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TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

178 points by founderling 9y ago

founderling 9y ago
Here is he sitting in his truck and working on his computer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBGgi5Lqn0U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBGgi5Lqn0U
grassdubious 9y ago
ELI5 the story behind this?
- m0ck 9y ago
  He is a schizo autistic programmer who is convinced God told him to make an OS, so he is working on it constantly for 15 years, doing nothing else (it kind of resembles Noah's Ark). He used to livestream regularly on Youtube and became popular on technology boards on 4chan, 8chan etc., for his rants about God and "CIA niggers" and generally "being a living meme". Some people there genuinely like him and even bought him that drum set he wanted, but others (given *chans reputation) just liked to screw with him to induce more rants. But he is really suffering from mental illness and should got professional treatment.
  - 3131s 9y ago
    And he also posts on HN, but last time I checked his account is shadow-banned.
    - slowmotiony 9y ago
      He gets banned whenever he posts because his mental illness is taking over and he can't help but include slurs in his messages. Snowflake mods then usually either delete his posts (like on reddit), shadowban him or just ban his whole account. Which is really a shame because ignoring the slurs, his posts give you a lot of insights into his mind.
      - pm90 9y ago
        Mods have good reason to ban him if his comments are peppered with racial slurs: they are doing their fucking job. Mental illness is no excuse for racism. Calling the mods Snowflakes is going a little too far IMO.
  - WillReplyfFood 9y ago
    Yeah, professional treatment- what if that is basically offering a life like a living zombie or no-treatment at all? Not my department is just a lazy early out of difficult problems. Hope you have family. Hope that one day makes it oyur department.
newsbinator 9y ago
When I googled I found more details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/7218gh/templeos_creator_is_now_homeless/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/7218gh/templeos_crea... > Despite the mean spirited attention he gets, he does have a following of people who seem to genuinly feel for him, and want to do nice things for him. One thing his followers did which at least seemed well intentioned was buying him a drum set. Terry likes to use drum sticks, but didn't have a set, so a gofundme was set up and he was bought some drums. > But shortly after receiving the drum set, Terry vanished off the interenet for a couple weeks. Eventually, this note was posted on his website: >> I got kicked-out of my parent's house. I got in a fight with my Dad, went to jail then mental hospital. >> I'm adapting to being homeless. Hope to get a car to live in but no loan yet. > At some point after posting this note, he was able to get a van, which he's now living in.
- kentiko 9y ago
  It blows my mind that a mental ill person is ending up homeless like this. Society should take care of theses cases.
  - gt_ 9y ago
    The closest thing we offer is prison these days. :(
  - krapp 9y ago
    Unfortunately, he was born into a society that would prefer the mentally ill take care of themselves.
    - b6 9y ago
      I can't lay that much blame on society. Have you tried to take care of a mentally ill person? It's common for them to make it extremely difficult. Schizophrenia often seems to cause its sufferers to be absolutely certain they are not mentally ill at all. I've walked around for hours looking for a mentally ill woman to give her a care package, only to be attacked by her a few days afterward.
galfarragem 9y ago
In a recent HN thread fellow HNers were asking what is a real artist: this is it.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  How do you mean? TempleOS is undoubtably a pretty interesting achievement, both in the artistic and technological sense - but Terry has serious mental issues, and we shouldn't overlook them as "oh, that's just how artists are".
  - StanislavPetrov 9y ago
    In fact, if you do a careful study of history, many of the best artists have "serious mental issues". The question is, how do we define "serious mental issues" and "art"? I don't think its a coincidence that people with off-the-charts creativity are mentally different than most other people. If your thought process is that far removed from others in regards to art ("creativity"), then it only stands to reason that your thought process would be very different from other people in other regards, too.
    - erric 9y ago
      At least in the US, the DSMV is used to define "serious mental issues" while everywhere "art" is completely subjective. I don't disagree with the premise of very creative people having very different though processes from the majority. There is a very fine line between genius and insanity.
    - shirian 9y ago
