John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US | Hacker News Reader

John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

bbc.com

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I met John in an Atlanta airport lounge years ago[1]. I recognized him immediately as I've always admired him, and I decided to go up to him and tell him as much. He invited me to sit down, and told him about when I was a teenager in the 90s learning about tech entrepreneurs at the time, I always thought he was pretty cool and had good ideas. I told him I respected him, and that I was sure he'd lived an incredible life and thanked him for his contributions. He was clearly totally sloshed(inebriated) and insisted he called his wife so I could recount the story to her. I did. An hr later I had to leave to catch my flight, and i asked him where he was going - he said I'd find out some "pretty crazy shit" about him next week, and that "the doc was a bunch of BS". Two days later, I read Show Time had announced "Gringo: The Dangerous Life of John McAfee". In the brief time I spent with him, I have to say he had pretty positive energy for someone who was portrayed the way he was.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/qThvR2S.jpg

Your sketchy looking link which I mistakenly clicked on instead of copy and pasting into my VM is b0rk. Says "This item has exceeded its view limit!"

works for me

You run a VM just to inspect "sketchy-looking links"? That sounds like paranoid behavior, if I'm being honest.

If anything, not paranoid enough because still tracking.

This place would be one of the best to hit with a 0day. Lots of IT people with full admin rights to entire corporate networks.

Doesn't fit the risk profile. 0days are used with surgical precision, not simply to dunk on hundreds of random businesses.

You can send different things to different requesting hosts.

Users at XYZ.gov gets the 0day, everyone else gets what is expected.

A healthy paranoia if you grew up with the internet.

When a link can compromise an entire machine, having a machine you can literally throw away with no consequence is nice.

Hell, I'd wager to say that containers wouldn't be a thing if it weren't for this kind of behavior. Looking for ways to build up and destroy VMs even faster.

You need a faster computer, man!

Try qemu's microvm mode, combined with virtiofs:

https://qemu.readthedocs.io/en/latest/system/i386/microvm.ht... https://virtio-fs.gitlab.io/

Windows 10 pro let’s you bring up fresh sandbox with one click and about 5 seconds to boot, it’s really not such a burden.

Or maybe people just have temp VMs running anyway, and like others have said, if you’re browsing hacker news on your work machine you should probably do so with a healthy dose of paranoia.

This is a thread about John McAfee, after all.

We've since replaced the original link, by the author's request.

Often meeting your hero's does not go well, so pleased this did for you :)

It's unfortunate that a lot of things we like about people, doesn't really go hand in hand for making good choices otherwise.

Yes I've met a number of personable people who I completely disagreed with on politics and their actions, as long as you don't challenge their ideological stances. It's kind of like dealing with an alcoholic as long as you don't challenge their addiction everything tends to go well. It happened to me just last night on the phone. The human mind is a complex thing.

“…as long as you don’t challenge their ideological stances”? Maybe the problem is you

So you are surprised people are combative if you challenge their beliefs? How is that weird. That's seems completely normal to me.

Why would you have to agree on politics to like someone? Comparing someones ideologial stance with a severe addiction is pretty messed up, dude. Are you so sure your stance is the absolute right one?

OP didn't specify an ideology, and I think their statement stands for both people holding extreme and non-extreme views if they are held very strongly.

EDIT: I'm no doubt the angry alcoholic archetype who doesn't want to discuss it when my Windows-using friends try and tell me it's better than my Linux setup. Then again, I know my stance is the absolute right one ;)

Running Windows 10 with Ubuntu 20.04 running within WSL, and that all works pretty sweet. Corporate apps and Linux consoles on the same desktop. And yes, command line consoles are the only thing I interact with within Linux.

Depends on what ideological stance is. I knew people whose ideological stance was that Jews rule the world and are dangerous. Including all the consequences including mild "holocaust was basically necessary". Perfectly charming people, super easy to get along with. Of course, unless you insist on claiming that Jews were treated badly and unfairly. When you oppose them about that specific point, they get quite aggressive.

It is easy to get along with people of various ideological positions, as long as you are willing to nod along, regardless of real world consequences of their ideological stances. As long as their opinion is the one ever said out loud.

> Why would you have to agree on politics to like someone?

There are some political stances that also imply a particular moral/ethical stance. I think it'd be pretty normal to not like someone if their morals are incompatible with yours.

I have found many people (though not most) can be fine and pleasant even when you directly challenge their ideologies. But that is only assuming you do so in a respectful manner. In fact most of my best friends have different stances and we often regularly challenge them in discussion.

What I have noticed in recent years is that people increasingly have little respect for those they disagree with and it’s largely on the basis of that disagreement.

When you say he was "sloshed" do you mean he was drunk? Or do you mean he was very pleased with your praise?

the former

The latter

Sloshed means drunk.

Not sure why you’re downvoted. I was also confused for a moment - “inebriated with praise” is not an uncommon expression.

Interesting. Haven't heard that expression before.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&q=%22inebri...

Five other hits in the entire Google corpus, all of which are the same use from 1921. It's so uncommon it's literally a shibboleth until you ruined it.

Sloshed is a weird word. It means drunk but if you go through etymology, it started at slush and moved to slosh which was to splash around in slush. Then somewhere along the lines, 'slosh' meant to pour without care and make a mess. That turned into pour alcohol carelessly and become a mess.

I always thought the association was directly from "splashing around", as in "you're so drunk that it's like you've been swimming in the stuff."

Where I grew up in Scotland, sloshed very specifically meant you couldn't pour the booze straight anymore, more than just a bit drunk. However, it's also considered somewhat polite, I thought... more appropriate when speaking of the dead.

That’s the meaning in Manchester too. Extreme state of intoxication by alcohol. Beyond mere “I’m drunk”.

Hey friend, honestly thanks. That’s how my Grandma Beatrice used the term sloshed - her family came over from Glasgow and she inherited that phrase from her Dad. It’s hard to convey but it was always said with love. It was more gentle teasing than an accusation?

Seriously though, thanks for this memory. My Gram and I were very very close.

Sloppy drunk was the impression I had.

Huh. Never heard that latter usage. Where are you from? (For regional dialect purposes.)

He was pissed.

It means he'd had a skinful.

My interaction with McAfee was in the pre-internet '80s. I was called when a nearby international school got hit by a computer virus spread on floppy disks. Looking for sources of info, found the "Computer Virus Industry Association". Called, got a little bit of generic advice, and he mostly asked me to send sample disks. Turned out that the "CVIA" was basically a pretext of McAfee trolling for people like me to send samples for the anti-virus software he was writing.

Sure, mildly clever ruse, but I always felt that the way it was done was a bit off - could have been more straightforward. I guess he thought people would not help him if he didn't use the pretext.

Somehow the rest of the story does not surprise me. Making his millions seems to have given him no peace either.

RIP

I'd argue that making those millions turned his life upside down, made his life drown in hedonism, eventually taking his mind and any shred of dignity. Still, RIP John

If given large amounts of resources, status, power, freedom to indulge whatever we wish.

I wonder how many people would also spiral out of control.

The thing about spiralling out of control is that it's both awful and awesome. RIP John Mcafee, one of the rare people who have the balls to really live.

We got McAfee for DOS in the late 1980s, dialed up his BBS for updates. Gave out copies at the college because it was shareware at the time, you buy a registration code.

I looked at that photo and realized I knew you Small world, my co-founer and I won 2 DigitalOcean awards at HackTech and LA Hacks that you awarded us

I recall both of them. Did you win an iPad? If so, I have a picture of me giving you that prize still!

Amazing!

@erwinkle Do you realize you touched a guy who touched John McAfee?

Realise that people can be super nice to you and cruel/evil to somebody else. The serial killer living next door might be a great neighbour. That doesn’t change the facts of what he/she is.

Watch 'The Fall' mini-series for a good example

Are you sure you want to use a fictional story as an example？

There is plenty IRL examples eg BTK https://abcnews.go.com/US/btk-serial-killers-daughter-living...

And Gacy, he had a fantastic reputation as an upstanding community member for years before his atrocities were discovered.

I'm not saying I do not agree to the point he's trying to prove, it's just the material he used I'm against, please understand the difference.

The hidden monster seeming like an ordinary and somewhat charming person is a common plot.

I think the word you're looking for is not "example" but "illustration."

This kind of subjectivism is so lacking in nuance, though, that the good parts that one is seeing (and, in many ways, choosing to see) are a mere reduction of the whole truth, and isn’t the whole truth of a person

So a serial killer is a good person just because he’s a nice neighbor to you? If you’re hanging out with a friend in your inner circle of elites and that friend is nice to you but is very rude to waiters and other blue-collar workers, is that friend a good person?

I’m not making a judgment of McAfee’s character here, just pointing out the myopic sense of morality. It’s so popular, too popular if I must say, among people these days.

>So a serial killer is a good person just because he’s a nice neighbor to you?

I don't think that is what the person you responded to was saying. Quite the opposite.

Nope that’s not my point at all. Quite the opposite.

In fact, this is what they mean when they say it's almost impossible to know who the real sociopaths are. The true ones are so charismatic and good at manipulation that, unless you are extraordinarily close to them or get on their bad side, they just seem like the sort of person that everyone likes.

Interestingly, a minority of people seem to be somewhat able to see through the facade. I have ADHD and a brother who's very nearly on the autism spectrum, and both of those conditions seem correlated with this ability to have an unbiased sense of a person. Perhaps it's due to the way we are slightly detached from normal social interactions, or the highly analytical way our brains function. All I know is that there are definitely times I feel this. For instance, if you look online, there are tons of relatively recent videos that have special forces types (SEALS, rangers, etc.) commenting on movie scenes or so on. The comments are always full of people talking about how they seem like such a great person, or how funny/charming/positive/etc. this person is. Meanwhile, I just come away with this feeling of being very deeply unsettled by them almost every time. Everything about their demeanor unsettles me. Now I'm in no way saying every special forces operator is a closet sociopath. But the job does attract a certain personality type, and many of the ones on these videos are the most charismatic of the whole bunch.

Back on topic, John always seemed to be to be a pretty typical narcissist to me. He did some stuff that I found to be funny in kind of a black humor sense (that video of him supposedly telling you how to uninstall McAfee antivirus), but the idea that he was a truly positive person I just totally don't see. I mean, think about it -- the OP's story involves John having the guy call his wife and tell him how great he thought John was and how great his ideas were. That's pretty typical narcissistic behavior.

It's a slippery slope tbh, you can end up suspicious of everyone, thinking everyone nice is actually a sociopath, when in fact there's nothing sinister under the surface.

Not to mention that people on the spectrum who are trying hard to show emotions appropriate to a situation end up seeming just as unsettling.

Always though ADHD was not about being able to have unbiased sense of a person. Instead much more about the inability to interact and be perceptive about the world and persons around you.

Might be true, but it's complicated by mental illness being defined in terms of ability to participate in society. This includes various deeply irrational behaviours.

Hyper focus is a benefit of ADHD. It just has to be interesting.

I couldn’t read people in teens. In 20s I decided to change that. Would stare intently at a person face and watch every muscle movement, tone, etc. read some books on body language.

Was absurdly exhausting for me. But I got very good at reading people. Eventually it went from intense analytical analysis to just “normal” paying attention.

I have to disagree about your veteran assessment. Almost a decade ago I accidentally got into the security integration industry (security cameras, gates and the software that runs all of it). That field attracts a lot of veterans, especially the higher echelon guys. I've got to know plenty of folks from the enlisted and up to a full bird. The thing with anyone from one of those specialty combat mission backgrounds, they're typically extremely grounded people. As in, do you remember being a teen or young adult before getting into a career field? You had all these folks blowing smoke up your ass about how great something is in that field. The whole unicorn, sunshine and rainbows about a job field. Then you always had one dude who was, "nah, that's like 10% of the job. 90% of the time it's like this." When you're young, you think the person with actual experience, the salty guy, is a party pooper jackass. When you're older, you realize that guy was leveling your expectations, warning you of pitfalls and trying to make you look out for the good and how to cherish it. Combat vets are kind of the same way. There's a good chance any moral or ethical theory people armchair postulate about when it comes to society... they saw the extremes actually played out in real life with consequences. Those that readjusted back to civvy life well have the best attitude towards life. They try living life to the fullest because, again, they've seen first hand how short and fragile life is. They dont sugarcoat it either, which I think is what a majority of people find so jarring. The amount of sugarcoating in general society is amazing when you see the contrast. The charisma they exude isnt really the sociopath, snakeoil salesman kind. It's far more worldly and more honest, mixed with zero fucks given what you think of them. That sugarless honesty is what most people, especially these days, are attracted to. But then it can come off as crazy because of how much it contrasts with "normal" bullshit. They're the most egalitarian and welcoming "demographics" I've ever met. On a whole, the tech industry is full of far more actual sociopathic and narcissistic assholes.

"Former Special Forces capitalizing on it to garner a Youtube following" is a very small and specific subset of Veteran. The GP post wasn't making a generalized statement about combat vets.

GP was even very careful to concede that the traits they think they've observed aren't necessarily a strong proportion of that specific niche.

Are you comparing John McAfee to a serial killer? For real?

Of course not. I was using an example to illustrate my point.

That's a great picture.

I think people like that always have positive energy whether feigned or real. It's what attracts people (and money) to them. Famous celebrities, high level execs, politicians that I've met all had similar outward charm.

Taking in to account he was drunk he must be real

Umm, no. Plenty of people have outward personas that they can maintain through extreme intoxication.

Guy Burgess was well known when a British diplomat for protracted alcohol binges accompanied by all sorts of poor decision-making, but he never let slip that he was a Soviet spy.

Not to mention Sasha Baron Cohen passing out from wine and waking up in character as Ali G - at least anecdotally

That, and he was already wealthy by the point the OP ran into him. I’m still poor and every additional dollar I receive increases my happiness immensely. Dollars buy dignity and he had no restraints in life at all financially.

This works less and less as you earn more. At some dozens/dollars a day (I don't even mean homeless, I mean when you pay the rent and only have some crumbs left - I have a lot of experience living this way) every additional dollar makes you happier. As soon as all your basic needs are covered you (I) lose all the emotional interest in money and only feel interested in experiences, free time and increased security.

In my experience ... they have learned to activate that charm when among other people/in the spotlight.

Being on their own, they have their dark moments, too.

Was just reading about McAfee freebasing bath salts from old posts on an old Joe Rogan forum and not paying taxes seems like the absolute least he was up to:

>I've processed 23 kilos of this stuff in the past year or so, and bump it myself every day - in fair quantities the hypersexuality... is beyond belief. I have had a number of acquaintances (both male and female) who have rubbed their genitals way past the point of bleeding and still couldn't stop.

>In all honesty, a first time user, or a user on a large dose, when presented with food, will simply figure out a way to include it in the ongoing sex play with their partner. If alone, they will figure out a way to fuck it, or shove it up their rectum. This is not a joke. Everything on the Tan becomes a sex partner or a sex aid. If only visually. I will not, anymore, let anyone on Tan be alone with my dogs for example.

>A local brothel owner (prostitution is legal in my country) talked me out of a large amount of Tan and provides it to his working girls and their customers. The idea was to simply increase business by having hornier customers and more authentic product. It worked for a while, and then girls started taking larger doses and giving customers larger doses. They began leaving and running off with customers - some after a single contact with the customer.

>If a person takes a large dose of the Tan and has the misfortune to have no partner at the time, then truly terrible things happen. A number of men, and women, have molested strangers after massive doses of the pure product (which is why I no longer provide it to anyone other than trusted friends - everything else is cut 50 to one). Twice, users on large doses have tried to molest my dogs.

>I have distributed over 3,000 doses exclusively in this country. They call it SPT (I named it) and it is a seriously hot underground topic here. I know of at least a dozen people who spend virtually full time playing with this, and hundreds trying to get samples, which I dole out with meticulous care. Anyone caught sharing this with another without my consent doesn't get any more.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/john-mcafee-this-might-be-t...

What compound(s) is(are) those?

Presumably the one he had in Belize on the north end of Ambergris Caye.

I suspect none that actually exist or have that effect.

Honestly, it amazes me how frequently people forget that people can lie.

He stated he made up the superdrug on his loggiaonfire site a few years ago to fuck with people & send them on a wild goose chase. The specificly colored artificial drug at least, which he had claimed was the perfect synthesis vs the other colors or w/e

Even more specifically, recognizing when a public figure is just messing with the interviewer/audience seems to be a rare talent.

Who forgot?

The people who believe everything McAfee says.

According to the linked post, Methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV) aka bath salts.

In more recent articles about it it seems to be a variation of alpha-PVP (flakka), something called alpha-PHP that is outside of any schedule for drugs. Basically a designer cathinone that is (or was) still legal.

He wasn't totally certain exactly what he'd made, afaik; his neighbor troubles coincided with efforts to get a real chemist to assist him in identifying what he was producing and stabilizing his method.

I smoked alpha pvp in a transit home in Saint Petersburg with some Georgian immigrants thinking it was meth, It made me really really high, and I spent the whole next day crying. I suspect this is a pretty popular drug in Russia.

