25 ms·

_why's site updated again

245 points by milesf 14y ago

ColinWright 14y ago
For a lengthy discussion of how to get access to these posts you can read about the last time it happened: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5540796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5540796
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  Have there been any updates since that post, or is this just a dupe?
  - dragonwriter 14y ago
    There's been a new set of things posted.
    - ColinWright 14y ago
      Thanks for that - I had no way of checking, and there was nothing indicated by the person who submitted the link. Useful to have the specific confirmation. I've edited my comment so it's now clearer, but I guess the downvote will persist and the comment will sink. <fx shrug /> Never mind.
milesf 14y ago
There's a flood of new content on whytheluckystiff.net, as predicted months ago by a cryptic message on the site. Nice to have you back, _why. We missed you :)
- milesf 14y ago
  Here's the text from /SPOOL/JERKS: --- Many, many years ago, so long ago that it's a real stretch to find anyone else who can remember this, on the old Oprah show, she did a feature on individuals who had left society and, in the process, had eliminated every trace of themselves. She had like three or four guests up on stage, if I recall correctly, and they had all gone back and diligently destroyed every little bit of information previously known about them. Burning birth certificates and ID cards, canceling bank accounts. Stealing photos out of family member's albums and destroying them. They had hired hackers to break into schools and erase their records. In fact, each of these persons had done such a bang-up job that all that was know about each of them was their social security numbers. (Although Oprah's researchers were unable to say which social belonged to which person; these numbers were only know because of the noticeable gaps that were left in the government's records.) On the program, these people sat in the dark, nameless and unsorted. No one know who the were. ---
  - Tobu 14y ago
    I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.
- milesf 14y ago
  Here's the text from /SPOOL/WHATUPDOC: --- Dr. Pestus, good afternoon, I am a fellow, a professor of sorts, who is doing work under an anonymous guise and I have just finished reading your book "Kill Yourself! The Terrible Things People Say and Do When They Aren't Themselves." Now, before you start to usher a reply, I am not writing to disagree with you. My complaint is that my real name is very plain and I prefer to have a fictional one. You don't seem to suffer this problem, since your real name is quite fictional-sounding on its own. I do realize that having a fictional name makes me a bad person, but how bad of a person does it make me? Please rate on the scale of John Q. Public to Mister X. Also, is it too late to be real? _why His reply came in a few days: Yes, it's true! I know your real name! I asked a few of my experts to trace back the little e-mail you sent and it lined up with the coordinates of one Pirate O's General Store in Draper, Utah. It seems that you composed the e-mail while you were plugged into their connection, enjoying a Sangria Senorial it seems. A quick call to store owner Chase McGuinn sorted all of this out. Now ---
- milesf 14y ago
  Here's the text from /SPOOL/EXPERTS --- The audience laughed, female laughter. Incidentally, the videotape of this program can be seen at http://youtube.com/watch?v=ShpcjWG_Me0 http://youtube.com/watch?v=ShpcjWG_Me0. (I don't know if it is proper to dump a YouTube address here. It feels like I have maybe just gone ahead and ruined what I am writing by doing that. Has all of this writing lost its timelessness, to have this relic here? But maybe this link will never break, maybe it will stay there for all time. Maybe it's me. I'm a relic which is already out of his time in the present age. Maybe I am what is holding things back, maybe I am already not of any relevance. Good things to consider.) Allow me to leave the jerktoasters on Oprah's darkened stage while I drop a name. Any of you happened to read the work of Dr. Emery Pestus? I can't go on with this story until you've read him, he's a big name in -nymity. Knows everything about it. Naturally, he goes on about all the things you know already: that anonymity obscures the truth, that it opens a vent for hatred, basically that it turns people into vile and slanderous beasts. But too often we let disguised persons slide when it comes to little poems or donations. On that point of Anonymous donations, he writes: Where one sees Anonymous etched, one witnesses the spoil of all the other names etched on the stone beneath it. In many cases, the gift of each part is the same, but the gift or Anonymous seems somehow the more virtuous. This lie speaks to the cynicism of our time! Where is the real man in all of this? Where has he hidden? We hate the man who is good and who is himself. --- Edit: corrected YouTube link.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
    - elisee 14y ago
      The o at the end looks more like a zero (it is one pixel taller than other "o" letters). There is a video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShpcjWG_Me0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShpcjWG_Me0 called "drunk mom" but I'm not sure if it's related.
      - jes5199 14y ago
        eek. That video does not seem to be an excerpt of Oprah - it's instead some sort of disturbing screaming match in a dark room
- drunken_thor 14y ago
  Link to where one of the older files /SPOOL/CAPRICE refered to https://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&gs_rn=9&gs_ri=psy-ab&tok=wDay4eDxmQ2VAAuudhN59A&pq=odlin+park&cp=11&gs_id=d0&xhr=t&q=odlin+park+lopez+island&safe=off&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&biw=1051&bih=985&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl&authuser=0 https://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&gs_rn=9&gs_ri=psy-... Turns out this is where he refers to in the /SPOOL/ELEVENTH file
deleted 14y ago
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ciroduran 14y ago
Is there an explanation on how to access these posts? Thank you!
- milesf 14y ago
  They are in PCL. A viewer such as http://openpcl.sourceforge.net/ http://openpcl.sourceforge.net/ will work. On the Mac PCLtoPDF does a really nice job http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/pcltopdf.html http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/pcltopdf.html
- techpeace 14y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5571702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5571702
nothxbro 14y ago
This seems like a bit of attention whoring. If the guy wants to come back to the scene, which he very obviously does, then just do it. These occasionally cryptic updates should be reserved for the new releases of half life and portal. Not for a Ruby programmer who had a nervous breakdown and has now decided to return to public life. It is annoyingly cocky to be posting what he does and to assume the community will go through the time to behold his crypted messages and even more saddening that everyone is going for it hook line and sinker. HN is not for this kind of stuff and it should be flagged. Tech news; not personal drama. Also worth nothing- Jonathan Gillette never vanished into thin air. _why was just his made up character. Like kermit the frog.
