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He wrote probably the most accurate SNES emulator ever and he spent tens of thousands of dollars on SNES carts to rip them and test against his emulator. He la
by umvi 2y ago
He wrote probably the most accurate SNES emulator ever and he spent tens of thousands of dollars on SNES carts to rip them and test against his emulator.
He later committed suicide I believe.
- flykespice 2y agoThey commited suicide after decades of harrassment from KiwiFarms and the Retroarch devs. They even attempted to change their internet alias multiple times to avoid their incessant stalking until settling to their final one (Near).
- clipsy 2y agoThey committed suicide; do not elide the fact that the primary reason for their harassment was that they identified as non-binary. Edit: A child post has provided reasonable evidence that I'm mistaken about Near preferring singular-they pronouns; "he" is likely fine. Apologies for the mistake. I will leave the original body of the post as I still think it's worthwhile to remember why Near was targeted for such harassment.
- llmblockchain 2y agoAs far as I'm aware, he went by he/him/they/them and accepted all of them.
- clipsy 2y agoThat's not my understanding, but I'm happy to admit a mistake and amend my post if you have a source.
- llmblockchain 2y agoFrom someone close with Near/Byuu: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27665789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27665789 I also believe marcan (another friend of Near's) commented something similar, but I can't seem to find it (I think it was on Twitter). Near's spouse referred to Near via "he/him/his" in all of the police/consulate correspondence in the FOIA, so it seemed alright to me.
- flykespice 2y agoYeah my bad, fixed it.
- wk_end 2y agoI know about the KiwiFarms stuff - but never anything so serious about the RetroArch developers. Can you elaborate?
- llmblockchain 2y agohttps://archive.is/UcRs9 https://archive.is/UcRs9 https://archive.is/a2WQ5 https://archive.is/a2WQ5 That's just the tip of it though. TLDR; The retroarch devs had an IRC channel where they would shit on byuu/near all the time, for no reason other than a group of them did it constantly. It was part of their "community".
- BoingBoomTschak 2y agoI was bored enough to read some of those IRC logs. Nothing was about sex or "gender identity". It just looks like typical underground Interweb being a tough place for people who are or want to be famous. I'm always wary with these one-sided "X was oppressed by meanies for no valid reason!" and using suicide as a way to enshrine it.
- llmblockchain 2y agoThis is only my opinion, but it seems to me Near had a number of mental things going on and it wasn't the "bullying" that pushed them over the edge. I think it had been a number of things snowballing for a decade or more (as seen in the depression post, etc). Of course, people talking about you on the internet constantly wouldn't help the situation at all.
- papercrane 2y agoThey also helped preserve Stephen Hawking's voice. Their emulator included an extremely accurate emulator for one of the DSP chips used in his voice machine. Th code was used when Hawking's original voice machine was failing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21026000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21026000