I suspect all of the drugs are pretty popular in Russia.

The most popular drug in Russia is still alcohol.

Nah. Half of all drugs sold on Hudra are mephedrone and alpha-pvp; even weed doesn't compare.

Unfortunately, yes. I lost friend to it ("alpha"). He is technically alive, but with completely ruined physics. I've thought, that only opiates could be so destructive, oh, man, I was wrong :-(

Don't do PHP, folks.

> I have photos of the boss fucking dogs in my safe at home. I think my job is secure.

That link you posted is WILD. Holy shit if half of everything there is true, that's still super fucked up

Doesn't that quote seem odd to anyone else? I wouldn't think he had a "boss" any more being a multi-millionaire. He was certainly an odd fellow, but I wonder how much we know about the provenance of these random forum threads.

One does not come to a new country out of the blue and become a drug dealer boss

True, but it doesn't sound like he was working for anyone most of the time, he was just making some stuff for personal consumption and/or for the local brothel owner.

So I'm really confused as to why he was working a job or had a boss with all that money when it seemed like he was just experimenting with drugs and hookers.

And even then, how do we know that any of these random forum posts are even legit? It certainly seems possible--he wasn't the most stable individual--but I hate to just blindly trust something I read on an internet forum that gives me no realistic way to validate that any of this is from him.

He is the boss? Referencing himself? Ha

That would be a very crackheaded thing to do, taking pictures to blackmail yourself for having sex with a dog.

He's just messing around. Having fun. It was a joke.

So he discovered super viagra? Maybe it was some phizer executive who got him done in.

All jokes aside though rip, McAfee was a really colorful character and strangely inspiring in some ways, it's unfortunate he got himself stuck in a dark place

This is a common misconception about Viagra and similar drugs. They aren't aphrodisiacs (i.e. they don't make you horny). What they do is affect blood flow.

Man, reading that was like reading TOTSE, turned up to 11.

John McAfee was Jeff Hunter?

That reads very wild but also he is clearly exaggerating. Even just processing MDVP a little and turning it into what he is describing is questionable but then doing the same with Salvia (a pretty non-sexual drug) and making an even more hypersexual new substance is hard to believe.

Good or bad, what a sad ending to a colorful life.

The guy was troubled and had many shortcomings, but he was colorful and also achieved success and arguably was one of the seminal figures in the nascent AV industry.

Sad to see his fall from grace and into a world of extravagance, deceit and cheating (taxes) and, if allegations true, even worse; then to end it on the floor of a jail -all by his own hands.

I mean, he very likely killed his neighbor in 2012... so I feel like "colorful" undermines how much of a monster he's been for over a decade.

And if the ladies stories about his hammock usage is true...

[I stand corrected]

It hasn't been "John's software" since 1994.

lol. I had to look that up.

Maybe he hung out with Chuck Berry too much.

So people don't have to look that up, some women claimed he liked seemingly consensual scat. Not really comparable to alleged murder.

That makes him a monster?

I mean, is that 100% true?

Probably (by which I refer to the standard of judgement in the civil suit). https://www.theregister.com/2019/03/20/mcafee_25m_lawsuit_ne...

That was a default judgement, which means he automatically lost because he didn't show up to court, not on the merit of the suit.

No it doesn’t mean that. He didn’t automatically lose because he didn’t show up. The court, specifically the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, allowed the Faull estate to petition for a default judgement due to McAfee’s continued failure to respond and due to the merits of the case presented. They did not, and would not, allow a default judgment on a meritless case.

Meritless cases don't even make it that far (the court refuses to hear the case), so while true this seems like an unnecessary quibble. Yes, the suit had enough to actually be heard by a court, but the reason for the judgement is due to McAfee's refusal to even participate. Said another way: if McAfee had participated, this is not the judgement that would've been reached. McAfee may have still be found responsible by the court, but not for the same reason.

It is certainly not the normal level of proof people take a court decision as being.

If I remember the story correctly the neighbour killed his dogs. That’s a pretty strong motive.

John Wick agrees

This makes me wonder if he was a source of inspiration for the movies...

Sounds like someone else with the same first name and motive.

Actually, John killed his own dogs after he believed they were poisoned by his neighbor. Were they really poisoned, or was that just one of his psychotic delusions(like his claim that Belizean officials were out to kill him but killed Faull by mistake)?

We'll never know. But we do know that his dogs were allowed to run free in a giant pack and attacked at least 6 people (probably more, but they may be locals and not ex-pats/tourists whose claims are more likely to be reported on)

He claimed that he gifted laptops to the Belizean government pre-loaded with spyware and alleged to have found evidence that multiple top officials were engaged in drug and human trafficking.

If true, would certainly be a motive for those officials.

Weird he never provided any proof of his claims about that. You would think that if he was invested enough to put his own life in risk(according to him) to find out the extent of corruption among officials in Belize, that he would, perhaps, release the information in some manner instead of just pretending like it never existed.

And what was the thinking of the officials who allegedly received the laptops? "Oh no, the man who gave us free laptops has been reading everything we've done on these laptops. Let's plan his murder on these laptops now. Don't worry about finding his address, it's just some home north of San Pedro right? Just go kill a guy and it must be John"

He mentioned in his tweets a lot will be released upon his death. We'll see I guess.

To anyone reading this: I will bet literally any amount of money that is available to me, with 10:1 odds, that no information will come out.

Didn’t McAfee bet to eat His own penis for some reason?

And lost, and refused to honor the bet.

It was over the price of bitcoin.

You waiting for any Q drops too?

There was a Q posted to his Instagram account an hour after his death was reported. Popcorn ready.

This is how conspiracies are created. There's no evidence and strong motive for him to create this conspiracy.

I'm a big fan of Occam's razor and in this case the simplest explanation, in light of _evidence_ of which there was plenty in the documentary, is that he was not truthful.

To be a bit pedantic, testimony is evidence. But I agree he was not very credible.

> He claimed that he gifted laptops to the Belizean government pre-loaded with spyware and alleged to have found evidence that multiple top officials were engaged in drug and human trafficking.

So he was looking to take out his competitors? Because he boasted of having sold 25KG of psychotropics in the previous year, so let's not mistake him for some vigilante.

Do you have a source for that? I don't doubt you, but I'd like to read the story.

> https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/09/the-obscure-legal-dr...

Quantity claims:

> https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/8utitu/john_mcafe...

Wow, that reddit thread is really something. Thanks

"Actually, John killed his own dogs after he believed they were poisoned by his neighbor."

I've never heard he killed his dogs. I did hear he thought the next door neighbor poisoned his dogs.

He shot his dogs and buried them on his property (allegedly, because he thought they were poisoned). The last I heard of the dogs, the police had taken their corpses to see if they were shot with the same gun that murdered Faull. But odds seem low since it was known that John had a ton of guns and armed guards in Belize.

Even without being found guilty of murder... if you watch that documentary he hires very unsavory characters to be his armed guards 24x7.

You are one of the richest people on the planet and you choose to be an armed bully on a small island with a lot of poverty to exploit.

He could literally have any lifestyle he wanted.

He hadn't been one of the richest people on the planet in more than a decade.

Definitely did not have enough money for literally any lifestyle, especially seeing as it appears he owed a lot of money in back taxes.

Had a net worth of several hundred million in a country where the cost of living was 23% of the US might not be a "megayacht and private 787" lifestyle, but it would do pretty well.

He owed a lot of money in back taxes because he made a point of specifically refusing to pay them, not inability to do so.

His net worth peaked at $100M right before the 2008 financial crisis, which apparently decimated his investments.

If you spend a lot of money without paying your taxes, you still owe those taxes, which means you have significantly less money than you think you do. So when his aforementioned wealth peaked at $100M, the real value (i.e. minus taxes) was probably much lower.

Not withstanding the amount, I'm willing to be corrected there, but the latter part makes little sense:

Say I have $1M in the bank (or in Bitcoin), but I owe the IRS say $300K.

I leave the country, and take my money out of the reach of the IRS.

My "net worth" on an accounting statement might be $700K, but if I'm making a point of avoiding and biting my thumb at the IRS, I still absolute have access to $1M, regardless of moneys owed or claimed. And if I have no intention of paying those taxes, I'm certainly going to use that money. And McAfee was very actively saying "I'm keeping that owed tax and doing whatever the hell I like with it".

Given that McAfee himself claimed he had assets seized by the feds and had nothing at the end, I don't think even McAfee was ever as far out of reach as you think he was.

The IRS can seize assets. McAfee wasn't sitting on $100M in hard cash, most was in property and investments.

According to [0] he was down to about $4M in net worth after 2008, which isn't nothing, especially in a LCOL country, but for context, if he made 200k per year and put 10% away for retirement from when he was 25, he would have had the same amount.

[0] https://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celebrity-business/...

Suppose your assets lost 70 percent of their value soon after the tax year ended. Now your net worth is 300k while your tax bill is 400k, and you can only slowly get the over-payment back by deducting it against your current taxes.

We are assuming McAfee is just not paying taxes because craziness, but when you have volatile situation you can get burned by the rules pretty badly.

He didn't strike me as a bully.

He seemed to like his dogs (which I get!), and was out for the little guys of the world. He didn't like authorities whom abused their power.

I found him refreshing compared to most wealthy guys.

I am sad he's gone. I wish it wasen't fear over the IRS though.

(I don't think anyone should do jail time over taxes. You can take their money, but no jail time. Oh yea, I don't care if he was doing drugs (prescribed, or illegial). I don't think anyone should have to go through withdrawls in a cell. That last sentence was not aimed at John. It never felt right hearing that people are expected to withdrawal from any substance while in jail. I see a constant help wanted in my local paper for a Psychiatry position at San Quentin. If I was in charge, every suspect would have a Psychiatrist they can talk to, and medicated if needed, with in a hour of being locked up for any offense. It's got to be one of the most stressful event in a person's life.)

> He seemed to like his dogs

We offered the McAffees a puppy shortly after they moved to TN; they came out and played with the litter for a couple hours in our front yard, and they were both very much "dog people".

Our pack wasn't aggressive, as such, but everyone found them intimidating. John was quite happy being chewed by multiple small hounds, and the rest of the pack was OK with the idea of him having a pup.

Alas, they weren't stable enough to give a good home to a dog at that time (and told us so before the pup was ready), so that puppy went elsewhere; but I was delighted to meet them both and found them decent people to spend a bit with.

> weren't stable enough to give a good home to a dog

That was my instinct as well, after John told the story about paying his Belizean housekeepers to shit into his mouth from a hammock.

Why did he kill his neighbor?

According to news story: McAffee's dogs kept terrorizing people on the beach, neighbor poisoned dogs, McAffee hired hitman to torture and kill neighbor.

There were some very disturbing allegations against him --which is why I included his fall from grace and the good or bad.

I would just add some skepticism to the charges only because the police down there can be corrupt and or inept and subject to bribery and so on. I don't know if there has been an independent international inquiry into the matter.

Anyway, I think it's sad to see people when they throw away all the earned achievements in such a debauched way.

> I would just add some skepticism to the charges only because the police down there can be corrupt and or inept and subject to bribery and so on. I don't know if there has been an independent international inquiry into the matter.

A US federal judge found him culpable for a murder civilly.

A US federal judge finding anything adds no validity to the claim.

Why not?

Not OP, but due to the low quality of judicial product lately

Unless it was uncorrelated, it would still be some evidence, yeah?

Because when people say "Innocent until proven guilty", what they actually mean is "nothing will change my mind."

> A US federal judge found him culpable for a murder civilly

False. A US federal judge entered a default judgement against him in a wrongful death suit. Murder is not a civil offense, the standards for civil wrongful death are not remotely the same as murder, and wrongful death liability (even based on a trial and evidence) doesn't indicate that one has even approximately committed murder. And, in any case the judgement was a default judgement because McAfee didn't answer the lawsuit, not a judgement based on evidence.

It establishes civil liability, but does not indicate anything (or even that anyone has reached any judgement) about the relevant facts.

> It establishes civil liability, but does not indicate anything (or even that anyone has reached any judgement) about the relevant facts.

Hence the word culpable, and not guilty.

My point was that the claim was of limited relevance in context, not that it was false.

You immediately call it false in your response.

That he was found culpable is irrelevant. That it was “of murder” is false. The grandparent was focussed on the discussion of culpability in the context of the segment that was quoted in the comment it responded to.

The point is that "murder" and "civil law" don't go together. Murder as a concept is always a criminal law issue.

> wrongful death liability (even based on a trial and evidence) doesn't indicate that one has even approximately committed murder

This is true in general, but not true specifically for this case. A wrongful death case does not need to indicate murder, as wrongful deaths can occur for many reasons. But in this case, the award of the $20 million in punitive damages (damages to punish the defendant, not to compensate the victim) specifically were for the torture and murder, with intentional malice, of Faull.

>the judgement was a default judgement because McAfee didn't answer the lawsuit, not a judgement based on evidence.

No it wasn’t. He didn’t automatically lose because he didn’t show up. The court, specifically the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, allowed the Faull estate to petition for a default judgement due to McAfee’s continued failure to respond and due to the merits of the case presented. They did not, and would not, allow a default judgment on a meritless case.

Pdf of the actual Decision. https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/03/20/mcafee-belize.pdf

If you are rich enough you are eccentric and colorful.

“He's mad?" "Sort of mad. But mad with lots of money." "Ah, then he can’t be mad. I've been around; if a man has lots of money he's just eccentric.”

― Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

great book

Money enables what's already there.

In pecunia veritas.

The obvious point you're making is about a double standard -- rich people are unfairly given more slack than others. But an alternative framing amounts to evaluating a method by its results -- basically saying "I don't know why you're behaving that way, but for reasons I don't understand it seems to work for you." That obviously falls apart if you can cleanly separate their wealth/financial success from their behavior e.g. because they inherited the money.

I was actually referring to the slack given to him for apparent murder and putting the police force on a payroll.

“killing your neighbor, bribing the police and never serving a single day for it? What an eccentric person you are”

That could still be eccentric depending on the situation in which you ended up killing your neighbor?

E.g. he came at me with a fire axe. And I kicked him down the stairs.

McAfee terrorized him with his dogs, he killed McAfeed dogs, McAfee killed him.

Is that in the eccentric free pass list? Can you put the list on GitHub?

Call me eccentric, but intentionally killing a dog is as bad as killing a person.

At what point does killing an animal not really matter? For example, we squash bugs and don't feel bad about it but killing a dog is frowned upon.

This is not a gotcha, I'm genuinely curious.

At least part of it, though definitely not all of it, is that a pet dog is immeasurably valuable to its owner.

Valuable in what sense?

It is interesting to watch dogs being treated like humans, almost like children and that sense of care does not extend to very human neighbours.

I don't get it. Probably because its a cultural thing. Anecdotally, where I am from a dog is a dog and will never get more attention than a person. It's not allowed in the house because that's where people live and if you feel lonely you call up a friend or sibling - not cuddle a dog.

One might get the impression that some cultures place more value in a dog than a person, which is bizzare since it is just an animal.

Western European culture has long placed a lot of value on dogs. The over embrace of dogs over humans recently though as you’re describing, is a sign of our societal collapse. People have gone absolutely bananas over animals and pets in general over the past 20 years. It’s the social upheaval and economic squeezing of the lemons. People are tense and always in fear and panic. So if you’re not very religious, you may find your non-human comforts in your pets. Especially because everyone else around you is also in constant fear and panic. It really started around here on 9/11. And it’s just a constant ramping up ever since.

> The over embrace of dogs over humans recently though as you’re describing, is a sign of our societal collapse

I think you've summed up ,quite succintly, my suspicions about western hegemony. The west is like the Empire in Asimovs Foundation trilogy. Wveryone is too busy looking at their phones to realise everything around them is crumbling.

It's not necessarily cultural, for some people dogs/pets are a substitute for human company and are held in higher esteem, since they don't have some of the negative behaviors humans do (such as dishonesty, etc)

> Valuable in what sense?

Unconditional love is valuable for humans.

Wolves have also a huge positive impact in our economy. If we exclude the humans, the wolf is the animal that had saved more human lives in the history, so is in a special category. Dogs and wolves belong to the same species.

> If we exclude the humans, the wolf is the animal that had saved more human lives in the history

Would you mind elaborating on this point? In what way has the wolf saved uncountable human lives? I've only ever seen it portrayed as a human and livestock predator.

EDIT: I've been reading up on the matter. Historically, the wolf has been associated with disease control, as they tend to remove the weakest, sickest members of a given herd from the genetic pool.

So meat is murder?

Arbitrary (and inconsistent) moral standards. I can’t wrap my head around how the same people who think killing dogs is bad are fine with eating meat from pigs and cows. How do you draw a line? Dogs are more intelligent? Dogs are better pets? Dogs are more fun and loyal?

Objectively, none of this is probably true (except the last).

I don’t think the problem is with the killing of the dog. The problem is with the killing of a pet.

Yeah. It's pretty common for people to regard their pets as members of their family.

