He was "in tech for about a decade". During this decade he most probably had tech coworkers who are maybe on HN. But we don't "recognize his face" here on HN... we don't know him...
The Screeps detail seems like something that could be fairly easily pursued... there can't have been that many players of that game to begin with, let alone those that would care so much about it that they would journal their thoughts about it. A quick check of the GitHub repo doesn't show he contributed code, but might he have opened an issue, contributed to docs? Might there be someone who was active in the community somehow (maybe showing up on leaderboards) until 2017?
I've spent a few days looking into this and haven't been able to find anything. There's also a big thing about "algae pools" "stock markets", etc, which didn't seem to be about Screeps.
I tried to find games that had these mechanics, and ended up spending a bunch of time looking through Spacestation 13 forums, but I'm leaning toward these references being about a game that he wanted to invent.
Algae pool, in the context of a list that contains "balanced nutri*nt? foods", is probably a food based in Spirulina. A green algae used in aquaculture. This seems to me like a check list [1] to assure that he didn't forgot anything after leaving a zone.
Is relevant because the man has been most probably poisoned. It was not a fast poison and it was painful but not too alarming. Not a bee, a wasp or a Bothrops. A plant or fungus, yes, could fit.
Is not suicide and terminal illness in my opinion. Nobody dies by starvation in presence of food.
But there is a third category that I was missing. Your own food. A too old Spirulina package can be contaminated and lead to slow poisoning. Emaciated in the context of plenty of food around and plenty of money means that he was deliberately refusing to eat while resting in the tent, this is a common effect of food poisoning.
[1] Speculating "Roach motel" can be an humorous surname for their tent. Nanites could be some kind of "armour", clothes or boots maybe.
Updated. There is a page talking about nutrition, protein and "trying different flavors". Fits perfectly with Spirulina powder that is used in protein shakes as the source of protein.
Updated again, Nanites are described in the context of a game later. This does not support my checklist hypothesis. Strange list. Maybe could be just a list of names for different worlds and items in the game.
You are right, I was unable to understand the last words
And one item of the list is just "screeps". I was wrong, Now It looks much more like a plan of things to think about while hiking. Maybe a plan to develop a startup based in energetic food and/or a videogame. This web shows a resume of his activity.
OP, based on the Screeps thread, we have a purported Steam profile for MH. Did that yield anything?
Edit: I know that folks thought this was a red herring. Checked the steam profile, power player badge was unlocked on 10/23 but Recently Played shows nothing (might be privacy settings) and last review was 3 years ago. Do badges ever auto-unlock, or could this person have shared a steam account?
That specific badge is for game ownership. I believe it's possible for games to be added to your account automatically in some cases (like an HD version given out for free to existing owners) which could unlock the badge without user intervention.
>or could this person have shared a steam account?
That number is way off- the steam client came out well after the website version (they both connect to the same MMO server), and there are a lot of users who just use the website to play the game.
The community- with the admins- put a lot of work into trying to figure this out. I lead a group who does analysis of other people's codebases by scraping data from the game, as a way to identify unique codebases (and players who use open source bots). The admins went through logs and we all poured through the game history looking for anything that might match up.
The problem is that it looks like he may never have played the MMO. Besides having the shared server the game is also open sourced. It's extremely common for players to run either in the simulator or on their own private server while testing out their codebase. Looking at his journals (and a journalist did share copies of everything they had with us) I really feel that he was in the early draft phase thinking about the game but not actually playing yet on the shared server.
The screeps community spent alot of time on this and we got nowhere.
Unfortunately the Screeps dev team is Russian based, so they declined to provide helps with their data.
The journalist contacted players who were active in 2017 and earlier individually (I was one of those) in hope of getting some leads. But from what I knew, even though we had some suspected players, it ended up not getting the lead we wanted.
If someone wants to check, I'd bet he at least forked or starred the github repo. A script to pull the list of those people, minus anyone whos been active since april 2017, would probably show his account.
You can exclude bandsaw1961 based on user pic and yacobjardon who was a student at Carleton University and a picture on his LinkedIn and career beyond 2017.
I don't really trust the steam online thing. I once got a notification that my brother was playing a game and he was driving a car and his computer was off. No, his account wasn't hacked. We spent awhile and noticed that it seems to randomly say your online and playing if you disconnect for awhile (my account too).
Do not look alike to me at all. different eyebrow shape and texture and possibly color, different teeth and different nose shape. nose on the right has a bulbous end quite different from shape on left.
Mike Hancoski as of 2018 was living in Denver, posted to Instagram and looks different than photos. I think you also missed Maxim2030 who is also in the list by momothereal. And also manhyper
Looking at https://imgur.com/a/eTphrRF
The code that he writes is a blend of languages. The arrow operators -> is indicative of C/C++ but C/C++ doesn't use nil or function. It's like he thinks in C/C++ first which puts him at about my age mid-40s. Anyone younger than 40 would be using dots '.' due to Java/Javascript/Python instead of '->'. Does anyone else get that vibe?
Wouldn't say that, I'm around 30 and grew up coding C, C++ and later, in my teens some Perl anf PHP, all these languages use the -> syntax and I still used that in my notes up until two or three years ago, I also use nil from my lisp adventures and prefer snake_caas. The first languages have I learned as a young child made an strong impression in my mental visualisation of programming concepts even of I haven't used them in many years. I found notes on my iPhone using the arrow syntax with snake_case variables. And from the pictures he looks about my age so I'd say 30 is a real possibility as well.
A lot (I would be surprised if it's not the majority of EEs/CpEs) of electrical/computer engineers are taught how to program with C/C++; using that to understand what age someone is, is an error.
Based on the "being in tech for about a decade" his "initially looks old with the beard but has young looking eyes" and your comments here, I'd put him squarely in his 30s.
I've just hit 30 and I still default to C or C-style to think about code. I've been formally taught coding with the K&R (while being introduced to Perl, Bash, PHP and LUA as a teenager), and I'm far from the only one.
Some colleges teach courses with C++, and if students or young programmers want to get into game development or graphics, they're often recommended to pick up C++. Systems programming is often taught using C++, if not C.
This seems like this would be the way to go. Steam shows less than 200 players for March and April of 2017 and if there are logs that far back, the Screeps team can likely provide some data about users who dropped out in March or April of that year as well
I wish we had better images of the notebook. I noticed a few constants `*_ENERGY_TARGET` which might be searchable if I could make out the first part. It seems that if any code exists for this stuff, it might be those constants come from real code.
A post on this topic is the top post on the screeps subreddit, but with no clear answers. Some posters found players who stopped playing unexpectedly during the appropriate timeframe, along with the group that player collaborated with. However, I don't know if there was any follow-up there, or if it was a dead end.
Just reading through the notes and there are lots of EVE terms in there. They look like they're talking about something else, a new game maybe, but I wouldn't discount it just yet.
They seem to be a novice programmer with big ideas. Some notepads might be missing (see pg 11). I really wish the scans were better.
1-2: Ideas for a screeps AI. (Screeps seems interesting! From a brief look, it's an open-source online MMO/RTS for programmers. It's seems kind of like an AI tournament akin to Battlecode, but persistent. You write your AI in JavaScript or WebAssembly.)
3-5 (top half): Unclear. Maybe from a game idea? Maybe part of the screeps AI?
