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Near, the emulator developer of bsnes, higan, and more, has died (twitter.com/marcan42)
390 points by aquova on June 27, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 148 comments



Posted this on the other thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27653450), I'll copy it here...

I don't really know what to say here. I didn't know them personally, but I saw their work and was truly stunned. Most people don't achieve in their entire lives what Near (aka Byuu) did in their comparatively short one. To say I was impressed is an understatement. I simply don't have the words.

What happened, shouldn't have happened. There needs to be a wider discussion of responsibility of hosting providers for the actions of their customers, and especially Cloudflare for shielding illegal acts. But that's a discussion for another day.

Tonight, the sky is darker, for the loss of one of its brightest stars.


> There needs to be a wider discussion of responsibility of hosting providers for the actions of their customers

How about holding the actual bullies accountable instead of shifting accountability to the ISP/Host? What happens in real life (i.e. outside the context of the internet) if bullies harass someone with hate mail until that person commits suicide? Does the blame shift away from the bullies to USPS or FedEx for failing to shield the recipient from the hate mail?

I could see a case made against kiwi farms, but cloudflare? They are infrastructure level and should not get in user content moderation imo


Cloudflare has already proven willing to stop supporting sites based on their content.

They’ve opened the doors, so it’s not unreasonable to expect that they could/would/should do it again.


People have been complaining for years about some of the content they shield (KF especially). The site is responsible for at least one previous suicide. Their response is always the same... to forward the complaints onto the abuser for them to laugh at.

Cloudflare has only ever intervened in matters like this when the mainstream press has given them an absolute and utter kicking.

The sad fact is, when you have your own AS-number and peering agreement, you can do pretty much whatever you like on the Internet.

De-peering a few of the worst network abusers and "it's not my problem, I just want the money" merchants would go a long way to improving the internet for the rest of us.

This might seem hardline, but it's not without precedent: the precedent is the Internet itself, in its earlier days.


Would anything stop the de-peered providers from peeing with each other, leading to a balkanized internet?


ISVs would love it, you could sign up for multiple networks. It would be like paying for a gateway provider to reach an existing walled garden like China.


I absolutely agree with making the bullies accountable, and making the networks accountable should only be in addition to that.

The guy who runs the site is a US citizen. If the police don't give a damn (which seems to be the case)... why aren't US citizens writing to their representatives about this?


> why aren't US citizens writing to their representatives about this?

Does that actually do anything?


One challenge that may be perceived is that while 'eggshell rule' exists [0], any wrongful death case involves a jury of people, a decent portion of which would rather not think about the damages their own bad actions towards others have caused.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull


The aim here is to stop the people who bully others to suicide. That is what is important. Kiwifarms is self hosted, there is no host to complain to.


> Most people don't achieve in their entire lives what Near (aka Byuu) did in their comparatively short one.

I'm astonished that someone with this caliber of attention to detail and proven track record to deliver was not already in at least an internship program. Would have definitely earned at least a closer scrutiny from me and I would have pulled strings to accommodate their special needs if that closer look held up.

KF depravity, if practiced upon a puppy with mapped-over harassment as say, constant yelling or similar behavior, if documented, would net the perps with harsher consequences than the nada they will get. An individual's character is measured by how they behave when no one is watching. A civilization's strength is measured by how it behaves when its weakest members are preyed upon.


I had a mathematics teacher in high school who had a line about the Romans: "The biggest impact the Romans had on mathematics was killing Archimedes."

The biggest impact Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, had on the technology community is killing Near and so many others by standing behind these sites. This is the principle for which he stands.


Near’s contribution to SNES emulation is unequalled, covering perfect dumps of every game possible, the most accurate emulator, and even pushing the envelope on what the SNES could do with HD mode and widescreen support. Such a brilliant hacker, such a loss. Thanks for all the effort.


I don't really know what to say here. I didn't know them personally, but I saw their work and was truly stunned. Most people don't achieve in their entire lives what Near (aka Byuu) did in their comparatively short one. To say I was impressed is an understatement. I simply don't have the words.

What happened, shouldn't have happened. There needs to be a wider discussion of responsibility of hosting providers for the actions of their customers, and especially Cloudflare for shielding illegal acts. But that's a discussion for another day.

Tonight, the sky is darker, for the loss of one of its brightest stars.


For those who were not aware of their accomplishments, this article by them is a great starting point into the level of detail of higan development: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/04/how-snes-emulators-go...

A monumental loss. I never knew them personally, and generally didn't keep up with development, but they were a truly magical person and didn't deserve this in the slightest.


near was the author of higan (https://higan.dev), a SNES emulator which is at the cutting edge of accuracy and emulation research. If you have even touched in passing the field of Nintendo console emulation, it's quite likely you've heard of them or their creations. I hope https://near.sh continues to stay up as an archive of all that they built over the years.

near posted a few words of encouragement when I was wondering whether to start a SNES emulator of my own, which inspired me to build one over the course of a few months. That journey gained me a huge amount of engineering, personal and aesthetic fulfillment.

I hope all the people Near/byuu inspired never forget their contributions to the field either. Rest in peace.