The poster you responded to (or should I say ranted at) told you nothing about their beliefs in regards to other animals.

If you kill a cow belonging to a rancher, I think they are going to object, and it's not because they think eating beef is wrong.

Every moral standard is arbitrary if you don't recognize the distinctions being made.

I would agree that someone who intentionally killed a dog and doesn't regret it is a terrible person, but I still think you'd be a terrible person if you subject them to death.

I think so too. At the same time I think I can emphatize with a person that does.

Kind of? What kind of person kills dogs?

I almost had to. A neighbor didn't think leashes or fences applied to his dogs and they cornered neighborhood children on more than one occasion and attacked one of them. The dogs went into another neighbors garage and attempted to attack him. He happened to have a rifle with him and gave them a warning shot. I'm not sure I would have, and I love dogs.

That was definitely a teachable moment for the owner had the dog been shot. It’s always the owners fault of course and not the animal’s but it’s pretty weird how some dogs are that aggressive and terrorize while others are no problem.

> Kind of? What kind of person kills dogs?

The kind against whom the same dogs are used as a terror weapon by a “colorful, eccentric” rich neighbor.

Have you read about Bill Gross and his feud with a neighbor? https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gross-legal-battle-scul...

Or, Rand Paul: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/rand-paul-attacker...

Without specific information, I'd expect that in any similar situation, both parties had reasons for doing what they did, and it escalated because neither of them would back down. Obviously it's not something that only rich people do.

And beforehand without specific information, I would've assumed that Paul was at fault and Gross was not, based on public images and politics. But it was seemingly the opposite.

Belize cops seem to be manning the till quite frequently judging by the case of their ex Governor General’s relative and one of their own

Don't forget about the rape allegations.

The slack has a compounding effect

Like, sure public perception isn't immediately bad when someone is perceived as wealthy

But the immediate and long term consequences are very different whether people went along with it or not

People can have louder and wilder public opinions when they aren't beholden to current/future employment or even advertising dollars

Even convicted people that do not need employment are able to just go back to whatever they were doing. They are not marginalized.

Even before conviction they can pay fines and settlements and make it orders of magnitude more expensive for prosecution to even mount a case

I don't think it has as much to do with wealth as it has to do with how interesting/accomplished the person is, the more slack we give them culturally. The more boring/ordinary a person is, the less slack we give them in western culture. A poor person whose life has interesting or compelling elements to it also seem to get a ton of slack culturally for crimes.

Are you eccentric and colorful because you are rich?

Are you rich because you were eccentric and colorful?

Or just people find you eccentric and colorful just because they look at you now that you are rich?

Guilty until proven innocent?

Well, technically, that can't happen now..

That's a legal standard, not a social or historical one.

It's a logical standard. You can't prove a negative (ie that you didn't do something and thus are innocent), so the burden of proof must always be on those making a claim to show that it is true. While it might not be as dangerous for the gossip column to employ fallacious reasoning as it would be for a court of law, that doesn't stop it from being wrong.

Outside the courtroom everybody makes judgements based on the balance of evidence, because we can’t possibly know enough facts to pass the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard.

"Beyond a reasonable doubt" isn't even the only standard of proof in a courtroom! That's only for criminal cases.

You mean like people judging others on Twitter based on gossip and quotes out of context? Society could do a lot better by imitating the justice system standards a bit more. The system was created that way for important ethical reasons.

It was created that way because of the extreme consequences of criminal conviction. Civil suits, which deal in money or injunctive relief, have a much lower standard of proof. Social opprobrium rightly has a standard lower than that.

It's no longer mere "opprobrium". These days it's losing your career (or at least your current job) and getting incessantly harassed. The calculus has very much changed.

(I'm not claiming that I have a solution for the problem, besides people individually waking up and realizing that it's a bad idea to rush to judgement. No amount of censorship or similar tactics could possibly solve this problem even if our benevolent tech overlords wanted to)

I'd say the standard in civil suits is the lowest ethically possible in judging people. It merely requires the claim to be more likely to be true that not. Below that, you're saying the claim is most likely false based on the evidence, but for reasons of extreme caution you will presume it is true. I certainly agree that happens in social media where the outcome of letting a "guilty" person get away with something is judged to be more unacceptable than the outcome of destroying an innocent person.

1) Lower than preponderance of evidence?

I believe you about it having such a standard (we can call it presence of evidence or presence of suspicion), but not on it being right.

2) Preponderance of evidence makes sense on civil suits because they are kinda inherently simmetrical. Either A loses or B loses. We would probably do better in using the standard of evidence for, say, a traffic violation, in the case of social "lets get this guy fired and try to make sure he never gets a job again" -- might not be enough of a standard, but better

The only standard mentioned in this thread was "beyond a reasonable doubt", to which someone replied that it should absolutely be the standard.

Did you mean to say "social opprobium" (aka, lets get this guy fired and kicked out of places) should have a lower standard of proof than "beyond a reasonable doubt"? Because reading your post I understood that it should be lower then the civil standard (i.e.: "preponderance of evidence")

Which I believe it *has*, but absolutely should not have

To clarify:

What do you think the highest and lowest standards of evidence should be for "social opprobium"?

And what is the maximum damage to ones life that "social opprobium" should ideally entail?

Nothing I said relates to the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard

It's not a logical standard, and you can prove a negative. For example, I can prove that I'm not dead, that there's no elephant in the room with me as I type this, and that my wife is not having sex with someone else right now because I can see her on the couch.

I wish people would stop saying you can't prove a negative. You can prove that you didn't do something by proving something else that logically excludes you doing it--such as being somewhere else at the time.

What about people who can’t prove a negative but truly are innocent? If you can’t guarantee that 100% can prove a negative, then innocent people would be convicted.

Innocent people do get convicted. Some negatives can't be proven, just like some positive assertions can't be proven.

What about people who can't prove a positive but truly are guilty?

In this fuzzy form of what "positive" and "negative" are, there is a symmetry that allows all arguments you have for one "side" to be easily flipped. Each positive is somebody elses negative. Not guilty? Not innocent? With that line of reasong you could not ever prove anything since it's "the negative" of something else.

Mathematical logic has a solution to this though. You may want to check out constructive logic. That's where the statement "you can't prove a negative" is reasonable but has very specific meaning.

In Aristotelian Logic, is said that you can't prove an Universal Negative statement. I guess at some point someone forgot the Universal part and ran with it, creating that misconception.

That's not what I'm talking about. You can't prove an arbitrary negative. Or even more rigorously, just because you can't prove a negative doesn't make the positive true.

You could have programmed a script to make this comment. The elephant might be invisible. That might be your wife's identical twin sister. You can always come up with a more elaborate explanation. You haven't proved your negatives, you've just made it harder to prove the inverse. And while specific examples might be easy, in general this is hard if not impossible to do.

It would be absurd to assume your wife is cheating at every moment where you can't see with your own eyes that she isn't - no the default assumption must be that the claim is false and evidence must be presented to the contrary.

You're confusing logic with epistemology in the context of legal proceedings and life in general. Epistemically, I prove there's no elephant in my room now because elephants can't be invisible, because I would feel it or hear it or smell it, etc. You can posit an endless number of additional premises to show that there may still be an elephant in the room, but you end up in logical paradox where any evidence of the elephant being present is inaccessible. At that point, what does it mean to say "there's an elephant in here with me that is completely undetectable, so lack of detection is not evidence of absence?"

In terms of epistemology, "proof" means reaching sufficient justification for considering a belief to be true, not validity according to an axiomatic system.

yeah but the guy poisoned his dogs right?

Disobeying unjust laws is not cheating.

He tweeted in preceding months and years that if found dead it wouldn't be suicide. He got "whacked" tattooed on his arm to prepare for this situation.

I don't think we can just uncritically accept that it's 100% a suicide

The guy was fucking everybody around all his life. He was crazy af and very smart. And he absolutely hated authority. It would be a beautiful last social hack to make people suspicious of the authorities in his death.

I wouldn't take the claims of suicide at face value when McAfee has literally stated that if he dies of suicide it's probably a setup.

https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/131680121508322509...

https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/120086428376625152...

He died in a Catalan prison, not in US. Even if the US government had really any reason to kill him, sending an agent to prison in a foreign country to fake a suicide, when he was going to get extradited anyway, seems a bit hard to believe.

The other explanation -that the policemen in the Catalan prison were useless enough to let him hang himself without them realizing- seems more plausible.

Tbh, that sounds like something a person would say/tweet to make an eventual suicide look heroic and blame it on others.

Someone who firmly believes that he is always treated unfairly whenever someone poses a threat to him or disagrees. I don't know much about the facts around McAffee's fate and this is admittedly pure speculation. But it fits in very well with a person whose ego apparently was through the roof.

Is "achieved success" vs. notoriety something to consider here? Maybe parameterized w.r.t. time period? (90s vs. now, etc.)

One of his last messages, just a few days ago. It is sad and thoughtful:

There is much sorrow in prison, disguised as hostility.

The sorrow is plainly visible even in the most angry faces.

I'm old and content with food and a bed but for the young prison is a horror - a reflection of the minds of those who conceived them.

https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/140301918407478887...

Also this tweet is interesting.

https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/131680121508322509...

May he rest in peace.

Thats not interesting when its 9 months in advance

Maybe a few weeks

People arent just able to make a perpetual conspiracy indefinitely in the future, or you dont have to entertain people trying to do that

I wont here

He has increasingly depressing messages in an increasingly dimmed outlook and an increasing time in prison

His instagram posted a giant Q after his death.

Call me cynical, but this feels like posthumous trolling.

He deadman switched this? on-brand!

The guys been in prison before and seemed to enjoy it, posted pictures from prison in the dominican republic which is way worse than spanish prison. The guy talked about being content a week ago, "I'm old and content with food and a bed", he felt bad for the young people who were afraid of prison. He was still able to tweet and enjoyed interacting with people.

If you think he killed himself, you don't understand how humans work, plain and simple.

His whole brand was avoiding the US government, with everything else being a perpetual vacation and experience

Its very on brand for him to never reconcile this

> If you think he killed himself, you don't understand how humans work, plain and simple.

Suicide doesn't involve humans working as they should, and anyone who pretends to understand suicide, or understand what motivates people to kill themselves, or believes anyone to be incapable of killing themself, is mistaken. I hope you never find out how mistaken you are.

Unless they’ve attempted it, which many people alive today have. I suspect even more have seriously considered it. But I agree that it is an acutely foreign place relative to the average human experience.

If there's anything I've learned in my life, it's that I don't understand how humans work. Which is why I'm pretty skeptical of your implicit claim that you do know how humans work.

He litteraly got a TATTOO to say he wouldn't never do this. And do you really think he would kill himself without posting a last tweet? He is either still alive and escaped out of jail, or murdered.

Relevant Eric Weinstein tweeted this few minutes ago:

> I have two bits of information about JE that are not public.

> 1) An interchange from McAfee on Epstein.

> 2) Knowledge that Epstein was asking after me in a late email just before he died. I have no idea why. There is no more contact about Epstein than one meeting about 20yrs ago.

> With that said, there now is nothing I know of again on Epstein that is private. There is no benefit to harassing me further. All Epstein information is now public. He crossed my path once. Seemed to know who I was. Interested in GU. That’s it. John and I have no recent contact.

> GU is now public. I have no more information as to its connection to Epstein other than he wanted it taken to Villard house. I’d like to talk to relevant physicists quickly given its role in the story. I give my permission to release any Epstein security video of me. Thanks.

> I’m quite concerned now given John’s 2020 call.

https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/140783396472377344...

Edit: what's with the downvotes?

What is GU?

Geometric Unity, Eric Weinstein's supposed Theory of Everything. It's likely a bunch of nonsense, but the man won't release a paper, so we can't know for sure.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/...

He published a GU paper a few months ago: https://geometricunity.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/Geometric...

(I haven’t read it, I’m not even remotely qualified.)

"*The Author is not a physicist and is no longer an active academician, but is an Entertainer and host of The Portal podcast. This work of entertainment is a draft of work in progress which is the property of the author and thus may not be built upon, renamed, or profited from without express permission of the author."

Well, okay.

The tell tale signs of a quack theory is hiding behind "it's for entertainment" legalese while portraying it as anything but. If only we could collectively agree to not make such an effort at giving these people megaphones.

It's less "legalese" than Eric's open contempt for academic insiders, and tongue-in-cheek rebel spirit (he literally released it on April Fool's Day, on the premise of repurposing the holiday for outsider/heterodox proposals [0]).

[0] https://twitter.com/ericrweinstein/status/979379894978150400

Two mathematical physicists took the time to go through his talk on it and pointed out serious flaws with it, which the author didn't address in his paper and has gone on to ignore.

[1] https://timothynguyen.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/geometric_...

[2] https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/special-epis...

What is with the downvotes? What am I missing that I should know because I don't see anything out of place with this post? (serious question)

If I were to take a guess, it might be because the quoted text comes across as conspiratory and opportunistic. It's not that Weinstein shouldn't be free to post tweets about what he likes. It's just that it had no relevance here.

It's well known that Eric knew Epstein. And he shared screenshots of text messages with McAfee (which McAfee himself sent first).

How's that opportunistic/"It's just that it had no relevance here"?

If it isn't obvious, then I'm not sure what I can add to it. To each his own.

Edit: I realize this can come across as rude. In short, the unproven "mysterious" GU stuff is something he is trying to advertise. McAfee was recently found dead, and it makes the news. The tweet is a weird rambling that somehow manages (tries to?) throw in some more conspiracy and tie it to GU. In any case, bs alarms are ringing. He expects people to care about GU, but I'm not buying it.

Skype? How outdated is his understanding of computer security?

30 years for tax evasion? No wonder he preferred to die.

I mean, you’ll get jail time for severe cases of tax evasion in Germany, too, but it’s a couple of years at max and most of the time it’s on probation.

How do you justify your draconic punishments in the US which is supposed to be a free country?

The sadly honest answer is that we don’t justify it. The people in power like punishing people.

US indeed has draconian punishments. However 30 years is a starting/worst case scenario to encourage a plea bargain.

Plea bargains are horrendous and really should be banned or made extremely rare.

I completely agree, but plea bargains are also the basic mechanism by which the justice system functioned. They represent something like 95% of convictions. If everybody who currently took a plea switched to demanding a trial, we'd need at least twenty times as many judges and juries.

I'm not against that, mind you, I'm just saying that you are proposing a massive sea change in the legal system. Everything about the recommended sentencing to basic questions like "what incentives can we offer to flip on someone" would need to be completely rethought.

Given the US imprisons its citizens at nearly ten times the rate that Germany does, has hugely unpredictable outcomes to civil suits, and clearly has serious problems with reliability of convictions in criminal cases, the question shouldn't be whether the US should have radical changes to its legal system, but how to achieve it.

Germans also tend to be more stable and commit less crimes than the USA, the crime rate here is also very high compared to Germany, including white collar crime. However, yeah our industrial prison complex system is extremely backward and should concentrate much more on rehabilitation and making sure that it's a (relatively) safe environment with things like 100% camera coverage since prison violence and rape are such a common thing.

I agree to an extend. However plea bargains can also be a valuable tool for getting to higher ups that actually make difference in some crimes. That's why they will try to flip low end lieutenants in racketeering to nail the big guys.

You're not free to not pay your taxes

(take that as an abstract comment, I have no view or knowledge on McAfee and his personal tax affairs)

Many countries largely limit things to taking your assets rather than locking you up, especially in cases like McAffees where I don't think he committed fraud, just refused to do his tax returns.

There's an underlying element of basic cooperation there -- you will actually surrender the assets, eg, instead of putting it all into cryptocurrency then sailing into international waters.

He would never see jail, hadn't even been convicted yet, average jail time is like 15 months in the usa, and he didn't kill himself.

Germany max is 10 years BTW, at least google before you post bullshit.

It’s 5 years. The 10 years are an amendment in cases of organized crime or public servants misusing their power. This exception exists to lock up criminals if no other charges can be proven. https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/ao_1977/__370.html

Germany has more draconic laws than the US in this situation, so I'm not sure what you're talking about.

"Under German law, the maximum term for one count of aggravated tax evasion is 10 years. If an accused is convicted of more than one count, the court can increase the maximum to 15 years."

The US is 5 years for each count, half of Germany's.

Macafee was under accused of multiple crimes, which added up to the headline figure of 30 years.

If he had been German it would have 60 years for those same multiple crimes.

Prison time here in Germany is limited to 15 years at max — independent on the number of crimes. People imprisoned for violent crimes may stay there for their whole life if they pose an ongoing threat to public safety.

- Prison time here in Germany is limited to 15 years at max

- People imprisoned for violent crimes may stay there for their whole life if they pose an ongoing threat to public safety.

So... Germany DOES have a life sentence. Kinda misleading to state it doesn't.

It’s not misleading. The prison term is 15 yrs max. In case of extraordinary violent crimes, the prisoner will be continuously evaluated and - if deemed to be a threat to public safety - hold on custody. Not because of the crime itself, but as a preventive measure. Once the evaluation no longer suggests a threat to public safety, they can leave.

