this controversy.
Quite the opposite. I'm demonstrating there is nothing to be of controversy here. It's pretty clear what occurred here (we do have many of the facts now), yet many want to go off on some wild conspiracy theory. That's fueling controversy purely for the sake of controversy.
With that said - I do believe all the cases have been made, and people will see what they want to see, regardless of the truth.
I get that and I appreciate the intent, but it doesn't matter whether you're burning conspiracy theories or something else, you're still adding fuel to the fire. It's keeping this unseemly argument going, so please stop.
Truth is exactly what we are essentially searching for here.
Some people have good reason not to trust police reports, as abuse of authority is rife within many districts in the US and UK.
This does not mean that we would disagree with what an official independent report would state because "It has to be a conspiracy", or any other garbage reason -- it just means that we disagree that the outcome of the official police report is necessarily correct, because of the bias police reports can hold.
I think it is fair game to argue against breathless conspiracy theories. It sort of surprising to see in this thread such complete acceptance for the "the police murdered him" narrative while noting the obvious reality, that this is extremely unlikely and the truth is probably much simpler, is actually extremely derided.
> Medics checked him out each time, and cleared him. Are you suggesting Medics aren't to be trusted now too?
As with all medical professionals, they are not to be trusted to be omniscient. Clearing him for release is not the same thing as guaranteeing that he had no dangerous injuries.
> Clearing him for release is not the same thing as guaranteeing that he had no dangerous injuries.
Isn't that almost exactly what clearing him for release means? What else are the medics "clearing him" for if not the absence of major/dangerous injuries? I suppose they cannot "guarantee" the lack of injury, but they certainly would have checked for evidence of traumatic brain injury.
It's possible that they missed something, but this is currently unjustified paranoia with nothing behind it except distrust toward the police.
It's the closest thing to a guarantee that they are able to give, which is substantially limited by the information, time, and equipment they are able to obtain.
As someone with a chronic medical condition that was misdiagnosed for ~20 years, I admit to having biases about this sort of thing, but I can assure you that my doubts are not limited to police-involved situations or EMTs.
Sure, medics make mistakes. I don't buy all this conspiracy stuff about the police killing Ian Murdock, though. That narrative doesn't make much sense, partly because the family is asking for privacy rather than loudly demanding justice as you might expect from family members of a murdered man. But also, the alternative is nutty.
The police just randomly assaulted him twice at two different times, then called the medics both times and filed false reports about what happened? Not only does this make absolutely no sense, but seems pretty easy to dismantle if false. Murdock claims that the police attacked him in his home twice. The police claim that he was attempting to break into two different homes. Which of these is more likely? Someone supposedly reported him both times. At least one medic saw him. Are these people in on the conspiracy or made up (seems easy to confirm that these are real people)?
This is tragic, and it is entirely possible that Ian Murdock was a victim of abuse by the police during his arrest/while in custody, but it also seems like Ian Murdock had some sort of mental break before all this happened (I seriously doubt this was all the result of just alcohol use). Given the (presumed) suicide, I wonder if he had some long term mental illness. He very well might have been delusional or psychotic during all this.
> don't buy all this conspiracy stuff about the police killing Ian Murdock, though.
I actually didn't state that police killed Ian Murdock, just that his (presumed) suicide could have been the result of the emotional trauma from the beatings. I can not speak for anyone else.
> Medics checked him out each time, and cleared him. Are you suggesting Medics aren't to be trusted now too?
Who said the medics cleared him? They may have cleared him to go home, but that does not imply he didn't have a concussion, for example.
I do not know if the medics in the US have a different policy, in the UK you can be sent home as long as you have someone to look after you, check you're ok, and make sure you don't fall asleep before 24 (or 48) hours have passed.
un·der·stand·ing (ŭn′dər-stăn′dĭng)
n.
1. a) The ability by which one understands;
intelligence: concepts that are beyond the understanding of a child.
...
2. Individual or specified judgment or outlook;
opinion: In my understanding, this is a good plan.
...
'Understanding' is correct in this instance, unless you wish to be extremely pedantic.