      Art in Swedish is "konst" which is the base for the word "konstig" which means, literally, weird or odd. I'm pretty sure there's a reason for that etymology.
      - bryanrasmussen 9y ago
        in Danish Kunstig main meaning is artificial or synthetic, secondary meaning - does not seem real, natural, or authentic (of upright standing) http://ordnet.dk/ddo/ordbog?query=kunstig http://ordnet.dk/ddo/ordbog?query=kunstig so I don't know that I would say there is a reason for the etymology that relates in any direct way with artists are weird.
tscs37 9y ago
The amount of dedication Terry shows for his project is beyond what you see anywhere else in the software dev space. For anyone who hasn't, I recommend to watch his videos on TempleOS (there are a lot of hymn videos or ranting videos, you can ignore those), they are a genuinely interesting perspective into OS Development.
- rootlocus 9y ago
  > The amount of dedication Terry shows for his project is beyond what you see anywhere else in the software dev space. I'd say Linus Torvalds shows at least the same amount of dedication to the linux kernel.
  - tscs37 9y ago
    Terry has been writing on TempleOS (and the previous iterations which were mostly name changes) for about 15 years without pause, even Linus takes breaks.
  - galfarragem 9y ago
    AFAIK, Tarn and Zach Adams also (Dwarf Fortress).
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  His mental condition and personal situation is also beyond what you see anywhere else.
  - tscs37 9y ago
    I've seen way worse for both, so not really. He's found a way to channel his mental condition into something constructive, something that people enjoy even.
- anc84 9y ago
  With all due respect (honestly), he has quite extrem mental issue and thus you should not compare his work ethos to healthy people.
mrob 9y ago
TempleOS has no process isolation, so it's completely unaffected by Spectre and Meltdown. I'm starting to think there's a lot of wisdom in its design. Complexity of modern computer systems keeps increasing but the value I get from that complexity isn't increasing nearly as fast. Spectre and Meltdown are just recent examples of some of the cost of that complexity. Do we really need an OS too complex for any one person to completely understand?
- chungy 9y ago
  It's a bit similar to Windows 9x -- anything can do anything. It might not be suspectible to Meltdown and Spectre per se, but the lack of security that grants that property still means a lack of security.
  - dfox 9y ago
    Windows 9x has process isolation, but has no concept of permissions thus any process can do anything that is provided by the OS API (which includes reading and writing memory of other processes, injecting code into kernel and such things). This means that it is very unlikely for misbehaving process to compromise the integrity of OS itself or other processes (modulo the fact that such process can confuse some other OS component, eg. window manager, such that the system becomes essentially unusable).
- sharpneli 9y ago
  That's like saying "I don't have any doors in my house, just open frames. So I'm not affected by the weaknesses in locks."
  - krapp 9y ago
    Locks are just propaganda anyway.
    - the-dude 9y ago
      May I suggest a social construct ?
agumonkey 9y ago
Depending on "truck" it can be pretty alright. See : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UeVsHmKAFA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UeVsHmKAFA (EV mod of VW kombi) Make a kickstarter to fund his future green life. ps: for some weird reason I expected him to look like anderson cooper..
- supermatt 9y ago
  If you have the money, time and experience to invest 7 months (in this particular case) into converting it, then yeah. I think you will find 90% of van/truck dwellers have a very different situation to that.
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    I'm sure this man can crack a bit of mechanics and power electronics, probably not harder than writing an OS, also I said people could help. Now for the majority of people in such need, sure it's hard, and I wish we could turn their situation in a similar manner.
    - supermatt 9y ago
      He appears to be living on a mattress in a family car (for the last 3 months). I think he’s definitely in that “situation”, with severe mental issues to boot.
- donatj 9y ago
  From the “van dance” video, appears he has a Dodge Carivan.
haloboy777 9y ago
I have so much respect for that guy just looking at his achievement.
sexydefinesher 9y ago
This is the guy King Crimson was talking about.
- neilsimp1 9y ago
  Nothing he's got, he really needs?
founderling 9y ago
He has a donate button on his homepage. I wonder if that brings in something? Anybody here who ever used a donate button on their website and can tell something about it? How does one even receive 'donations'? Is that like getting paid? Do they have to create an invoice for tax reasons? How is it taxed? It would be nice if there was a number, how much is donated per month. I can imagine donating something. Depending on how much cash flow there already is.