Not sure about Germany, but here in Norway we have prison sentence with a max of 21 years which is a punishment.

However we also have "forvaring", or detention, which is locking someone up to protect the public.

If you're sentenced to "forvaring", you're not let go at the end. Instead a commission will review your case and behavior, and determine if the "forvaring" needs to be extended or not. So while you can't get more than 11 years (IIRC) at a time, the sentence can be extended indefinitely.

The important point is that "forvaring" isn't mean to be a punishment, although I assume it might certainly feel like it. It's meant to protect the public from a dangerous individual.

the penalty is a maximum of 15 years. The is something called "Sicherheitsverwahrung" - meaning "keeping for security (of society)". In that case the criminal served his sentence but is still locked up because he is considered dangerous for society. But because it's officially not a punishment anymore they have to be treated less harshly, with more comfortable cells etc.

He would have been 90 and most likely still suicided. I have no doubt that the german system is much better run and more just that the American system. We've turned it into a private industry and some states even treat prisoners as industrial slaves.

wouldnt it be 15 years, as thats the maximum?

> If he had been German it would have 60 years for those same multiple crimes.

Nope. That's nonsense. Contrary to other countries, prison time isn't added on a per-conviction basis in Germany. There's maximum prison time per crime (in this case: 15 years) and that's that.

Also jail times do not add up in Germany like in the US it seems. If you are guilty of violating several laws you still receive only a single punishment („Tateinheit“). If McAfee has not declared his income tax correctly in three consecutive years this would count as a single violation of the law.

Nope, we don’t add up prison time in Germany for repeating the same or related crimes over and over. On top, the 10/15 years are the maximum and barely reached. E.g. Uli Hoeneß, ex-manager of the soccer club Bayern Munich, got 3.5 years for evasion of ~30m dollar in a total of 7 counts, but could actually leave prison after sth like two years, 1.5 of which where „open jail time“, so he could go to work and only had to sleep in jail.

> Nope, we don’t add up prison time in Germany for repeating the same or related crimes over and over. On top, the 10/15 years are the maximum and barely reached.

The USA is similar, sentences are often served concurrently meaning the headline numbers don’t get added up. Headlines reflect the absolute maximum penalties but there’s something called the Sentencing Guidelines that is used to set the actual length of the sentences and whether they are concurrent. https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/introducing-guidelines-app

> but there’s something called the Sentencing Guideline

But which are, as the name suggests, “more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules.”

Still, a better measure of likely sentence than naively adding up statutory maxima for individual counts.

I think the Feds were after him pretty hard, they are rather vindictive and take his types of statements personally and that they encourage others to try and beat the system as well. Rarely is it only "the crime". Political ambition and Puritanical outlooks on morality often figure in with federal prosecutors.

> Political ambition and Puritanical outlooks on morality often figure in with federal prosecutors.

Perhaps, but prosecutors don’t unilaterally set sentences, and neither of those are either guidelines factors or things that you can cite to get a trial court to depart from (and an appeals court to uphold departure from) the guidelines.

Interestingly, I’ve just listened to Kahneman’s “Noise”, which features a whole chapter about Sentencing Guidelines in the US! Very good book!

Are you holding that up as an example of a functional justice system?

Because that strikes me as more dysfunctional, where people are getting preferential treatment because they're part of the German footie machine.

The example is just the one that’s most well known in Germany, but almost 4 years for tax evasion is in fact a high sentence and far from preferential treatment, taking into account that Hoeneß turned himself in voluntarily which was, due to mistakes of his lawyers, not accounted for in court. Better tax lawyers could have probably prevented jail time all together in such a scenario. „Open jail“ is the usual way to go for confessed and remorseful, non-violent prisoners with a job and a stable social environment. He paid roughly 50m dollars on top of that, btw.

But why do you chose this example? It’s not realistic at all. Maybe if John was German and also involved in German football. But as German business man he would have sentenced to 10 years.

As I said, it’s a well known case. But it seems like you can show proof of “regular” German business men or women who were punished much harder? Would you be so kind to drop some names and links?

> Uli Hoeneß

That would be an example for someone punished lightly. If you and I did this it would be near maximum possible. Some people are more equal.

This is simply not true.

You and me would be smart enough to hire lawyers that can file a proper „Selbstanzeige“ according to §371 Abgabenordnung, which would prevent us from going to jail altogether ;-)

What? It says right there "more than one count, the court can increase the maximum to 15 years." It doesn't say per count. If you're convicted of more than one (up to infinity) the maximum is 15 years.

You literally quote "maximum to 15 years" and say that's worse than 30 years?

The US loves it jails and they love making examples out of people unless of course you're a corporation or a politician. Then you're allowed to evade taxes, insider trading, and anything else that is considered a death sentence for everyone else.

Actually we don't but as a society since it's only like 3% of the population we don't pay much attention to it so neither do politicians.

My understanding was the IRS will give you a chance to pay back your taxes with penalties, and they only criminally charge people as a last resort. Is that not the case? Or perhaps only for people who aren't being egregious with their evasion.

Livestreaming your cryptocurrency-fueled presidential bid while living on a houseboat in international waters to evade arrest may qualify as "being egregious".

Right, I don't think they tend to imprison people who accidentally mess up their taxes or fail to report some income to save some money. I think it's typically the very egregious offenders who get jail time.

Egregious with their evasion for lots of money and then running off to foreign lands to evade.

When the catch up to you, you are going away for a long time.

Prison time for tax evasion is extremely rare in the US. Almost always the IRS just collects the penalty and moves on. The only real exceptions are either for criminals with a lot of other charges stacked up (eg mob bosses). Or a public figure making a political statement like Wesley Snipes.

Not saying this is good or bad. Just saying it’s how it is. Joe Sixpack who fails to report some cash income will almost certainly never see a jail cell.

Selective enforcement is bad. The fact that the law says that you could go to prison for one year for not filing taxes on time, but that it's rarely enforced means that they should fix the law.

Using it only on "bad guys" is a recipe for the government punishing people that disagrees with them.

>Using it only on "bad guys" is a recipe for the government punishing people that disagrees with them.

Indeed that's exactly how it is being used if it's true that they throw the book at public figures for making political statements like Wesley Snipes.

Don't you also go to jail if you can't pay them?

Maybe possible? But generally in that case when there was no fraud, you just get a bankruptcy-resistant lien that follows you to your grave, and whatever enforcement actions accompany liens. Generally again, absent fraud, they'll work out a high-interest installment plan.

The tax code is too confusing and subjective to send everyone who makes a mistake to prison.

Jail is for people who actively dodge taxes, not someone who submitted their taxes a few days late.

That also sounds like a problem.

I believe selective enforcement is a core part of policing in the US. No police agency has enough resources to go after everybody who breaks the law, so they make examples of high profile defendants to deter others.

One of two things is true. Either they believe everyone should be doing 30 years (preposterous) or they know they are committing a grave injustice against someone.

There is no reasonable interpretation of selective enforcement.

Thats not how the law works. It's not code, its run by people for people.

I've heard this from multiple people explaining stuff to me -- they were all Americans.

Where are you from? If it's from continental Europe, I wonder if that's the difference. We get our laws from English Common Law instead of civil law (except Louisiana).

Can we get a brit in here to see what their conception of the law is?

How courts interpret legislation and precedent differs a lot between common and civil law jurisdictions, but that's got nothing to do with how policing operates. Police everywhere can choose not to take action unless you're talking about a zero-tolerance society with Stasi-like levels of monitoring.

"Selecting policing" is just "discretion", that particular phrase is possibly US-centric but the concept itself isn't.

I would imagine how likely courts are to convict has to impact that discretion for any police force that's judged based on some sort of metric.

Or is the US the only place that really does that?

I'm sure every police force takes that into account along with other factors, there are always laws that become outdated and are arrested for less, prosecuted less and convicted of less over time. And in common law jurisdictions precedent can impact the scope of existing law and change how police will enforce it.

I'm not American.

I misread as “the” people and was confused. Sad.

.... or crimes occur on a continuum of "technically bad" and "omfg bad", and all instances are not identical. Nothing about your dichotomy seems true in all cases, even if it is sometimes (maybe even often) obviously true.

Punishing someone more than they deserve in order to communicate a point to others, strikes me as a kind of political agenda, not justice.

The law is a political institution

“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

Focus on ‘unusual’. All the words in this document have a meaning.

I don't think its selective enforcement so much as different crimes that can appear superficially to fit the same facts.

Filing late because you made a mistake will cost you interest plus possibly a penalty relating to the amount. Tax evasion is a crime which can lead to jail time. The system will decide which one fits better based on your behavior, including how cooperative you are when they investigate it.

Just like if you hit someone in the head and they die. Maybe you will get charged with murder or maybe they will believe it is an accident. There's really no way to remove these human factors from the justice system.

> which is supposed to be a free country

A common misconception. The United States takes the constitution seriously, but doesn’t even rank in the top 15 countries according to most freedom indexes.

Depends what you value. You have to really look at what the freedom indices are using to rank countries.

exactly.

Popehat has an excellent article about this sort of thing. It’s really quite good.

https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...

The tldr is that the maximum sentence of all the crimes added up has very little to do with what most people would actually face.

Not just that but as a US citizen even if you aren't living in the US anymore you still have to pay US taxes. The 2014-2018 income taxes he owed were while staying abroad. The US forces you to renounce your citizenship to get out of paying taxes to a country you don't live in. IANAL but that's my understanding.

And when you renounce your citizenship they tax your existing wealth.

Yeah I really never understood this, but they do mitigate it a bit as you can write off foreign taxes as a "cost" and greatly reduce your tax rate

> The US forces you to renounce your citizenship to get out of paying taxes to a country you don't live in.

Which you can't even do for the last year+, since all the embassies are closed to renunciations indefinitely.

Even more, a court may say that you're still US citizen even if you renounced, for the only purpose of being able to prosecute you.

If haven't noticed by the number of responses your comment has engendered, speaking in absolutes can come across as trolling. "You" don't justify anything; you live and affect the system you are born into. The united states are not united in what is desired from the "justice" system.

the U.S. legal system is designed to ensure even innocent people plead guilty, it does this by coercing its victims with cruel punishments but then say "but if you just sign here and admit you did it we will agree to these much much lesser punishment"

What does 'free country' even mean?

As a counterpoint, Germany uses fines much, much more as a punishment than the US, which can easily be seen as a regressive punishment – it is a punishment which is much worse for the poor than it is for the rich. Meanwhile prison is something both the poor and the rich want to avoid equally.

Fines in Germany usually follow the "Tagessatz", which is the income of a day, as calculated based on your tax records (and other information). So you might be sentenced to pay 90 'daily incomes', which hits a poor person as badly as it does hit a rich person.

Also note that there is a minimum amount of income that you always will be granted access to ('Pfändungsfreigrenze'), so a fine will not make you die from hunger nor make you homeless.

True in principle, but afaik the income is usually estimated (it is not measured precisely) a lot lower than its true value for wealthy persons. Still a better idea better than fixed fine amounts, of course.

people scraping on their salary are hit very hard by fines defined by "Tagessätze". But once someone is "poor enough" to hit the limit or anyway living on welfare they are very ineffective.

Prison is far worse for the poor than it is for the rich. And the poor are far more likely to end up in prison over the most ridiculous crap in the US. In practice, the US's justice system is far worse for everybody but the rich.

fines in germany are completely ineffective against criminals on welfare. (and that's a problem)

That's not true for criminal offenses at least. You have to pay them or you go to jail. If you're on welfare and have 400€ to live on they generally expect you to pay 100€ a month. From what remains you have to pay everything but rent, so energy, Internet, and other fixed costs you might have as well as food. I wouldn't be surprised if this actuajly forced a lot of people into crime just to not go hungry.

Lol, free country. Also the country with the highest per capita imprisonment.

I'm in the US. It's purely Orwellian double speak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irwin_Schiff

Not only did he die in prison, but he was banned from selling his books.

Don't forget that he ran for President as well, claiming to clean out the corruption in government with the information he had collected. Other politicians don't pay taxes and they aren't arrested.

He didn't want to end up like Julian Assange. Just speculation.

Probably knew he would be watched much more carefully in the USA and had been biding his time and when he got the final notice decided that death was better than the American penal system and at his age that's probably true.

Spain might have been his last chance. If he knew he was toast suicide might be the best option. I know if I was facing such an almost guaranteed conviction, rather than spend 30 years (or most likely much less) in prison I would just count it a win ( he had led a life on his own terms for the most part) and do the same.

What a strange life he lived. I'm not going to make a value judgement about whether or not he was a 'good' person, but I do applaud the fact that he dared to deviate from the norm.

"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."

-- Hunter S Thompson

RIP

That Thompson quote really resonates with me, thanks for sharing.

Read the whole book, then if you haven't already (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas). Truly excellent.

Far from excellent imo. Repetitive and disinteresting in tone and topics(drugs.) Ok if you're a teenager.

I second the recommendation. I loved the book, though (to be honest) I did read it when I was pretty young.

It's not just about taking drugs, though plenty of drugs are taken. It's an outsider's look at just how weird society is. It's also absolutely hilarious.. but fully appreciating the humor may require experience with drugs.

This is the rare case when watching the movie is an acceptable substitute. Johnny Depp studied HST for months to get it right.

The Rum Diary by Hunter Thompson was also absorbing.

Taking hard drugs can lead to deviant behavior, so I am not sure if people should be applauded for it.

That seems to imply that he lived a deviant life because he took drugs, rather than the other way around. This is precisely the type of judgement that the parent wanted to avoid. :)

Drugs destroyed his life, and it wasn't glorious. I'm not sure what else there is to say

He lived a wealthy and colorful life full of ups and downs. I wouldn't want it for myself, but it probably worked out okay for him.

We're all monkeys on a space rock. I think it's good we have such variety.

> it probably worked out okay for him.

He just committed suicide.

And if you don’t believe he did I’m not sure that makes a case for it working out okay for him either.

or did he take drugs bc his life was shit? why did you decide to establish this direction of causality?

Maybe most reasonably experienced adults know that drugs screw your life up.

That sounds like the opposite of survivorship bias. You don't hear about the ones that didn't screw their lives up.

Yeah. I don't see them either. There are probably very well-organized people out there with a crack habit. The ones I see are the dead-eyed fuckups on the street spreading misery to themselves and their surroundings.

But it cuts both ways. There's a phrase "high-functioning alcoholic", meaning someone who still holds down a job, wears respectable clothes and all that. I grew up with a drunk: "high-functioning alcoholic" just means the worms are well concealed inside the can.

The ones that don't screw their lives up pull back considerably and realize quickly how dangerous drugs are.

Especially at high doses for long periods of time, which is how Hunter S. Thompson got his name.

This assumes that drug abuse / addiciton is rational, which it almost certainly is not.

Did you know him personally to be able to make that judgement. To me it sounds like lying on his taxes destroyed his life, or to be more charitable to him, the government destroyed his life

So can being rich enough that no-one can check your behaviour.

He’s a murderer and fraudster. You do not in fact have to applaud him for anything.

and allegedly a rapist

Just like many of our founding fathers!

At least one of those rape accusations was made on camera, by Allison Adonizio. It's not a fuzzy Twitter rumor thing. She accuses him of drugging and raping her.

Not saying it did or didn't happen but plenty of people has been accused not only on Twitter but also on TV for things they never did.

He was convicted neither of rape nor of murder (though he was apparently found culpable for the murder by a US federal judge in a wrongful death suit). I believe he is guilty of both, as is my right; you might disagree, as is your right.

My point is only that I refuse to judge people just because someone has said it in a specific medium. (Generally I try not to judge people much at all.)

I have dear friends that have been tarred and feathered by national broadcasters and I am supposedly one of the victims as are many of my closest friends and I can't relate to the story at all :-/

You are free to use your own experiences and weightings of circumstance to reach your own conclusions about McAfee. I find the accusations against him to be highly credible.

You can celebrate someone's accomplishments without condoning their sins. I applaud lots of little pieces of his life and reject/regret many others.

I agree with you, but I'm pretty sure the age of social media has us in the minority.

I agree with you guys... but this dude's accomplishments are few and purely self-serving.

I feel like there are some obvious problems with celebrating successes without making room for what the person did to achieve that success.

As an example: it would be odd to celebrate Amazon's financial success without mentioning their labor practices. Agree or disagree with them, they are part of how Amazon is able to make money.

If people are more than the worst thing they have ever done, then they are also more than the best thing they ever did. Talking about either in isolation is deceptive.

I agree to a certain extent, but ... if the allegations are true, he murdered his neighbour, raped at least 1 woman, hired a small private army, and was possibly running drugs. For me, that dominates my picture of him, building an anti-virus company seems like a small detail in comparison.

We’ll never know for sure which of the allegations are true, but from what I’ve read/watched, my personal opinion is most seem pretty credible. If they are, I’d find it in poor taste to celebrate much about the man, given how much pain and suffering he’s likely caused.