- milesf 14y ago
  Nonsense. Hacker News is about Hacking: from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture) "A hacker is someone who loves to program or who enjoys playful cleverness, or a combination of the two. The act of engaging in activities (such as programming or other media) in a spirit of playfulness and exploration is termed hacking." What _why is doing definitely fits that definition.
- AndyNemmity 14y ago
  Clearly a lot of us care about it, so it should be here. If you don't like it, don't read it. People care enough about half life and portal that their cryptic games are part of the fun. The same goes for _why. It isn't cocky, perhaps there are many people doing it right now, and none of us know because no one is paying attention to them. But we value _why. You may not, that's your judgement to make.
- milesf 14y ago
  If anyone's guilty of seeking attention, it's me (who posted this link) and all the people upvoting this. I posted the link. All _why has done is make changes to his website, and I and many others have been following the puzzles he's created. There's nothing I've done that could command such attention. I suspect the same might be true for you.
istopped 14y ago
Can someone explain me what the hell is that website?
- milesf 14y ago
  You'll have to do some digging to see the history of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5540796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5540796
deleted 14y ago
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techpeace 14y ago
A bit of background: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5541880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5541880 I'll be uploading PDFs of the files as they come in here: http://www.scribd.com/collections/4230081/-why-s-print-spool http://www.scribd.com/collections/4230081/-why-s-print-spool
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
WestCoastJustin 14y ago
wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/DISCLAIMER wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/URGENTLY wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/JERKS wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/BRICKS wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/EXPERTS wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/WHATSUPDOC wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/PIRATEO wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/NOTHIN wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/TRIALS wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/READING wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/BURN http://www.ghostscript.com/download/gpcldnld.html http://downloads.ghostscript.com/public/binaries/ghostpcl-9.07-linux-x86.tgz $ tar zxvf ghostpcl-9.07-linux-x86.tgz $ cd ghostpcl-9.07-linux-x86 $ ./pcl6-907-linux_x86 <file you downloaded> Here is what I got: http://imgur.com/a/VSzu0 http://imgur.com/a/VSzu0 UPDATE #1: wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/YOUGETIT wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/EYES wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/FAREWELL wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/FIRELESS Here is what I got: http://imgur.com/a/4V38q http://imgur.com/a/4V38q UPDATE #2: wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/TORN wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/AMANDA wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/REVERSE Here is what I got: http://imgur.com/a/MR90W http://imgur.com/a/MR90W
- doki_pen 14y ago
  apparently `lp -o raw -d "<yourprintername>" <FILE>` should print the pcl to your printer. I couldn't get it to work though. Maybe you're printer has to speak pcl. I tried cups-pdf (virtual printer) with no success.
  - makomk 14y ago
    Yeah, your printer has to speak PCL for that to work.
- aidenn0 14y ago
  You're the top comment; minde adding the two new ones? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5572115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5572115
  - deleted 14y ago
steveklabnik 14y ago
Just a note, it's a printer spool. So as new things are added, old ones are going away.
- drunken_thor 14y ago
  you can just just clone the git repo and step back in time if you missed any
runjake 14y ago
I am enjoying this, Jonathan. Keep it up.
philwelch 14y ago
This reads less like a return and more like the goodbye he never made when he left.
bcrescimanno 14y ago
I just read everything (so far). Given the person behind it, I'm finding it difficult to separate the man from the character; however, I did note that he chose to use his real name at least once and the perspective seems far more personal than it seems in-line with the _why character. I sincerely hope I'm wrong but this whole thing reads like a suicide letter. I'm wondering if anyone else has had that thought while reading it? Perhaps it's about the death of the _why character; however, given the seemingly personal nature of so much of the writing I can't shake the thought that there may be a very real person in real trouble behind these writings and there's a whole community completely missing that piece of the puzzle.
- TallboyOne 14y ago
  I hope not :|
- erikpukinskis 14y ago
  The narrator doesn't say it's his name, another character claims to have found out via internet research that it's his real name.
sprobertson 14y ago
If you'd like to follow in real time I wrote a shell script that pipes all new entries directly to your printer: https://gist.github.com/spro/5416485 https://gist.github.com/spro/5416485
- ldh 14y ago
  Fantastic, thank you. I've got a dot matrix printer that's been hooked up and waiting for a project for some time now...I think this is exactly it.
milesf 14y ago
_why is an artist. His work touches people: -- https://twitter.com/rgm/status/324939563770474496 https://twitter.com/rgm/status/324939563770474496 And I find my heart suffused with joy, for @_why has returned to us: -- https://twitter.com/rgm/status/324939832663080960 https://twitter.com/rgm/status/324939832663080960 An improvement to the world that I was not expecting this morning. Huzzah. -- https://twitter.com/olleolleolle/status/324940406661996544 https://twitter.com/olleolleolle/status/324940406661996544 Such a kind thing, to provide the warmth of culture, in this cold, cold place. I'm warmed to the bone by this.
- sergiotapia 14y ago
  What exactly did why do that has earned him this much love and adoration? (Honest question)
  - peterwwillis 14y ago
    His book's so funny and quirky that it made me forget my troubles for a little while. The world needs more why.
  - milesf 14y ago
    I'm working on a project called "decyphering_why" that seeks to explain that. He's an artist who created books, blogs, code, music, videos, and more. For example when he released the book "why's poignant guide to ruby" (http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/ http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/) teaching the Ruby programming language, he released a soundtrack with it as well! Here's my favourite song from that: https://soundcloud.com/wondible/chapter-2-this-book-is-made https://soundcloud.com/wondible/chapter-2-this-book-is-made Hopefully the primer I'm writing will help for those new to the person that is Why the Lucky Stiff.