Near (Byuu) has previously appeared on HN as the author of BSNES, Higan, and other emulators for retro gaming systems.

https://bsnes.dev/

His work raised the bar for emulator accuracy and the preservation of video games. He was a towering figure in the field, and will be sorely missed.

I am unaware of a better source for this information besides this Google doc, at the moment. Near’s Twitter handle is @near_koukai, where you can see his farewell message.



This is the second loss to the emulation scene by the hands of these people.

The incredibly talented author of pcemu - probably the best classic Pc platform emulators, was subjected to a similar campaign of anti trans abuse and harassment (most of it can still be found online) and called it quits.

https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/


There's at least one more: Rachel Bryk, a developer working on the Dolphin GameCube/Wii emulator [1], was driven to suicide back in 2015, likely in part due to transphobia and harassment [2].

[1]: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2015/04/25/commemoration-rachel... [2]: https://www.nj.com/monmouth/2015/04/post_18.html


The behavior Kiwi Farms encourages seems like it should be illegal. How is this not murder?


This is the most useful review article I've found (for U.S. law), though it's from 2014: "Death By Bullying: A Comparative Culpability Proposal", https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...

The overall conclusion I get from it is that homicide or manslaughter charges could be brought in principle, but prosecutions are rare, and successful ones even more rare. The article author proposes a legal standard for culpability, but it's not clear it's been adopted by any courts. There are also some examples of lesser charges, like harassment or stalking, but they're also rare. In addition, several states have passed specific criminal bullying and/or cyberbullying laws that might allow easier conviction on a lesser charge, but they haven't been widely tested yet.


In 2017, a Massachusetts woman was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for coaxing her (then) boyfriend to suicide.


What did Kiwi Farms do? I tried looking up their comments on him[1] but only sampled some at random rather than reading all of their comments. It certainly seems cruel and mean spirited. Some more recent comments are flippant or celebrating the suicide - but it isn't clear to me that they did anything other than be mean to Near online.

Am I missing something?

1 - https://kiwifarms.net/threads/byuu-byuu_nyan-setsunakun0.430...


KF exists solely for harassment, doxxing, etc. They generally hate furries, LGBTQ+, streamers, "e-girls", really anyone.

They'll try to get you fired, call your boss, harass your workplace with fake reviews about you until you get fired, etc.


[flagged]


KF's dedication to it makes twitter look like a joke.


There's a lot implied in the doc linked from twitter, if not spelled out. Particularly troubling is the alleged targeting of friends and family.

That said, it's one side, and not even from the source, but from someone's interpretation/understanding of what happened to the source, so I'm being careful to not assume much. The quick-take might be the correct take in this case, but that doesn't mean I'm comfortable with using it.


I would edit this into my parent comment, but can't edit it any more. Further reading I found this post from the Kiwi Farms operator that shares an email from Near explaining a little more on the situation.

https://kiwifarms.net/threads/byuu-byuu_nyan-setsunakun0.430...


that whole thread is so vile. poor Near. like, Near is apologizing to Null for persuading one of KF's moderators to delete the thread on them, and presumably was angry that Near influenced a mod into a chance of conscience? and Null lashes out at Near for it?

these are evil people. I wonder if they realize how evil they are.


Sadly, the majority have either convinced themselves they're good and the world is evil or decided that they don't care


Is being cruel and flippantly celebrating a suicide not condemnable enough?


I don't think it is the same as murder or should be illegal.

Just yesterday YouTube recommended me a video about an Australian YouTuber facing legal trouble for being mean to an Australian government figure. The laws he may, or may not, have run afoul of use similar language about online harassment. The YouTuber claims to be calling attention to corruption and poor governmental practice.

To me, the Australian YouTuber drama epitomizes a bad possible result of making online bullying illegal. Such laws will be used to squash genuine dissent - not just jerks.

I do think the cruel people celebrating a suicide should be morally condemned. I would think less of people who do that. I wouldn't advertise there, work there, etc. But I don't think it should be illegal and it is not similar to murder.


The original thread seems to exhibit gray area stalking. Look at post #84.

https://kiwifarms.net/threads/byuu-byuu_nyan-setsunakun0.430...

Looking through that thread, I wouldn’t be surprised if a cyberbullying case could be made in many states. There are early comments predicting and mocking the victim’s suicide far in advance of it. With all the evidence we’ve got, it seems like this cyberbullying has some culpability in a death.

I am not saying these two situations are exactly the same, but here is a situation where someone used an electronic device to encourage a suicide and was prosecuted for manslaughter

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.californiacriminaldefensela...

The posts along the lines of “I hope he does it so our kill count will increase by 1” don’t seem totally dissimilar.


IANAL, but the Michelle Carter case never made it to federal court as the Supreme Court declined to take the case. As a result, the case did not set a de jure precedent for how similar cases should be conducted outside Massachusetts. In addition, Kiwifarms is protected by §230 and the suicide took place in Japan. Under federal law, neither Null nor KF bear any responsibility for the decisions of the site's respondents and it is unlikely that any IP logs are kept. There's also the fact that any such a case would be thrown out for lacking territorial and subject matter jurisdiction. In other words, there's no case.