> possibly running drugs

Didn’t he have a pretty detailed site on “how to smuggle drugs through Central America and get away with it”? I’m pretty sure that was him. Can’t seem to find the site rn though.

> hired a small private army

That one is the most verifiable. He in fact seemed to be proud of that fact.

If he truly is a fraudster, then you cannot really trust is accomplishments as being his own.

Making terrible anti-virus software doesn't make up for murder and rape

> issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the terror group ISIL. you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to them"

https://twitter.com/dril/status/831805955402776576

Guilty until proven innocent?

That's the HN default I think.

This cancel culture thing where a few negative cancels all the good you could have done is really weird.

Voltaire is racist, Washington had slaves, this or that twiteroo said 10 years ago some kind of sorry thing, McAfee killed and frauded.

Look it's all kinda true and all kinda irrelevant. People are more than the 10% of the time they sinned. I sure have sinned, and I sure hope you'll still find me valuable as a human.

If you were a rapist, murderer, and fraudster, I would not find you valuable as a human

There's a big difference between cancelling someone for something offensive they said on Twitter (which I disagree with) and cancelling someone who committed murder and rape.

Big, big difference.

Yes, one heinous act can outweigh all the good someone did. That's why we lock up murderers. That's not "cancel culture", it's every functioning justice system on earth.

Nobody "is" anything. People do things. He did some good things, worth praising. He's also allegedly done some despicable things that we should condemn.

It should be noted that this Hunter S Thompson quote refers to Oscar Zeta Acosta. Acosta made a big difference fighting for the rights of poor and marginalized mexican-americans in east LA. He did something more with his life than just take a lot of drugs and be weird.

> did something more with his life than just take a lot of drugs and be weird.

Not everything about a person is their public image though. Summing up a persons life like that, even if you disagree with his public image, is just inhumane. Did you know him? Did you ever even see him once?

> Did you know him? Did you ever even see him once?

We're going to need to rewrite an awful lot of history if our standards for judging people are "knowing them and seeing them even once"

I think very little history is about passing judgment on historical figures.

I think history is hardly about anything but passing judgment on historical figures.

I'm a determinist- I believe that if I were in an identical environment with an identical brain, I would behave identically. Reading social media, I see a lot of value judgments on people that rub me the wrong way- this person should be hated, that person was evil, etc. Extrapolating from my premise, I feel like those judgments apply to me and it stings a little.

Reading history, I encounter statements about what people did and about what motivated them to do it in a way that is aligned with my deterministic outlook. I never find myself bristling at a historical biography the way I do in, eg., this thread. The author might want me to judge someone, but they don't tell me to do so or even express directly that that is their belief.

I don't think a rule like, "you can't say someone is good/bad if you didn't know them," would result in a change to any history texts I've read, though I expect there are exceptions that I have not seen.

Yeah, sorry, unclear: Not for the author to pass judgment, but the reader.

We would only need to rewrite the bad history books, which are, to be fair to you, an awful lot of them. :)

Historians do document public figures' personal lives all the time. It's a regular part of the research and not at all uncommon.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.al.com/news/2019/02/how-an-...

I briefly met McCafee in this context right before he announced his candidacy. I was using the cowork space to get out of the house. He was there to meet with Kyle, the COO, and what appeared to be potential investors.

Had a conversation with his meth-mouthed bodyguard who started talking about ducking behind me if someone came in with a gun.

At that point I left for the day and didn’t renew my coworking membership. Eventually, what was obvious to me about the place came out. I used it because it was the only coworking option in Auburn-Opelika at the time.

Having been on HN, I figured it was probably what it was. But also accepted I might be wrong…a bias for the sake of using the space perhaps.

Never mind running a con, they were the sort of assholes who didn’t mind putting my life at risk.

FWIW, if HST is to be believed, I think McAfee and Acosta would have gotten along:

Oscar was not into serious street-fighting, but he was hell on wheels in a bar brawl. Any combination of a 250 lb Mexican and LSD-25 is a potentially terminal menace for anything it can reach – but when the alleged Mexican is in fact a profoundly angry Chicano lawyer with no fear at all of anything that walks on less than three legs and a de facto suicidal conviction that he will die at the age of 33 – just like Jesus Christ – you have a serious piece of work on your hands. Especially if the bastard is already 33½ years old with a head full of Sandoz acid, a loaded .357 Magnum in his belt, a hatchet-wielding Chicano bodyguard on his elbow at all times, and a disconcerting habit of projectile vomiting geysers of pure blood off the front porch every 30 or 40 minutes, or whenever his malignant ulcer can't handle any more raw tequila.

— Hunter S. Thompson

Reading this quote made me again think Hunter S Thompson is overrated. It's all like "Woo! this guy SO EXTREME!" Not a patch on Tom Wolfe.

This is true. But he did also do a lot of drugs and he was also weird. See Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas for examples where he was portrayed as Dr. Gonzo.

He did a lot more than that, it's a shame that is what people know him for.

Because I agree but only know of him through Hunter Thompson, I will plug his own book here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobiography_of_a_Brown_Buf... - and give it a read some time.

HST did a lot more than do drugs and be weird, but I wouldn't imagine a computer nerd who clacks on a keyboard to know much about Gonzojournalism or the effects it's had on American culture.

Just a note on a reason you likely got so many downvotes, beyond the tone: the parent was likely referring to McAfee with that remark, not to Thompson.

(and the tone)

should also be noted that Oscar Zeta Acosta disappeared during alleged involvement with drug-runners, and defended groups and people who now-a-days would likely be considered domestic terrorists (like early Brown Beret members before their first dissolution in the early 70s).

...he also protected people from computer viruses.

You win this comment section, there could not be a more appropriate quote for this news.

I came across a Wired article on McAfee from 2012 describing his life in Belize, and it's quite a story. Starting an antibiotic lab, hiring armed guards with automatic weapons, trying to clean up drug crime in a small town, sleeping with 17-year-olds (one of which tried to kill him), pointing a loaded gun to his own head, getting raided by the police and jailed, lots of paranoia, and that's just the highlights. It's worth a read.

https://www.wired.com/2012/12/ff-john-mcafees-last-stand/

thanks for re-sharing, what a great read to recap his crazy-ass life

I always remember by Geography teacher correcting me on my incorrect use of wether instead of whether and explaining that the former meant a castrated ram.

Thanks, I'll remember that.

The way I remember how to write it is that "weather" and "whether" have the same number of letters.

There’s a bunch of wh... words. Wouldn’t you know them by class?

In my language they spell hv...

Hvem, hvad, hvor = who, what, where etc.

That's one of my favorite quotes. I can really relate to it.

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

From McAffee in 2019, "Getting subtle messages from U.S. officials saying, in effect: "We're coming for you McAfee! We're going to kill yourself". I got a tattoo today just in case. If I suicide myself, I didn't. I was whackd. Check my right arm. "

https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/120086428376625152...

Tweet from last week:

"My friends evaporated through fear of association.

I have nothing.

Yet, I regret nothing."

Link to said tweet: https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/140517850671217459...

a great quote -- thanks for this

As cynical as it might seem, there is an alternative possibility: in spite of getting a tattoo saying he would not kill himself, and in spite of posting a tweet saying he would not kill himself, he went ahead and killed himself.

The better questions are, did he deserve to be imprisoned and did he deserve to die?

Why is this downvoted? Was he actually convicted?

He was in jail pending extradition hearings. Extradition was approved today and he was soon to be relocated to the US to stand trial.

> did he deserve to be imprisoned

I mean, that's kinda what happens when you don't pay your taxes and run from the government. He would've gotten a trial if he didn't commit suicide.

> did he deserve to die

No, I don't think anyone deserves to die. But, the most likely case here is he did kill himself, in which case, it's kinda on him.

> No, I don't think anyone deserves to die.

technically, everyone dies... the question should be, did he deserve to be killed, if he was (not saying he was) or did he deserve to think that was his only way out?

> or did he deserve to think that was his only way out?

Hm, "deserve to think"... We're all totally responsible for our own thoughts, aren't we? I mean, who else could be; how could anyone else be?[1]

If McAfee had addled his brain with drugs so as to suffer paranoid-delusional fantasies; or even without drugs, if he had pondered weird conspiracy theories to the extent that he self-induced a persecution complex... Who's to blame for that but he himself; how could one claim that he didn't "deserve" it?

___

[1 -- EDIT]: Besides "long-term brainwash" scenarios, that is. James Bond in a North Korean prison cell, a cowed and battered spouse / child(ren), members of an oppressive cult, shit like that. McAfee was none of those.

You are aware that he was wanted for murder in Belize?

But somewhat ironically that was not what he was imprisoned for.

For anyone wondering: "the Spanish High Court approved of his extradition to the US on tax evasion charges." [which is why he was imprisoned]

It worked for Al Capone.

No, the best outcome would have been a trial with a fair outcome.

But he went down to South America, started making drugs, and got accused of rape and murder. The legal system should assume innocence before trial, though in my personal opinion he was an evil man.

What ecil did he do? Take drugs?

he was wanted for murder in Belize....

I know that. Did he do it, or did he just piss the wrong US "officias". Downvote all you want. This guy clearly did not kill himself

you know his life was basically over right? He was 75 years old . He was going to jail for at least 20 years.

That doesn't make him a murderer or suicidal.

bruh ... who wouldn't be a lil suicidal when they find out they are going to jail for the rest of their life.

But you just said he was 75 years old. That's not a lot of jail time.

Some guys are suicided, others simply decide to change their gender in jail. If you don't see how this works, then I have nothing more to say to you

You got the continent wrong.

I don't have much of an opinion about McAfee, but it bugs me a bit when people who know less than I do have stronger opinions.

> You got the continent wrong.

I'm not the person you replied to, but, do you mean they got the continent wrong because Belize is in Central America, and thus technically North America? Seems like an unnecessary nitpick.

If you thought he mistook Spain to be in South America, then, maybe the guidelines here would be of help. From my own experience, it is better to not assume people know less than you.

Then again, maybe you are referring to something else, in which case it would be nice to know what.

Belize isn't just "technically" North America, and misplacing it in South America is a not a minor nit. It shows a fundamental unfamiliarity with the subject. In my experience, norteamericanos that refer to everything south of the US border as "South America" tend to lump it into a mental box of stereotypes.

I've spent a fair bit of time in Central America, and the people I met there generally took great umbrage at being referred to as "South America".

I honestly fail to see what your point is, and as an argument, it does not impress me much. You went off your way to argue a minor inconsequential detail (yes, given what was discussed, it was inconsequential), and at the same time suggest they were less knowledgeable about the topic (which I might remind you, was not geographical terminology of land regions).

You'll do yourself a favor to not insult people over technical details. The arrogant attitude does not give a good impression. If you wanted to make it known you knew something they didn't, you could have achieved much more with "Belize and Central-America for that matter is considered to be part of North America, and very explicitly not part of South America". There was no need to make a point of someone knowing less, or disparaging their argument that had little to do with this.

In any case, do not mistake my interaction here as some sort of personal investment. I do not care much. Take the advice from a stranger as you will.

You missed the point. Parent has very strong opinions ("evil man"), yet makes statements that expose lack of familiarity with the subject. I'm calling it out.

My desire: People with strong opinions should temper them. Or at least temper them in public. That's all.

If your objection was to him having a too strong opinion, which would be more than welcome, you would be better served by making your argument relevant to that, and not geography trivia. It's a form of ad hominem, of which all forms are annoying.

How exactly does what you pointed out -- "lack of familiarity with the subject" of geography -- constitute a "calling out" of their strong opinions on McAfee's character?

Total fucking non sequitur!

(Even trying it on paints you in an ever worse light. At least in my book, you'd have come out of this a lot better if you'd taken GP's advice and backed off gracefully one or two comments earlier.)

I don't think anyone here is arguing he deserved to die, but he definitely wasn't innocent either.

> did he deserve to die?

Is there a coherent answer to this in the case of suicide?

I feel like we enter a liar's paradox since the entity who decides whether you deserve to die is yourself.

Aaron Swartz?

Whether or not someone deserves to die doesn't seem like much of a question when the cause of death is intentionally self-inflicted.

Those really aren't good questions at all.

He was imprisoned awaiting extradition for tax evasion charges, so guilt wasn't really determined yet. He did flee the US to avoid these charges and has since racked up a considerable trail of charges from foreign governments.

We'll probably never see direct evidence of his death. But suicide is plausible, given his history, I'd certainly believe he'd contemplate suicide when faced with a life in prison.

Which poses the question - if you're absolutely sure you're not going to kill yourself, how could you make sure that everybody knows it and believes it? Is there a way?

Reliable (and potentially even publicly accessible) surveillance. Just livestream every moment of your life and keep logs in multiple locations.

How does that work if you are in prison?

You can't. That's the job of the prison. This is why people get upset when there is a "CCTV malfunction" when high profile prisoners supposedly kill themselves.

Not an option though if you're jailed in Barcelona.

Well, unless you get taken to prison where you will be surveilled, but the surveillance will fail at exactly the moment you committed suicide, mysteriously, and all footage would disappear after a technician makes an innocent mistake while backing it up.

Right, so then obviously in that case there was foul play.

Is that what happened here or are people believing what they want to believe rather than striving to perceive a fact-based reality?

Ehhh, pretty sure he is referring to Epstein.

I believe they are referencing to how Epstein died, which was ruled a "suicide"

"So obviously in that case there was foul play."

Correct, and the events that user described is exactly what happened to Jeffery Epstein, and yet somehow we have no public information about who is responsible, and the official story is suicide.

> obviously in that case there was foul play.

But is it? What kind of foul play - is it prison management hiding the fact they had somebody kill himself on their watch (which is professional incompetence), or the other one?

The Epatein guards were going to talk and suddenly got a sweetheart deal that even avoided prison. There’s still evidence out there somewhere.

Or, non-conspiratorially, surveillance fails all the time, but no one cares or even knows if surveillance fails and there was no reason to go back through the footage.

Put someone in a room and prevent them from sleeping for a few days and I'm pretty sure you could convince anyone to kill themselves. There's no absolute certainty that can ever be provided.

That's murder, not suicide. I think you made a point, but not the one you thought you made

yes true! but the point is also that the mind is malleable, there's no guarantee that anything I say today will be true tomorrow... there are endless circumstances

It is indeed an alternative possiblity, but the possiblity that he was murdered should not be discounted. Murdering those that challenge authority has been happening since the dawn of history and nothing has fundamentally changed. Well other than needing to make it look like a suicide since modern society likes to believe it's enlightened.

McAfee was an obviously unhinged lunatic peddling fringe nonsense. You can make an argument that cryptocurrency poses a threat to the state, but a 75 year old man who spends 16 hours a day rambling on twitter about fringe stuff does not. The available evidence points strongly to a deeply mentally ill guy facing life in prison and killing himself.

"obviously an unhinged lunatic". That's a very strong statement that doesn't add to the discussion other than to trigger fear of association among commenters here. Facts are always better than ad hominem.

I'm not sure ad hominem applies here. Based on the background facts from the article alone "unhinged lunatic" isn't an irrelevant insult on character which ignores the subject matter rather a relevant point of refutation that the guy was truly unhinged and that should legitimately play a strong role in considering his claims. Could you always add more background? Sure, but I think there is more than enough in the article to point to him being genuinely unhinged.

I read the same article as everyone else here and didn't see anything that qualified the label "unhinged lunatic". You should perhaps look up the meaning of ad hominem by the way - it absolutely applies.

> He also launched unsuccessful bids to become the Libertarian Party's candidate for the presidential elections in 2016 and 2020. In 2019 McAfee expressed his disdain for taxes, tweeting that he had not filed tax returns for eight years because "taxation is illegal." In the same year he was briefly detained in the Dominican Republic for allegedly bringing weapons into the country. McAfee never fitted into the mould of what a tech entrepreneur might look like. He was brash, reckless and never far away from the next scandal... McAfee was a visionary, but also hot headed. It was his temperament that got him into trouble throughout his life. In 2012 he was arrested in Guatemala, having been on the run in Belize where police were investigating the death of his neighbour... He will be remembered, rightly, as an important figure in the development of the technology scene of the 1980s and 1990s. But he will also be remembered as a deeply controversial figure, who at times seemed intent in taking a path in life that might lead to trouble.

Hinged people aren't remembered for running between countries with various felony charges across borders because they think taxes are illegal in their home country while simultaneously campaigning for office there. It's not even a matter of if you believe he did or didn't do all of these, that he seemed to constantly find himself in these situations around the world is telling.

> Ad hominem (Latin for 'to the person'), short for argumentum ad hominem, refers to several types of arguments, some but not all of which are fallacious. Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself. This avoids genuine debate by creating a diversion to some irrelevant but often highly charged issue.

Seems to match the understanding I gave in my comment not anything new - "Based on the background facts from the article alone "unhinged lunatic" isn't an irrelevant insult on character which ignores the subject matter rather a relevant point of refutation that the guy was truly unhinged and that should legitimately play a strong role in considering his claims".

