What’s reality? I don’t know. When my bird was looking at my computer monitor I thought, ‘That bird has no idea what he’s looking at.’ And yet what does the bird do? Does he panic? No, he can’t really panic, he just does the best he can. Is he able to live in a world where he’s so ignorant? Well, he doesn’t really have a choice. The bird is okay even though he doesn’t understand the world. You’re that bird looking at the monitor, and you’re thinking to yourself, ‘I can figure this out.’ Maybe you have some bird ideas. Maybe that’s the best you can do.
Terry was my first look into how mean the internet is. Here was a man, wicked smart, but with some very clear issues. He was kind enough to share himself with all of us, producing videos and putting his work out there but Instead of engaging with him while recognizing his limitations, we mocked him. People turned up to prod him to say "CIA N...". They asked him the same 5 questions to bait him into saying something stupid. It was honestly horrible.
Learning of Terry marked the end of my internet innocence. Suddenly it wasn't just fun and games, but real people with real lives.
If you think that watch was tough, go watch the documentary Stevie for even further exploration of the sheer out of sight out of mind realities that are too difficult as problems to bring up usually.
Expose someone to a community of billions of anonymous users and you pretty much have to expect this type of behavior, regardless of how inexcusable it is. The best thing you can do is not feed the trolls, just ignore them. They're never going away, but at least you can avoid giving them satisfaction.
Terry had schizophrenia and lived with his elderly parents while developing his OS.
Then, Internet trolls targeted Terry because of his controversial remarks.
The trolls celebrated all of his questionable actions, ruining his relationship with his parents who eventually kicked him out of the house. At that point he became homeless, living in a car.
Because of his mental condition, he broke the law in several occasions. In his late videos he can be seen unshaved and having difficulties to keep personal hygiene, unlike before he became homeless, where he was always shaved and clean.
Not so long after becoming homeless he died killed by a train and some believe it was suicide.
I have heard that some troll gifted him a drum set, and his elderly parents were very aggravated from the noise and that was one of the tipping points.
I worked on the history system to Shrine's shell (Lsh) in 2020. Development of Shrine is stalled currently so the changes never propagated to Shrine proper.
I would call Shrine a fairly minimalist fork, in that there's a lot built on top of TempleOS, but the core is mostly the same. A more minimalist fork is TinkerOS, which is a lot closer to stock TempleOS but with bugfixes, modern hardware support, and some software packages added.
ZealOS is a maximalist fork, changing the core of TempleOS everywhere the authors see fit. Nothing wrong with that either.
The fork authors are in contact with each other and discuss ideas / share code occasionally.
I wonder how much is compatible between these projects. I think the binaries from each should run on the other. Though some features probably required changes to the kernel.
Terry Davis was clearly the mad scientist we didn't know we needed. He brought many useful insights to OS development. Maybe one day the seeds he planted will grow out to become a wonderful tree. On days when he wasn't hampered by his medical issues some people remember him to be an extremely skilled teacher, patient with people who asked genuine questions. There was that side to him too.
He was an incredibly gifted, yet equally troubled, individual, with some noble goals for what computing should look like. There are many good ideas in TempleOS we can all be inspired from, and I'm glad there are people working on expanding and making them more accessible.
I know what you mean, but it was mostly because of his illness that he had phases where he talked only conspiracy theories ("The CIA ni*as glow in the dark"). He had phases where he talked many subject with full awareness of his own illness and without cursing.
The glowies I get being a symptom. I'm not sure I buy the idea that someone is only super racist when they're having an episode, though. Plenty of his rants about black people had nothing to do with conspiracy theories. I'm not denying he was brilliant.
> I'm not sure I buy the idea that someone is only super racist when they're having an episode, though.
It's a fairly well-documented phenomenon that people suffering from things like dimensia or alzheimers will behave inappropriately, in ways they wouldn't have earlier in life.
Whether they're expressing deep-seated beliefs or simply no longer able to filter invasive thoughts is hard to say. The brain is a complex system and damage caused by trauma or exposure to lead, for example, can also cause increased impulsiveness and social aggression.
I can't imagine how terrifying it must be to slowly lose control of your mind and 'self'.
There are actually quite a lot. Some with real wisdom in them.
Take a look at his original account on here and you will find some - but also, there are many videos in which he has lasting moments of lucidity. Typically when talking about his old hobbies and passions.
Completely normal and not even slightly unhinged conversation - one would never know he was otherwise the ways he were.