On the matter of byuu's/Near's suicide, the (or at least one) motivation wasn't from bullying per se, but from Null's refusal to take down the 3 year old discussion thread regarding byuu.

Source:https://kiwifarms.net/threads/byuu-byuu_nyan-setsunakun0.430...


This Twitter thread strongly suggests the motivation was largely due to bullying from the Kiwi Farms forum, in addition to the owner’s refusal to do anything about the thread.

https://mobile.twitter.com/near_koukai/status/14089400572353...

I was arguing that the event could be considered more than nothing, possibly something like manslaughter due to possibly analogous events being considered as such. Not that the actors would be prosecuted under any particular law.


>>I was arguing that the event could be considered more than nothing, possibly something like manslaughter due to possibly analogous events being considered as such. If you're arguing that casework from manslaughter-at-a-distance exists in the United States and that such case work would be applicable to KiwiFarms, I'd disagree with both points. The first point has already been explained. As to the second point, such a case would involve interstate commerce. That's under the purview of the Supreme Court which has already classified what is considered unprotected speech. "Cyberbullying", however it's defined, is not among those designations. Defamation seems to be closest category, but that's not a criminal designation. Another point to address is that calling for someone's death or suicide is not in itself illegal. Otherwise, plenty of people would be imprisoned over their opinions about Donald Trump. There must be a mens rea and a credible threat or act for the purpose of objectively harming the individual in question. Composing a slanted and abhorrent commentary about said person does not qualify as or is not comparable to setting up the noose or pulling it.


I clearly state this is not what I’m arguing.


Don’t you believe that actions should have consequences?

Do you believe that psychological attacks can have a lasting impact?

Do you think that threatening someone’s friends and families is a reasonable act?

Do you agree that getting an intermediary to kill a third party is still murder? Why can’t the intermediary also be the third party?

This was a pre-meditated and coordinated long term psychological attack, with the explicit goal of getting someone to kill themselves. These actions must have consequences.


I think it is difficult to get the definition of such a law right. You don't want to send someone for jail just for, e.g., frequently arguing with someone and sometimes insulting them.


If the intent is to kill, and the person died through their actions, then it is murder.

The methods and means don't need to be enumerated. The intent and the end state are what is defined in law.

Both the US and Japan have standing here to charge KF members with murder and those that run KF as an accomplice.


Perhaps it doesn’t bother you but I’m worried about giving prosecutors yet another extremely broad tool that they can use to put people in jail on dubious grounds.


A group of people organize together with the intent of killing or harming others on the internet. This feels like an "on the internet" patent moment, absurdly so.


That’s not what happened with FriendlyJordies. Christo approached John Barillaro, deputy premier of NSW, whilst happening upon him on his way to school (The Con).

Barillaro then sicked an anti-terrorism task force on him, lying about almost ever aspect of the encounter. The difference? Those being actually stalked could never get this unit to act.

A complete abuse of power. But different to this.


Kiwi Farms is the scum of the earth. Sadly it has many victims.


This terrifies me:

> Near survived that. Many wouldn’t, but Near was strong enough to overcome that level of emotional abuse. But Kiwi Farms is relentless. Not to be defeated in their pursuit of utter emotional and psychological destruction, they went after who Near treasured most: their friends. Doxing some, directly harassing others, and even specifically seeking out suicidal people to target.

> That broke Near.

[...]

> Some of you may be aware of Near’s notoriously paranoid opsec. After getting to know them, it became clear this was a defense mechanism; a product of all the abuse they received over their entire life.

Not that I'm doing anything particularly likely to attract the attention of the worst part of the internet (but then, you'd hope that "writing some emulators and going by 'they'" shouldn't either), but, I've thought about it and decided I can deal with people going after me. To some extent, I can be careful about opsec; to some extent, if someone goes after me, I'm all right with that.

But what if they go after other people in the name of targeting me? What if they go after my friends, or even my family, who has very little say in what I do? What if my parents, who have never had to care about opsec in their lives and like most people's parents own a house and have their real names on it, get SWATted because some monster on an internet forum hates me?

How am I supposed to respond except by deciding, I will not do anything with my life that could attract Kiwi Farms' attention?

This is terrorism, and I am terrified.


Looked them up. How is it that they aren’t getting prosecuted _right now_?


Good question. Assuming you're US based - Why not write a letter to your representatives, asking them why the police ignore and dismiss online harassment, and why a single US citizen continues to be allowed to operate what is solely a hate site?

If legal pressure isn't enough, why not try political pressure?


I'm not US-based but I imagine this requires international cooperation in any case


Kiwi Farms is vile. I stumbled upon it while researching someone who turned out to be a target of one of their hate campaign. Its a PHP Forum-style site, but with entire sub forums dedicated to small groups and event specific people. Long running topics would be an entire persons hate campaign against them.

The members seem to have a strange, self-claimed moral authority. The posts are a mix of records of what they have done to harass people, updates on past targets, ideas for future hate, and justification about why this person deserves it. Overall it was sad for everyone involved. I hope they find some solace in their lives, if only to let their victims find it also.