But since we're this far with it already might as well add some additional facts to get past why we shouldn't consider his claims at face value since we're both here:

- "McAfee wrote on Twitter that he predicted that the price of one bitcoin would jump to $500,000 within three years, and that "If not, I will eat my own dick on national television." In July 2019, he continued to defend a prediction of $1 million by the end of 2020. In January 2020, however, he stated on Twitter that his previous predictions were simply "A ruse to onboard new users", and that bitcoin had limited potential because it was "an ancient technology"." the guy constantly lied about things he peddled, or at the very least was an inconsistent storyteller.

- He wrote of himself in Belize "My fragile connection with the world of polite society has, without a doubt, been severed,” he wrote. “My attire would rank me among the worst-dressed Tijuana panhandlers. My hygiene is no better. Yesterday, for the first time, I urinated in public, in broad daylight."

- On 11 August 2020, McAfee fabricated a hoax that he was arrested in Norway during the COVID-19 pandemic, after refusing to replace a lace thong with a more effective face mask. McAfee later posted a picture of himself to Twitter with a bruised eye, claiming that it occurred during this arrest.[81] However, the photo of the alleged arrest shows an officer with the German word for "police" on their uniform, so it could not have been an arrest in Norway. The Augsburg Police later confirmed McAfee unsuccessfully attempted to enter Germany on that day, but was not arrested.

- He was known for consuming copious amounts of hard drugs and peddled bath salts for many years. Even a normally well held together person will be erratic, paranoid, and unreliable in that situation.

> It's not even a matter of if you believe he did or didn't do all of these, that he seemed to constantly find himself in these situations around the world is telling.

This makes the false assumption that the system is correct and railing against it is crazy.

> Seems to match the understanding I gave in my comment not anything new

This implies "unhinged" and "lunatic" are used in ways that describe specific and precise conditions rather than as insults, which is, frankly, horseshit.

As for the rest of your comments, they are unrelated, irrelevant, and don't characterize him in a way that is much different from the average American, even if true.

> but a 75 year old man who spends 16 hours a day rambling on twitter about fringe stuff does not

Are we still talking about McAfee here? I am coveted.

Unhinged folks can be murdered by state actors outside the law too...

This is one of those situations which may well just be impossible to unravel in a satisfactory way.

In fact, if you're clever and in intelligence, a good way to cover your tracks and generally be nefarious is to provide a reason for your desired outcome to happen. In other words, do what you can to encourage the unhinged tendencies of your target so that they might actually do it themselves or at least it will seem more plausible that they did.

As a thought experiment I have wondered before what I would do if I suspected the government might want to suicide me.

It's depressing to think that I'd have to have perfect mental health and the appearance of perfect mental health to arise suspicion otherwise my suicide would be written off. This is, of course, literally impossible.

Even assuming I did, almost anything bad that happened to me prior to the murder (losing a loved one, going to prison, being unable to go home, being arrested, stories of how you mistreated your cat) could be used to push for the idea of it being a suicide on mental health grounds. If Snowden were offed tomorrow, for example, there would be a veritable chorus of believed people declaring him mentally unwell whether or not there was any clinical evidence for it.

Any additional "craziness" from my past (& most people have some) adds fuel to the fire. Any evidence that you considered suicide in the past then you're practically a write off.

The fact that even foreshadowing it by saying "I would never commit suicide" would be used as evidence that I'm crazy (because "normal" people don't do that) is truly depressing. I thought this would work but it appears it's too easily dismissed as somethihg only a kook would do because Occam's razor.

Assuming the other evidence can be dealt with quietly (videotape, autopsy, etc), state sanctioned murder of dissidents and whistleblowers this way seems fairly easy. Moreover, if you're a whistleblower or dissident with real mental health issues or god forbid have attempted it before a staged suicide is a very logical way of dealing with you. The public is primed to write it off without a second thought.

Well said. The guy litteraly got a TATTOO to make the point. He honestly didn't kill himself. Especially not without even tweeting one last time.

If he did, I'm sure his wife will know and will confirm this soon.

Narratives are generated out of thin air. The person could have been perfect and they still could make them look like a suicidal lunatic. Any additional help from past circumstances is lubricant, but not necessary.

> Unhinged folks can be murdered by state actors outside the law too...

Yeah, but the thing is the state usually doesn't need to whack them.

Like here: Why would the US have had McAfee killed; what would be gained from it that couldn't just as well be gained from letting him rot in jail, be it in Spain or the US?

And please don't try the old "to silence him / suppress the Secret Truths he knew!". A) The null hypothesis is that there are no such "Secret Truths"; and B) if anything, this "suspicious" death lends more weight, not less, to his deluded ravings. (As witnessed by much of this comment thread.)

> You can make an argument that cryptocurrency poses a threat to the state, but a 75 year old man who spends 16 hours a day rambling on twitter about fringe stuff does not.

Unless they are, e.g., also head of state and government, but that’s not an issue with McAfee, though its not unheard of.

or he was mentally unstable and not being treated for that...

There's a saying, you can't escape death and taxes.

You can escape taxes with death though

Not even then. I think they take back taxes out of your estate.

Not if your estate has more liabilities than assets!

It should absolutely be discounted. There's literally no evidence suggesting he was murdered.

He was about to be extradited, the US Government was well on their way to making an example of him. There was no incentive to murder him.

Also of note - suicide in the US is extremely difficult if you've been identified as someone with intention. You get checked on every 15 minutes, including at night (which can be a torture by itself)

15 minute checks aside, I’m pretty sure every federal prison has enough amount of cameras to keep an eye out from the local central command station…especially in 2021. Still surprised there was no evidence of this sort for Jeffery Epstein.

Doesn't seem that uncommon:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/02/13/jaildeaths/

I'm going to mention that this jail was not in the US. I'm not familiar with jail policies in Spain, and it might be easy.

As far as the US is concerned, you've quoted policy. I'm pretty sure that jails and prisons in the US are supposed to provide medical care, mental health care, food enough for decent health (without having maggots): There are plenty of examples of it not happening. "I didn't know they were suicidal" or "We've been short staffed, and I couldn't check on him" are easy excuses.

I feel like, in the world of outlandish theories, faking his own death is far more likely than a gangland murder.

"There's literally no evidence suggesting he was murdered."

I mean, he did get a tattoo saying if he was found dead while in custody he had been murdered. But do go on...

That’s not how evidence works, my friend.

You gonna back that statement up with some evidence? It's evidence, perhaps not evidence you like or would work well in a court of law, but it's a type of evidence regardless.

What's "evidence"; his tattoo? What is it evidence of?

AFAICS it's evidence either that he was trying to make himself seem a martyr, or that he was just generally unhinged. Both, of course, at the time he got it -- now, around the time of his death, it isn't evidence of anything at all; now it's just a bunch of fading old paint on his arm that has nothing to do with what is happening now.

But that's all it is "evidence" of. Claiming it's relevant in any way or "evidence" of anything else is like reading tealeaves, seeing deep significance in the colour of the getaway car at some bungled heist: "It was green, as in the Green Party the accused is a supporter of! So this was an act of poitically-motivated domestic terrorism! I rest my case!" -- "The defence?" -- "Your honour, my client bought that green 1992 Plymouth Omni at Honest Joe's Great Car Bargains six years ago. It was green at the time, had been ever since it was built, and my client assures me he bought it not because of the colour but because it was the cheapest car on the lot. And the reason he joined in on a plan to commit armed robbery was not political, but because he still drives that 1992 Plymouth Omni that was the cheapest car on the lot six years ago."

Make that "Murdering those that threaten authority".

I consider it an "alternative possiblity" that Epstein hung himself.

Sure. But how many people in high places -- billionaires and top politicians -- had hung out with McAfee, on his yacht possibly sticking their dicks where they shouldn't have stuck them?

Feels much, much more plausible that Epstein was silenced than that McAfee would have been. At least AFAICR I haven't seen any even remotely credible reason why anyone would have needed McAfee silenced.

An unstable personality that hates the US saying the US government would stage a suicide is much more likely to actually kill themselves than your regular run-of-the-mill evil billionaire with powerful enemies saying nothing about how they will die.

I don't think Mcafee really thought things through enough to come to this conclusion.

"I'd never kill myself" is exactly what a suicidal person _would_ say.. Great post.

They even had it tattoo'd on their arm in a cringey fashion to show how down-to-Earth and committed to this plane of existence they were.

That's like 300% sane!

It is also what folks with absolutely no intention of killing themselves would say. Sure, you could parse out situations where they might and you could probably make someone's life so unimaginably miserable that the would eventually turn to it, but these are fringes.

I mean, I haven't done the analysis myself but "I'll tell this story so that if I take the cowardly way out my reputation will still be protected and the conspiracy theorists will keep my legend alive forever" has a > 0% chance of being the motivator here.

He could have killed himself anyway--- that is obvious, but his past statements still need to be taken seriously, and extra care and doubt need to be applied to the reported story.

Do the past statements of a clearly unhinged individual need to be taken seriously?

Unless you are very sure that McAfee was "clearly unhinged individual", it is a strong statement and ad hominem. Doesn't help add to the discussion than mere gossip.

The man said he would eat his own dick on TV[1] if Bitcoin didn't hit $500k in 2020. There are credible reports he paid women to shit in his mouth from a hammock. There is his entire twitter feed. I am very sure McAfee was a "clearly unhinged individual", and if you're not I'd like to know what kind of evidence you need.

[1] http://dickening.com/

We don't have to go any further than the tweet that started this thread: McAfee claimed to be "getting subtle messages" from officials in the American government threatening to kill him.

He was a clearly unhinged individual.

Nice circular logic.

Yes.

So every statement should always be taken seriously? Is there no minimum bar of credibility that should be met?

Credibility is not only about who says it, but at least a bit about what they say, right?

If McAfee said the moon is made of cheese, I’d call that less credible than McAfee saying he’s going to get suicided.

Right, it's about both. "The US government is gonna suicide me" is not a statement I would believe coming from the average person, and given McAfee's statements/claims/drug abuse/tax evasion/etc I would say he had less credibility than the average person.

> his past statements still need to be taken seriously, and extra care and doubt need to be applied to the reported story.

Why? The fact that he had a paranoid fantasy of being murdered by the US government doesn't make it so. I don't have to take extra care with the ramblings of conspiracy theorists with a long history of outright bullshit.

Why? Because the US government has a strong and long documented history of murdering dissidents, especially in south america. Side A is unhindged guy, Side B has a very long rap sheet for murder. McAfees relationship with the intelligence community should be further investigated by private parties, ignoring a rap sheet like that is just as fantastical as conspiracy.

BTW, I realized tone may have been lost...but that was supposed to be a 'McAfee' style rant

>his past statements still need to be taken seriously

Like the one where he promised to eat his own penis?

As they saying goes, they dig their own graves.

True but it is also possible that he was assisnated. People get assisnate all the time for political reasons.

> As cynical as it might seem, there is an alternative possibility: in spite of getting a tattoo saying he would not kill himself, and in spite of posting a tweet saying he would not kill himself, he went ahead and killed himself

In fact, if you have people who will believe you (either becuase of who you are or who your target is), and a beef against someone, and see a confluence of circumstances likely to lead to a place where suicide is your only way out, why wouldn’t you set them up to take the blame if it got to that point (especially if you blamed them for the situation driving in that direction, so you might feel that it was a lie in only peripheral details, but not grand narrative.)

That would have been a very long con since he has been tweeting things like this since 2019.

Well, seeing as 2019 is when he fled the US to avoid prosecution for tax fraud, it's not like it took a lot of foresight to say "hrm, maybe the US government will catch me."

Still that’s quite petty motivation for such a long con.

How is this a long con? It's two years. According to the indictments he was being extradited for, that's _not the longest con John McAfee has been involved in_.

“Such a long con” kind of assumes that McAfee thought if he got caught, it would take this long.

> That would have been a very long con since he has been tweeting things like this since 2019.

He started doing that not long after (or maybe concurrently with) announcing he was on the run from the USG in relation to the specific charges that he was ordered to be extradited to immediately before actually committing suicide.

For some reason I couldn’t help but read this in the voice of the narrator from Arrested Development.

Why would anyone want him dead? I don't think anyone cared about him that much.

This. The guy was just some drug-addled tech industry has been that shilled crypto scams and dodged his taxes. I think all those bathsalts were making him paranoid.

If people had reason to kill him, it would likely be that he knew scandalous information. The public wouldn't really know that people cared about him or what that information was.

I have no idea if McAfee had such knowledge, but "I don't know any reason why someone would kill him" doesn't mean much.

What he knows is immaterial though.

Whatever McAfee would "reveal" would just be his word. Which isn't great. Unless he knows how to obtain evidence of things, what he "knows" is just rambling.

Movies have instilled in us this notion that simply knowing something is good enough. It's not. Let's pretend for a second that McAfee knew that certain public figures were, without a doubt, 100%, Satanic pedophile lizard people or whatever the flavor of the month panic is.

If his only proof of this is that he saw Person X devour a live baby while molesting children in the basement of a pizza parlor, it's kind of meaningless. It's not much better than just saying you know it because you believe it really strongly.

The information he would have to know would be specific to uncover something in a way that people could actually act on that information.

Otherwise, it's like what Bill Murray whispered in my ear after he painted my house last night, "No one will ever believe you".

It's not impossible that his word could provide evidence, he may know where (possibly metaphorical) bodies are buried.

His word alone? No. It would have to be words to the effect that it would tell people where to look for actual evidence.

Yes, that's why I specified he may "know where the bodies are buried."

> It's not impossible that his word could provide evidence, he may know where (possibly metaphorical) bodies are buried.

Yes, and even if not, testimony alone is evidence, even if it doesn't lead to other evidence.

It may or may not be evidence that a trier of fact views as credible or sufficient on its own to meet the applicable standard of proof, but it is evidence.

> he may know where (possibly metaphorical) bodies are buried.

Because founding and running an anti-virus company for a while gets you invited to all the big shots' murder rampages...?

Was he ever even a largish campaign contributor, or anything that might have got him hobnobbing with (people that later turned into) The Powers That Be? I've never heard anything such about him; have you?

I'll repeat myself by saying "I have no idea if McAfee had such knowledge." You just can't say he didn't have some knowledge because you are unaware of any important information or connections he had.

Hasn't "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence" been debunked enough already?

Yes, I can. He was no Epstein; he didn't extortionably frolick around on his yacht with underage girls and politicians, billionaires, and celebrities of science, media, and entertainment. The only commonality McAfee's sad "frolicking" had with Epstein's was that it was on his yacht. But it was with his ex-hooker wife, crew and servants, and Idunno what more-or-less temporary "friends" and other hangers-around he may have picked up. Sure, some of the latter may have been second- or third-rate celebrities in their Latin American or Southern European home countries. Do you think that's the kind of people who have the clout to have someone "whacked" (or even the reputation to need "I snorted bathsalts with John McAfee on his yacht" suppressed)?

I mean, sure, I'm perfectly prepared to believe that he might have had some "whackable" knowledge, after all... As soon as anyone presents even a shred of evidence for that. But as far as we know, he didn't have any inside knowledge that needed to be "silenced". That's the null hypothesis; it's claims to the contrary that need evidence in their favour so as not to be dismissed out of hand.

There was a ruling today approving his extradition to the US. US officials were about to get him and he was facing extremely serious charges. That's a really important bit of context to keep in mind before jumping to ideas that some shadowy "they" had him killed.

Though it is also highly notable that he publicly posted "I'm not going to kill myself, and if I do then I was probably assassinated" before his death.

That was 2 years ago though. A lot in a person's life can change in just 2 years.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27609346

He's also indicated much more recently that any "suicide" wouldn't be such.

Very strange that you are being down voted.

The man has spent most of his life lying and cheating, why would anyone believe him when he says this?

That's also 9 months ago, "before his death" is a bit misleading.

and if he'd posted it yesterday, you'd be saying it's so soon that it's suspicious and he's obviously up to something.

what's the optimal cooldown to post affirmations of life so that you believe they're true?

I guess I discount the words of others pretty strongly, especially when it comes to conspiracy theories.

Instead of trying to look for evidence in someone's tweets, how about we look at the facts on the ground. Such as: was he on suicide watch? Is this jail reliable? Is there a history of conspiracy and/or corruption in this jailhouse?

And then he killed himself to set off moronic conspiracy theories as a final FU to the USA.

Which is more believable, that he was murdered, or that he killed himself to troll people?

Truly the latter. He was not a well-adjusted, grounded individual.

Also, what benefit is there to the US to kill him? They already won. Being able to kill people you have custody of is a weak message compared to "nowhere is safe from us".

They don't want him in the press talking. And it sends a message.

The message was already sent: you can't flee from the IRS once you are a target. Showing you're not afraid to kill enemies isn't nearly as chilling.

Prisoners dont get to talk to press all that much. You are 100% of time under controll. And having him in prison for long sends even better message then maybe-murder-maybe-not.

He was literally tweeting up until a few days ago. What makes you think he'd need the press to "unveil" anything "they" "don't want him talking about"?

No one was paying attention to his tweets. He'd get a lot of attention in an extradition.