    - astrodust 14y ago
      I'd call his Poignant Guide less of a tutorial on Ruby and more of an immersive experience. Chunky bacon, indeed.
    - 14y ago
Edd314159 14y ago
Honestly, it doesn't read anything like he's "coming back" ('he' being the _why 'character'). Which is sad.
- knotty66 14y ago
  Of course not - he's far too busy being Satoshi.
  - irollboozers 14y ago
    I like to imagine theyre roommates or something. I think I prefer it to whatever the reality is.
    - zeckalpha 14y ago
      And Mark Pilgrim!
drunken_thor 14y ago
The github version was just ipdated with a file called amanda 6 minutes ago! can't find a pcl viewer for mac right now so I cant help that way
- steveklabnik 14y ago
  MacPCLtoPDF works well.
jayferd 14y ago
1. install ghostpdl - I'm using version 9.07 from here: http://code.google.com/p/ghostscript/downloads/detail?name=ghostpdl-9.07.tar.bz2 2. Download all of the things curl whytheluckystiff.net | grep SPOOL | cut -f1 | cut -d/ -f2 | while read line; do wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/$line && pcl6 -o $line.pdf -sDEVICE=pdfwrite $line; done
aidenn0 14y ago
New files added: [edit] SPOOL/TORN http://imgur.com/jMi4TiZ http://imgur.com/jMi4TiZ [edit] SPOOL/AMANDA: http://imgur.com/9Gh4mRs http://imgur.com/9Gh4mRs [edit] SPOOL/REVERSE: http://imgur.com/keddF4h http://imgur.com/keddF4h
klrr 14y ago
Is he trolling?
- makomk 14y ago
  I'm not sure. This may depend on how exactly you define trolling.
  - klrr 14y ago
    I mean, I don't really get it, that's why I think he's trolling. I don't mean trolling in the sense that you spam "fuck you" on a forum, rather the sense that he is fooling or teasing us(if that's the right word) in a intelligent way. I don't really know much about _why nor the Ruby community.
csmattryder 14y ago
Sappily enough, seems like he fell in love, or something. That's what I'm reading from AMANDA, he met a girl, and loves her more than Ruby (should that even be possible!?) Whatever the reason, I'm enjoying the ride!
Jeremysr 14y ago
If anyone wants to hook their actual printer up to _why's queue (which I'm pretty sure is what he intended), iandennismiller transcribed the OCaml program in SPOOL/HOMEWORK which polls whytheluckystiff.net and sends the PCL files to your printer: https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com/pull/4 https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com/pull/4 It's quite magical. I was woken up this morning by my printer, when the first pages were being published. Now every 5, 10, or 15 minutes my printer starts clanking away (it's an old one) and a brand new page slowly emerges. Great way to read a novel, if that's what it is.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- glesperance 14y ago
  This definitely reads like one at least. I can't help but be amazed at the way he uses to publish / distribute it all at the same time using this print spool.
kevinSuttle 14y ago
You guys are going to be so mad when he announces he's doing Node now :)
gadders 14y ago
Bored now. The big drama queen.
jayferd 14y ago
Okay, so I've curated it a little bit - flipped everything right-ways-up, and arranged it into what I think are three logical sequences in what i think is the correct order: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/r9m1nlo4c7i7umf/cpUb9PU6pJ https://www.dropbox.com/sh/r9m1nlo4c7i7umf/cpUb9PU6pJ
- jayferd 14y ago
  here's a transcription of the "trials" sequence: ## TRIALS TRIALS Once a year, I take a month & I read everything I can by one author. This year I read 4 books by Thomas Bernhard in one month. And the year before that, it was everything by Denton Welch in one month. But - in 2009 - see, this was very very dangerous - I read everything by Franz Kafka in one month. I started with "Amerika." It was August. I read The Castle. ## READING I read The Trial. I read all the short stories. I read The Stoker, even though it's (verbatim) the 1st chapter of Amerika - because I really enjoyed Amerika. I read all the deleted stuff. All the Blue Octavo notebooks. The Burrows and so on. I skimped on the letters. (Don't care who he was outside of his own imagination.) And when I was finished, I felt done. It went quick. ## BURN I finished early. I was done. I was decimated. To program any more was pointless. My programs would never live as long as the trial. Hadn't he told Max Brod to destroy all of those books? He had sad to burn them, my friend, to burn these books. But look, here was Amerika, thoroughly reconstructed. ## YOUGETIT And yet completely unfinished, in my hands. What if Amerika was only written for 32-bit PowerPC? Can an unfinished program be reconstructed?? Can I write a program and go, "Ah, well, you get the gist of it." If The Trial was written for 32-bit PowerPC, Max Brod wouldn't have to burn them! He would just be like, "How do I even get this thing off the hard drive?" ## EYES But no. It wasn't written for 32-bit PowerPC. It was written for eyes. At the end of Amerika, we don't even know how Karl gets to Oklahoma. Who cares - he's in Amerika and he goes to Oklahoma. In that last chapter, they say, "Does everyone have their identification papers?" And a woman pulls a large bundle of papers out of her baby carriage - her perambulator - and raises them. Karl has no papers, he simply raises his hand. ## FAREWELL This is good enough, so they let him by. What if he had not told Max Brod to burn them? What if he had just not said anything to Max Brod except, "thanks a lot," and, "A fond farewell to you!" In fact, seems weird he didn't burn them himself. Tuberculosis doesn't stop you from burning paper, right? A thousand pages. Two thousand pages. Maybe three thousand pages. ## FIRELESS That's a lot, but I think he could have doone it, even alone, even with tuberculosis. Imagine Kafka's fiendish little face rubbing his hands over that fire! Seems fun. Or he could have hidden it inside an old 32-bit PowerPC. No one's going to look there. Just goes to show that you can't trust people who aren't you. Of course he didn't want them burned. That was just Kafka, writing his own death. The ending has his signature on it. Reality's kind of a medium, maybe greater than paper. ## TORN We all want life to have the same texture that we read about in novels. Promise me you'll never read all 3 Kafka novels in a month.
kzrdude 14y ago
On this topic: I realized recently that my tries to stay or become more anonymous on the web didn't really have the ideological reasons I thought it had. I thought it was all about internet privacy rights and avoiding the inevitable creep of privacy loss; once your data is out it is unerasable. I found out that my interest in internet privacy varied wildly with how depressed I was during that period. That when I'm clear I don't really care about it. But when I'm depressed I wish that my every contribution on the web of forums, github, etc was disconnected and anonymized. Commenting without committing your identity to it, seeking praise (github stars) without a face.. In truth, most of my motivation to disconnect my online identities is just an echo of my unwillingness to be one, whole, person; unwillingness to be me.
