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Comment by twistedlogicx | Hacker News Reader

He wasn't just a programmer. He was also a Counter-Strike: Source pro and a legend of the New Zealand CS scene. He was a goalkeeper for the country's national futsal team (indoor-soccer) and won two national titles and a player of the year award. He was a car enthusiast who custom-built a beautiful BMW and won the "Best V8 Engine" award at a show and shine competition. On top of all of that, he was a programmer who founded LazyWorm Apps and developed apps like MetroTube and Tweetro+. According to one of the lead software guys at Microsoft, MetroTube was once the most popular app on the Windows store.

Most importantly, he was a father of a 2-year-old girl.

His loss is tragic and I had to write about it. I shared this elsewhere and I was referred to this amazing place and asked to share it here as well, so I did.

Thank you to anyone who reads his story.

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Thanks for writing this - it's an awesome read about a fantastic guy. Atta worked for me for 7 years in Christchurch (the last 3-4 years he was doing these apps on the side, then setting up his business). He was a lovely positive guy and I had total respect for him. Our two companies would catchup occasionally and we all enjoyed his company. He was a real role model to anyone who wanted to be the best they can. It's such a great shame this has happened and I feel so sad for his family (his father was also shot but is in Hospital). Unbelievable that this has happened.

Thank you so much for your words and I'm so sorry for the loss of your friend.

I hope those that are suffering most from his absence (and the absence of all of the other Christchurch victims) can some day reach a point of healing.

Good words. I attended university with Atta many years ago and we remained (distant) friends since. He was a legend back then as a CS:S player and a BMW enthusiast, and pretty good at our regular "Quake Breaks" as well.

His company LWA Solutions, that was born out of LazyWorm Apps, did some work for the company I work for. Atta in particular was a driving force behind some of their really cool innovations - in VR. He was one of the first people I knew of who was using a tablet as a mock UI sketchbook, and producing some really cool work despite the awful capacitive touch pens of the time.

It's so difficult to reconcile his murder. He was such a genuine guy with so much ahead of him, and I'm so sorry for his family.

I appreciate these comments from the people who knew him more than anything else. Thank you for your words and I'm so sorry for your loss.

Thanks for reminding us, all of us, that the people affected by hate crimes are people with stories, just like us, not numbers. Same ambitious, similar hobbies, beloved, and gone too soon.

It's insane how many really, really, good people we lose to tragedies like this... 9/11 took away one of the founders of Akamai(the CDN company). Even the recent 737 crash took away some really accomplished people from humanity. It's a constant reminder of the fragility of life and how easily one can lose a loved one or oneself these days.

This kind of thing is why the "NPC" meme and other dehumanizing language is so dangerous. Everyone is a person with a story, achievements, fears, and family. Often really surprising.

That meme never registered as problematic to me (at least by meme standards) but you’re correct.

I always felt it outed its creators as lacking theory of mind; why does a large group of people have different shared beliefs than me? They must lack the ability to think independently like everyone else in my cliquey subculture!

But let's acknowledge the truth that there are plenty of people who really don't think critically. Certainly some people will label others as "not thinking critically" when they really just think differently, but let's agree the former category does exist, and it's not a small population.

But most people do think critically. Have you considered this phenomenon to simply be shared or group cognition (also something nearly everyone experiences), rather than a lack of critical thinking skills?

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about most people thinking critically. I don't have anything other than personal experience to justify my position and a quick Google search wasn't able to turn up any convincing studies.

Group cognition (from a quick skim of a Wikipedia article about it) doesn't seem to justify lack of individual critical thinking though. It seems to be more like a term to describe a process, like "memes" and "idea viruses". It doesn't substitute for individual critical thinking.

I don't think of the NPC meme as especially harmful. Although I don't propagate this meme, I think it's an interesting way of poking fun at people who truly don't think critically about their opinions and sort of absorb opinions by osmosis from the media. I think a strategy of poking fun at people who don't think critically might be one of several possibly useful ways to change that trend. The NPC meme also seems like a possibly useful way to psychologically deal with the fact that there are many people whose minds simply cannot be changed no matter how rationally you try to explain your perspective.

