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I thought it was interesting that her name is Jessica -- that's not a Czech name and there's no equivalent. So I looked her up and she was born George (Jiri) F
by david927 18y ago
I thought it was interesting that her name is Jessica -- that's not a Czech name and there's no equivalent. So I looked her up and she was born George (Jiri) Fridrich. She's a transsexual. (Not that there's anything wrong with that. Just interesting.)
- jgrahamc 18y agoI'm surprised to see this getting voted up; seems like pure gossip. If anyone on HN wants a detailed list of _my_ sexual activities my contact information is in my profile. Otherwise I'd be happier if you just looked at my code and writing.
- lief79 18y agoI completely agree with you, and yet I can't help but admire that he noticed that random detail and followed up on it. So I'm voting you up and leaving him be.
- ksvs 18y agoSomeone changing their gender is not a sexual activity. There was nothing salacious about david927's comment. If anything it is an interesting sociological data point, given the small number of prominent women in math and science.
- sethg 18y agoSexual reassignment surgery is not a sexual activity, but it is part of someone's medical history, and I think it is in poor taste to gossip about someone's medical history. If Ms. Fridrich had been hospitalized for depression as a teenager, would that also be suitable for discussing on HN?
- jgrahamc 18y agoI agree, but my example was that both sexual activity and changing gender are private activities that don't need to be discussed here.
- bd 18y agoThis was more of a missing puzzle piece than a gossip. For somebody familiar with Czech names and aware of the timeframe (80s), the name does indeed stand out strongly.
- poppysan 18y agoWow. you should become a detective...what a hunch! (not being sarcastic either...)
- acangiano 18y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jessica_Fridrich http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jessica_Fridrich
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- rsheridan6 18y ago>To take it to Godwin's extreme To Godwin's extreme... and beyond!
- david927 18y agoWait. That's not quite fair. First, I found out that she's a transexual quite easily and so that can hardly be called "outing" someone. Second, I did think about whether I should write that comment, and I thought by pointing it out I was helping, by saying "Look, this person is amazing and she's also a transexual." It's a push against the stigma. To go to your Nazi example, I felt I was saying, "Jessie Owens just kicked your ass, and look -- he's black."
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- david927 18y agoI didn't infer that she was a transexual from the name change; I read it when looking for the name change.
- ralph 18y agoSophie Wilson, formerly Roger Wilson, designed the ARM's instruction set. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson Also wrote the BBC BASIC ROMs used on Acorn computers in 6502, and later BBC BASIC V (five) in ARM. (ARM originally stood for Acorn RISC Machine.) Being able to successfully run the 6502 BASIC ROM is considered a test of how good a 6502 emulator is; his 16KiB of machine code, generated from hand-written assembler, used every trick of the CPU to squeeze in the code. This meant that when the BBC Master 128 came along, with its slightly later 6502 deriative, he could re-write some of it to use the new op-codes, taking less space, and thereby getting in a few more BASIC commands.