- skore 14y ago
  That rings very true. But it needs to be taken further: I would say that regardless of mood, it's still a worthwhile pursuit. Because to sometimes be unwilling to be one, whole, person is essential to finding who you are, eventually. Once you have found who you are, you are less likely to see changing who you are as a top priority - granted that you like who you are. But it most likely took a lot of time to be who you are and during that time, it would have screwed you forever to be forced to stay who you were. Which is, I guess, why young people care about privacy. And who is to say that you will always like who you are? Which is probably why old people care about privacy. Becoming a person in the first place has a lot to do with trying out traits or persons. I don't think Depression is necessarily a cause (although it may be) for pursuing privacy about that search, maybe it's just a symptom - that not being whole is depressing and thus searching for yourself deserves privacy. To protect your unfinished person to be finished by the outside world. But it's also about the pressure we put on ourselves. Merlin Mann said somewhere that Procrastination is forgetting who you are for a certain period of time. I initially thought that that was an entirely negative statement. It just now occurred to me that it can be a positive statement as well. And that being depressed about not "getting things done" is entirely useless, because you're basically punishing yourself for trying harder to find out who you are (instead of finishing stuff that who you were cared about). Which stunts your development and leaves you more likely to procrastinate, kicking you back into a cycle of self loathing.
milesf 14y ago
Okay, now I'm really confused :D steveklabnik found user thdvl whose is a contributor to http://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com http://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com (the source for whytheluckystiff.net). thdvl's repository http://github.com/thdvl/shore http://github.com/thdvl/shore has this eerie little gem. http://thdvl.com http://thdvl.com Edit: Notice the pronunciation of that domain: "The Devil"
- milesf 14y ago
  Have a look at the pull request notes: https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com/pull/3 https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com/pull/3 "What progress, you ask, have I made? … I have begun to be a friend to myself." A github user thdvl (likely _why) communicating with another github user cwales (also likely _why) saying he's begun to be a friend to himself. Is _why coming to be at peace with himself? So many ways to interpret this art :)
  - mijustin 14y ago
    Does anyone know what these characters in the middle mean? Screenshot: http://d.pr/i/sSLu http://d.pr/i/sSLu (from http://celebsbukkake.com/thdvl/ http://celebsbukkake.com/thdvl/)
    - lordp 14y ago
      Google Translate says "Standing on the sidelines" (Chinese)
    - est 14y ago
      隔岸观火 watch the fire on the other side of the river, basically it means it's not my problem so LOL http://www.zdic.net/cd/ci/12/ZdicE9Zdic9AZdic94247719.htm http://www.zdic.net/cd/ci/12/ZdicE9Zdic9AZdic94247719.htm
    - gnarbarian 14y ago
      I love the domain choice. I'd say it's a metaphor for what we're doing now.
doki_pen 14y ago
https://gist.github.com/dokipen/5415806 https://gist.github.com/dokipen/5415806
laughfactory 14y ago
Is the site ever up? I've tried a number of times and it always seems to be down.
laughfactory 14y ago
Is this site ever up?
madmoose 14y ago
I made an archive of all the PCLs that have been spooled so far, plus PDFs and (rotated) PNGs rendered at 150 DPI. http://thomas.fach-pedersen.net/SPOOL/ http://thomas.fach-pedersen.net/SPOOL/
- madmoose 14y ago
  In honor of the HOMEWORK document, I automated it to update every couple of minutes :-)
- granitepail 14y ago
  this should be at the top! most complete option yet, with preservation of the original documents. many thanks!
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
1337p337 14y ago
I am somewhat surprised, given the content, that no one has posted _why's "Final words". I happen to have logged it, and given the content, it seems very relevant: (08/13/2009 03:36:54 PM) twitter.com: _why: i thought that RIP was strictly for cremation. (08/17/2009 10:22:45 AM) twitter.com: _why: burying myself feet first in the woods with the hope that this will lead to a career as a much beloved and sought after mouth-under-a-rock. (08/18/2009 12:16:43 PM) twitter.com: _why: programming is rather thankless. you see your works become replaced by superior works in a year. unable to run at all in a few more. (08/18/2009 12:32:21 PM) twitter.com: _why: if you program and want any longevity to your work, make a game. all else recycles, but people rewrite architectures to keep games alive. (08/18/2009 01:17:43 PM) twitter.com: _why: ahh i’m just so totally suspicious of anyone who claims to love progress but stridently defends the status quo!! (08/18/2009 01:55:00 PM) twitter.com: _why: kafka would be a lot harder to get into if the trial only ran on a power pc. (08/18/2009 07:50:07 PM) twitter.com: _why: nailing a small ornate gold shelf at arm’s height above the bed for my cat to sit on. i give you: norton’s perch. (08/18/2009 07:54:20 PM) twitter.com: _why: i should probably have little teeny shelves all leading up to it. with their own miniature portraits or doll banisters or something. (08/18/2009 08:06:21 PM) twitter.com: _why: an ascending homage to fish bones. culminating in a delicate canopy of mouse furs.
r0bbbo 14y ago
I'm getting a GitHub 404 now.
madmoose 14y ago
He stripped the site of contents now. Everything's still in the repository history though: https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com/commits/master https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com/commits/master My mirror's at http://thomas.fach-pedersen.net/SPOOL/ http://thomas.fach-pedersen.net/SPOOL/ has all the documents in PCL, PDF, and properly oriented PNGs if you're tired of turning your monitor upside down :) I made an imgur album of the PNGs too: http://imgur.com/a/dJpuG http://imgur.com/a/dJpuG
- coffeejunk 14y ago
  A friend of mine put together the full book as a pdf: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5575707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5575707 / http://www.scribd.com/doc/136875051/-why-s-complete-printer-spool-as-one-book http://www.scribd.com/doc/136875051/-why-s-complete-printer-... / https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/8z6j7bju8qx7g7o/WHY_FULL.pdf?token_hash=AAFHqKM5vjJo185d-tm7sv1pC4UXI0LdD4WUBtvy2D4vUg&dl=1 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/8z6j7bju8qx7g7o/WHY_FULL...
sfcgeorge 14y ago
I wrote a little blog post in tribute to why, "Nobody Knows Why": http://www.sfcgeorge.co.uk/posts/2013/04/19/nobody-knows-why http://www.sfcgeorge.co.uk/posts/2013/04/19/nobody-knows-why The post also links to an updated PDF compendium of all _why's recent documents. All rotated and in the correct order (maybe). Bursting with _whyness.