- NicoJuicy 9y ago
  http://www.templeos.org/ http://www.templeos.org/ on top of the page is a donate button :) ( not affliated or any way. I just feel bad for him)
- james-skemp 9y ago
  Example of this done right: https://opengameart.org https://opengameart.org Not instant, but looking directly at the Patreon would be closer. And yes, normally you'd report as taxable.
eptcyka 9y ago
I wish there was a cure for his and his family's suffering. Irrespective of him being a genius, he deserves to receive the medical attention he needs.
NicoJuicy 9y ago
I know he's perhaps not mentally stable, but after all. He has problems and he does some amazing things. Perhaps consider donating on top of his page: http://www.templeos.org/ http://www.templeos.org/ ( paypal).
- myaso 9y ago
  Just donated 5$/month, will keep it up for a year at least. PayPal transactions take a bit of time to go through -- the hardest part was filling out the details :( I really don't have the resources to arbitrarily afford charity, but fuck it -- I spend more money on coffee in a month and it's been too cold to wander around for a while here. It must feel really awful to some people who make 6 figure salaries to part with just a little money to a person who is both talented and likely lived in agony all his life. Maybe some people can start acting like the ubermensch they pretend to be from their libertarian ideology.
  - stevenh 9y ago
    I'd ask you to explain how all libertarians are Nazis but then I guess I'd be taking the bait.
    - klez 9y ago
      "Ubermensch" doesn't imply "nazism". It's a nietzschean concept referring to humanity going beyond itself, and was then adopted by nazism to refer to a man of pure race, which is not what Nietzsche was talking about.
      - stevenh 9y ago
        He wasn't thinking of Nietzsche when he used the word. It's trendy now to accuse libertarians of being neo-Nazis.
        myaso 9y ago
        You sure like to put words in other people's mouth ;) Please tell me exactly what I'm thinking and what I meant -- I'm burning with curiosity at this point. And maybe together we can iteratively refine it.
rurban 9y ago
This was 3 months ago. Apparently he lives happy in his van.
- WillReplyfFood 9y ago
  Yes.No. Schizos have the wanderlust, they try to discover new territories- but they end up socially self isolating- and to reduce the suffering - drugs.
iovrthoughtthis 9y ago
This is incredibly sad. :( I haven't got any money to help and I don't even know where I would put it to be helpful.
zichy 9y ago
If you want to draw attention to a schizophrenic person who needs help, maybe linking /r/Drama is the wrong way.
- reeteshv 9y ago
  IMHO, this attitude is akin to "throwing the baby out with the bath water". I'm sure the readerships of HN & Reddit are not mutually exclusive. Tomorrow, someone will object to linking a WSJ article as it's a conservative newspaper. Then, somebody else will object against The Guardian for it being too left-leaning.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    From the /r/drama sidebar: "Do your part to keep our community healthy by blowing everything out of proportion and making literally everything as dramatic as possible." I think it's fair to consider /r/drama an especially bad place to originate a story about someone who needs help.
    - reeteshv 9y ago
      That paragraph is prefaced by the definition of the word Drama. If we want to avoid drama, we should stop sharing a significant number of recent events, e.g. the Meltdown and Spectre drama, launches, touchdowns and failures of SpaceX, a majority of anti-Google comments, etc.
      - zichy 9y ago
        What are you talking about? Do you grasp the basic difference between a security vulnerability and a mentally ill homeless person?
        reeteshv 9y ago
        I understand your scepticism about my ability to grasp basic differences, considering that we have never met nor interacted before. Hence, this clarification... As per my understanding, there is plenty of Drama in the security vulnerability incident - Intel CEO selling a large chunk of stock after the company was informed of the vulnerability; the differing views on the actual performance impact of the patches, the discussions on whether it was a genuine oversight error or corporate greed that led to the situation in the first place, etc. The reason I mentioned this along with the original article is simply because I was trying to clarify that there have always been dramatic posts/comments on HN. Therefore, sharing an article from r/Drama sub-reddit didn't seem sacrilegious to me. I apologise if I have offended your sensibilities...
senatorobama 9y ago
Who are the kiddies who keep stirring him up?
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Say hello to the offspring of Anon...
jstewartmobile 9y ago
Let's drop homeboy some cash (top of page): http://www.templeos.org http://www.templeos.org
krisives 9y ago