What high-level conspiracies was he supposed to have been a party to, that he could have leaked?

They don't want him in the press talking about what exactly? He didn't exactly come across as a guy that would flee to central america to keep decades-long secrets.

He didn't kill himself to troll people, really.

He killed himself to damage the reputation of the US government.

He couldn't escape from imprisonment, and he couldn't do much to harm the government. But he could do this.

It was the most he could do, so (I think) it's what he did.

How would the reputation of the US government be affected? McAfee is not a popular international figure, and he's not a martyr for any kind of cause that people will rally around.

The reputation of the US government will not be affected. But I can imagine that in McAfee's confused mind, it would be.

Everyone here seems to have some inside track on McAffe's mental state. It's so ridiculous presumptuous, when we barely have an understanding of the mental state of those close to us.

So how do you know he wouldn't have killed himself...?

I'm not stating anything with certainty, but he said multiple times over the years that authorities were threatening him with exactly this, a staged suicide, to the point that he even got it tattooed on himself, because he knew the media would push a narrative claiming he was crazy and suicidal. People are going so far as to say that he killed himself to troll people. The lengths people will go to avoid facing the truth that their leaders are sociopathic gangsters is extreme.

Yeah, well... From where I sit it looks more like this: The lengths people will go to, to avoid facing the overwhelmingly probable truth that the old tax-evading murderers on the lam they still for some reason admire are sociopathic gangsters, is extreme.

Really, honestly, seriously. Have you even tried to consider it could be that way around? Occam's razor suggests -- no, it screams! -- that he killed himself:

* People get desperate and kill themselves in some situations. McAfee was in a typical such situation.

* Having killed himself -- or not, as some would have it -- at the moment McAfee is big news. People (such as yourself) are (literally) screeching bloody murder. If there is anything to find, investigative journalists now have lots of incentive to look for it. If he'd just been extradited, probably no one would have cared; there might have been a few short articles noting the fact, and that would be that. Wouldn't it be stupid, then, to kill him since that would only attract all this attention (that you and I are lavishing on it)? How plausible is it that any actor that has the resources to have someone "whacked" is that stupid?

* Lots of people (you possibly among them?) have suggested that he was killed because "they wanted him silenced". I have asked a few what, exactly he is supposed to have had on anyone that would warrant "silencing" him. So far nobody has had any suggestions. Do you?

So, yeah, it does indeed look like some are doing their best to avoid facing the truth: You all who see a conspiracy here.

Do you realize you are ditching a conspiracy with a conspiracy?

Which raises an interesting question: can a conspiracy consist of a single person? How about if that person speaks to himself?

More to your point -- replacing one weakly substantiated theory with another -- there are still degrees of plausibility among unsubstantiated theories.

I have hard time believing this, either that he died or his motive. Tax evasion has one of the most lenient punishments of white collar crimes.

McAfee has shown time and again that he wasn't a reliable or rational person.

He had enough charges lined up (up to 5 years for every count, IIRC) that he would likely be imprisoned for life. Goes without saying but he was also an incredibly paranoid person.

I doubt it. charges tend to run concurrently. If he cooperated and paid what he could, likely he would serve no time.

Yeah, but federal sentencing guidelines are complicated and it's very unlikely he'd serve anything like the possible maximum sentence. Trial probably would have dragged on for a few years and he'd eventually plead to something and serve a couple of years in a minimum security prison.

That said, he was 75, so I guess even a few years could potentially be a life sentence.

He was 75.8 years old at the time of his death and the average life expectancy for a male in the United States is 76.3.

That's not really how that works. The life expectancy of an American male who already attained aged 75 is 11 more years.

> He had enough charges lined up (up to 5 years for every count, IIRC) that he would likely be imprisoned for life

Usually, without aggravating circumstances, federal sentences would run concurrently, though thr multiplicity might push them up within the range permitted. So, lots of nonviolent up to 5 years per count crimes with no particular extreme factors likely adds up to...about 5 years.

Which at his age might still be a sizable fraction of his life, and he wouldn't be the first person to act based on an unrealistic estimate based on what is theoretically possible rather than likely.

Paying taxes is even less painful and he didn’t do that.

Unless McAfee has dirt on you, and getting extradited to the US with serious crimes against him means a high likelihood of him turning state's witness.

He’s not exactly going to appear credible in court.

When I say dirt I don't mean hearsay. I mean physical evidence.

The timing does make me suspicious. I'm generally willing to believe he was "suicided" by some shadowy conspiracy. But if that's what happened, why would they do it on the day his extradition was approved?

If our secret ninja assassins wanted to take him out because he Knew Too Much or whatever, they could do that any old time. Why do it on the day his extradition was approved instead of some random day 6 months ago or something.

On the other hand, it seems much more reasonable that a man whose extradition to the US to face Federal Criminal charges was just approved might suddenly decide to kill himself rather than deal with that.

Unless of course the Secret Ninja Assassins knew that and decided to kill him today to make it look less suspicious. But then we're really getting into the weeds of conspiracy, where any crazy thing we could dream up might have happened.

You literally answered it yourself: you find the suicide more believable today. If you find it more believable today, and their motivation is obscuring the murder, this is the perfect timing actually.

Or they could only get too him in a Spanish prison and they ran out of time.

Wouldn't be unusual for the US. Gitmo is specifically not on US soil to avoid dealing with US laws.

> Gitmo is specifically not on US soil to avoid dealing with US laws.

“Camp Delta at Gitmo is used...” is more accurate here than “Gitmo is specifically not on US soil...”; Johnson v. Eisentrager (1950) was not a motivating factor in securing the lease at Guatanamo Bay (in 1903) but was a factor in siting the temporary (Camp X-Ray) and later permanent (Camp Delta) detention facilities for War on Terror detainees there.

If he got murdered the connection to the extradition hearing to me would be that people are afraid he will talk and they're less confident in their ability to get to him in a US prison than a Spanish one.

His body is probably not even cold yet and the conspiracy theories are piling up. On a Twitter thread, replies range from the usual RIPs to people claiming some dubious connection with Epstein, Clinton etc. Not claiming that you are, but I suspect many will use this as proof of something nefarious. Which it might be, but at least I feel that it is unlikely.

It feels like everything now starts with 'it's a conspiracy' for no reason and somehow everyone has to prove it isn't a conspiracy ... or it is assumed to be.

Once you believe nefarious actors are running things behind the scenes, it's pretty easy to apply that thinking to almost any scenario.

Why kill someone they were about to get legitimately?

Because whatever he says in a trial becomes public record and widely reported on.

Maybe I'm out of the loop, but who cares what he says? He is just a crazy person who dodged taxes.

Unfortunately like Shkreli, Trump, etc., he has amassed an army of angry young extremely online men who hung on his every word, and will now descend on the comments section.

Extremely online men?

I think the HN community has little overlap with the #FreeMcAfee club.

I guess it depends on how you define "little." You can peruse the comments here before they're flagged; it's a lot bigger overlap than any other community I'm in, including some of the worse ones like miniature wargaming or Emacs users.

I mean, they're posting in this thread right now. Maybe it's not a lot of them by percentage, but they're certainly vocal right now.

He's also a liar and a con artist. And he's always been obsessed with being the object of others' obsessions. Like when he would claim to be the zenith of hacking targets, nevermind the fact that he'd been irrelevant for decades.

Did you ever get the impression from him that he was "holding back"?

To my knowledge he never posted something like "I really did kill that guy." He may have still had secrets even though his online life was so loud.

Perhaps, but I doubt those secrets were secrets that "they don't want you to hear". He's never been in a position to get any governmental secrets and, AFAIK, he's not really known to have connections with anyone really important in government (ala Epstein).

It also makes little sense that the US government would kill him before extradition and not after when they have a lot more control over narrative and investigations. Killing him on foreign soil makes everything needlessly harder for the US.

>He's never been in a position to get any governmental secrets and, AFAIK,

Part of his career was at Booz Allen Hamilton, though not for too long. Also he was in a position where corporate or personal secrets may have been accessible, which could also explain why an extradition would lead to action.

You're talking Snowden, right?

I think the GP you replied to meant McAfee. (Snowden was never supposed to have killed anyone, was he?)

No, McAfee worked at Booz Allen Hamilton in the 80's.

Aha... So Snowden only found the clues McAfee planted way back when; McAfee was actually the real whistle-blower all along!

...or not.

TIL; thanks.

I wasn't saying he was, just providing a possible response to the question in the comment I replied to.

It seems like HN is becoming more like Reddit and downvotes now indicate disagreement instead of being used to hide things that don't add to the discussion.

A lot of down voting of perfectly reasonable comments in this thread...

That might just be me, I seem to have attracted the ire of some people on HN recently.

That's perhaps because so many of them, are like virtually all of yours, persisting in pushing "he was killed by the government!" based, as far as I can tell, solely on him saying "I would never commit suicide so if it looks like I did, the government must have done it." Why are we all dismissing that, right? We're dismissing it because we're looking at McAfee's history. The man loved to make grand, conspiratorial statements with absolutely nothing to back them up. Take a walk through his Wikipedia page, and don't go "pfft, Wikipedia" -- I'm talking about the parts with extensive supporting links here. In a very real way, McAfee loved being a troll. No judgement on him (at least for that), but I honestly don't see how anyone can deny it was a huge facet of his later life.

I don't doubt that at the time he said he wouldn't commit suicide, he meant it, but based on other tweets quoted among these comments, he was very clearly in a state of depression brought on by his incarceration -- and, for god's sake, he'd spent most of the last decade as a fugitive. This is a man who went to extreme lengths to avoid being in prison. So when you keep asking, over and over, "What makes you think he would possibly commit suicide to avoid spending the rest of his life in prison," the answer is "literally everything the man had been doing before he was caught."

Or perhaps it's a bunch of people with preconceived notions and reactionary clicking like yourself. I challenge you to find a comment by myself that insists he was murdered. And the comment I was referring to that I said was reasonable was not pushing any particular narrative, but positing a reason why someone might want to murder him. That's not the same as saying he was murdered.

There is so much reactionary outrage online that people accuse you of supporting a belief for simply discussing it even if you didn't push it and haven't committed to it.

HN used to be somewhere where this didn't happen, seems like even HN has succumbed to the eternal september.

Edward Snowden has published a book, appeared on every podcast and talked to every media outlet since the 2013 revelations. He's still alive (granted, in Russia, where he'll probably be stuck forever).

I seriously doubt a drugged-up 75yo who lived outside the US for much of the past 20 years somehow had a hotter scoop on the US government's doings.

Epstein has to be a suicide too then, because Snowden is still alive?

Lots of bigshots did shit they shouldn't have been doing on Epstein's yacht. Is there any credible report that any such figure did any such thing on McAfee's?

In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the theory most likely to be true remains the null hypothesis: He didn't have diddly-squat on anybody.

> Because whatever he says in a trial becomes public record and widely reported on.

I don't think John had any credibility left for that to happen. We will never be 100% sure but I lean %99.99 that he committed suicide. He was not the kind to spent time in jails. Boredom killed this man

October, 2020

I am content in here. I have friends.

The food is good. All is well.

Know that if I hang myself, a la Epstein, it will be no fault of mine.

https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/131680121508322509...

April, 2021

https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/138634987054662041...

> I have been imprisoned in Catalonia nearly 7 months. I speak no Catalan and little Spanish so human contact is limited. There are no entertainments - no escape from loneliness, from emptiness, from myself.

> This has been the most trying period of my life.

Turns out prison sucks after a while.

As for the food, he changed his tune on that, too:

https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/139145553961222553...

> Most prison food in Spain is indistinguishable from rat shit in motor oil. The single exception is potato pie, which is only served on Saturdays.

> Unfortunately today is Sunday.

Yeah, and also he was a pretty damn good troll. No doubt he had a backup plan, and this was probably it.

> Turns out prison sucks after a while.

Sounds like it sucks at the beginning, too.

He never made good on this promise:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7qawy/john-mcafee-no-longer...

Kind of undermines his credibility.

In his last prison interview he said that all his money was gone, his friends had all abandoned him and yet he regretted nothing. Sure sounds like a last statement to me.

And in late 2020: "I am content in here. I have friends. The food is good. All is well. Know that if I hang myself, a la Epstein, it will be no fault of mine."

https://archive.ph/peexn

This. Gonna be grand when he faked his death and paid off a couple prison guards 10+ BTC to escape and shows up elsewhere in a year or two. One can hope, anyway. Plus, he had to get out of eating his own dick.

https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/131680121508322509...

Why would one hope for him to escape justice?

Because it is cruel and unusual to punish someone for hyperbole, severing a mans penis and making them eat it is not justice.

I either responded to the wrong comment, or misinterpreted the one I replied to. I wrote that believing I was responding to a claim that it was a good thing that McAfee evaded arrest in Belize. He certainly shouldn't be made to eat his own genitalia, regardless of what he's done.

I don’t think prisons in Spain work like that.

The more simple explanation would probably be "a person doing this doesn't have a firm grip on reality, and might be a suicide risk"

I have found that "I'll never kill myself. There's always something to live for" is something that is very easy for people who are safe and happy to say, and I pray that these people will always be safe and comfortable enough to not change their mind on this for their own sakes.

When you're sitting in a tiny concrete box and looking at the very distinct possibility of spending the rest of your life in such a box, either metaphorically or, in McAfee's case, literally, the thought process is quite different. Yes, McAfee has had run-ins with the law before, but maybe he figured he wasn't going to get out of this situation so easily, and he didn't have that many more good years left in front of him, concrete box or no.

Thus, I'm willing to accept this as a suicide unless and until compelling evidence otherwise surfaces.

add to that: going through drug withdrawal while trapped in said box

> I have found that "I'll never kill myself. There's always something to live for" is something that is very easy for people who are safe and happy to say, and I pray that these people will always be safe and comfortable enough to not change their mind on this for their own sakes.

Maybe it helps to remember having said it oneself? I mean, if you are so badly off that you contemplate suicide, then everyone else saying "there's always something to live for" may be easier to write off; like, "what do they know of my life?". But if you've used to say so yourself, then sure, you may now think "so obviously I was wrong then"... But still, you're you, so you do know a thing or three about your life, so you may perhaps still hang back and consider "but wait, maybe I'm wrong now, and not back then?".

Maybe. At least feels like it should have a better chance than other saying it. So, hey, let's all remember to repeat this to ourselves now and then, mmkay?

Anyone who believes that IRS or SEC sends a hitman to kill people because they evade taxes or run fraudulent crypto schemes, needs to examine their head.

McAfee was always paranoid. He was not a threat to the man. He also lied a lot and even admitted it many times.

He said he'd eat his dick on live TV if Bitcoin didn't hit $500k by last year (https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/887012614131372032, https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/887039604846714881, https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/887024683379544065) so the track record on predictions... isn't great.

At least he doesn't have to fulfill that promise, albeit late.

Maybe he was joking?

I certainly see no reason to take what he says at face value, but this includes the "I've been suicided!" tweets.

Because twitter seems to be rate limiting access to this tweet ("Something went wrong, try reloading"), here is an archived version

https://web.archive.org/web/20201005231441/https://twitter.c...

McAfee is an interesting person but I believe absolutely nothing that he says.

The trait that carried McAfee furthest was, in hindsight, his incredible talent as a hype man. He effectively created an image as a larger-than-life figure who those in power were afraid of and wished to stop.

I have no trouble believing that people wanted him dead in general. He was credibly accused of both murder and sexual assault[1]. I am sure he was annoying to many officials, but most of the reports of death threats around McAfee were those experienced by the people he disliked.

I think that the simplest and most straightforward explanation is that this tweet (and tattoo) were another promotional stunt for someone trying to get out of the charges against him. It would be another in a long line of claims McAfee made on various topics which had the effect of, however briefly, centering himself in the eye of the public. He wasn't adverse to extreme actions and I have no trouble believing that he would both get that tattoo and decide later to end his own life.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/12/12887124/john-mcafee-rape...

What you have here is someone ruminating on and obsessing over themes of suicide. Sadly that’s exactly the kind of person who goes on to fall victim to that behaviour.

He clearly lost his mind at some point. Late John McAfee != early John McAfee. Heavy drug abuse and alcoholism looks to have played a role.

Giving tons of money to a chronic addict (like he got when he cashed out of his company) can be a death sentence.

Do you have any experience with the stuff you’re making such bold statements about, because I have; and my god did you oversimplify things.

Then perhaps you can provide some clarity rather than alluding to hidden knowledge that you won't show people? Otherwise what the public has to go on would be John McAfee's YT and Twitter.

Tons of money, check Tons of blow, check

It was pretty simple at the time, blow up the nose, money to the hooker, repeat and rinse. It only got complicated when I ran out of money.

I don't think he lost his mind, but rather decided that it was more fun to seek attention than credibility.

Exactly.. the art of not giving a fuck

Seeking attention is an opposite of not giving a fuck.

I think not giving a fuck means not caring to appear respectable in this context.

watch his self-filmed youtube channel and you may change your mind

Mostly towards the end of his life it would appear. I don't recall hearing anything about him prior to 2016 and the run-up in crypto.