245 points by milesf 14y ago

For a lengthy discussion of how to get access to these posts you can read about the last time it happened: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5540796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5540796

w1ntermute 14y ago
Have there been any updates since that post, or is this just a dupe?
- dragonwriter 14y ago
  There's been a new set of things posted.
  - ColinWright 14y ago
    Thanks for that - I had no way of checking, and there was nothing indicated by the person who submitted the link. Useful to have the specific confirmation. I've edited my comment so it's now clearer, but I guess the downvote will persist and the comment will sink. <fx shrug /> Never mind.

milesf 14y ago

There's a flood of new content on whytheluckystiff.net, as predicted months ago by a cryptic message on the site. Nice to have you back, _why. We missed you :)

milesf 14y ago
Here's the text from /SPOOL/JERKS: --- Many, many years ago, so long ago that it's a real stretch to find anyone else who can remember this, on the old Oprah show, she did a feature on individuals who had left society and, in the process, had eliminated every trace of themselves. She had like three or four guests up on stage, if I recall correctly, and they had all gone back and diligently destroyed every little bit of information previously known about them. Burning birth certificates and ID cards, canceling bank accounts. Stealing photos out of family member's albums and destroying them. They had hired hackers to break into schools and erase their records. In fact, each of these persons had done such a bang-up job that all that was know about each of them was their social security numbers. (Although Oprah's researchers were unable to say which social belonged to which person; these numbers were only know because of the noticeable gaps that were left in the government's records.) On the program, these people sat in the dark, nameless and unsorted. No one know who the were. ---
- Tobu 14y ago
  I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.
milesf 14y ago
Here's the text from /SPOOL/WHATUPDOC: --- Dr. Pestus, good afternoon, I am a fellow, a professor of sorts, who is doing work under an anonymous guise and I have just finished reading your book "Kill Yourself! The Terrible Things People Say and Do When They Aren't Themselves." Now, before you start to usher a reply, I am not writing to disagree with you. My complaint is that my real name is very plain and I prefer to have a fictional one. You don't seem to suffer this problem, since your real name is quite fictional-sounding on its own. I do realize that having a fictional name makes me a bad person, but how bad of a person does it make me? Please rate on the scale of John Q. Public to Mister X. Also, is it too late to be real? _why His reply came in a few days: Yes, it's true! I know your real name! I asked a few of my experts to trace back the little e-mail you sent and it lined up with the coordinates of one Pirate O's General Store in Draper, Utah. It seems that you composed the e-mail while you were plugged into their connection, enjoying a Sangria Senorial it seems. A quick call to store owner Chase McGuinn sorted all of this out. Now ---
milesf 14y ago
Here's the text from /SPOOL/EXPERTS --- The audience laughed, female laughter. Incidentally, the videotape of this program can be seen at http://youtube.com/watch?v=ShpcjWG_Me0 http://youtube.com/watch?v=ShpcjWG_Me0. (I don't know if it is proper to dump a YouTube address here. It feels like I have maybe just gone ahead and ruined what I am writing by doing that. Has all of this writing lost its timelessness, to have this relic here? But maybe this link will never break, maybe it will stay there for all time. Maybe it's me. I'm a relic which is already out of his time in the present age. Maybe I am what is holding things back, maybe I am already not of any relevance. Good things to consider.) Allow me to leave the jerktoasters on Oprah's darkened stage while I drop a name. Any of you happened to read the work of Dr. Emery Pestus? I can't go on with this story until you've read him, he's a big name in -nymity. Knows everything about it. Naturally, he goes on about all the things you know already: that anonymity obscures the truth, that it opens a vent for hatred, basically that it turns people into vile and slanderous beasts. But too often we let disguised persons slide when it comes to little poems or donations. On that point of Anonymous donations, he writes: Where one sees Anonymous etched, one witnesses the spoil of all the other names etched on the stone beneath it. In many cases, the gift of each part is the same, but the gift or Anonymous seems somehow the more virtuous. This lie speaks to the cynicism of our time! Where is the real man in all of this? Where has he hidden? We hate the man who is good and who is himself. --- Edit: corrected YouTube link.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - elisee 14y ago
    The o at the end looks more like a zero (it is one pixel taller than other "o" letters). There is a video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShpcjWG_Me0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShpcjWG_Me0 called "drunk mom" but I'm not sure if it's related.
    - jes5199 14y ago
      eek. That video does not seem to be an excerpt of Oprah - it's instead some sort of disturbing screaming match in a dark room
drunken_thor 14y ago
Link to where one of the older files /SPOOL/CAPRICE refered to https://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&gs_rn=9&gs_ri=psy-ab&tok=wDay4eDxmQ2VAAuudhN59A&pq=odlin+park&cp=11&gs_id=d0&xhr=t&q=odlin+park+lopez+island&safe=off&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&biw=1051&bih=985&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl&authuser=0 https://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&gs_rn=9&gs_ri=psy-... Turns out this is where he refers to in the /SPOOL/ELEVENTH file

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

ciroduran 14y ago

Is there an explanation on how to access these posts? Thank you!

milesf 14y ago
They are in PCL. A viewer such as http://openpcl.sourceforge.net/ http://openpcl.sourceforge.net/ will work. On the Mac PCLtoPDF does a really nice job http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/pcltopdf.html http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/pcltopdf.html
techpeace 14y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5571702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5571702

nothxbro 14y ago

This seems like a bit of attention whoring. If the guy wants to come back to the scene, which he very obviously does, then just do it. These occasionally cryptic updates should be reserved for the new releases of half life and portal. Not for a Ruby programmer who had a nervous breakdown and has now decided to return to public life. It is annoyingly cocky to be posting what he does and to assume the community will go through the time to behold his crypted messages and even more saddening that everyone is going for it hook line and sinker. HN is not for this kind of stuff and it should be flagged. Tech news; not personal drama. Also worth nothing- Jonathan Gillette never vanished into thin air. _why was just his made up character. Like kermit the frog.

