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An Interview with _why the Lucky Stiff
- herval 18y ago_why is an ARTIST! I wish the interviewer asked what he thinks about calling software engineering - and the classic 'building bridges' comparison... :-)
- bprater 18y agoThe man never fails to amuse. And I absolutely agree, I love seeing hand-written copy.
- anuraggoel 18y agoNot if you want to quote lines from his interview on HN.
- jonursenbach 18y agoWhich is why the word needs to adopt Comic Sans so we can easily quote lines, but also read text like it's handwritten copy.
- parenthesis 18y agoNot Comic Sans, but Zapfino.
- anuraggoel 18y agohttp://bancomicsans.com/ http://bancomicsans.com/
- whughes 18y agoI would prefer a high-CPU usage, extremely inefficient embedded Flash text display applet. It's the Web 2.0 way of doing things.
- pavelludiq 18y agoYes, when XP came out it was beautiful, wasn't it :D I still used the classic theme though. Im not that much of a windows user any more, so it doesn't bother me that it looks like it came from the 90's, and im a 90's kid, so there :D
- whughes 18y agoI preferred the Watercolor skin they dropped.
- r11t 18y agoIt seems _why is a very enigmatic figure and his real identity seems to be not known. However I respect his desire to stay anonymous despite the fame he deserves for being a very creative and respectable hacker.
- kragen 18y agoI think his real identity is very well known, isn't it? He's why the lucky stiff. (Admittedly my Argentine friends might complain that since we don't know the number of his Documento Nacional de Identidad, we don't really know his identity. It's really hard to explain to notaries and the like that my new US passport came with a new passport number, and that does not mean that I am not the same person.)
- petercooper 18y agoHis real name was on his Wikipedia entry for a brief period. At the time I confirmed with others that it was true, but then it was removed and hasn't been back since. I've not been able to find it with a casual browse (and I've forgotten it). This is all the more amusing since he wrote the foreword for my book :)
- dag 18y agoThe page history says that his last name might be Malsky.
- herval 18y agoHe might as well be a group of people - sorta like Aristoteles or Homer (the greek one, not the Simpson)!
- GeneralMaximus 18y agoMe and my friends once tried to uncover his real name, with no success. It seems he has registered all his domains with the name _why the lucky stiff (the WHOIS page said "the lucky stiff, _why") Maybe that is his real name?
- 18y ago
- river_styx 18y agoThe best part about _why: if this guy completely loses his mind one day, no one will notice any difference.
- FraaJad 18y agoThe server is not responding to me. Is there a cached copy elsewhere?
- shiranaihito 18y agoI wonder if he expends too much energy on being Quirky. He goes by a Quirky name, writes Quirky & Poignant guides, and responds to questions in a Quirky way. Overall, he's really quite Quirky. He's unique and intelligent, we get it. But for once, it would be nice to see him talk about something like a normal person.
- herval 18y agoDon't we have too many normal people out there already, saying the same stuff in their lookalike blogs...? (or maybe _why IS one of those guys as well, uh?)
- mapleoin 18y agoI wish people would say this more about other eccentric people. Some people aren't this tolerant with RMS for example...
- Zev 18y ago_why is eccentric in a completely out there way, its pretty hard to argue there's someone like him. RMS is a archetypal hacker from the 70's who remained that way in the 2000's. There's no doubt that they both do great things, one's just more then slightly more unique and the other is intimately known.
- trevelyan 18y agoI love archetypal 70s hackers. Just add rock.
- shiranaihito 18y agoThe thing is, each and every one of us is unique, by virtue of being born. People just happen to have converging tendencies, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's no need to Be Different. I'm not saying you shouldn't find your own thing and do it. It's just that being different doesn't require any effort on anyone's part. Besides, anyone could pick up _why's Quirky Shtick and sound roughly the same.
- ryan-allen 18y agoBrilliant :) On another note I miss the BBS, and Major Mud.
- jodrellblank 18y agoA 14" laptop running Windows XP. Is it irrational that I have even more respect for him after learning that? No multicore, multihead powerhouse, no HN open on another screen, no very tweaked Linux install...
- burke 18y agoFor all the interesting things _why does, I've always maintained that it would be completely unsurprising if he was in fact an entire group of hackers. He must never sleep.
- KevBurnsJr 18y agoSolid gold.