5 (bottom half) - 6 (top half): CPU time calculation for screeps?
6 (bottom half) - 10: More screeps notes.
11: A table of contents for the notepad(s). Not clear what "3s" refers to. t I think it's the name of a game he wants to make. Seems like some of those notepads might be missing?
12-15: Idea for a peer-to-peer backup/storage system.
16: "BLL", a programming/scripting language, probably short for "B... L... Language".
17-18: Nutritional wafer/bar notes. (Probably for an "all-in-one" hiking food.) The mention of "future" and "no allergies, minimum ingredients, natural ingredients" makes it unclear whether this was something he tested, or just an aspiration.
19-33: More Screeps AI notes.
34-40: "Nanites guild". Either a full game idea, or from a game he wants to make and that he provisionally titled "3s".
From reading the notebook he may be a game developer. Quite a few of the pages look like notes from algorithms on rendering a game, maybe an FPS or RTS game, and he talks about outputting to the console and sprites.
Yes, though I would say amateur game developer. Like the kid who always wanted to build a game but never did, got a "real job" doing some kind of much more boring programming.
There is one point where he is musing about mapping commands to hex values within a single byte which makes me think he started programming in the 8bit era.
This tool is good. We could also use Google Lens to extract text from the document, I tried on a few pages it captures a some more text than Handprint.
Having done a bit more reading through other sources. There should be more focus on his abdominal scar, reduced teste size and cachexia (wasting). This is a very common symptom pattern for cancer. A large portion of cancer patients die from cachexia. HIV, or a chronic disease of heart/liver/kidney are other possibilities but would have left other evidence that would have certainly been noted in the autopsy.
My guess is there are some oncologists and surgeons (probably in NY) who know who this person was, but cannot say anything due to confidentiality.
Don't they have a legal requirement to disclose the identity of this person to the police for identification purposes? I understand that they can not do a public reveal, but I think the state has an obligation to keep record on who is alive and dead.
Yes, is a pattern. You don't became cachectic by a acute poisoning. I checked the authopsy but did not claim obvious tumors, tymus anomalies, no obvious signs of kidney or liver diseases. And I didn't find anything about the heart that would support a heart attack, but is soon to discard that.
If it was a poison is not a haemotoxic one in my stupid opinion. (No petechias or inner bleeding, all correct in the circulatory system and most of all all apparently correct in the liver).
If it was a drug it did not appeared in the analytics, so either it does not leave trace after a while or is not a common one. There was not specific medication against cancer or hypotiroidism found in the backpack. Only ibuprophen and antihistaminics I think [1].
[1] I think that is reasonable to explore at least the possibility of an Ibuprophen overdose, just to discard options.
> My guess is there are some oncologists and surgeons (probably in NY) who know who this person was
Probably not helpful, but "Mostly Harmless" is also the title of Rob Rhinehart's personal blog[1]. Rhinehart's 2013 posts about his nutrition experiments under the "Mostly Harmless" title, led to the founding of Soylent.com and the modern meal replacement industry.
So just possibly MH was a fan of Soylent, or of DIY Soylent.
Edit: on this notebook page[2] are the words Algae Pool and Nutrigs (nutrients?)
The pages[3]-[4] seems devoted to planning or documenting an energy-bar recipe. Similar fascination with the nutritional details of artificial foods are expressed by hobbyists who dabble in DIY Soylent recipes, see for example [5], [6].
On this basis I think it at least credible that MH was aware of Soylent and DIY attempts at complete-nutrition foods, so might have learned the "Mostly Harmless" title from Rhinehart's blog.
Which is no help whatever in identifying him, but interesting.
Read an account somewhere that he got invited over to a fire if he didn't bite, or something like that, and replied that he was mostly harmless. It stuck from there.
My guess is his choice of phrasing was influenced by Adams, given he was reportedly an sf/f enthusiast, but it's a pretty standard sort of geeky small talk reply.
As noted elsewhere on the thread, it's originally a Hitchhiker's Guide joke, a description of humans. It was also used as the title for one of the later books in the series.
I wouldn't discount your explanation, but Rhinehart pulled that name from a very popular source.
I looked at this a year ago but unfortunately lost the note I kept.
There was a fellow named Ben Bellamy, who was a software developer, on LinkedIn at one time with a photo that closely matched this guy. I believe he was, in fact, in the New York area but I cannot remember for sure,
I did some poking around tonight but couldn't pull up his LI profile again.
There are two remarkable things that I saw in the autopsy report -
First, there were "abundant" feces in his intestines, which suggests to me (though I am not a doctor) that he didn't starve to death.
Second, he had an abdominal scar, which might be pretty identifying to someone who knew him, and also supports the theory of a recurring cancer or similar illness.
Not even a passing mention of the privacy questions at stake here. I don’t fault the police for seeking answers, but every self-nominated amateur sleuth isn’t due an answer about the identity of someone who in all likelihood wanted to live privately and never committed a crime.
On his hike he was anonymous as far as his real name goes, but he shared some things with people, and I'm not convinced we know that we know what his wishes were as far as his death goes, if any family would ever hear of it, etc.
That could give some peace to their beloved ones, and nothing can harm him anymore. It seems that he has tell to be a divorced; maybe he has children. I think that is a fair move.
Is there no an index of "unrecognized dead people" that can be matched to a list of "people seeking to find disappeared lost one"? I would imagine if a loved one asks for them, providing pictures, the authorities could the said matching?
I thought the same thing when they mentioned he was emaciated with food near by. I would rather die doing something enjoyable than sitting at a desk at work, so maybe a terminal diagnosis prompted his trek. I would assume they would have found most health issues in an autopsy, unless maybe it was something very unusual or difficult to identify after decomposition.
That doesn’t fit. You don’t discover you’re terminally ill and then brainstorm a game while you're out trying to find yourself. If you think you're terminally ill then your notebook is likely to be full of meditations on the day's endeavors and thoughts about your legacy, and your mortality, maybe even your family. You write about a game when you're nowhere near a computer, it's because you're imagining eventually being back at a computer. Or if you have the hubris to think someone will type your ideas into a computer and this game is gonna be your enduring legacy, then you write with an audience and try to tell people what they are reading -- not a private notebook.
But I think you're onto something. Non-terminally ill could be a different story.
This is almost certainly not what happened, being hyperspecific, but let me tell you a compelling possibility. If you were a programmer with a really mild form of epilepsy that was slowly getting worse and worse, you could imagine thinking that it was related to all of your time playing games and staring at screens, like you find that your eyes just kind of lock on a screen where action is happening and your heart starts beating too fast as your brain goes into overdrive processing too much action and you know you have to tear your eyes away but your eyes are not cooperating. Really uncomfortable and after a really bad episode you will probably feel like your brain is out-of-joint and any encounter with the wrong stimulus might send you back into an "acid flashback" type of situation. Possibly that sort of situation includes hiking for too long or so. Supposing you were of that mindset you might be thinking that this was environmental and, “I am going to get out in nature and these things will quiet down and I will plan my follow-up game." Mild recurrences on the trail are explained as just "no I haven't finished healing yet." Then triggered by heat and being lost and stressed in a Florida swamp, maybe you have another really big one. Zapping in and out of consciousness, maybe you don't have the mental wherewithal to figure out where you are and how to get to safety. Something like that.