The "design philosophy" behind TempleOS was schizophrenic delusion, there's no reason anyone else concerned about the value of the code, rather than "creating God's temple on Earth" or whatever, needs to concern themselves with those aspects of it.
Perhaps Temple OS shouldn't be evaluated by ordinary software standards. It is more or less useless as a general purpose operating system. It may have value in education, but in my opinion, it should be treated as an artwork when assessing its merit
From what I understand, Terry was trying to capture the magic of early personal computers, hence no virtual memory or process isolation. A low-stakes environment for hobbyists and tinkerers to play around in. Adding network support raises the stakes a bit.
> The "design philosophy" behind TempleOS was schizophrenic delusion
Forking TempleOS and working on it is the fetishization of schizophrenic delusion, so at the least it should stay consistent with the schizophrenic's clearly expressed ends. If people want to do their own thing, they should come up with their own thing.
Every comment I remember of him on HN threads were all hidden, downvoted and flagged. Now, to be perfectly clear, most of them were completely deranged and absolutely unrelated (usually a lot of stuff about god and bible etc etc) and he clearly was not sane of mind, but saying that he was treated "with respect and admiration" is a huge stretch.
People admired his work and acknowledged the existence of his project. People talked about it a lot and it was definitely interesting to see develop. However the person himself was definitely not welcome on HN (and I can't really fault that logic).
The net attitude of HN is one of admiration for Terry because he's more talented than most of us. I think the biggest thing that affected Terry on this site was being hell-banned.
I don't think that banning someone who repeatedly posts "completely deranged and absolutely unrelated" material is not treating them with respect. You don't have to look very far before he starts calling things CIA nigger brainwashing, and stuff like that.
This site was better with him on it. So what if he said a lot of crazy things? If you let a crazy guy offend you, I think that's a "you problem." He did not have the position or power to act on his prejudices; he wasn't hurting anybody in any real way. Posting here obviously meant something to him, since he kept coming back and creating new accounts. It was cruel to shut him out.
Propagation of harmful sentiments from anyone, but especially someone who (rightfully) inspires admiration will spread those further to people who are easily influenced or unable to separate a technical brilliance from someones capabilities in the rest of their life.
To be clear - Terry remains an inspiration to me, but I can understand the predicament of a moderator who needs to maintain a space.
People aware of Terry's condition might be willing to put up with his antics, but that's a minority. Everyone else just sees this crazy stuff being posted.
No, he was hellbanned. His comments were automatically marked dead no matter what he was saying. It was a huge mark of disrespect towards him, isolating him and belittling him like this. No doubt worsening his mental state. The moderators of HN have blood on their hands.
Blaming an internet moderator for driving someone to suicide by simply enforcing community standards is extremely callous. You're actually doing more damage with your moral judgement by trying to bring down someone else.
Now I read many of Terry's comments without ever turning on showdead. Even if he were hellbanned, it would've been a consequence of his actions regardless of the reasons behind them.
But maybe it's not even worth responding to somebody who creates a throwaway to make such statements.
His mental illness was not his fault. But it is also understandable that when someone uses the n-word, they will get downvoted and banned, even when it’s not their fault.
No, with response to the comment about the “downvote” mention -
(My “You’ve clearly missed the point”)
Mentioning downvotes on HN is incredibly stupid, & if you comb through my past comments, you can see me calling people out for it.
In this very specific & nuanced situation, though - I am using it to mock & make clear my utter contempt & hatred of those who did view Terry as a sad, funny meme, & were laughing all along the way while watching his downward spiral, which culminated in his suicide.
Many of those, still on here & reading this thread, will essentially want to mock my kindness towards Terry & his tormented life. & calling that out is my personal fuck you to them.
No comment regarding anything else in your response.
Nifty, but that font rendering burns my eyes. Might it workout both technically and philosophically to pipe all the text output through LaTeX or some similar thing?
I was asking myself: Why? Isn't this in bad taste? Isn't this continuing a meme long after it has turned from funny to sad?
I am sure the answer is just because we can, just for fun, to make it more accessible. But I kind of wish there was an answer to that question in the README or on the site.
I think Terry would be happy that people want to tinker with what he built even after his death. I mean, he explicitly built it as a sort of throw-back to the early home computer days.
>Isn't this in bad taste? Isn't this continuing a meme long after it has turned from funny to sad?
The OS contains genius ideas, it's not called "TempleOS" it is public domain, the devel workflow is the same..i think it keeps one of Terry's good sides alive...i would be honored.
My favorite quote from a Terry not Pratchett.