I admire your ability to solely wish solace on them. I'd rather the long arm of the law caught up to them.


there's not a lot the law can do, unfortunately. doxxing isn't illegal in the US, at least federally, except against people in certain positions [0]. there's a high standard for harassment to be considered illegal. bullying is not illegal. hate speech is not illegal. even if individuals on Kiwi Farms can be prosecuted, it wouldn't take the site down. and to be prosecuted, the prosecutors would have to care. there just aren't the laws..

I'm friends with a few people who have been targeted by Kiwi Farms. Near is far from the only person driven to suicide by overwhelming bullying. it's one reason I keep a low profile - I'm just too scared.

0. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/119


> there's a high standard for harassment to be considered illegal

True, although it's sometimes possible to do a 2-step process under a lower standard. First, ask for a restraining order in civil court. Getting a restraining order has a much lower bar than charging someone with a crime does. If they don't stop, and violate the terms of the restraining order, then they can be sanctioned in various ways (civilly or criminally) for violating the restraining order, depending on the jurisdiction.

There are organizations that regularly do this pro bono for domestic violence cases, where the process is pretty well understood [1]. I'm not as sure what organizations or assistance exist for online harassment, unfortunately.

[1] https://www.womenslaw.org/laws/general/restraining-orders


>The members seem to have a strange, self-claimed moral authority. The posts are a mix of records of what they have done to harass people, updates on past targets, ideas for future hate, and justification about why this person deserves it.

Sounds a lot like Twitter.


The biggest difference is that you're thinking about a very nasty 0.1% of twitter that use the platform to harass, whereas harassment is the primary purpose of this site.


Sounds nothing at all like Twitter. These are people who cheer when they drive someone to suicide. Do not diminish their utter depravity by comparing them to something far less extreme.


No, this sounds exactly like Twitter.

On Twitter, self-appointed mobs of the morally righteous call for violence against children [0], farm lulz from the killings of police officers [1], dox strangers to get them fired over off-color jokes [2], and endlessly harass and threaten certain conservative journalists and activists [3]. Actual Twitter employees harassed right-wing reporter Andy Ngo [4] after a real-world mob attack sent him to the ER with a brain hemmorhage, an event which "ACAB Twitter" continues to celebrate and remind him about.

The trolls on Twitter blend in by being a few medium-sized fish in the ocean. The trolls on Kiwi Farms are more visible as big fish in their own small pond. They're ideologically flipped compared to Twitter trolls, but fundamentally alike in their methods, moral posturing, and disregard for basic human decency. They're all an enormous net-negative for humanity.

[0] https://medium.com/@RevolutionaryId/twitter-democratizing-mo...

[1] https://twitter.com/halfsleeps/status/1320955923205033984

[2] https://news.yahoo.com/journalist-apologizes-for--hasjustine...

[3] https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/its-insane-were-having-a-...

[4] https://archive.is/VGuZy


No, it still doesn’t sound like Twitter.


Such a sad series of events. When folks bring up why people don't just walk away from the PC when being cyberbullied/harassed online, it is often because we attach so much of our lives to our online identities and internet friends. How can you just walk away from what may be your only social outlet?


And Near was very much a person that lived a large part of their life online. Those who bullied him took away a home and a place where he found connections to people. I hope those involved somehow reflect on what they are doing and realize that there are humans on the other end and change their ways, though a quick check of the forum in question shows members are celebrating this news or putting out conspiracy theories that it is some kind of publicity stunt to promote higan.

Truly disheartened and saddened. Be good to people everyone. Even people, dare I say especially the people, you disagree with or dislike. Everyone is going through something you know nothing about.


Very sad that they are gone, byuu's work on emulators has been very useful. Weird to hear about things like this and realize that people are real on the other end of the computer.

Skimming through, I don't see a reason why they were harassed by Kiwi Farms. I don't get it, what caused that?


A nit: it'd be more respectful to use "Near". They really wanted people to call them that and not their old pseudonym.

I never personally interacted with Near, but I've been following them and their work since the days of the zsnes forums, back in the mid-00s. I'm a huge fan - not just of their technical achievements or their ideological commitment, but also of the seeming grace with which they carried themselves in the past few years. I don't know if I'll get all the details right, but I'll try.

My understanding is that KF chooses to harass people who are marginalized, easy to bully, and on the basis of how dramatic, embarrassing, or "cringe" their response would be. Near was gay, autistic, non-binary, and involved with furry communities (though IIRC they may not have been a furry themselves - not that it matters), which made them an easy target. They were sensitive and struggled with depression - KF knew their harassment would be effective. And Near was a controversial public(ish) figure who'd, in the past, courted a fair amount of scene drama and flame wars (sometimes blamelessly, sometimes not, as I'm sure they'd tell you themselves) that occasionally got very personal. In other words: KF looks to stir shit up, and Near sadly provided an ample amount of shit to stir.

No one deserves to be harassed like this, but it feels especially cruel that it was done to someone as remarkable as Near. This is a terrible loss.


I think you are wrong. Apparently "near" was another pseudonym to seperate their console hacking and different social interests. Near mentined it in some post.