Again, that particular scenario is deeply unlikely, but it shows off the basic features: he's writing in his notebook because he expects to return to work, he's taking an extended vacation in nature because he cannot stand to keep working in his current situation. Maybe.
I am really reluctant to post this, something about joining the internet's quest to solve this guy's case seems... I dunno. Fetishistic. I don't really have much to contribute except that I wish the scans were better so I could read this guy's notebook more clearly.
"That doesn’t fit. You don’t discover you’re terminally ill and then brainstorm a game while you're out trying to find yourself. If you think you're terminally ill then your notebook is likely to be full of meditations on the day's endeavors and thoughts about your legacy, and your mortality, maybe even your family."
That might work for some people, but everyone is different. It's possible he doesn't have a family, which is supported by there not being a missing persons report. If I didn't have a family, I probably wouldn't care about legacy, or musing on philosophical topics. I even told my wife that when o die she should donate my body to science, have them pay for the cremation, then spread my ashes in the garden.
The epilepsy example is quite solid. That would be something that may present in different ways without being apparent in an autopsy. It'd be a little odd that the woman he hiked with for a couple months didn't notice it if it was getting worse.
I don't think he's sick tbh. He looks like a lot of guys that I know within CS -- interested in video games and smaller, more technical subjects, very skinny because he forgets to eat, the beard/long hair because he doesn't care to shave, and these big solitary adventures. I know like 10 young men who all fit this profile.
Skinny is one thing, emaciated is something else. I'm not sure what explains how he became emaciated or the unknown cause of death, but being sick could be one explanation.
You're thinking of a person who is fighting the terminal illness. But not everyone chooses to fight, some choose to spend their remaining time doing something they want to do. It's quite possible for someone to decide the cost in suffering from fighting the disease isn't worth the extra time the fight would gain them. Note that this isn't from ignorance, those more medically knowledgeable are more likely to make such a choice.
The problem here is what would it have been that wasn't picked up in autopsy?
Where is this quote from? It's not from the linked article.
> "10 mi / day is absolutely abysmal for a normal thru hiker."
To the best of my understanding, unless he flip-flopped, he was not a thruhiker as he started in NY.
It is not clear either if he made his way south in a continuous footpath.
Moreover, even for a thru-hiker, the 10 by 10 gold standard of hiking does not apply for the majority of hikers on the A.T. It is true it is a gold standard on a well graded trails such as the PCT (well... not counting Sierra Nevada and North Washington), but it is not uncommon from what I've heard, even for thruhikers on the A.T to average 10-12 miles a day. Personally out of the triple crown of US hiking trails, I only thruhiked the PCT, but hiked other long trails where 15 miles/day can be a real struggle where as on the PCT I was able to do 25/day and sometimes more.
Also, it should be noted that he was found dead in Florida, which the Applachian Trail doesn't go through. He might have attempted the Florida Trail which goes through Big Cypress NP.
I see now. I wonder if what Florida police took as 10 miles a day was in Florida or on the A.T.
It probably makes for a big difference as the Florida Trail is much flatter and the terrain should be easier though I'm not sure the middle of the summer is the best time to hike it, and the heat + humidity could have slowed him down in different ways.
As to the A.T. — I think it's not just the grade that is to account for the low mileage but also that the season is not as narrow as on the PCT/CDT.
One of the photos shows him holding paper in a plastic bag. The headline mentions the Pinhoti Trail. It seeks to link the Florida Trail to the AT. It is far enough along to be a working route though there is still a lot of walking on paved roads.
Very interesting! The ECT (Eastern Continental Trail) links Pinhoti Trail with Florida Trail (through some road walking in Alabama) and further north part of Benton MacKaye Trail in Georgia until Mt. Springer where it takes on the AT.
Given that he made it to Georgia on December 1st, and that the A.T runs through 76 miles of Georgia, if he made it to where he was found dead by foot along the ECT, the mileage breakdown from where he was last seen would be:
76 (Georgia A.T) + ~300 (port of BMT) + 335 (PNRT) + 220 (road walking in Alabama) ~1000 (FT until Big Cypress NP) = 1931 miles from December 1st 2017 until the day he died (in July 2018 I assume).
In total, we have at most 8 months (minus the days that have passed since his death), which are ~240 days. Most hikers will take a day off ("zero" as in zero miles) once a week or so, so that could make it 205 total hiking days.
His average mileage in that case would be 1931/205 = 9.4 miles a day, which is very close to what his max mileage was reported to be!
Finding places to sleep would have a massive effect on how far he traveled in a given day. Unlike the west, pitching a tent beside the road is less an option. Partly the weather, partly the density of undergrowth and surface water, and largely the cultural unacceptability. A lot of time each day would go to finding places that looked good enough to work and avoid interference.
Right, you might have to pitch early or late to find a decent camping ground, but that would only apply the Alabama road walking part (which is 220 mile long and part of it goes through forests so it's even less).
I still think that wouldn't change my rough calculation that could align with him continuing along the ECT.
Walking along the road with a backpack is more than enough to stop a deputy sheriff pretty much every where in the south. Areas in proximity to the AT are exceptional not typical.
I am not disagreeing with your theory. Just thinking about what walking is like in the south and how it differs from other parts of the US based on nearly a lifetime living there and meaningfully traveling the west in recent years.
Got it now. I wonder if it's likely that a deputy sheriff would keep a record of such encounter, during which I assume, they might ask a hiker to provide identifying details.
A hiker from Baton Rouge is less likely to be caught at unawares and more likely to talk through an encounter. Anyway the odds of someone making paperwork for themselves is pretty low in a chance encounter.
I'm thinking "thru-hiker" isn't really the right description of this guy. It feels to me like someone who was doing long distance hiking without regard for completing a trail.
Nope, its absymal. I was carrying 45 pound full on winter gear loadout while thru hiking and I was getting 23 miles a day at going from 5k ft to 13k ft
Or he was just chilling. While I've certainly done 20+ miles pr day hikes, I find it every bit as enjoyable doing 10 miles pr day where I can sleep in, take long lunch breaks, get sidetracked, and generally just enjoy my surroundings.
> He wasn’t an experienced hiker (wore jeans the first couple weeks, didn’t carry maps/gps/phone, had a tent that was too big, carried a backpack that was over 50 lbs)
Also in the pictures without jeans he was wearing knee support, he might have just had arthritis or something like that.
The whole thing really reads as mental illness to me. I bet he had it under control for the most part, but things worsened as the trip went on.
One of the biggest reasons for quitting mental illness drugs is due to the feeling that everything is "OK", and they don't need them anymore.
This almost universally false, and as the drugs leave their system, things get progressivelly worse over time. The story fits this timeline really well.
And his mix of gear suggests someone lacking experience. I'm very used to seeing novices on the trails with a wide range of gear, mostly cheap stuff. By the time you get to the top of the highest mountain in this part of the state (class 1, 17mi RT with 1 mile of climb) almost everything you see except shirts is fairly high end.
10 miles is a lot if you're just getting into it and have a heavy pack. To suggest that only something extreme could cause that is naive. Could be limited by a minor foot problem.
