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Comment by ColanR | Hacker News Reader

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.

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I wrote a quick script through Github's API, and found 10 users[1] matching the criteria:

* starred any screeps repo before May 2017, and no other screeps repo since then

* no public contributions or events since April 2017

If someone has some time to do further filtering, ensure the users have not starred any GitHub repo since May 2017

I didn't go through forks but that would also be an avenue.

[1] https://gist.github.com/aramperes/2363dc3434de6b494b28b5a658...

A few of the users have the same in game username, and have been online recently.

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).

This guy with his Screeps-Main repo is interesting, he also removed a txt file with some description of what he wanted to do: https://github.com/NihilRex/Screeps-Main/commit/e2c34e211226...

The last things he did were in 2017.

Edit: Nope, same user is on the forum, https://screeps.com/forum/user/nihilrex

As someone else pointed out, it seems this user was recently active on Screeps forums, so ruled out.

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.

Checking for users who forked the repo in 2017 and haven't been active since 2017 I got.

- amidman

- eqzus

- Mike Hancoski (follows users from NY, wrote PHP code, his personal website domain wasn't renewed and is now available.)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-hancoski-b342aa53

This guy looks like a clean shaven version of those pictures. Noses look the same. The eyes. No updates to the account since 2015.

He has an instagram profile with an update nov 2018.

You might be right

Here they are side by side https://ibb.co/4Zn4qqX

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.

Might be worth reaching out to other people working for "Xcite Media Group". 23 employees is small enough to know if someone went missing.

Damn, they really DO look very similar. Mike appears to have unattached earlobes, and MH's appear attached, however.

Maybe brothers or closely related.

Definitely several similar characteristics. Could be a brother.

It would be funny if the real Mike Hancoski googles himself and stumbles upon this thread.

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

Ahh thank you I had missed Maxim2030. Looks like manhyper updated his fork of screeps on February 11th?

Also saw Mike Hancoski's Instagram but it's odd he hasn't posted anything to his LinkedIn since 2014? Maybe worth awkwardly reaching out just in case?

Maybe he just stopped using LinkedIn? I think these are the same Mike:

Work photo (2018): https://thexcitegroup.com/xcite-family/mike-hancoski/mike-h/

Facebook (2019): https://www.facebook.com/mike.hancoski

We're hitting the end of the allowed reply indents but I think you're right modernerd. Looks like he's likely still active online.

Hancoski also has an active facebook page. I won't link it but I found it with a Google search and he last posted in Dec 2019.

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?

PHP also uses -> and is still popular with those younger than 40. The lack of $ gives it away though. This is a very curious case indeed.

Definitely not drowning in $variables, he's 40 something.

If I were making paper notes, I would not bother with exact syntax - especially not for tokens which only exist for the machine parser's sake.

In other words, I have written PHP pseudocode which definitely omits $. But these notes are generic enough to allow virtually anything C-descended.

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.

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.

On the 3. page of the scanned notebook [1] he mentions Java.

[1] https://www.colliersheriff.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=94010

Somewhat amusing to see the police highlighting "trust no one" as a note on p2p networking.

Uh, I'm 28, and a lot of my college education was in C & C++, much more than Java/Python/... - in a large french university.

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.

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.

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.

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