It's actually quite worse than that. Terry is kind of going through a "teenager" phase it appears. Apparently he left his parents house and started living in his car and his family went to visit him unannounced. There was some kind of altercation (probably his family trying to physically get him back) and the authorities were called because of a disturbance and he was charged with "Battery" in Las Vegas. He plead guilty to some minor charges. During the same time he's been seen with what some are describing a hooker. Unfortunately he also has an ongoing fascination with some famous YouTuber and predators/trolls are taking advantage of him by posing as her to get him to send naked photos =( The Terry Davis story gets crazier every day and I have a lot of sympathy for him. It upsets me to see the some areas of the Internet exploit him for the whole "CIA" thing. EDIT - A new development he was arrested in Arizona on the 27th of December for property damage? Get well soon, Terry.
fb03 9y ago
Putting aside all the "mental illness/nutjob" talks that everyone likes to focus on so much, I would just wish that someone somehow would be able to connect with him and channel his genius (it is clear that he is quite good at what he does) into some project with a proper objective and guidance. Bram Cohen has Asperger's and he could create BitTorrent which is widely used. I wonder if Terry Davis would create some game changer stuff as well if he had better support.... It is a sad situation.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Aspergers is a walk in the park compared to what Terry is dealing with.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  I wish someone would connect with him and get him to accept some treatment. He's created great things, but it seems like his life is a struggle.
grawprog 9y ago
I've read through a lot of Terry's posts on 8chan and his rants that got him banned from a few websites. He's totally fucked but a genius. I've tried TempleOS. It made my brain hurt to look at it and it really wasn't intuitive in any way at all. I like the concept of the OS, a full OS where everything is in the same memory space. But, it's way too annoying to really play with anything in TempleOS.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Any OS from the era of cooperative multitasking should have much the same behavior, iirc. Heck, even DOS with a few TSRs could come close.
moron4hire 9y ago
As far as I can tell, Terry Davis has been given multiple chances to get well. He chooses to be sick. It's tragic, but you can only lead a horse to water, you can't make it drink. I've been on the side of trying to help a family member get better. It's impossible to help someone who doesn't want help. And it's one of the hardest things in the world to give up on someone who doesn't want help. You question your decision for the rest of your life. And sometimes you go back, and get reminded almost immediately you did make the right decision. Also as far as I can tell, the only reason most people care about anything involving him is because of some stories about him being a "heroic" programmer. Not that they've had any realistic confirmation of that experience, because they almost certainly haven't tried any of his software. So there seems to be this perverse, backwards reasoning that "Terry says terrible things, but it's ok, he's sick, but he chose to be this way, but it's ok, he wrote his own OS". It's terrible that anyone should have to live this way, even the worst people in the world. But I'm not terribly convinced that the concern I see expressed is anything other than asshole programmer worship. Take away, "he wrote his own OS", and I just have a really hard time imagining very many people giving two shakes.
- htk 9y ago
  I agree with your first sentence, but let’s not forget the defective equipment that needs to be fixed or stabilized with medicine is the same equipment responsible for the decision to take it or not.
illumilichen 9y ago
no hacking no improvement in technology so my hacking giant told me at first i had problem accepting this but with time it got done on me that this is 100% true...galvin has handled all my hack needs and they still do. it only takes a good reputation for such relationship to linger for ages.... galvinaccess2@gmail.com... best hackers you can think of...
vertwert 9y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/programmingcirclejerk/comments/7p80od/10xers_link_to_rdrama_discussion_of_terry_davis/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programmingcirclejerk/comments/7p80...
vertwert 9y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/programmingcirclejerk/comments/7p80od/10xers_link_to_rdrama_discussion_of_terry_davis/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programmingcirclejerk/comments/7p80... :))
se30b 9y ago
Does anyone have info about his current status? He has not updated his site since Dec 15. As far as the van thing goes, he wasn't really homeless. He went to his parents house frequently and he could live there but chooses to live mostly in his van because he likes it.