I don't understand how the average person cannot comprehend this. The point isn't to "hike far, fast"; it's "walk around, hang out in nature, maybe wind up somewhere new." Maybe he wanted to head out, push as far as he was able and willing, and then die. Maybe he was sick and tired of living and working in our shitty society. What's so hard to understand about that? Particularly with the cash he had on hand, which is exactly what I would do: clear out bank accounts and/or max out credit cards with cash advances, and then disappear forever with no expectation of dealing with a financial institution ever again.
The assumption that he must have died purely by accident is absurd; or, if not, that he must have been mentally ill. I could absolutely see myself doing this in another 5-15 years. There's so very little worth living for, but I learned 10 years ago I'm not willing to off myself in the ways people normally do. Heading out into nature and lasting as long as I can on my own seems like the workaround to "being ready to die", but "not willing to hang, shoot, or poison myself".
No, I don't need help. Tried the suicide route 10 years ago (very seriously, not as a call for help), and discovered that I'm not quite that fed up with life yet; and when I am, that's not how I want to go. This story is exactly the kind of method I'd use if the desire to fade from the world resurfaces.
"One person remembered that he ate a lot of sticky buns; another said that he loved ketchup."
Searching github for 'sticky buns' reveals what seems to be unused account - ghostmachina
"dna. deep learning. info theory. sticky buns. the joys of life."
I wonder how long it will be before someone truly cannot be anonymous in this country (or the world). Whenever I come across a book/movie about someone traveling to the future and trying to blend in, my immediate thought is that they will instantly be flagged as suspicious by a hundred different automated systems (where is your advertising profile, credit history, location history, iris scan, microchip??)
There probably are already enough biometrics, digital records etc. today that can accomplish this given the right incentives for everyone involved.
I have several relatives who live off the grid in remote places. They're not survivalists or militia folk or anything like that. They just like to maximize their privacy.
The keys to survival appear to be: Generate your own power (so you aren't beholden to a utility company), have a well drilled for water, have a boss who will cash your paycheck for you on payday, and live near a town where paying by cash isn't considered strange.
They still pay taxes, though, so they can't be totally anonymous.
One goes a step farther. He builds his own motorcycles to get around. According to him, the law in his state says that if your conveyance is home-built to a certain percentage (51%, maybe?), then you don't have to register it with the state. I have no idea if that's true, but to my knowledge he hasn't had any trouble with it in the 20 years I've known him.
I've met similar folk through back roads travel. Something I can't ever put my finger on is the mild squalor (my opinion, not saying this is true for your relatives) people are willing to endure. Sure, they do it for "maximum privacy", but can't you achieve the same relative privacy in ways that might lead to a higher quality of life? Generating power, drilling wells, boss cashing checks, etc... I get the sense there might be some form of mental health e.g. paranoia, but that's just a guess. I'd be really interested to hear your take on it if you don't mind sharing.
For example, drilling wells is very common, even in densely populated places like New Jersey. When I lived there, having municipal water was very unusual in some surprisingly populated counties.
I think what you're seeing isn't so much squalor in terms of poverty or dirt. I think what you see is the result of people doing things on their own. No one can be an expert at everything. No one can do as good a job as a professional. But if your value some other thing a little higher than the fit and finish of a professional job, DIY is good enough.
I'm slightly less concerned about being anonymous from the government and far more concerned about being anonymous from businesses.
How is it that every time I move, they still figure out where I live and continue to send me junk mail? I'm extremely concerned about the ease of arbitrary businesses finding out where some person lives. I want this to be unethical to the point that whoever leaked my address without my consent to be arrested and fined.
Protip: Only do the temporary change. It still lasts like 6 months so it would cover practically everything. You could potentially miss something later but for me it’s a solid trade.
For the most part I figure if something is really important enough people will figure out a way to reach me. My e-mail address is pretty easy to find and any business I have subscribed to services from has that. I consider it the official way to contact me. I already deprecated snail mail and phone as official ways to reach me.
Yeah, I hate those assholes for that, that's why I don't tell the USPS anymore when I move.
Whenever I give my address to a business for shipping, DMV, voter registration, etc. I also tack on a code to my address so that if they leak it as-is, they'll have blood on their hands, and I can publicly shame them for it. But that hasn't yet seemed to successfully track down the source.
I generate a unique code for each entity that I am required to provide my address to.
I usually change "Apt" to "Unit" to stump the automatic address-correcting APIs that will convert "Apt 10-BCRK" to "Apt 10". I found that changing "Apt" to "Unit" usually stumps them.
The idea is that if I see another business use "BCRK" to send me junk mail, or list my address on those idiot people search sites, I will write a blog and publicly shame the first business for giving it out.
Package delivery drivers happily ignore the "BCRK" part and my packages still arrive as usual.
When giving out billing address for credit card authorization, I find usually I can skip the apartment number field and the card still authorizes just fine, so I also don't need to tell online retailers the same 4-letter code that my bank has listed for my address.
This is a great idea and I would like to use it. However, I have only the house number and street address. What can I do in that case?
PS: I generate separate emails already. Example: somebusiness@mydomain.com However, I have not found a single case where they leaked my email address, so I am not sure if it helps for spam and privacy.
I separate emails, a different address for each company/organisation I deal with. Since I started in 2002, I have found multiple instances of leaked or sold email addresses. My Dropbox one was leaked for sure, as that was quite public, and some of the others seem sold, as the companies seem a bit fly-by-night (of course that may also mean they're clueless about security). One reputable-seeming one I contacted about it claimed they hadn't had a data breach, which I think probably just means they weren't aware of it. I've also had an address scraped and then copied manually from a classified ad - they left out the first letter when they copied and pasted, but I still get it since I have a catch-all!
I do the separate-email thing too and my spambox is chock full of emails to leaked addresses. The leaks seem mostly from large, upstanding companies that have had data breaches (Adobe, Myspace, ...), rather than from deliberate email address sales. It's still very handy to be able to just disable an email address... can't do that if you've used the same registration email on 1000 sites.
I imagine you could just still just use "Unit XYZ" or whatever.
If it confuses your delivery folks and it's the same people every day, just explain it to them to ignore that, but most likely they'll just ignore the Unit stuff and leave the package at your door as usual.
I found this out when I moved recently and I find it incredibly stupid. I'm now simultaneously annoyed that my new address seems to still receive mail for the last 3 tenants, but I also didn't do a change of address so whoever ends up renting my old apartment is going to be annoyed with me.
The last house I lived in was torn down and rebuilt. The address changed from 311 to 313 in the process. I've always wondered if it was because they were tired of receiving my junkmail.
Last time I moved I gave USPS a change of address to a PO Box. Then, after updating all the important ones I forgot, I let it expire six months later. I'm still getting junk mail at my new address, but some of the more annoying ones have lost track of me.
You're getting downvoted and I'm not sure why, but I'd like a moment to share my story and why I believe in what you believe:
My mom called me the other week and told me that a recruiter was looking for me. She gave me their name and number, but I was stumped. How the hell did:
1. They know that was my mother
2. How did they know her number
3. How did they know she would be able to reach me?
I've subsequently determined that my ICE information was leaked somehow. This is the only piece of information, other than life insurance, where my mother and I would be positioned as related. I do not have a Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit. I have this profile, which is my average online profile, and I have a professional one. Neither has ties back to my family, much less phone numbers. We also live in totally different states and they were calling her about a job for me in my current state and city.