Coming from someone who was close with them, both near and byuu are appropriate, and as for gender pronouns they did not prefer any "they/them/he/she" are all ok


Kiwi Farms whole deal is to harass people online. I'm not sure they need a reason. A girl set herself on fire due to their harassment in 2013.


She set herself on fire in 2018 after 5 years of harassment over something she did in 2013


From reddit discussions, it appears that it was triggered by some political posts Near put up (and since took down/stopped posting) close to a decade ago.

KF apparently didn’t like the posts, and set them up as a virtually permanent target.

So stupid.


There isn't a reason because that is what Kiwi Farms does–they harass, dox, and troll relentlessly. This is not the first suicide Kiwi Farms has been responsible for.


They were on the autism spectrum, and had written about feeling emotionally sensitive and easily overwhelmed. Unfortunately, that's all it takes for bullies who just want to have an impact on someone -- knowing you're vulnerable to it. Then they came out as non-binary and made some political posts, which elevated it to hatred for many of those bullies.


You really don't need to do much to catch their ire. It's enough to annoy one wrong person, especially if you're vaguely trans or some other minority.


Eccentrics - how many, how eccentric - are a measure of the cultural sophistication of society. Very sad. "KiwiFarms" sounds like a terrible site; would love to see it destroyed, but those people will find somewhere to aggregate. Looking forward to being as eccentric and vulnerable as possible in my own life :D.


The sort of folk attracted to Kiwi Farms will find somewhere else to aggregate, but that doesn't mean anyone needs to make it easy for them.

Showers always build up mildew, but we still periodically scrub them.


Where about the police in all of this? Isn’t it their responsibility to pursue harassment like this? Aren’t the actions of KF already illegal? It seems to me that society still doesn’t take the internet seriously. We still expect to be scammed on eBay and don’t report it. Scams and fraud are everywhere. Abuse like that is rampant. I’m serious, where are the internet police? Yes it’s going to be hard when the people live in another country but so many times the perpetrators do actually live in the same country and basically live with impunity!


I'm not really sure what to put here. I never spoke to them personally (except maybe once or twice here on HN) but their work on SNES emulation enabled communities to spring up that improved my life for the better. I'm not going to touch the debate on whether to hold Cloudflare+1776Hosting partially responsible here (I'm sure others will), but I do know that Near physically moved countries to get away from the harassment they were getting.

Just be respectful, ok?


1776 hosting is run by the KF site admin.


A substantial portion of the logic unit of my homeschooling relationship with my six-year-old is playing and analyzing the SNES randomizers, which are possible in part because of Near's incredible contributions.

Near was not done with this incredible work; it was impressive to see such devotion to accuracy on an ongoing basis.

A real loss.


https://blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8chan/

>We just sent notice that we are terminating 8chan as a customer effective at midnight tonight Pacific Time. The rationale is simple: they have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths.

>Even if 8chan may not have violated the letter of the law in refusing to moderate their hate-filled community, they have created an environment that revels in violating its spirit.

Cloudflare should drop Kiwi Forums as a customer based on this. In fact Kiwi Forums might be worse because it specifically exists to discuss and coordinate harassment, doxing, and stalking of others both online and offline. 8chan was at least ostensibly "just" an anonymous imageboard with a lack of moderation. Kiwi Forums has no justifiable reason to be kept online and Cloudflare's association with it should be kept in mind when chosing to do business with Cloudflare.

Same applies to Dreamhost, their domain registrar. No, kicking them off these platforms won't shutdown the site. They'll move to a Russian DDoS protection service like 8chan did. But there's no reason for Cloudflare/Dreamhost to make it easy for Kiwi Forums to exist, or to continue to receive revenue by hosting them.



I remembered this article from 2011 about bsnes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-...

Tragic loss, RIP.


It's not a "tragic loss", it is murder. And justice is needed.


I completely agree.


What makes it "murder"?


Do you not consider the targeted harassment by an organized group of people with the premeditated goal of getting them to commit suicide to be homicide?

I do.


That's not the definition of murder though, even if you feel like it is. I know we're in a post-fact world, but you don't get to magically decide what words mean.


> That's not the definition of murder though

It’s usually, when criminally charged, been charged as a lesser degree of homicide (typically some form of manslaughter), but that's because its hard in that kind of case to prove premeditation, as the causation element is the same between murder and manslaughter.

If there is actual premeditation, it fits within the definition of murder.


And I would think that the forums themselves could provide evidence of premeditation.


It's not homicide nor manslaughter neither, and has no concept of "premeditation" at all. It's was a 10 page years old thread on an obscure gossip website.

He was not doxxed (no one even knew his name), did not have threats posted there... I fail to see how it can even closely be related to "murder".


And yet people have been convicted of murder for using similar techniques. There’s explicit examples in other comments to this article.

Intent matters.


>And yet people have been convicted of murder for using similar techniques.

No they haven't.

>There’s explicit examples in other comments to this article.

No there isn't.



>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2765658

Completely different scenario that's not even closely related. This example involved an intimate partner that was on the phone with the victim when he was clearly in an altered state, instructing him to go back into harm's way to kill himself.