178 points by founderling 9y ago

Here is he sitting in his truck and working on his computer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBGgi5Lqn0U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBGgi5Lqn0U

grassdubious 9y ago

ELI5 the story behind this?

m0ck 9y ago
He is a schizo autistic programmer who is convinced God told him to make an OS, so he is working on it constantly for 15 years, doing nothing else (it kind of resembles Noah's Ark). He used to livestream regularly on Youtube and became popular on technology boards on 4chan, 8chan etc., for his rants about God and "CIA niggers" and generally "being a living meme". Some people there genuinely like him and even bought him that drum set he wanted, but others (given *chans reputation) just liked to screw with him to induce more rants. But he is really suffering from mental illness and should got professional treatment.
- 3131s 9y ago
  And he also posts on HN, but last time I checked his account is shadow-banned.
  - slowmotiony 9y ago
    He gets banned whenever he posts because his mental illness is taking over and he can't help but include slurs in his messages. Snowflake mods then usually either delete his posts (like on reddit), shadowban him or just ban his whole account. Which is really a shame because ignoring the slurs, his posts give you a lot of insights into his mind.
    - pm90 9y ago
      Mods have good reason to ban him if his comments are peppered with racial slurs: they are doing their fucking job. Mental illness is no excuse for racism. Calling the mods Snowflakes is going a little too far IMO.
- WillReplyfFood 9y ago
  Yeah, professional treatment- what if that is basically offering a life like a living zombie or no-treatment at all? Not my department is just a lazy early out of difficult problems. Hope you have family. Hope that one day makes it oyur department.

newsbinator 9y ago

When I googled I found more details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/7218gh/templeos_creator_is_now_homeless/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/7218gh/templeos_crea... > Despite the mean spirited attention he gets, he does have a following of people who seem to genuinly feel for him, and want to do nice things for him. One thing his followers did which at least seemed well intentioned was buying him a drum set. Terry likes to use drum sticks, but didn't have a set, so a gofundme was set up and he was bought some drums. > But shortly after receiving the drum set, Terry vanished off the interenet for a couple weeks. Eventually, this note was posted on his website: >> I got kicked-out of my parent's house. I got in a fight with my Dad, went to jail then mental hospital. >> I'm adapting to being homeless. Hope to get a car to live in but no loan yet. > At some point after posting this note, he was able to get a van, which he's now living in.

kentiko 9y ago
It blows my mind that a mental ill person is ending up homeless like this. Society should take care of theses cases.
- gt_ 9y ago
  The closest thing we offer is prison these days. :(
- krapp 9y ago
  Unfortunately, he was born into a society that would prefer the mentally ill take care of themselves.
  - b6 9y ago
    I can't lay that much blame on society. Have you tried to take care of a mentally ill person? It's common for them to make it extremely difficult. Schizophrenia often seems to cause its sufferers to be absolutely certain they are not mentally ill at all. I've walked around for hours looking for a mentally ill woman to give her a care package, only to be attacked by her a few days afterward.

galfarragem 9y ago

In a recent HN thread fellow HNers were asking what is a real artist: this is it.

pavel_lishin 9y ago
How do you mean? TempleOS is undoubtably a pretty interesting achievement, both in the artistic and technological sense - but Terry has serious mental issues, and we shouldn't overlook them as "oh, that's just how artists are".
- StanislavPetrov 9y ago
  In fact, if you do a careful study of history, many of the best artists have "serious mental issues". The question is, how do we define "serious mental issues" and "art"? I don't think its a coincidence that people with off-the-charts creativity are mentally different than most other people. If your thought process is that far removed from others in regards to art ("creativity"), then it only stands to reason that your thought process would be very different from other people in other regards, too.
  - erric 9y ago
    At least in the US, the DSMV is used to define "serious mental issues" while everywhere "art" is completely subjective. I don't disagree with the premise of very creative people having very different though processes from the majority. There is a very fine line between genius and insanity.
  - shirian 9y ago
    Art in Swedish is "konst" which is the base for the word "konstig" which means, literally, weird or odd. I'm pretty sure there's a reason for that etymology.
    - bryanrasmussen 9y ago
      in Danish Kunstig main meaning is artificial or synthetic, secondary meaning - does not seem real, natural, or authentic (of upright standing) http://ordnet.dk/ddo/ordbog?query=kunstig http://ordnet.dk/ddo/ordbog?query=kunstig so I don't know that I would say there is a reason for the etymology that relates in any direct way with artists are weird.