I would say it is already unethical to dox someone, just if you do it in the name of sales or "connecting people" Americans somehow sweep it under the rug.
This is just a matter of correcting societal expectations.
That's a distinct possibility, but the odds that you've sent mail to your mother's house is high.
Doesn't have to be in your name, either. Your billing address, her shipping address? That can be packaged and sold to a third party.
It doesn't take much information to infer relationships, and we constantly leak information which is aggregated and sold. Facebook and friends are playing on easy mode, the markets for this kind of data predate social media and the professionals are very, very good at it.
I agree. I leave latitude in my mind that my conclusions are wrong and that this happened in other ways. Either way, it's not good. I wish it hadn't happened and as much as I'd like to say it didn't bother me much here I am posting on HN about it.
Same thing happened to me, but it was not to sell me something. It was nefarious enough that I cannot talk about it, without creating even more damages.
Social engineering can still go all the way, where irremediable damage can be done. Then good luck to get justice!
The direct mail business has this “public records” part figured out pretty well and they gather the data from anywhere they can. Wouldn’t be surprised if utility bills factor in as well.
There are a lot of women in China who don't officially exist. They are significantly marginalized because they can't use government services or easily get an online identity.
I'm the author of the piece. I think the best clues are that the mystery hiker told people he was from Louisiana, and that he worked in the tech industry in NY. I suspect someone here might recognize him. I'm reachable at nxthompson at protonmail.
I just wanted to thank you for writing an engaging long form article that doesn't meander telling parallel stories jumbled together. I could draw a straight timeline from the first paragraph to the last and that's oddly something I don't see too often in this format anymore!
Perhaps some unexpected context: at least some authors of long-form pieces write with the objective of selling the rights to their works in mind. The more it feels like a screenplay, the more likely it is to attract a buyer who feels it has potential as one.
I don't have numbers from you, just that bit of context and some supporting quotes off the record.
Qualification: I tech-consult producers and writers on screenplays.
You probably know this but others might not: there are literally agencies that develop ideas through a tight lifecycle of inception, moderate form to long form market testing in publications like Wired and investment and film/podcast/TV development sourcing based on feedback from those market tests and brand sponsorship and alignment for the launch of the final product.
$5,000 and 5 months? Why in the world is the DNA matching going so slow?
My cousin mailed fifty bucks and some spit in an envelope on Monday and Wednesday I get an email from 23andMe saying "Hey! We think this is your cousin's spit!". And neither of us is missing!
1. collecting a DNA sample from a corpse is more difficult than having someone spit in a tube and drop it in the mail. It takes tools and a specialist
2. they want to compare with lots of different databases. Most GEDMatch data comes from genotyping arrays, that look at ~500k variants on the genome. However, different companies use different sets of single-nucleotide variants. Meanwhile, law enforcement databases look at microsatellites, which can't be assayed easily with an array. Sequencing someone to be able to use all the different databases would be on the order of a thousand dollars
3. The genetic testing companies do things in bulk. Your cousin's spit was run though the various steps (like PCR) with 100s of other samples. Doing it for a single sample is going to be more expensive
Has his DNA been checked against people in the various online sequencing sites? You might be able to find a relative that way. They found a serial killer through that a year or two ago.
I love how sometimes worlds collide and thruhiking related stories make it to HN. It is however sad for it to be in this context.
If anyone reading this consider getting into long distance hiking, I'd encourage you to do so. While it is always best to avoid getting into dangerous situations rather than finding your way out of there, getting yourself either:
1. A subscription based satellite messenger (Garmin Mini is only 100g/3.5oz and is backed by Iridium. Globalstar is the other big network).
2. Personal Locator Beacon (COSPAS-SARSAT backed device) that has no subscription fee and is backed by better availability guarantees (Resqlink is only 4.6 oz) but has no messaging capabilities other than an "SOS signal".
If the above story didn't do enough to convince you that such device could have been helpful, please do yourself or your loved ones a favor and read what had became of Otter when he got trapped on the Continental Divide Trail — "Snowbound", Outside Online:
The key thing about a signalling mirror is that it can be useful _if someone is searching for you_ (and provided that you have clear sky above you).
PLB or satellite messengers will not only let the first responders know where you are (both by transmitting your location via satellite distress signal as well as using 121.5 MHz 'homing signal' in the case of PLBs to help first responders find your exact location), but also trigger the SAR operation rather than waiting for someone to notice you've been gone for too long.
A signal mirror is useful for directing searchers to you, but is useless for telling them you have a problem. I actually have both a beacon and an inReach--I got the beacon when I started doing hikes that weren't part of a group, but were still on fairly popular trails. This year I've been deliberately avoiding the crowds so I added an inReach.
With the beacon they'll know exactly who and where you are (but nothing about the nature of the problem) and it also transmits a homing signal for aircraft. With the inReach if you just trip the SOS they only get who and where, but you also have text messaging so that you can communicate how urgent the situation is and what it will take to get you out. (Safe but unable to extract won't get anything like the response that femoral artery severed, tourniquet applied gets.)
I travel abroad a lot. I always wear my roadid bracelet. It is stylish enough that folks think it is for looks, but cheap enough that it won’t get stolen off my body (like a wallet might).
Maybe I asking for too much but why didn't his makeshift snowshoes work? Being of sound body and mind with only 10 miles between you and civilization should rarely be a death sentence.
I'm not sure how well his makeshift snowshoes performed, but the journal of his account during the time he waited for someone to find him portray him as more resourceful than most hikers I've met.
As to his distance from civilization, I'm assuming you refer to Lagunitas Campground to hwy 285. That is around 20 miles as the crow flies, more like 30 miles on trail from what I see on CalTopo, but with thick fresh layer of snow covering the trail, he'd have had to find his own way (assuming he knew hwy 285 was there). Navigation in a snow covered land that is high in elevation yet hilly but flat enough to hide what's coming ahead can make 30 miles be very very challenging even without the mental challenge of coping with being wet and cold every day.
He was also hoping, at least at the beginning, that they'll find him, and that must have been a consideration for staying in the same place rather than risking losing the trail.
Yup, I have aborted a hike because of an inch of snow. I didn't recall exactly where the trail was, only that it was basically cut into a slope. Looking down at it I couldn't figure out where it would be safe to walk and where I would be risking sliding down the hill. It really changes things.
Obviously, I could have scraped aside the snow every couple of feet and figured it out but I knew there was a lot more such terrain ahead, it would have been very slow.
Right, that's the exact model you should look for, InReach is the term they use to describe their whole sat-messaging line.
By the way, they also have an API you can hook into.
I once was toying with the idea of implementing a compact language to help me with resupplying between towns:
Lets say that my flashlight breaks or my mattress gets a hole that I cannot fix, I could have a list of all my items (it's rather short - for example here is my '19 HRP thruhike gear list: https://lighterpack.com/r/rbjo9d).
For every item I can maintain let's say an amazon product page (with some price bound probably), as well as the list of towns I'll be visiting.
A single text message that says "ORDER 1 flashlight to Bridgeport" could trigger an order to the General Delivery address which I already have in my Amazon account.
This could even work as a service that possibly pays itself using just Amazon's referral fees.
I never got to actually testing their API since you have to manually apply to their business plan which cost significantly more than the regular plan.