milesf 14y ago
Nonsense. Hacker News is about Hacking: from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture) "A hacker is someone who loves to program or who enjoys playful cleverness, or a combination of the two. The act of engaging in activities (such as programming or other media) in a spirit of playfulness and exploration is termed hacking." What _why is doing definitely fits that definition.
AndyNemmity 14y ago
Clearly a lot of us care about it, so it should be here. If you don't like it, don't read it. People care enough about half life and portal that their cryptic games are part of the fun. The same goes for _why. It isn't cocky, perhaps there are many people doing it right now, and none of us know because no one is paying attention to them. But we value _why. You may not, that's your judgement to make.
milesf 14y ago
If anyone's guilty of seeking attention, it's me (who posted this link) and all the people upvoting this. I posted the link. All _why has done is make changes to his website, and I and many others have been following the puzzles he's created. There's nothing I've done that could command such attention. I suspect the same might be true for you.

istopped 14y ago

Can someone explain me what the hell is that website?

milesf 14y ago
You'll have to do some digging to see the history of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5540796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5540796

deleted 14y ago

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techpeace 14y ago

A bit of background: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5541880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5541880 I'll be uploading PDFs of the files as they come in here: http://www.scribd.com/collections/4230081/-why-s-print-spool http://www.scribd.com/collections/4230081/-why-s-print-spool

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

WestCoastJustin 14y ago

wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/DISCLAIMER wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/URGENTLY wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/JERKS wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/BRICKS wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/EXPERTS wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/WHATSUPDOC wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/PIRATEO wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/NOTHIN wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/TRIALS wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/READING wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/BURN http://www.ghostscript.com/download/gpcldnld.html http://downloads.ghostscript.com/public/binaries/ghostpcl-9.07-linux-x86.tgz $ tar zxvf ghostpcl-9.07-linux-x86.tgz $ cd ghostpcl-9.07-linux-x86 $ ./pcl6-907-linux_x86 <file you downloaded> Here is what I got: http://imgur.com/a/VSzu0 http://imgur.com/a/VSzu0 UPDATE #1: wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/YOUGETIT wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/EYES wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/FAREWELL wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/FIRELESS Here is what I got: http://imgur.com/a/4V38q http://imgur.com/a/4V38q UPDATE #2: wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/TORN wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/AMANDA wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/REVERSE Here is what I got: http://imgur.com/a/MR90W http://imgur.com/a/MR90W

doki_pen 14y ago
apparently `lp -o raw -d "<yourprintername>" <FILE>` should print the pcl to your printer. I couldn't get it to work though. Maybe you're printer has to speak pcl. I tried cups-pdf (virtual printer) with no success.
- makomk 14y ago
  Yeah, your printer has to speak PCL for that to work.
aidenn0 14y ago
You're the top comment; minde adding the two new ones? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5572115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5572115
- deleted 14y ago

steveklabnik 14y ago

Just a note, it's a printer spool. So as new things are added, old ones are going away.

drunken_thor 14y ago
you can just just clone the git repo and step back in time if you missed any

runjake 14y ago

I am enjoying this, Jonathan. Keep it up.

philwelch 14y ago

This reads less like a return and more like the goodbye he never made when he left.

bcrescimanno 14y ago

I just read everything (so far). Given the person behind it, I'm finding it difficult to separate the man from the character; however, I did note that he chose to use his real name at least once and the perspective seems far more personal than it seems in-line with the _why character. I sincerely hope I'm wrong but this whole thing reads like a suicide letter. I'm wondering if anyone else has had that thought while reading it? Perhaps it's about the death of the _why character; however, given the seemingly personal nature of so much of the writing I can't shake the thought that there may be a very real person in real trouble behind these writings and there's a whole community completely missing that piece of the puzzle.

TallboyOne 14y ago
I hope not :|
erikpukinskis 14y ago
The narrator doesn't say it's his name, another character claims to have found out via internet research that it's his real name.

sprobertson 14y ago

If you'd like to follow in real time I wrote a shell script that pipes all new entries directly to your printer: https://gist.github.com/spro/5416485 https://gist.github.com/spro/5416485

ldh 14y ago
Fantastic, thank you. I've got a dot matrix printer that's been hooked up and waiting for a project for some time now...I think this is exactly it.

milesf 14y ago

_why is an artist. His work touches people: -- https://twitter.com/rgm/status/324939563770474496 https://twitter.com/rgm/status/324939563770474496 And I find my heart suffused with joy, for @_why has returned to us: -- https://twitter.com/rgm/status/324939832663080960 https://twitter.com/rgm/status/324939832663080960 An improvement to the world that I was not expecting this morning. Huzzah. -- https://twitter.com/olleolleolle/status/324940406661996544 https://twitter.com/olleolleolle/status/324940406661996544 Such a kind thing, to provide the warmth of culture, in this cold, cold place. I'm warmed to the bone by this.

sergiotapia 14y ago
What exactly did why do that has earned him this much love and adoration? (Honest question)
- peterwwillis 14y ago
  His book's so funny and quirky that it made me forget my troubles for a little while. The world needs more why.
- milesf 14y ago
  I'm working on a project called "decyphering_why" that seeks to explain that. He's an artist who created books, blogs, code, music, videos, and more. For example when he released the book "why's poignant guide to ruby" (http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/ http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/) teaching the Ruby programming language, he released a soundtrack with it as well! Here's my favourite song from that: https://soundcloud.com/wondible/chapter-2-this-book-is-made https://soundcloud.com/wondible/chapter-2-this-book-is-made Hopefully the primer I'm writing will help for those new to the person that is Why the Lucky Stiff.
  - astrodust 14y ago
    I'd call his Poignant Guide less of a tutorial on Ruby and more of an immersive experience. Chunky bacon, indeed.
  - 14y ago

Edd314159 14y ago

Honestly, it doesn't read anything like he's "coming back" ('he' being the _why 'character'). Which is sad.

knotty66 14y ago
Of course not - he's far too busy being Satoshi.
- irollboozers 14y ago
  I like to imagine theyre roommates or something. I think I prefer it to whatever the reality is.
  - zeckalpha 14y ago
    And Mark Pilgrim!

drunken_thor 14y ago

The github version was just ipdated with a file called amanda 6 minutes ago! can't find a pcl viewer for mac right now so I cant help that way

steveklabnik 14y ago
MacPCLtoPDF works well.