tscs37 9y ago

The amount of dedication Terry shows for his project is beyond what you see anywhere else in the software dev space. For anyone who hasn't, I recommend to watch his videos on TempleOS (there are a lot of hymn videos or ranting videos, you can ignore those), they are a genuinely interesting perspective into OS Development.

rootlocus 9y ago
> The amount of dedication Terry shows for his project is beyond what you see anywhere else in the software dev space. I'd say Linus Torvalds shows at least the same amount of dedication to the linux kernel.
- tscs37 9y ago
  Terry has been writing on TempleOS (and the previous iterations which were mostly name changes) for about 15 years without pause, even Linus takes breaks.
- galfarragem 9y ago
  AFAIK, Tarn and Zach Adams also (Dwarf Fortress).
Cthulhu_ 9y ago
His mental condition and personal situation is also beyond what you see anywhere else.
- tscs37 9y ago
  I've seen way worse for both, so not really. He's found a way to channel his mental condition into something constructive, something that people enjoy even.
anc84 9y ago
With all due respect (honestly), he has quite extrem mental issue and thus you should not compare his work ethos to healthy people.

mrob 9y ago

TempleOS has no process isolation, so it's completely unaffected by Spectre and Meltdown. I'm starting to think there's a lot of wisdom in its design. Complexity of modern computer systems keeps increasing but the value I get from that complexity isn't increasing nearly as fast. Spectre and Meltdown are just recent examples of some of the cost of that complexity. Do we really need an OS too complex for any one person to completely understand?

chungy 9y ago
It's a bit similar to Windows 9x -- anything can do anything. It might not be suspectible to Meltdown and Spectre per se, but the lack of security that grants that property still means a lack of security.
- dfox 9y ago
  Windows 9x has process isolation, but has no concept of permissions thus any process can do anything that is provided by the OS API (which includes reading and writing memory of other processes, injecting code into kernel and such things). This means that it is very unlikely for misbehaving process to compromise the integrity of OS itself or other processes (modulo the fact that such process can confuse some other OS component, eg. window manager, such that the system becomes essentially unusable).
sharpneli 9y ago
That's like saying "I don't have any doors in my house, just open frames. So I'm not affected by the weaknesses in locks."
- krapp 9y ago
  Locks are just propaganda anyway.
  - the-dude 9y ago
    May I suggest a social construct ?

agumonkey 9y ago

Depending on "truck" it can be pretty alright. See : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UeVsHmKAFA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UeVsHmKAFA (EV mod of VW kombi) Make a kickstarter to fund his future green life. ps: for some weird reason I expected him to look like anderson cooper..

supermatt 9y ago
If you have the money, time and experience to invest 7 months (in this particular case) into converting it, then yeah. I think you will find 90% of van/truck dwellers have a very different situation to that.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  I'm sure this man can crack a bit of mechanics and power electronics, probably not harder than writing an OS, also I said people could help. Now for the majority of people in such need, sure it's hard, and I wish we could turn their situation in a similar manner.
  - supermatt 9y ago
    He appears to be living on a mattress in a family car (for the last 3 months). I think he’s definitely in that “situation”, with severe mental issues to boot.
donatj 9y ago
From the “van dance” video, appears he has a Dodge Carivan.

haloboy777 9y ago

I have so much respect for that guy just looking at his achievement.

sexydefinesher 9y ago

This is the guy King Crimson was talking about.

neilsimp1 9y ago
Nothing he's got, he really needs?

founderling 9y ago

He has a donate button on his homepage. I wonder if that brings in something? Anybody here who ever used a donate button on their website and can tell something about it? How does one even receive 'donations'? Is that like getting paid? Do they have to create an invoice for tax reasons? How is it taxed? It would be nice if there was a number, how much is donated per month. I can imagine donating something. Depending on how much cash flow there already is.