>https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/michelle-carter-found-g...

Literally the exact same case.

I'll say it again: there have been no cases that supports what happened being called "murder".


I only discovered higan a couple days ago.

What a loss of talent, especially the loss of someone who dedicated so much time to a passion project with tremendous contribution to the community.

Is there a way to keep their home page online?


I believe the hosting and domains have been taken care of.


I'm sure some will disagree, but I'd argue this should be a black bar moment.

So many of us grew up in the early-to-late-2000s internet, likely on many of the forums that touched on emulation. Near/byuu's achievements in emulation/game preservation are insane and arguably unmatched, and they also posted here from time[1] to time[2].

So sad to see this all unfold.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=near


A black bar to commemorate the loss of a dear community member, with their death a warning of the real human cost of online toxicity and intolerance.


Another vote for black bar. Near was inspirational and a true hacker. @dang, can we get one?


I second that as well


I second this.


Yes please.


I'll always remember fondly bsnes, near's life work should be celebrated given how much he contributed to emulation accuracy, to preserve such an important part of history for all to experience in the future. It's very sad to hear of his passing and it's even sadder and more infuriating to think that he was driven to suicide.

Kiwi Farms is a vile, awful place and encountering it a few years ago changed my perceptions on laws, anonymity and privacy. I didn't expect such an awful place to exist and I wish there were some laws in place to implicate them in the murders they have committed over the years.


It hasn't been confirmed by authorities, but may never be, since almost nobody knew his real full name or exactly where he lived. However, it definitely doesn't look good. :-(


[cw: discussion of suicide]


"Evil triumphs when good men do nothing."


I have followed and admired Near for the better part of my life. I feel I know Near even though they didn’t know me. I am extremely saddened by this news.


What would be necessary to bring a lawsuit against KW? Who would do it, and what would the charges be?


We really need proof that they're actually dead. A police report, a mention in the local paper would work but something. We don't even know their name to look into the matter, despite being doxxed. Let's first confirm that a person has actually died, then we can take concrete action against Kiwi Farms. Otherwise they will always be able to claim that no suicide even took place.


I'm unsure why their last Twitter thread seems to be unlinked everywhere, but here it is for anyone who wants to read their own words:

https://twitter.com/near_koukai/status/1408940057235312640


Oh no! They had posted here in the past.


who is Near?


formerly known as byuu, creator of the emulators bsnes, higan and more. https://near.sh/


Should we be backing up/ mirroring the domain?


The marketplace of ideas has failed. I wish it weren’t true. I loved the concept. Russia killed it. Trolls killed it. Fake news killed it. Click bait killed it. It’s sad and I mourn it. Free speech on the internet isn’t looking too hot. We must demand that platforms do more to police what people can send and post. I don’t envy their position. Perhaps one of the new user-controlled data models will help. Perhaps AI will help. Perhaps only human-moderation will work. I don’t know but I don’t see things getting better.


I wouldn't say it has failed, but succeeded. The framing of the "marketplace of ideas" has really always been about paving over power dynamics and justify continuing harm by appealing to something external. In your marketplace of ideas, the hundreds of abstract individuals that are hararassers are equally as valid as one abstract individual just trying to live their life. It's working as intended.


It might be more accurate to say that the marketplace of ideas isn't all it's cracked up to be. It has failed to be the utopian dream some hoped it would.


That is the exact opposite of what I'm saying. Saying the market place of ideas was an utopian dream that failed is like saying the divine right of kings was an utopian idea that failed. At best, it is something people were conned into agreeing with.

These ideas weren't invented out of thin air, but to defend things that are hard to defend on their own merits. And just as the devinity of kings mysteriously only brought rights and no responsibilities, it is equally telling that the only time the "marketplace of ideas" is ever brought is in the context of why we shouldn't be doing anything about all of the hate speech.


> These ideas weren't invented out of thin air, but to defend things that are hard to defend on their own merits.

No, they were invented to provide air for all things to be considered on their merits, and to defeat dogma and traditionalism. That it also allows bad ideas to get some air is not the purpose, but a necessary feature to allow the good but discriminated against ideas surface.

> And just as the devinity of kings mysteriously only brought rights and no responsibilities

Making nonsensical allusions between dissimilar things doesn't mean they are similar. A marketplace of ideas is exactly the kind of thing that allows the divinity of kings to be questioned and reconsidered in the first place, so equating them is particularly odd.

> it is equally telling that the only time the "marketplace of ideas" is ever brought is in the context of why we shouldn't be doing anything about all of the hate speech.

That the things that are considered but wrong generate a lot of noise continuously as they keep being wrong is not unexpected. The correct and or good things that eventually supplant the prior things stop making noise by nature of be accepted. Equality of races and sexes is something you get out of the marketplace of ideas, as well as race and gender superiority. Once upon a time, race and gender superiority was the accepted norm, and calls for equality were the loud complaints that people had to hear and decide whether to agree with. Eventually equality supplanted the prior norm, and we hear some noisy ideas about superiority. I doubt that will supplant the norm in the majority though, it's an obviously inferior situation for the majority than equality, because everyone is a minority depending on how you slice it.