As with any idea, the danger is in misapplication. For example, if someone simply stops trying to change others' minds when it's really still possible but the NPC meme causes them to ignore that possibility, then it doesn't help improve the world. Or if a misguided individual who doesn't distinguish meme from reality uses it to dehumanize people in their mind, then that's a problem.

Everyone is a person with a story, but living life with that awareness is unnecessarily burdensome. Self-awareness is more important than the awareness of others’ stories.

Obsession with other people’s life stories leads to hero worship and constant comparison with them, making you unhappy because you couldn’t check off as many checkboxes as them. This is another form of unhealthy thinking, the inverse of narcissism.

What is unnecsssry? What is obsession? Any contradiction between self aware and be empathy with your human life live sane time as you.

You can live a life that concern only yourselves. Yes! Life is impermanent, obsessive with oneself and pain is everywhere. As a branch of Buddhism would said.

You can also note if that is so all religion and all givernment can disappear as love thy Neigbour, be empathy and still with the world instead of going to nirvana himself, many governments are bad but anarchy may not be good either.

No one sure what is the best approach for one life. But what you said seems odd.

May those died live in peace now. Let the living continue. We will continue do evil and good thing. Choose. Every seconds of it. That is life. RIP ultimately we all know.

It's insane how many people we lose to tragedies like this.

Every person is valuable. We shouldn't just lament the loss of people with notable accomplishments. We should mourn every single person, and do what we can to prevent this from happening again.

"Every person is valuable"

That's a truism, no one would deny that.

But stories make a larger impact and are most valuable when you hear these tragic events. Otherwise all you're left with is number of death counts, which brings far less consideration for distant people, sadly.

I think a good point is raised about why this guy. There were 50 people that all had lives, but we picked on the tech guy. It ends up feeling mildly disrespectful. Like we aren't remembering this guy because of his achievements, we're remembering him because of how he died, and now he's been reduced to his achievements.

I don't know. You could make a case that people in the community knew him, so it makes sense to remember him. Maybe its 'good' that he had any positive achievements worthy of note at all. Most deaths don't warrant even a footnote.

>There were 50 people that all had lives, but we picked on the tech guy. It ends up feeling mildly disrespectful.

Let's be realistic - there being a "tech guy" is the only reason this story is on topic. Hacker News is not supposed to be a place to discuss mainstream events, however tragic they may be, or the deaths of people not relevant to the tech community.

My comment wasn't complaining about HN focusing on the tech guy. It was specifically a response to the sentiment

> It's insane how many really, really, good people we lose to tragedies like this

A story about the tech guy is a reason to be on HN. But statements like the above just serve to trivialize the deaths of those not deemed "really good people".

>That's a truism, no one would deny that.

Many deny that all the time in practice. Even openly.

The point is that "50 dead in Christchurch" can be hard to internalize, especially when these tragedies are arriving so hot on the heels of other tragedies. Our human brain is really good at remaining distant. We tend to take our own lives for granted until we're in dire straights.

These kinds of pieces help us reify the incredible gut-wrenching gravity of human loss.

To put this in perspective, over 150 thousand people die every day. About 2 die every second. You can't mourn them all, and you'd probably get severe depression if you genuinely tried your best.

I'd guess the point is that saying that a tragic event takes away some 'accomplished' people appears to diminish the loss of the unaccomplished people. So the statement would refer to all people lost in that tragic event, not that we should consider all people when one/few die...

But conversely, if you mourn only the people lost in that tragic event, doesn't that diminish the loss of people who die in no less tragic events that don't get publicity? (which is the vast majority of them).

My point was that it's all cherry picking, because you can't mourn everybody, and we don't even try. Draw a line far enough, and beyond that death and suffering is all very abstract, even if we do know about it. And mostly we do not - although we know where to go if we wanted to find out, we don't want to find out; events of comparable magnitude and depravity happen in some areas of the world with far more regularity.