But it could really be useful and save you a lot of time and money while thruhiking, when you really need to get a replacement item while out there between towns with no signal and your next town only has a general store.
And yes, Otter's story is so crazy, sad and depressing. Being there so long and slowly realizing that there is no way out feels so difficult to process.
I can easily see how it could have been adapted to a film.
Could it be a Canadian that drove to NY and then hiked west?
That's a pretty common thing to do.
I have a bunch of friends from college that are bouncing around the globe travelling on foot, picking fruits and doing farm-work when they run out of funds.
Or are the databases / missing persons agencies communicating with each others?
I'm from French Canada and I could easily imagine someone being in the US and saying "I am from Louisiana" while actually meaning "my ancestors are in Louisiana".
I used to do that a lot when I was younger. I didn't have my own computer until I was out of college. I would write out 6502 assembler programs by hand on graph paper and then hand-assemble the code in the columns to the left of the assembly instructions. Then I'd enter the hex code in with the Apple ][ monitor.
Regarding his identity; I used to hang out on #coders on IRCNet from the mid 90's to the early 2000's. There was a guy there called MostlyHarmless and I think both the age and nationality checks out. I haven't been there for ages and I am pretty sure that the channel was password protected but it would probably take somebody just a few minutes to check around there amongst the regulars to see if they're the same guy. Right now there isn't a user online called MostlyHarmless, which there always was back then.
If there are financial details, such as a PayPal account or credit card, and the above-mentioned Steam profile seems likely to be connected with the hiker, it might be worth considering providing some small amount of information to the authorities responsible for the missing person's case.
Hmm, it seems also the profile may have been active more recently than would be the case if it were Mostly Harmless's account
> However, I have to inform you that the "Ben2" that MrFaul is talking about is very unlikely your victim, as his steam profile shows he unlocked a number of badges in the last year
Well, this was quite the rabbit hole for me. Great article, btw.
Here's my best candidate from some internet sleuthing: https://imgur.com/EMPKO2V . I do definitely see some resemblance, but interested if others do too.
I have a possible name, but no evidence that anyone with that name has been reported missing. The only contact point I found is a twitter profile that I think could be a brother, but I'm not about to message that person and open that door b/c I could be way off track.
I always found it fascinating how different people see faces very differently. I think the dead giveaway here is the nose. I remember actually seeing a video where an expert in facial recognition talks about how you can practice telling faces apart by looking at very specific things. I know ears and nose are definitely key.
I wonder what ClearviewAI has to say about this :)
It is a sad case. But even more sad is our desire to know but the guy may be trying to escape from us all.
The problem of madness is you know your desire to know is not right but still you go on. Whilst I understand the argument in the article someone love him may want to know what happened. Still, should we respect his seemingly intent to avoid all theses.
Or are we all mad in a sense.
P.S. finally nailed it why china want dna so much. No need all but if have sufficient database the match to one’s relatives is sufficient.
Young men don't die for 'no reason'. It's odd that they couldn't find some cause of death, I assumed that in 2020 we'd be able to make a rough estimate. If there's no obvious foul play then statistically the obvious one would be suicide, but that should narrow only to a few specific things. How many ways are there for one to 'just die' while lying in a tent.
Foraging in the wild for food or water can have deadly consequences. For example, McCandless ate the wrong kind of berries.[0] Or the time when three campers scooped up more than just water in their coffee pot.[1] And don't underestimate the effects of Giardia.[2] That ubiquitous parasite could easily weaken and lead to the demise of a solo-hiker.
On the other hand, on the show Alone a few seasons back the medical staff had to pull someone who had weeks worth of smoked fish saved up yet was risking serious organ damaging due to malnutrition. Even though he had plenty of food he was simply rationing too strictly and had lost over 20% of his bodyweight in a matter of weeks. Point being, it's possible to put oneself in danger despite having the resources to avoid the risks.
Alone was fascinating to binge on netflix. The winner of the season I watched had a whole elk to eat and was still losing dangerous amounts of weight over the course of the season. I would have never guessed that he would have struggled so much with such bounty.
I wonder if he was fasting or starving himself and ran into unexpected trouble. For example pg 17 has some detailed nutritional data on something, maybe an idea for a protein bar?.
It looks like he was developing some sort of nutritional "wafer." I remember when Rob Rhinehart was in the early days of developing soylent, he commented that some of the raw nutritional powders he was sourcing for the mixture could be quite harmful if taken in the wrong dosage. Maybe he made himself sick with a bad batch of wafers?
I'm not sure the article said...is it known how long he was dead for before the body was discovered? After enough time has passed, it becomes impossible to reliably determine whether certain factors played a role in the death. Underlying health issues and infection can be hidden by decomposition.
I don't think it was in the article, but I read somewhere that they believe, based upon the little external decomposition, that the body was found perhaps a day after he passed.
Aneurisms, strokes, toxins (spider/snake bites). The first is pretty quick, but the latter two could leave someone sufficiently weak or incapacitated to move and care for themselves, but still survive long enough to become emaciated.
All of this would show up in an autopsy. Snake bites would leave visible puncture wounds. There are for all practical purposes no deadly spiders native to the US. Tissue necrosis from a brown recluse would be visible, and a black widow would leave neurotoxic signs that a decent autopsy would have found, as well as possibly the toxin itself. (Hardly anybody dies from those two spider bites, and those two are the only medically significant spiders in the US.)
How long would they remain detectable by an autopsy in a county that didn't even want to spend $5k on DNA testing? How long was the body decaying before discovered. I do agree about the necrotizing venoms. But consider a black widow. You could be incapacitated, rendered helpless for a day or so, and become sufficiently dehydrated to be essentially delirious after recovering from the bite proper. That would leave you in a state that, without assistance, you'd not die from the bite, but from starvation/dehydration several days later. How long is the toxin in the body?
Not necessarily. The toxin could have been ingested, especially if it was something man-made rather than natural. Many would have left recognizable signs, but others you'd have to know what signs to look for and/or do a specific test. Whatever it is might even have cleared his system (it takes a while to become that emaciated) but not before doing some kind of neurological/motor damage.
Depends on the state of decomposition as to what they would find in the autopsy, but I would generally agree that invenomation is unlikely as it wouldn't explain the emaciation (they could be coincidental). Found in a tent in FL... I don't want to imagine that smell. It's also possible they found anomalies or issues but were not able to tie them to the death (I imagine the autopsy is confidential).
It would take a fairly long time for even a 130 person to get into the 80s. If you can't move or care for yourself, you'd be dead in that tent in less than 3 days.
True. I saw another poster commenting on a case where a person was being too strict in rationing their (plentiful) food. Which perhaps makes more sense here. If he'd already lost a lot of weight and stamina as a result of that, could've laid down and died shortly after.
Rationing could be an issue, if he had reason to ration. Maybe if he got lost deeper within the park and was on his way out. Depends on how much food he had with him, when he was previously buying supplies, etc.
Florida is like the US's Australia. There are so many things that can kill you including a number of poisonous species of spiders and snakes. It's not a good place to hike alone.
Well, I'm not a doctor or medical professional of any sort so I honestly don't know. I was just presenting things that could lead to an apparently healthy young-ish man suddenly dropping dead for no apparent reason.