jayferd 14y ago

1. install ghostpdl - I'm using version 9.07 from here: http://code.google.com/p/ghostscript/downloads/detail?name=ghostpdl-9.07.tar.bz2 2. Download all of the things curl whytheluckystiff.net | grep SPOOL | cut -f1 | cut -d/ -f2 | while read line; do wget http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/$line && pcl6 -o $line.pdf -sDEVICE=pdfwrite $line; done

aidenn0 14y ago

New files added: [edit] SPOOL/TORN http://imgur.com/jMi4TiZ http://imgur.com/jMi4TiZ [edit] SPOOL/AMANDA: http://imgur.com/9Gh4mRs http://imgur.com/9Gh4mRs [edit] SPOOL/REVERSE: http://imgur.com/keddF4h http://imgur.com/keddF4h

klrr 14y ago

Is he trolling?

makomk 14y ago
I'm not sure. This may depend on how exactly you define trolling.
- klrr 14y ago
  I mean, I don't really get it, that's why I think he's trolling. I don't mean trolling in the sense that you spam "fuck you" on a forum, rather the sense that he is fooling or teasing us(if that's the right word) in a intelligent way. I don't really know much about _why nor the Ruby community.

csmattryder 14y ago

Sappily enough, seems like he fell in love, or something. That's what I'm reading from AMANDA, he met a girl, and loves her more than Ruby (should that even be possible!?) Whatever the reason, I'm enjoying the ride!

Jeremysr 14y ago

If anyone wants to hook their actual printer up to _why's queue (which I'm pretty sure is what he intended), iandennismiller transcribed the OCaml program in SPOOL/HOMEWORK which polls whytheluckystiff.net and sends the PCL files to your printer: https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com/pull/4 https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com/pull/4 It's quite magical. I was woken up this morning by my printer, when the first pages were being published. Now every 5, 10, or 15 minutes my printer starts clanking away (it's an old one) and a brand new page slowly emerges. Great way to read a novel, if that's what it is.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
glesperance 14y ago
This definitely reads like one at least. I can't help but be amazed at the way he uses to publish / distribute it all at the same time using this print spool.

kevinSuttle 14y ago

You guys are going to be so mad when he announces he's doing Node now :)

gadders 14y ago

Bored now. The big drama queen.

jayferd 14y ago

Okay, so I've curated it a little bit - flipped everything right-ways-up, and arranged it into what I think are three logical sequences in what i think is the correct order: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/r9m1nlo4c7i7umf/cpUb9PU6pJ https://www.dropbox.com/sh/r9m1nlo4c7i7umf/cpUb9PU6pJ

jayferd 14y ago
here's a transcription of the "trials" sequence: ## TRIALS TRIALS Once a year, I take a month & I read everything I can by one author. This year I read 4 books by Thomas Bernhard in one month. And the year before that, it was everything by Denton Welch in one month. But - in 2009 - see, this was very very dangerous - I read everything by Franz Kafka in one month. I started with "Amerika." It was August. I read The Castle. ## READING I read The Trial. I read all the short stories. I read The Stoker, even though it's (verbatim) the 1st chapter of Amerika - because I really enjoyed Amerika. I read all the deleted stuff. All the Blue Octavo notebooks. The Burrows and so on. I skimped on the letters. (Don't care who he was outside of his own imagination.) And when I was finished, I felt done. It went quick. ## BURN I finished early. I was done. I was decimated. To program any more was pointless. My programs would never live as long as the trial. Hadn't he told Max Brod to destroy all of those books? He had sad to burn them, my friend, to burn these books. But look, here was Amerika, thoroughly reconstructed. ## YOUGETIT And yet completely unfinished, in my hands. What if Amerika was only written for 32-bit PowerPC? Can an unfinished program be reconstructed?? Can I write a program and go, "Ah, well, you get the gist of it." If The Trial was written for 32-bit PowerPC, Max Brod wouldn't have to burn them! He would just be like, "How do I even get this thing off the hard drive?" ## EYES But no. It wasn't written for 32-bit PowerPC. It was written for eyes. At the end of Amerika, we don't even know how Karl gets to Oklahoma. Who cares - he's in Amerika and he goes to Oklahoma. In that last chapter, they say, "Does everyone have their identification papers?" And a woman pulls a large bundle of papers out of her baby carriage - her perambulator - and raises them. Karl has no papers, he simply raises his hand. ## FAREWELL This is good enough, so they let him by. What if he had not told Max Brod to burn them? What if he had just not said anything to Max Brod except, "thanks a lot," and, "A fond farewell to you!" In fact, seems weird he didn't burn them himself. Tuberculosis doesn't stop you from burning paper, right? A thousand pages. Two thousand pages. Maybe three thousand pages. ## FIRELESS That's a lot, but I think he could have doone it, even alone, even with tuberculosis. Imagine Kafka's fiendish little face rubbing his hands over that fire! Seems fun. Or he could have hidden it inside an old 32-bit PowerPC. No one's going to look there. Just goes to show that you can't trust people who aren't you. Of course he didn't want them burned. That was just Kafka, writing his own death. The ending has his signature on it. Reality's kind of a medium, maybe greater than paper. ## TORN We all want life to have the same texture that we read about in novels. Promise me you'll never read all 3 Kafka novels in a month.

kzrdude 14y ago

On this topic: I realized recently that my tries to stay or become more anonymous on the web didn't really have the ideological reasons I thought it had. I thought it was all about internet privacy rights and avoiding the inevitable creep of privacy loss; once your data is out it is unerasable. I found out that my interest in internet privacy varied wildly with how depressed I was during that period. That when I'm clear I don't really care about it. But when I'm depressed I wish that my every contribution on the web of forums, github, etc was disconnected and anonymized. Commenting without committing your identity to it, seeking praise (github stars) without a face.. In truth, most of my motivation to disconnect my online identities is just an echo of my unwillingness to be one, whole, person; unwillingness to be me.