NicoJuicy 9y ago
http://www.templeos.org/ http://www.templeos.org/ on top of the page is a donate button :) ( not affliated or any way. I just feel bad for him)
james-skemp 9y ago
Example of this done right: https://opengameart.org https://opengameart.org Not instant, but looking directly at the Patreon would be closer. And yes, normally you'd report as taxable.

eptcyka 9y ago

I wish there was a cure for his and his family's suffering. Irrespective of him being a genius, he deserves to receive the medical attention he needs.

NicoJuicy 9y ago

I know he's perhaps not mentally stable, but after all. He has problems and he does some amazing things. Perhaps consider donating on top of his page: http://www.templeos.org/ http://www.templeos.org/ ( paypal).

myaso 9y ago
Just donated 5$/month, will keep it up for a year at least. PayPal transactions take a bit of time to go through -- the hardest part was filling out the details :( I really don't have the resources to arbitrarily afford charity, but fuck it -- I spend more money on coffee in a month and it's been too cold to wander around for a while here. It must feel really awful to some people who make 6 figure salaries to part with just a little money to a person who is both talented and likely lived in agony all his life. Maybe some people can start acting like the ubermensch they pretend to be from their libertarian ideology.
- stevenh 9y ago
  I'd ask you to explain how all libertarians are Nazis but then I guess I'd be taking the bait.
  - klez 9y ago
    "Ubermensch" doesn't imply "nazism". It's a nietzschean concept referring to humanity going beyond itself, and was then adopted by nazism to refer to a man of pure race, which is not what Nietzsche was talking about.
    - stevenh 9y ago
      He wasn't thinking of Nietzsche when he used the word. It's trendy now to accuse libertarians of being neo-Nazis.
      - myaso 9y ago
        You sure like to put words in other people's mouth ;) Please tell me exactly what I'm thinking and what I meant -- I'm burning with curiosity at this point. And maybe together we can iteratively refine it.

rurban 9y ago

This was 3 months ago. Apparently he lives happy in his van.

WillReplyfFood 9y ago
Yes.No. Schizos have the wanderlust, they try to discover new territories- but they end up socially self isolating- and to reduce the suffering - drugs.

iovrthoughtthis 9y ago

This is incredibly sad. :( I haven't got any money to help and I don't even know where I would put it to be helpful.

zichy 9y ago

If you want to draw attention to a schizophrenic person who needs help, maybe linking /r/Drama is the wrong way.

reeteshv 9y ago
IMHO, this attitude is akin to "throwing the baby out with the bath water". I'm sure the readerships of HN & Reddit are not mutually exclusive. Tomorrow, someone will object to linking a WSJ article as it's a conservative newspaper. Then, somebody else will object against The Guardian for it being too left-leaning.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  From the /r/drama sidebar: "Do your part to keep our community healthy by blowing everything out of proportion and making literally everything as dramatic as possible." I think it's fair to consider /r/drama an especially bad place to originate a story about someone who needs help.
  - reeteshv 9y ago
    That paragraph is prefaced by the definition of the word Drama. If we want to avoid drama, we should stop sharing a significant number of recent events, e.g. the Meltdown and Spectre drama, launches, touchdowns and failures of SpaceX, a majority of anti-Google comments, etc.
    - zichy 9y ago
      What are you talking about? Do you grasp the basic difference between a security vulnerability and a mentally ill homeless person?
      - reeteshv 9y ago
        I understand your scepticism about my ability to grasp basic differences, considering that we have never met nor interacted before. Hence, this clarification... As per my understanding, there is plenty of Drama in the security vulnerability incident - Intel CEO selling a large chunk of stock after the company was informed of the vulnerability; the differing views on the actual performance impact of the patches, the discussions on whether it was a genuine oversight error or corporate greed that led to the situation in the first place, etc. The reason I mentioned this along with the original article is simply because I was trying to clarify that there have always been dramatic posts/comments on HN. Therefore, sharing an article from r/Drama sub-reddit didn't seem sacrilegious to me. I apologise if I have offended your sensibilities...

senatorobama 9y ago

Who are the kiddies who keep stirring him up?

digi_owl 9y ago
Say hello to the offspring of Anon...