I didn't pick them totally randomly, though. I had a rationale: He seemed emaciated, which suggests something left him immobile for an extended period since he had food at hand. This made me think of strokes and snake/spider bites. The former could leave you permanently immobile, but alive. Without assistance he'd have died within a few days. The latter, depending on the sort, could leave you immobile and in great pain for a day or so, with a chance to recover and survive. But if he'd already become sufficiently dehydrated he may not have had the energy or wherewithal to care for himself.
There are other conditions which could lead to a similar outcome. Heat exhaustion, for instance, may not kill outright. But could leave you in a state where you need assistance and can't recover on your own.
Whether they'd show up on an autopsy, I don't know. But also per the article it was a while before he was found. So given a sufficient level of decay, it's possible these conditions wouldn't show up or would be sufficiently hard to detect (remember, the sheriff's didn't even want to pay $5k for the DNA testing, he wasn't a crime victim so their budget wasn't paying for a lot of analysis).
> IN APRIL 2017, a man started hiking in a state park just north of New York City. He wanted to get away, maybe from something and maybe from everything.
> Everyone who goes into the woods is trying to get away from something.
> Everyone, at some point, has wanted to put their phone in a garbage can and head off with a fake name and a wad of cash.
Since you are here I want to mention how off-putting this rhetoric is to me, a person who likes being outdoors, who doesn't have problems around spend all day refreshing the NYT or twitter or instagram, a person who genuinely likes solitude. It's almost as if urbanity is now synonymous with a neurotic steady state of over-exposure and any act of finding a moment of peace in the outdoors is itself a futile act of desperation -- an attempt to flee modernity. It just doesn't ring true to me.
Agreed, I've been working online for 20+ years in the Scottish Borders in a town of 15K people, with the forest and fields a minute walk away.
> Everyone who goes into the woods is trying to get away from something.
Getting into something is maybe more apt. Walking the dog in the middle of the countryside is very peaceful and regenerative, it grounds you. "Getting away from something" makes it sound like the something is the modus operandi when it never was. It's almost like it adds more nuance to a man's story, you know, the fast living 21st century tech man who has an epiphany. Perhaps the 80-hour a week tech worker's walk into nature means something more than other people's... or not really.
> I want to mention how off-putting this rhetoric is to me
I'm not sure your emotions are important to others. Maybe it would be better to address what you think is the flaw in the characterization rather than leading with how it impacts your personal emotional state.
Because it's offtopic and a drag. Imagine showing up at a party and someone starts accosting you with "since you are here I want to tell you how off-putting" their pet peeves about your work are. I doubt you'd want to hang around in that conversation, and it doesn't make for the best party. We're hoping for better conversations and more interesting parties.
I've chosen a life of less work, less stuff and therefore less money. I spend a lot of my time alone on big trips around the world, and out in the wilderness. I'm immensely more happy than I was sitting at a desk watching my life go by without really being alive.
I get a lot of this attitude about how I must be "running from something" or I'm "throwing my life away".
I think it's a symptom of our modern "society" that it needs to put down anyone who chooses not to be drowning in it.
Which, of course, makes me want to distance myself from it even more.
I choose to look at it the other way around and say I can't afford NOT to make this choice.
But I don't have a lot of money, in fact my last few years of tax returns I've barely earned more than the tax free threshold. So it's not about having tons of money to escape the 9-to-5, it's about realizing you can find happiness with a lot less.
I'm pretty sure that danso has submitted lots of really good articles that hadn't appeared on HN before.
More generally, please don't post like this - it crosses into personal attack. Even if all the information is public, spending time and energy to put it together into a case against someone does more harm than good.
If you have concerns over someone's behavior, please just message the mods at hn@ycombinator.com. Pushing discussions into meta-arguments about reposting poisons threads.
Pretty sure I found him in like ten seconds. I just searched NAMUS for people matching his characteristics, and I found a Joseph Wayne McCartan from Louisiana. MH claimed to be from there. They also look strikingly similar. Further, JWC was suspected to have been a cancer survivor. This could explain the large abdominal scar—and, if the cancer recurred, the wasting. Check this reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/MostlyHarmlessHiker/comments/jnixu7...
I know you're only trying to help, but they look nothing alike. And going missing on a shrimp boat leaving Texas, to then hike from up north seems too odd for Occam's Razor.
Two points: One, I don't know who you're looking at! They look very, very similar to me. Keep in mind, you have to age your mental image of JWM about ten years. Second, it's absolutely clear that MH wanted to "go missing" / be untraceable. If I were to accomplish that, the best way to do so would be to fake some sort of accident... like a mishap at sea (so that people believe you to be dead). Hence, shrimping boat.
Quite an odd thing to say. While it can be easy to think that someone looks alike due to the "overall appearance" of their faces, closer inspection usually sets things apart. Their completely different chins are one example.
Secondly, his DNA didn't match the missing person's database, which you are getting your "match" from.
There's no reason to be defensive. You've done nothing wrong. Wrong starts only if it is impossible for one to accept that one's theory might not be correct. That can ultimately end in throwing off the real investigation, if one were aggressive enough.
It I put in the two reddit images, and it says they don't match, but its not very confident. I've tried with some older family photos, on with kids growing up and those matched well, (even though 4 years difference). I does seem to work pretty well in general.
Verification result: The two faces belong to different people. Confidence is 0.09848.
I was incredibly convinced it was the son of a friend due to similar (in my mind) facial features. And even more convinced when I found evidence the friend's son had a vegan restaurant that closed down around the same time this guy disappeared. Then I found the son's github repo with updates from 2020. Actually glad to be wrong.
The Louisiana missing persons repository says that his DNA records are available [1]. So they (theoretically) would have found a match of his DNA when searching the missing persons database.
I took a look at the picture of JWC, and I can't quite see the resemblance, but maybe I'm missing something. Is there any mention of JWC working in tech?
Edit: From the missing persons website:
> Last seen on shrimping boat in the Texas area in the Gulf of Mexico.
Maybe someone more savvy than me with this could age him ten years to get to get a better comparison... As for working in tech, yeah you'd think there'd be some record. But then again, tech is a great place to work if you want to be anonymous. E.g. could have been a contractor.
Reminds me of the old adage that if you want to find out how to do something in Linux, it's quicker to make a post saying "Linux can't do X!" and watch the rebuttals roll in than ask the question "How do I do X?"
DNA is our best bet, but as we see it's the missing part of the story.
With this said, it makes for a decent fictional writing prompt.
It's 2045, the cold case on Mostly Harmless has been reopened after 24 years. Advances in DNA matching technology beyond what we imagined possible in 2020 have occurred. Detective Williams submits the preserved DNA to the US National DNA Registry (DNAR). Within minutes an exceptionally high probability grandparent match is returned. The record had been added just 8 days previous, but was a sealed record. Inquisitive about the circumstances that would lead to the improbable events that a match existed, was only in the system for 8 days, and was sealed he put in a formal request for unsealing to DNAR. DNARs response was "Pursuant to USNADR Act 11A all juvenile records are sealed until the date of the records documented 18th birthday. A warrant must be issued by a judge for unsealing. Per subsection 15 of the act on permissible information release, the requested records year of birth is: 2045."
No, social networks are. More than likely there are people who absolutely know who he is, they just need to see the photo.
DNA databases are not necessarily comprehensive, if there aren't people in his lineage who are both registered and who know about/of him, then it won't work.