No, it's not correct. You have insufficient information with which to render an "individual or specified judgement or outlook" on this matter. What you've done is provide your guesswork as if it's based on meaningful information. You have no data supporting your claim that Murdock's head trauma caused his erratic comments on Twitter. I don't believe it's even known whether he had meaningful head trauma.
This isn't pedantry. You are basically lying. What you've done is present one of many possible explanations as if it is the correct one, despite having no data to back your claim. This is like claiming that a rogue Chipotle employee intentionally introduced e. coli into their food supply. This is a possible explanation, but it's just wild conjecture. Presenting it as "your understanding" would be to present it as if it were a factual claim.
Ok. Do not wait for others to change the things that you can change by yourself. Topcolor changed to 000000 in config. Annoying banner issue solved. This was the easy problem.
A few days before Christmas, I was emailing a friend and wrote about how it seems like the odds of a liquidity event are about equal to the odds of having at least one founder try to commit suicide. That is likely an exaggeration, but like you, I feel like we are losing too many of our people.
I'm not qualified to speak to why. I have suffered and many of my issues were due to a bad combination of burnout and 'I'm killing it' culture. Simply, admitting weakness in our field feels career ending and so the tendency is to push through burnout and depression. But, I wonder if the fear of admitting weakness is endemic of our culture of if it just a symptom of the disease.
In light of my past, I have started emailing my friends, telling them that I care about them, and letting them know that if shit looks bad, they can tell me. They don't need to kill it, or be ultra successful. They just need to be.
I've also wondered if something like that could become sort of a volunteer organization. Kind of a founders helping founders organization??
I seem to remember reading about an organization whose aim is to help startup founders battling depression, but I cannot seem to find the reference. I did, however, come across this article from last year:
In any case, I believe those endeavoring on leading ambitious projects almost entirely on their own must have a strong personal circle of friends and colleagues that are always supportive and know how to encourage preventative measures. Easier said than done, but maybe providing incentives for startup founders and investors would be one way to encourage a program like this.
'founders helping founders'. Not to make fun of a terrible disease that is depression, but a better name must be made. It's is just SO techy sounding and first-world-problem-ish. I like the idea, but then again, not a soul on earth is making you be a 'founder' other than the one in the mirror.
It would be interesting to see the rate of suicide (I'm not sure Ian's death is certain to be suicide yet, and I don't wish to speculate.) amongst tech-industry positions, and other industries as a whole, and whether the rate is increasing.
I've struggled recently with burnout, and add that to personal struggles such as relationships and friendships, I've been in a bad place more than once. Talking helps; though with Ian everything happened so quickly, and with Aaron also, the law was seemingly involved with both.
There must be FOI requests that can be made for this sort of data, and some analysis might indicate an underlying problem which could begin to be addressed.
I don't think you need FOI requests for this info. What you'll probably find is that occupations exposed to "seeing the worst" (doctor, soldier, cop), and those with rising rates of unemployment, have the most suicides.
Suicide statistics are tricky. What you do or don't count as a death by suicide isn't always obvious. And there's a bunch of data that isn't always collected, or has only just started to be collected. (Was the person gay? Were they trans?)
When we look at work we think that jobs affected by economic downturn are risky (builders, vets, farmers). We also think that some other jobs are risky because they provide access to means and methods (doctors, vets, farmers).
There are some risk factors for programmers: young; single; male; intelligent enough to research methods;
For England there are these sources:
Office of National Statistics.
these numbers are robust, and good quality. They very clearly define what they do count as suicide and what they don't count. They also clearly define how they define the year - the year of registration, which may not be the year the death happened.
Searching for suicide returns a lot of information, some of which is provided under FOI request.
This also reminds me of Luke Arduini, who took his own life by jumping off the Golden Gate bridge on January 1st 2014. Yahoo even hired a private investigator to find him. He also left (in hindsight unsettling) tweets shortly before his death.
In case someone is interested in the background story:
> with someone who has gone as far as low to kill themselves
Far lower yet is he who would criticize the dead. You won't be forced to sympathize, but nobody asked you to give commentary on how superior you feel to suicide victims.
No, it doesn't make it right. But it's especially not right to do what you're doing now.
So thank you Ian Murdock for helping me professionally, economically and just making my life better. And here's to all those great minds that do wonderful things to help us all out, even though most do not know you at all.