But it's still better than the alternatives.


Moderation feels irrelevant if the host is unwilling out encouraging the behavior. I wonder if they best approach it better DNS blocking. ISPs forced to comply with law, however alternate DNS "get the full internet" are left legal. I want to be careful with opening the door to banning sites/people from the internet. I can't imagine leaving the system in place as-is an acceptable solution.


I have a feeling moderating online speech is a losing game. There will always be platforms such as 4chan and KF willing to provide a space to any kind of speech. Maybe I've become too cynical, but I've come to accept that the only way to not be bullied or harassed online is to not expose yourself too much online, such as through compartmentalizing different aspects of your online social life through different social media accounts.

I know this sounds like victim-blaming, but this is not my intention. It's just that maybe we humans were not built to be judged by everyone everywhere. For those that watched the anime Evangelion, there was a nice, forward-thinking discussion about this idea there.


> but I've come to accept that the only way to not be bullied or harassed online is to not expose yourself too much online

I've been on the internet for almost 30 years. This is something that we've lost in the last decade of people dying to tie their real identity to everything. The wild west internet was actively hostile and you had to be smart about not only what you said, but who you were associating with.

This form of "internet bullying" has existed since the dawn of the internet. That doesn't make it any more correct and it's only gotten more vicious with age. Especially because finding exploitable weaknesses is extremely easy when people leave themselves exposed on social media, twitter, discord, etc. We haven't solved it because I don't believe there is an actual solution. You get rid of KF and 4chan, another 10 communities pop up and the most popular one survives. You hit the registars, and they find another. Eventually they'll end up on one of the many registrars located outside the US that could not care any less what is hosted there.

The best thing you can do is compartmentalize. The problem is people, for better or worse, tie their entire identity to whatever they do on the internet. This is fraught with danger because it makes you easy to attack. But being easy to attack isn't enough, you have to also have to have shown some weakness they can use as leverage. Near is an unfortunate example of this. KF bullied them mercilessly because they possessed enough exploitable traits to make it profitable. This isn't victim blaming, but unfortunately something we must learn from. Privacy, compartmentalization, and good operational security are the only things that can protect you.

Maybe we can return to the internet of psuedonyms and lies that I remember. It was safer then, because no one trusted anyone implicitly and no one was willing to expose weaknesses that could be exploited.


But there's a lot of eccentrics whose life is the internet. To disconnect for them is essentially the same as solitary confinement.

Insofar as privacy, compartmentalization, and good opsec, near did all of that, doesn't help when the mob goes after friends and family.


Did he, though? He was famous for being an incredible hacker, and then he conflated this profile with his furry persona and used it to talk about LGBT stuff. It saddens me so much that things have to be this way, that people can't put themselves out there without being (literally) bullied to death, but being pragmatic he could have separated those two "personalities", especially considering one of those is extremely well known in certain circles.


I don't entirely agree with this premise.

I do agree on the furry + anime vices stuff that mixing that in with the legendary byuu was silly and wouldn't surprise me if it was unfortunately due to their autism (they they have it in the twitter thread).

However I don't think LGBT + incredible hacker is a huge blunder IF and only IF, you can be assertive about it, which is much easier said than done when:

A: Most people just want to live their lives without none-sense

B: LGBT people are far more likely to be brought up either through parents or environment to feel the need to be introverted about themselves to protect themselves from harm.

But say someone like say Rupaul, even if they get hate, they simply would never take it.


The problem is that now people dedicate time and effort to "doxing" people so there's no real way to ensure that you're safely anonymous for any extended set of interaction as a persona. Unless you're for some 4chan like system where everyone is anonymous for every message, people will invest in their online personas and will be upset or devastated if they are attacked or destroyed.

The real difference now compared to the past IMO is that as a society we haven't really internalized that will large, possibly global reach and the benefits it may bring come an associated set of dangers. The larger the audience, the larger the possible benefits of your interactions. Linus Torvalds leverages a global audience into a volunteer workforce for what is likely the greatest software engineering product of the human race to date. Another person makes a poor decision or hurtful comment or is just interpreted wrong, and is the zeitgeist of a day or two, but a day or two of almost the whole world's ire. That can have major personal and professional consequences, as we've seen.

Managing a one-on-one interaction and explaining yourself to someone is generally trivial, for mature people. Doing so for a group of 10 is harder, but also possible much of the time. For 100, adequately assuaging them all is unlikely, some will retain reservations you'll likely never know are directly related. It worsens at every level. At the point where thousands or millions of people have negative impressions of you, many will never even see counterfactual evidence to what was initially presented, and your reputation may be tarnished, possibly to a sizeable fractions of the human race, and there's not much you can do about it, because the novel situation that got information about you in front of them initially is extremely unlikely to be repeated.


Eh bullying could be culled on many platforms with a simple rule. Require photo ID for an account. Bit hard to insight violence when your able to be held accountable.

Tbh should be mandatory for a FB account and Twitter given their large hold on social media. They want to allow non verifiable or accountable users. Give me the user the ability to block interaction with all non verified accounts. Problem mostly sorted.


