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Comment by patrickaljord | Hacker News Reader

Kind of disappointed that HN isn't putting a black top banner to show respect to Ian like they did with Steve Jobs and others. I've been using Debian for more than 15 years and it runs half of the web today, the International Space Station, Tesla motor vehicles and more. Ian's impact on the world and our community is simply incalculable. It also looks like he wanted to use his suicide to grab people's attention on the issues of police brutality, serving humanity even through his death. Thank you Ian.

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Please, let's don't do this. Is it an Internet thing? "why hasn't Obama said anything yet?", "why did the Muslims not distance themselves?", "why is there a national holiday for x but not y".

Symbols are cheap, but not very important. Let's not make the absence of symbols into a huge thing. State your grieve, I'll grieve with you, but let's not get angry at other people who don't show their grieve the way you expected it.

Symbols are a powerful thing and are very important. ie: symbols are a big part of collective identity. Collective identity helps a mission.

The "collective identity" component of this comes from the group of HN readers collectively deciding to upvote this to the top story for an extended period of time. I'm not sure what would be added to that by a single admin making a decision by fiat.

It would add respect, status, etc.

No, you can't just say that without backing it up. The Guardian (good, left-leaning UK paper) can't go more than a few days without a deadline like "We're all [name of someone who just died and who you've never heard of and won't again] now" or whatever. People get forgotten and all that matters is how much people have changed reality whilst alive (or what impact they have after they're dead). Just printing their name or a little slogan or icon or whatever...it literally means nothing, either at the time its printed or afterwards.

Collective identity? We're all individuals.

From Wikipedia: "Collective identity is the shared sense of belonging to a group."

I guess some nights for some people who aren't part of a group can be very lonely.

I get the point about belonging but your comment reeks of dehumanization.

Join us or else....

That kind of attitude creates and/or enforces much of the negativity in this world such as the actions of cops alleged by Ian Murdock.

That statement was about collective identity. Everyone has a collective identity.

You are free to choose your own collective identity. Do whatever you want. If you say that you are not part of any collective identity, I'm not sure about that...

I try very hard to avoid any collective identity for myself, even to the extent where a lot of people would say "I am a [verb]er," I consciously prefer "I [verb]."

The collective identity mindset opens people up to manipulation, guilt by association, and undeserved praise by association (which sounds nice but can lead to poor decisions based on a distorted sense of self). Any benefits are comparatively small. You can still go [verb] with the [verb]ers without merging your identity and worldview with theirs.

There should be a Russel point just like there is a Godwin point.

It's only right to balance the availability of internet adage. Might as well call it Russell's Law.

Not angry, just disappointed. That's why I didn't demand that HN start showing the symbol.

Hopefully, they aren't working today either. With any luck, the people who could put a black banner have a chance to spend a couple days with friends or family to celebrate the new year.

Symbols are literally everywhere you look. The sentence you just read is nothing but a chain of symbols which got resolved to an overall concept. 2 + 2 = 4 means nothing except to a human.

You're right -- symbols are cheap. However, they're the very threads our world is weaved with. Off topic I know, but I always think it's important to keep in my mind.

A friend respond to the uproar (by some) after the recent Paris attacks that Facebook had not offered temporary logo profile picture for other recent atrocities: "Don't have a go at mourners in a funeral that they didn't go to other funerals."

It hit me very hard yesterday when I heard he passed as he was one of the really big contributors to the technology we are using now.

Even harder when I first read of the dubious circumstances regarding his twitter account.[0] Arstechnica started an Inquiry.[1]

[0]http://archive.is/OPlI7 [1]http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/12/ian-mu...

Agreed. I didn't see the black thick line on HN yesterday evening, but I was really expecting it to be there today. Its absence genuinely makes me sad.

Yes, the reactions on HN in general have been kind of underwhelming compared to Steve Jobs for reasons I can understand although for me Ian's death has hit harder than Steve's. My guess is that many here are young, mostly devs that have been using Mac all their dev life and before that windows. For the older folks who do dev ops or were around in the 90's and early 2000's and who cared about free software, Debian really had a huge impact on us and so we feel more sad about Ian's death than the rest.