It's possible that his family recognized him and just hasn't bothered to say anything publicly. Maybe he burned bridges in his previous life and folks would rather let it go than deal with interviews, etc.
Reading the notebooks I'd guess although in tech, not a programmer. It's all on designing the one game (based on Screeps), except one page on food. (I think BLL is business logic layer, p2p.bak is the servers to run it, blockchain-ish)
Personally I guess religious and gay. Just current intuition. I haven't read all the forums. The ex-girlfriend claim doesn't seem cited.
Reading his notebook was really sad. His private thoughts on show for the world to see. Being a quite person it's not something I'd guess he'd have liked. I know the dead are dead, but I also won't piss on a friends grave, so I don't practice what I believe.
It's amazing how rude Facebook, reddit, and in this case, greedy companies, can be. If he cared enough about anyone knowing who he was, he'd have told someone. This is just blatant disregard for a man's privacy.
He posed for a number of photographs and videos. He interacted with many people. He never expressed the desire to remain anonymous that you intuit. If someone wants to slip away quietly into the void, there are much better ways to do it than this path.
I'd argue it's honoring him and the honorable life he seems to have led to pursue this investigation. Not to mention there may be a number people who will get peace from the knowledge that a friend or family member of theirs has passed. That seems like the kind of thing that a kind, caring person would want.
The article at least hints to the fact that MH was weary about digital evidence:
"He asked Mostly Harmless if he could take a picture. Mostly Harmless hesitated but then agreed"
Are there better ways to slip into the void than going into the wilderness without even a phone?
He didn't go into any wilderness. He traveled one of the most popular hiking trails in the country. Went into stores. Stayed in campgrounds. Let himself be photographed a bunch of times. Why he hesitated that once, I don't know, but I seriously doubt anyone would have pressed him if he'd just declined.
Better ways? A boat out into the ocean. Hiking out West or in Alaska. Or South America. Going deep into an unpopular cave. Hiking in a desert.
There are many, many places more "wild" than the popular hiking trail in Florida where he passed. If he'd wanted to slip away quietly, he seems like he had the means and the intelligence to have figured out how to do that successfully.
Wouldn't the more wild places be better known to someone very familiar with the options? Someone starting out in denim jeans doesn't strike me as that type. Seems more like the sort to which any long distance trail would appear appropriately wild.
He didn't say his name, though. At minimum it's a desire to stay pseudonymous, and I think it should be respected.
The idea that privacy can be violated like this solely because random Facebook users are interested in it and on the off-chance that family he hadn't interacted with in years might find some abstract comfort despite not being close at all is just incredibly bizarre.
I find it somewhat poetic that he was heading for the Keys. As this is exactly the person you meet down here, many people are known only by their given nickname and many times like this gentleman seems to be, have been successful and just want to get away from the world. You can sit in a bar next to a fishing bum and a billionaire and not know who is who. He is exactly the type of person the Key's attracts and it is ashame he did not reach his goal. Point being I understand the utilization of a given nickname, it is almost a second birth name of a new life, a new life that they themselves are seeking. Thus the name can sometimes become more important than their birth name.
I've thru-hiked and "no one" goes by their real names out there (for long). It's just not the way trail community works. There are many people I met and all we know name-wise about each other are our trail names.
I suspect those that didn't want to be on social media at all would have declined to be in the GoPro video for a longer discussion (as I likely would have, but I wouldn't have stopped a passing hiker doing a GoPro recording since that's more in the realm of a dashcam kind of thing). Fellow hikers tend to be respectful about such things.
The laws and principles of privacy protection are generally built from the perspective that people have privacy interests that need protection, but dead bodies aren't people anymore and have no privacy rights. We do have certain restrictions about the deceased, but those are designed to protect the interests and privacy of their surviving family, relatives and friends, not the deceased themselves.
For example, we can read and even publish the private diaries and intimate correspondence of dead people, and the only privacy that needs to be accounted for is the interests of other parties in that correspondence and the (living) people talked about in these messages - but the dead don't care about anything any more, or at least that's the general assumption.
If I somehow legally obtain your diary and publish juicy exerpts and facts from it (publishing all of it would be restricted by copyright), then you may have grounds to sue me for violations of your privacy. If you're dead, your heirs can't do that, they can protect their rights (e.g. the inherited copyright), but not your privacy. It's similar for defamation; after you're dead, defaming you does not violate the rights of anyone - anyone living, that is.
In my local jurisdiction, I would not necessarily expect that to be protected by privacy law even if I was living (you may have grounds, but good luck!) - and it would be protected by copyright either way.
Trail names are ubiquitous, and generally aren't used for pseudonymity to protect one's privacy.
I don't think it's a reasonable presumption based only on the fact that he hadn't mentioned his legal/previous name that this person did not want to news of his death to reach people from elsewhere in his life.
Maybe he wanted privacy but didn't expect to die. He likely had someone in his life who is wondering what happened to him and I think it's good that people are trying to give them closure.
Why do those people deserve to know anything? They obviously haven't sought it out, and given he hadn't contacted them in years, it's completely pointless to assume they were close.
Answer: They don't.
Privacy should be respected, even in death. Especially in a case like this.
Having only read this article, is there somewhere else that you've read about the case to conclude that he has no family or friends who've been looking for him? It could be that they've been looking in the wrong place, or are older and not on the FB and other fora where this case is being discussed to connect the dots. And similarly, how can you conclude he hadn't contacted them in years (though it's obviously been years at this point), we know nothing of him prior to starting the hike in 2017.
How do you know? You didn’t know about MH case until now? 2years on. what’s not saying his parents are elderly and are not on the internet? That his friends are not recognising him due to the hiker association and maybe the beard and hat has altered his appearance a lot. Especially with the weight lost he would of experienced during the hike.
He wrote whole notebooks, that doesn’t scream I’m walking into woods to die and don’t want anyone to know. It was the AT and then the FL that’s hardly the wilderness.
He could of just been a private person and never thought he see the hikers again so didn’t give to much away. He could have experienced some sort of mental illness and wasn’t in his right mind to know what he wanted.
Without citing philosophers, how do you reach the conclusion that your identity, once dead, (and therefore your vital status) is a private information?
Privacy is for the living. The dead are instead owed respect. If he had wanted particular things to happen after his death he could have written a will. Absent that, I think it's reasonable that the people who found him do what they they think most respectful.
The duty of respect for the dead also doesn't trump the needs of the living. If there are people out there waiting for his return, they should be told. I know somebody who's son disappeared, presumably in shame, after he failed out of college. For years and years it hurt her daily to not know . Eventually he got back in touch. If he had died before doing that, she would have deserved to know that her wait was over.
His privacy is a really important issue. People have a right to disappear. No one has a right to take this away from someone else. You own your body.
People seems to excuse themselves trampling on others privacy just so they can be part of a podcast. It's lame. Your family doesn't own you, you don't own them.
> If he cared enough
This bit is wrong. He might have cared and he seems to have gone to great lengths to protect his privacy.
Points of thought
1) Some people think dead people have zero rights. You are in or out on this.
2) We don't know for sure he wanted to disappear after his death.
I think when one dies, his heirs or estate assume the rights of what to keep private or not. In this case, they need to find those individuals to notify them.