Oh I would love to see that leak


@dang, could we get a black bar today please?


This is deeply saddening.


Kiwi farms needs to end. This is not the first person they have murdered. There is no excuse for anyone who does anything to enable any part of its existence.


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How do you know the author knew Near's address or employer? They were known to be very secretive about such real-life details, and in this day and age it's very much possible to regularly meet someone but have no idea where they actually live or work.

Moreover, you're making a leap by assuming the author didn't try to save their life.


When Robin Williams died, people were putting out images with "Genie, you're free" on it. This sort of behavior paints suicide as a valid means of escaping suffering.

When "13 Reasons Why" was released, it was criticized for romanticizing suicide as a tool to get people to listen to you "beyond the grave" or have some sort of impact.

While nothing has been confirmed by authorities, the behavior in this letter is extremely troubling, and seems to be the manifestation of how our society views suicide.

Instead of suicide being understood as a harmful decision that wouldn't be made in a better frame of mind, it's being portrayed as a valid decision -- and attempts at intervention are a violation of the person's autonomy. Or something to that extent.

There are other things I want to say and write, but I don't think it's appropriate until an official statement has been released from authorities.


> This sort of behavior paints suicide as a valid means of escaping suffering.

It's your typical person's way of trying to excuse their own action or lack of inaction, by making a statement that provides them some comfort, rather than face the way that their own inaction/belittling/bullying towards depressed people in their lives, might be part of the problem.


Perhaps, but the statement is wrong because of how it portrays suicide, not because of the motivations for making it.

Furthermore, I believe trying to understand suicide as driven by a single cause is detrimental. Suicide is a complicated issue, and is driven by numerous factors.

Trying to reduce any complex issue to a single factor sets anyone who wants to help at a disadvantage, and may contribute to the problem.


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With some effort, I can sort of understand how one might have that reaction. But the tl;dr is that there's history here that makes it all tragically plausible. More specifically:

1) The persona "Near" was relatively new, following a partial "infosuicide" with respect to their previous pseudonym (which involved a degree of detachment from singular achievements in SNES emulation and preservation benefiting projects ranging from Snes9x to MiSTer to Analogue Super NT), which ties into the fact that

2) invective against Near has been an ongoing phenomenon for literally decades. Many people in the broader SNES emulation scene considered Near's pursuit of console-compatibility (for hacks/translations) and console-accuracy (for emulators) to be a kind of counterproductive pedantry rather than a contribution to the field. From there, it spiraled into a vicious cycle of Near being exploited as a "lolcow", a tradition with a long and ugly history of disproportionately preying on the insecurities of people who hold on to earnest desires to contribute to society despite being marginalized for being neurodivergent and/or gender-nonconforming.

3) marcan is, in the grand scheme of things, uncommonly credible. He's well-known as part of multiple ambitious reverse engineering efforts (e.g. Team Twiizers/fail0verflow, OpenKinect) and is known for his no-bullshit approach to a wide variety of infosec and opsec issues. His word carries well-earned weight to people who follow those scenes.

(NB: I'm not here to debate any of these points with you. I'm simply injecting some background. Please don't confuse yourself as to what's happening here.)


Ok, but how do you prove something Kiwi Farms did actually caused it?

From what I've read of linked forums, there was no activity regarding Near. Last activity was on page 13, dated April or May 2021, basically saying "Any news on Near?"

How do you pin this on KF and not individuals assocates with the site?


I also would like to know more about this, if anyone could shed light on it I think it could be appropriate to understand the circumstances.


I'm not sure what you can do in that situation if you don't know where the person lives and they're in a foreign country whose language you don't speak. Who do you even contact?


The person who wrote the note said they had coffee with Near in Akihabara on June 9th. That would imply they both are in Japan, so none of that thinking would apply here.


Well help me out here. Where are we going with this? The most unfavorable interpretation I can think of is that he’s not really dead at all and was “only” compelled to drop out of his friend community and give up his life’s work.


> That would imply they both are in Japan

… in a world without international travel it would.


If you're going to be snarky, at least be intelligent.

The probability of two people living in the same place given that they had coffee together is ludicrously higher than the probability of them living in separate countries.


I did not intend for my reply to be interpreted as snarky. I'm sorry.

I tend to be needlessly pedantic and often do a poor job communicating in writing the non-verbal cues I'd couple with my reply in face-to-face conversation to signal that my intent for it is purely informational.


If you didn't imply a bad thing then it's good, have a nice day :D


There's more evidence out there, but I'm concerned about doxxing by saying more.


Then why bother saying it? I also know more evidence that supports my position, but I, too, don't want to dox by saying more.


>Then why bother saying it?

Because there's no indication from your post to suggest that you know more evidence that supports my position. Your post sounds like far more of a leap than it does if you've seen the other stuff.


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For sure, we will never see the full picture. I personally find the whole situation a bit strange, like ... something about it doesn't make sense. Time clears everything up.


[flagged]


Not even touching on the false equivalency, this has to be one of the most tone-deaf and upsetting comments I've seen on HN.


fuck off




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