skore 14y ago
That rings very true. But it needs to be taken further: I would say that regardless of mood, it's still a worthwhile pursuit. Because to sometimes be unwilling to be one, whole, person is essential to finding who you are, eventually. Once you have found who you are, you are less likely to see changing who you are as a top priority - granted that you like who you are. But it most likely took a lot of time to be who you are and during that time, it would have screwed you forever to be forced to stay who you were. Which is, I guess, why young people care about privacy. And who is to say that you will always like who you are? Which is probably why old people care about privacy. Becoming a person in the first place has a lot to do with trying out traits or persons. I don't think Depression is necessarily a cause (although it may be) for pursuing privacy about that search, maybe it's just a symptom - that not being whole is depressing and thus searching for yourself deserves privacy. To protect your unfinished person to be finished by the outside world. But it's also about the pressure we put on ourselves. Merlin Mann said somewhere that Procrastination is forgetting who you are for a certain period of time. I initially thought that that was an entirely negative statement. It just now occurred to me that it can be a positive statement as well. And that being depressed about not "getting things done" is entirely useless, because you're basically punishing yourself for trying harder to find out who you are (instead of finishing stuff that who you were cared about). Which stunts your development and leaves you more likely to procrastinate, kicking you back into a cycle of self loathing.

milesf 14y ago

Okay, now I'm really confused :D steveklabnik found user thdvl whose is a contributor to http://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com http://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com (the source for whytheluckystiff.net). thdvl's repository http://github.com/thdvl/shore http://github.com/thdvl/shore has this eerie little gem. http://thdvl.com http://thdvl.com Edit: Notice the pronunciation of that domain: "The Devil"

milesf 14y ago
Have a look at the pull request notes: https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com/pull/3 https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com/pull/3 "What progress, you ask, have I made? … I have begun to be a friend to myself." A github user thdvl (likely _why) communicating with another github user cwales (also likely _why) saying he's begun to be a friend to himself. Is _why coming to be at peace with himself? So many ways to interpret this art :)
- mijustin 14y ago
  Does anyone know what these characters in the middle mean? Screenshot: http://d.pr/i/sSLu http://d.pr/i/sSLu (from http://celebsbukkake.com/thdvl/ http://celebsbukkake.com/thdvl/)
  - lordp 14y ago
    Google Translate says "Standing on the sidelines" (Chinese)
  - est 14y ago
    隔岸观火 watch the fire on the other side of the river, basically it means it's not my problem so LOL http://www.zdic.net/cd/ci/12/ZdicE9Zdic9AZdic94247719.htm http://www.zdic.net/cd/ci/12/ZdicE9Zdic9AZdic94247719.htm
  - gnarbarian 14y ago
    I love the domain choice. I'd say it's a metaphor for what we're doing now.

doki_pen 14y ago

https://gist.github.com/dokipen/5415806 https://gist.github.com/dokipen/5415806

laughfactory 14y ago

Is the site ever up? I've tried a number of times and it always seems to be down.

laughfactory 14y ago

Is this site ever up?

madmoose 14y ago

I made an archive of all the PCLs that have been spooled so far, plus PDFs and (rotated) PNGs rendered at 150 DPI. http://thomas.fach-pedersen.net/SPOOL/ http://thomas.fach-pedersen.net/SPOOL/

madmoose 14y ago
In honor of the HOMEWORK document, I automated it to update every couple of minutes :-)
granitepail 14y ago
this should be at the top! most complete option yet, with preservation of the original documents. many thanks!

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

1337p337 14y ago

I am somewhat surprised, given the content, that no one has posted _why's "Final words". I happen to have logged it, and given the content, it seems very relevant: (08/13/2009 03:36:54 PM) twitter.com: _why: i thought that RIP was strictly for cremation. (08/17/2009 10:22:45 AM) twitter.com: _why: burying myself feet first in the woods with the hope that this will lead to a career as a much beloved and sought after mouth-under-a-rock. (08/18/2009 12:16:43 PM) twitter.com: _why: programming is rather thankless. you see your works become replaced by superior works in a year. unable to run at all in a few more. (08/18/2009 12:32:21 PM) twitter.com: _why: if you program and want any longevity to your work, make a game. all else recycles, but people rewrite architectures to keep games alive. (08/18/2009 01:17:43 PM) twitter.com: _why: ahh i’m just so totally suspicious of anyone who claims to love progress but stridently defends the status quo!! (08/18/2009 01:55:00 PM) twitter.com: _why: kafka would be a lot harder to get into if the trial only ran on a power pc. (08/18/2009 07:50:07 PM) twitter.com: _why: nailing a small ornate gold shelf at arm’s height above the bed for my cat to sit on. i give you: norton’s perch. (08/18/2009 07:54:20 PM) twitter.com: _why: i should probably have little teeny shelves all leading up to it. with their own miniature portraits or doll banisters or something. (08/18/2009 08:06:21 PM) twitter.com: _why: an ascending homage to fish bones. culminating in a delicate canopy of mouse furs.

r0bbbo 14y ago

I'm getting a GitHub 404 now.

madmoose 14y ago

He stripped the site of contents now. Everything's still in the repository history though: https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com/commits/master https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com/commits/master My mirror's at http://thomas.fach-pedersen.net/SPOOL/ http://thomas.fach-pedersen.net/SPOOL/ has all the documents in PCL, PDF, and properly oriented PNGs if you're tired of turning your monitor upside down :) I made an imgur album of the PNGs too: http://imgur.com/a/dJpuG http://imgur.com/a/dJpuG

coffeejunk 14y ago
A friend of mine put together the full book as a pdf: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5575707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5575707 / http://www.scribd.com/doc/136875051/-why-s-complete-printer-spool-as-one-book http://www.scribd.com/doc/136875051/-why-s-complete-printer-... / https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/8z6j7bju8qx7g7o/WHY_FULL.pdf?token_hash=AAFHqKM5vjJo185d-tm7sv1pC4UXI0LdD4WUBtvy2D4vUg&dl=1 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/8z6j7bju8qx7g7o/WHY_FULL...

sfcgeorge 14y ago

I wrote a little blog post in tribute to why, "Nobody Knows Why": http://www.sfcgeorge.co.uk/posts/2013/04/19/nobody-knows-why http://www.sfcgeorge.co.uk/posts/2013/04/19/nobody-knows-why The post also links to an updated PDF compendium of all _why's recent documents. All rotated and in the correct order (maybe). Bursting with _whyness.