I don't know. I'm only 26. Still it hit me harder than Jobs' death. I used to own a PowerBook in high school / first uni year. At that time I was already using Debian on my servers. Since then I also use it on my laptops.

I chose Debian because it is technically awesome, and also because it is politically awesome. Be it the Debian manifesto, Debian's social contract, Debian Free Software Guidelines, the way the Debian project is organized (e.g., the use of the Schulze/Condorcet method for electing the project leader), etc. All of this is the result of the work of the many people in the project/community that Murdock created with his ideals.

I thought that would count for something for everyone, especially among HN folks.

I worked closely with him at Progeny, and I've long admired Apple and Steve Jobs. Both deaths hit me pretty hard.

Ian reminded me a bit of Steve; he had a similar ability to look a few steps ahead, anticipate technology trends, and he was quite charismatic.

Orthogonal to the above: I remember when Ian first got an iPod and started downloading music from iTunes. He was astonished at the convenience. "How has no one done this before?" is nearly an exact quote.

Steve Jobs is more famous and thus known by more people. I use Apple products on a daily basis and I use Debian only once in a while. Yet I feel more sad about Ian's death.

And while many Mac users attribute their OS to Steve Jobs, I bet most Ubuntu users never heard about Ian (or Mark Shuttleworth for that matter).

Looking at the subthread spawned from this comment, I'm partial to flagging all of it. Some of your responders may end up later regretting the things they said.

Seriously, comparing two deaths like this is not a good idea, not when it's so fresh. Both Ian and Steve impacted the computing world in a huge, if different way, and both deaths are tragic. We've honored Steve Jobs then, this is the hour of honoring Ian Murdock. Black bar be damned.

We can sort out who did more for the world later.

Deleted comment

Read my second sentence, the one that starts with "My guess is that...". That's just a guess though.

The very glue within the majority of HNers' effort here is money. Jobs represented $$$$$, Ian's Debian is free.

lots of money has been made on top of debian.

The development community still respects FOSS.

Therefore, HN does not really represent the development community. More like javascript hipsters.

Please hang out here for a bit longer and get to know the place before deciding what community does HN represent.

I had been a lurker for ~2 years and a registered user for ~3 years, so about ~5 years in total. I don't believe that HN adequately represents either independent developers, non-corporate FOSS community or web developers ("JS hipsters").

My only problem with representation here is that if you have differing opinions than one of the other groups, you get downvoted into oblivion. Hell, saying anything that goes remotely against the tide gets you downvoted.

I can understand what he means though, because most people that downvote me are "JS hipsters." Since these people comment the most, they have the ability to control the conversation, and thus leave a larger visible proportion of representation.

Everyone has this policing tone, too, and it's obnoxious.

Nah, one has to learn to stop caring about downvotes that much. You can very well express contrarian views on HN, and yes, you sometimes have to pay the price in blood^H^H^H^H^Hkarma. Like with all worthy causes. What matters is that people will engage your argument constructively, if you write it in a substantial and civil way.

Case in point: only yesterday 'miguelrochefort had the guts to post advocating a completely contrarian view on privacy[0]. That particular comment, predictably, got downvoted, but it didn't stop a thoughtful discussion from spawning. As long as this happens, HN serves its purpose.

Also, how do you know that people who downvote you are "JS hipsters" and not someone else? :).

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=miguelrochefort

My ultimate paranoia is that they are part Lua hipster like me. My own kind downvoting me.

I can imagine. Getting into a disagreement about programming with another Lisper is something that would break my heart.

I had noticed also the top banner absence also, and agree that is missing.

Ok. Do not wait for others to change the things that you can change by yourself. Topcolor changed to 000000 in config. Annoying banner issue solved. This was the easy problem.

Agreed. If the black banner is going to be used, this is an appropriate time.

I agree. If this site is for 'hackers' or programmers, than it should get black banner.

But if this is site for investors that call programers hacks, then carry on.

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