jstewartmobile 9y ago

Let's drop homeboy some cash (top of page): http://www.templeos.org http://www.templeos.org

krisives 9y ago

It's actually quite worse than that. Terry is kind of going through a "teenager" phase it appears. Apparently he left his parents house and started living in his car and his family went to visit him unannounced. There was some kind of altercation (probably his family trying to physically get him back) and the authorities were called because of a disturbance and he was charged with "Battery" in Las Vegas. He plead guilty to some minor charges. During the same time he's been seen with what some are describing a hooker. Unfortunately he also has an ongoing fascination with some famous YouTuber and predators/trolls are taking advantage of him by posing as her to get him to send naked photos =( The Terry Davis story gets crazier every day and I have a lot of sympathy for him. It upsets me to see the some areas of the Internet exploit him for the whole "CIA" thing. EDIT - A new development he was arrested in Arizona on the 27th of December for property damage? Get well soon, Terry.

fb03 9y ago

Putting aside all the "mental illness/nutjob" talks that everyone likes to focus on so much, I would just wish that someone somehow would be able to connect with him and channel his genius (it is clear that he is quite good at what he does) into some project with a proper objective and guidance. Bram Cohen has Asperger's and he could create BitTorrent which is widely used. I wonder if Terry Davis would create some game changer stuff as well if he had better support.... It is a sad situation.

digi_owl 9y ago
Aspergers is a walk in the park compared to what Terry is dealing with.
pavel_lishin 9y ago
I wish someone would connect with him and get him to accept some treatment. He's created great things, but it seems like his life is a struggle.

grawprog 9y ago

I've read through a lot of Terry's posts on 8chan and his rants that got him banned from a few websites. He's totally fucked but a genius. I've tried TempleOS. It made my brain hurt to look at it and it really wasn't intuitive in any way at all. I like the concept of the OS, a full OS where everything is in the same memory space. But, it's way too annoying to really play with anything in TempleOS.

digi_owl 9y ago
Any OS from the era of cooperative multitasking should have much the same behavior, iirc. Heck, even DOS with a few TSRs could come close.

moron4hire 9y ago

As far as I can tell, Terry Davis has been given multiple chances to get well. He chooses to be sick. It's tragic, but you can only lead a horse to water, you can't make it drink. I've been on the side of trying to help a family member get better. It's impossible to help someone who doesn't want help. And it's one of the hardest things in the world to give up on someone who doesn't want help. You question your decision for the rest of your life. And sometimes you go back, and get reminded almost immediately you did make the right decision. Also as far as I can tell, the only reason most people care about anything involving him is because of some stories about him being a "heroic" programmer. Not that they've had any realistic confirmation of that experience, because they almost certainly haven't tried any of his software. So there seems to be this perverse, backwards reasoning that "Terry says terrible things, but it's ok, he's sick, but he chose to be this way, but it's ok, he wrote his own OS". It's terrible that anyone should have to live this way, even the worst people in the world. But I'm not terribly convinced that the concern I see expressed is anything other than asshole programmer worship. Take away, "he wrote his own OS", and I just have a really hard time imagining very many people giving two shakes.

htk 9y ago
I agree with your first sentence, but let’s not forget the defective equipment that needs to be fixed or stabilized with medicine is the same equipment responsible for the decision to take it or not.

illumilichen 9y ago

no hacking no improvement in technology so my hacking giant told me at first i had problem accepting this but with time it got done on me that this is 100% true...galvin has handled all my hack needs and they still do. it only takes a good reputation for such relationship to linger for ages.... galvinaccess2@gmail.com... best hackers you can think of...

vertwert 9y ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/programmingcirclejerk/comments/7p80od/10xers_link_to_rdrama_discussion_of_terry_davis/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programmingcirclejerk/comments/7p80...

vertwert 9y ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/programmingcirclejerk/comments/7p80od/10xers_link_to_rdrama_discussion_of_terry_davis/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programmingcirclejerk/comments/7p80... :))

se30b 9y ago

Does anyone have info about his current status? He has not updated his site since Dec 15. As far as the van thing goes, he wasn't really homeless. He went to his parents house frequently and he could live there but chooses to live mostly in his van because he likes it.