So it feels a tad hypocritical to focus on this particular way to cherry pick as disrespectful.

I agree, I only refer to when a particular event is noted (cherry-picked by the media) that we don't call out the 'smarter' people as a greater loss within that context.

I think every death is a tragedy, whether it's from a terrorist attack, or from aging-related disease.

Losing the people in that way - people that were part of a bigger community and people who contributed to that community - is very tragic, it causes so much pain.

But when you say every person is valuable - can you define valuable.

What about people that are more like psychopaths, just take, abuse and exploit... what is their value?

For example, I don't really see myself as particularly valuable to this planet - I don't contribute anything meaningful, nothing that advances us forward in a positive way.

All I do is try to reduce the damage I do on this planet (climate change etc).

So how do you define valuable?

Speaking from the perspective of a monotheistic believer, my sense of universal human value goes back to the concept of "God created mankind in his own image", and the way over history that has lead to inalienable human right such as "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights".

One might argue that people who choose a destructive life path diminishes their inherent reflection of (a good) God, and should a lesser value, for which I can sympathize with. However, the concept of a God that makes good on covenants with unfaithful people forms this opinion of mine: each person in this world, despite doing wrong, was initially created equally by being in God's image. So long as God continues to treat mankind with equal value, so must I (and others who believe this God-based attribution of equal human value).

Hope that helps, at least from one angle of it.

Thanks for your perspective.

So the way I understood it is that every person has the potential to be like God (even if they are the Christchurch killer, Hitler and the likes), so that's why they are valuable.

I get that concept, I just don't see how we can be practical about it. For example, I think most people would probably say that mass murderers, child rapists etc don't bring any value to our society or habitat and that those people are 'beyond repair'.

I just had a problem with the statement "Every person is valuable" - first what is Eridiu's definition of valuable and also it needs to be a bit more specific or not be so absolute.

Sure, thanks for the thoughtful response.

I agree that being practical is hard. It makes me think that the "leap of faith" isn't the belief in God's greatness and that we each have a bit of it, but actually treating others as valuable as God would consider them. Some rare individuals practice a radical forgiveness which attests to the authenticity of their faith or principles, but certainly these stand out because they are so incredibly rare.

What you mentioned, about the thinking that there are those beyond repair, who have caused so much destruction that they seem to have lost all of the image of God that they were created with–I can sympathize with that, too. If someone takes the image of God and commits evil (especially when it's irreversible like death or trauma), that is certainly negative value. That would deserve eternal punishment, while which is something that is also hard to understand practically, seems helpful here.

An interesting way to put it would be that God exists as the ideal, and while people aspire to any number of ideals, they resort to living "practically" since they are not "actually" God, but just in his image.

Sorry if I'm beating a dead horse. I appreciate defining or at least contextualizing and framing things, too. Talking with you has helped me articulate my own beliefs better as well. Thanks.

Then write posts about those people too. Someone took the time to write about someone who meant something to them. Without someone like you taking the time to do the same we aren't going to know about the others. Be the solution you want to see.

>Even the recent 737 crash took away some really accomplished people from humanity

And some less accomplished, if those matter at all...

I played countless games of casual CS with Atta while running GotGames, which hosted the majority of Aus/NZ pro CS:S tournaments back in the day.

He was a kind and warm influence in a scene which harbored its fair share of immaturity and vitriol. He'll be sorely missed.

Holy crap. How many things can a guy do? That's a bunch of different and varied interests.

Thank you so much for writing the story.

Thank you for this beautiful story. Each person is a universe and clearly his loss will be felt by many. This mad world we live in saddens me greatly.

Thanks for writing and posting this.

Sounds like someone I would've been friends with. Thanks for bringing humanity to the headline.

Thank you for sharing his story.

It’s saddening how many people are robbed of the kind of friendship they could have with people who are different yet the same in so many ways, because of this learned hatred.

This is a great writeup. Thanks for sharing.

I do wish you had mentioned that he is originally Palestinian.

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