He routinely popped up in the news over the last 20 years at least.

I may be wrong but did you somehow miss this:

https://www.wired.com/2012/12/ff-john-mcafees-last-stand/

https://www.amazon.com.au/John-McAfees-Stand-Kindle-Single-e...

Sometimes drug abuse and alcoholism is just an outcome of other problems. I wouldn't be shocked to hear that he had untreated bipolar or something.

Interesting tweet by Kim Dotcom... (fuel for the conspiracy theory):

https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1407805522175094785

“I wan’t to build an anti surveillance phone Kim. With air-gapped cam & mic, open source OS with VM and the most secure crypto wallet. That will piss the mass spying US govt off. Want to help me?”

— John McAfee

Shortly after he was arrested on “tax charges”. RIP John.

Oh look, another conspiracy theory! That didn't take long. Does this one tie John in with Epstein too, like another comment's conspiracy theory does?

To label/dismiss something that might be true (>0%) a "conspiracy theory" doesn't give it justice.

"All conspiracy theories turn out to be true" reverts it to "100% true", then.

Where are we now in the discussion?

Did we make (any) progress?

Such phone already exists: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5

Or in english:

https://nypost.com/2021/06/23/john-mcafee-dies-by-suicide-in...

Another English source:

https://news.yahoo.com/john-mcafee-found-dead-spanish-193256...

Can someone explain why McAfee had decamped to Belize in the first place and started a life on the lam?

Wikipedia is surprisingly sparse here.

Edit - in 2012 he was the prime suspect to the killing of his neighbor as mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27609243

He moved to Belize to "experiment" on herbal medicines to affect the micro-biology of the human body.

Guess Belize are lax on experiments and "labs"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McAfee#After_McAfee_Assoc...

> Can someone explain why McAfee had decamped to Belize in the first place and started a life on the lam?

Drugs.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/09/the-obscure-legal-dr...

someone posted a nice story in a different thread - before he started going really crazy with the lab and stuff, it looks like he first wanted to get away from a couple of pending lawsuits in the States:

"He was already facing a suit from a man who had tripped on his property in New Mexico. Another suit alleged that he was responsible for the death of someone who crashed during a lesson at a flight school McAfee had founded. He figured that if he were out of the country, he'd be less of a target. And he knew that, should he lose a case, it would be harder for the plaintiffs to collect money if he lived overseas." https://www.wired.com/2012/12/ff-john-mcafees-last-stand/

From memory, his nephew had passed in a similar way to the person in the flight. It may be the same case. I don't think he was running away from paying a settlement, I think he was running away from the guilt he felt that he had facilitated his own nephew's death. It was immediately after that that his downhill spiral began.

Wired suggesting it was a financial move is just lowbrow journalism.

McAfee himself said it was a financial move at the time. https://www.fastcompany.com/1615167/plagued-lawsuits-mcafee-...

(You're roughly correct about the circumstances - his nephew was illegally piloting and crashed a plane killing himself and the passenger in McAfee's low-altitude flight program.)

There were serious allegations of murder and serious corruption. I’m conflicted on how to feel about this. Probably would have preferred seeing him convicted or vindicated, definitely not dead.

Watched about 20 minutes of Gringo before I got tired of it and turned it off.

Sounds like a textbook case of what can happen if you take a very bright person and then give them a sudden windfall of success. That is, derangement. He or she doesn't stop being smart and even charismatic and so on.

One question always is: what's the next act? No next act and the propensity to derangement goes up.

> what's the next act?

Very hard question to answer for those who got rich early, , lived fast, but now are out of the game and direction-less.

A lot of pro athletes suffer depression after retirement because of the absence of the daily routine. You have a lifetime of empty hours left to fill. Some are fortunate and have a network of friends and family to provide companionship and support. Others don't and try to fill the void with sex and drugs. But that just conceals the fundamental emptiness. It's still there, and will reveal itself the second you come down.

I choose to remember him like this:

"How To Uninstall McAfee Antivirus" => https://youtu.be/bKgf5PaBzyg

Very NSFW. Very hilarious.

"But the strangest part of knowing McAfee was the time he wanted me to help start an AIDS-free sex club. I still remember how excited he was about his new, brilliant idea. Membership required a fee and an AIDS test. If the test came back negative, you were given a membership card, which you could then take to organized member parties, have lots of casual sex, and not worry about catching the virus."

- My adventures with John McAfee https://www.csoonline.com/article/2616198/my-adventures-with...

Anti-virus in all respects, I guess.

what a legend

Bit of a tangent here:

I notice he stresses the first syllable of his name. Is "McAfee" always pronounced that way, also in England, Ireland and Scotland?

Wikipedia gives the pronunciation as /ˈmækəfiː/, like in the video. Is it reasonable to suppose that if lots of people pronounced the name differently then at least one of them would have edited the Wikipedia article to mention the other pronunciation?

I didn't know him at all, but felt there was something I recognized and understood about what he was saying. If you must burn, burn bright. It looked like a great ride.

This video of him playing piano is what I think he wanted people to know: https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/136205988701080781...

thanks for that video. i found myself so quick to judge, though i know very little about him. but seeing someone play music makes them human again. it seems he did burn bright. some people cant help but push up against the edges of existence. rip.

If you didn’t know, Charles Manson was a sociopath but a talented musician. Not sure if you taste the style but here it is: [0]

[0]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HOTnvPE_LMY

Better quality link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsIGKxvrG0E

What is the “change” he was talking about here?

Tweet from him late last year, Oct 2020:

> I am content in here. I have friends.

> The food is good. All is well.

> Know that if I hang myself, a la Epstein, it will be no fault of mine.

https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/131680121508322509...

Hang on while I go grab my tinfoil hat.

No sarcasm : Just because you're most likely suicidal (and loudly claiming you're not), mentally unstable, cold-turkeyed and deprived of your liberty, doesn't mean that they're not out there to suicide you.

In fact, that would be the perfect cover-up. I'm not saying this is what happened, but I do believe if you're enough of a perceived threat in any shape or form you will be liquidated.

And I absolutely hate Occam's razor being applied to these circumstances.

So did he know/do or say a few things that lit up the radar? Maybe, such as for instance claming to know which person allegedly in his mind killed Epstein. Or simply because he wouldn't shut up or creating a radicalising following.

McAffee ended up doing YOLO to the extreme. Check out the "After McAffee Associates" section.

> In June 2013, McAfee uploaded a parody video titled How to Uninstall McAfee Antivirus onto his YouTube channel. In the video, McAfee criticized McAfee's antivirus software while snorting white powder, and being stroked and undressed by scantily clad women. The video has garnered over 10 million views.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McAfee#After_McAfee_Assoc...

When McAfee was running for president I sent him an email telling him that he should shave his beard, citing that every president since the invention of the safety razor has been clean shaven.

He emailed me back saying he would be the first president since then to win with a beard.

RIP to a real legend

I feel like a lot of people in this thread are forgetting he likely killed his neighbor in 2012 and has been on the run since.

I mean, sure he built some antivirus software a few decades ago, but I don't think he deserves the eulogies he's getting here. He's not tech's Hunter S. Thompson; he's a murderer who spent the last years of his life screwing over people with crypto scams.

The Gringo documentary was damning.

IMDB[0] for those wondering.

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6071534/

The existence itself of that movie demonstrates that many parties had it in for him.

I honestly can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

Much as the existence of The History Channel demonstrates a smear campaign against the third reich, I suppose.

Well we should probably take into account that the programme was made for entertainment purposes and not as evidence as part of a trial. Much in the same way that reality TV is edited to make it more entertaining, this was probably produced in such a way to emphasize outrageous behaviour and the truth would have been less important.

Hard to know how Ancient Aliens on the History channel fits into this.

Documentaries like money?

This is not uncommon when you are both a notorious asshole and wealthy enough to make it a problem for everyone else

> I feel like a lot of people in this thread are forgetting he likely killed his neighbor in 2012 and has been on the run since.

In America, we're supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty. It's a shame it really only takes an accusation.

He was found guilty in civil court in Florida and forced to pay $25M; he never stood trial because he fled.

Also, presumption of innocence applies to the law, not to HN comments.

He wasn’t “found guilty,” it was a default judgement.

One cannot be found guilty in a civil trial.

> we're supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty.

The legal system should presume innocence. It's completely reasonable for people have lower standards for assuming guilt.

In general yes, but it takes on a different form when the person is an eccentric that has very publicly challenged powerful authorities and has been both the source and target of disinformation campaigns.

I enjoyed following the guy's adventures (if/when it didn't involve killing people), but what on earth might attract powerful authorities that would go as far as killing him in a Western jail? He's not Epstein and mostly posted fantasies and various minor scams.

There isn't some unified hive -mind organization that controls "western jails". It could be some particular bloc with an agenda that took him out

He was accused of making bath salts, and he was reported to be involved with prostitutes and much younger women. His reported statements seem to confirm that, not deny that.

I probably won't describe someone as evil for committing victimless crimes. But MPDV is a hard drug that's connected to serious, graphic crimes. I believe he was involved with trafficked women in third-party countries, that's rape. So I easily believe both the murder and rape accusations.

> He was accused of making bath salts, and he was reported to be involved with prostitutes and much younger women. His reported statements seem to confirm that, not deny that.

Open and shut case then. So unattributed "reported" anecdotes on the internet are all it takes these days, huh. No wonder it's so easy to smear and bury people.

Everyone here on HN is so strict about online security and providence and yet assign truth to a story based on anonymous anecdotes.

1) Presumption of innocence applies only in court which McAfee purposefully avoided.

2) He was found guilty in civil court.

3) If he wanted to be judged by American standards he should've perhaps stayed in America.

4) You're acting like accusations of torturing and murdering your (yes actually dead) neighbor happen regularly to random people. Cancel culture, amirite?

"Innocent until proven guilty" is for the courts, who hold sway over one's freedom. It is perfectly acceptable as an individual to go, "yeah, he probably (because I, as an individual, aren't held to a 'reasonable doubt' standard, either) did it" just as it is perfectly acceptable to give some benefit of the doubt.

But as others have already pointed out, a court already found him guilty, and it's moot anyway.

It’s not just a legal standard, it’s a fair minded principled default. If you have information that didn’t make it to trial or that is not legally actionable, you can make up your own mind. If you saw everything the Jury saw and nothing they didn’t see, and still would have voted differently, fine.

Innocent until proven guilty is an admission to your own flaws in judging another person. You can live life without that admission, but they are still present within you.

He was found guilty in a civil suit, and has been actively avoiding a criminal trial.

"Likely" is a fully appropriate term, since all evidence points to that being the case, but (as you say) there has been no trial to subject that thesis to evidence.

"Likely" != "in my opinion"

Civil trials do not determine guilt or innocence

Nor can internet comments deprive people of material rights, so we're in the clear!

If you flee the country to avoid being tried in court, we are just supposed to say "Oh well, guess you are innocent forever"?

The legal standard for guilt in a criminal trial is "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." There is a lot of room between "likely" and that very high standard. It is perfectly consistent to think someone more likely committed a murder than didn't, yet still have a reasonable doubt. So I really don't think there's any shame here.

Court of law has rules on what evidence can be brought in. Courts are not the arbiter of justice, they're a system of justice that has flaws and errors.

Lol he fled his trial. Also people can make up their own mind and people can credibility can him a rapest and a murderer

> I mean, sure he built some antivirus software a few decades ago, but I don't think he deserves the eulogies he's getting here.

Surely having built an antivirus us corroborating evidence of evil intent?

I find it unlikely that the product he created less damage to computers and user productivity than what it protected them from, especially in the last 15 years or do.

The court of public opinion does not operate on the same rules as a court of law.

Most people still believe OJ "did it" even though he was found innocent. In a just judicial system, the accused must be proven guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt", but the general public are not beholden to such stringent requirements. People are allowed to evaluate the available evidence and come to their own conclusions. In the case of John McAfee, that evidence is pretty damning, and he's done nothing to temper its persuasion.

Was he convincted of murder, or are you acting as the judge and jury based on third hand media reports?

It is a very small community where this happened (San Pedro, BZ). I'm all for due process, but it was basically an open secret.

source: my parents live in the town where it happened.

> I’m all for due process, but…

Then you’re not for due process

This is HN, not a criminal court. One can be all for due process, and propose one's opinion here that someone is guilty. "Due process" does not apply here.

He was never tried, because he fled to Guatemala to avoid prosecution, then faked a heart attack to delay his extradition.

Is your assertion that authority figures are to be trusted and fleeing them proves guilt? Is this deference to authority provided to China and Russia as well?

People aren't automatically innocent in the eyes of the public just because they successfully avoid seeing a trial for nearly a decade by fleeing the country they are wanted in. McAfee's behavior surrounding the charges does absolutely nothing to help his perception.

"Innocent until proven guilty" is really only applicable in the context of formal judicial punishment. Absent formal judicial proceedings, it is completely fair for people to draw their own conclusions from the available evidence.

Even when a court of law does come to a conclusion, it does not mean public opinion is required to agree with that finding (i.e. that time OJ Simpson killed a person)

> People aren't automatically innocent in the eyes of the public just because they successfully avoid seeing a trial for nearly a decade by fleeing the country they are wanted in

It's weird how many on HN have this attitude to McAfee, but not to Assange.

I don't think Assange is a fair comparison.

He has influenced the world in much more significant ways.

That is strange, I always saw both figures as being popular among the *ahem* politicized conspiracy theorist crowd that has become so prevalent online in the last 5-6 years.

All these pro/against witch-hunts remind me of Hans Reiser [short] episode. When the Reiser saga was unfolding, there was a lot of support from people that identified with the "nerd" group. I remember reading so many theories on why "he couldn't have done it", how "it is completely normal to remove the passenger sit form your car", or to buy books on how to clean a crime scene...

Not saying I sway one way or another with Assange or McCafee... just that, as in Reiser's case, I am sure there's so much information we don't know that running to make an armchair judgement is most likely bound to get you to the wrong conclusion.

And yet you seem to suggest a particular conclusion and even claim that armchair judgement can lead you to something worse than 50/50 odds.

I've seen plenty of support here that Assange was not guilty of rape but not on the basis "he wasn't legally convicted" rather other reasoning. I.e. the opinion of guilty or not guilty is different but that's not what the line you quoted is talking about, it's just saying the lack of legal conviction is not the same thing as evidence they didn't do the crime (which seems consistent for both McAfee and Assange).

*two people

There was a whole civil case about it in the US. So while that doesn't prove he committed murder beyond a reasonable doubt, it means the preponderance of the evidence suggests he did.

> he likely killed his neighbor

> he's a murderer who spent the last years of his life screwing over people with crypto scams

Well, that escalated quickly.

Credibly accused of rape and multiple murders is the most accurate

Here in America we have something called innocent until proven guilty.

"Innocent until proven guilty" does not mean "Abandon critical thought until a judge tells you otherwise" — this guy caught himself up in crimes literally everywhere he went... and this was after fleeing from a $25m judgement against him.

It seems a bit daft to think "gee, he probably did nothing wrong" simply because of how the American legal system is designed.

> It seems a bit daft to think "gee, he probably did nothing wrong" simply because of how the American legal system is designed.

It's worse than that. People are saying "gee, he probably did nothing wrong" simply because he avoided seeing any trial by fleeing the countries he is wanted in.

It is absurd to apply that to individual, or even social, judgement. We don't actually pretend to be ignorant and blind of a person's probable or apparent misdeeds if they haven't been proven in a court of law, nor should we. If, for instance, I notice a couple small, expensive items go missing each time my cousin visits, I'm not going to say "oh well, better not tell anyone else he's probably a thief and I'd better keep inviting him over and leaving him unattended, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law after all". That'd be silly, and acting that way to such an absolute adherence to that principle would be downright anti-social. If he's later convicted and my family finds out I'd noticed years ago, but not warned them because he hadn't been convicted yet, and so he stole things from them because I didn't warn them, they'd justly be pissed off at me.

Or, what, are we suddenly not allowed to judge people's apparent behavior & deeds as soon as they're criminal, but free to before that? That doesn't make much sense either. But clearly we can form and share judgements about behavior that's not criminal, and that's fine. If it gets too serious, though, then we have to stop unless a conviction occurs? Huh?

You shouldn't discount the possibility that your kid has been stealing from you all along, making things disappear when your cousin visited everytime to throw suspicion on him. ;-)

(Allright, I'm just trying to lighten the mood).

You're absolutely right about this. Future-supervillain children framing others for their crimes must never be discounted when attempting to explain any phenomenon. That's just basic household safety. :-)

I am hoping it's a case of people just being ignorant of his life after exiting the software world. The guy left a pretty horrible path of destruction. Hope his victims have some small amount of closure from this, because they won't be getting it from the legal system anymore.

Folks want to make him out as a nerd/tech hero and pretend all of the downward spiral stuff that he did never happened just to keep their conscience clean.

The sad thing is that our government seems to make a point of screwing with kooks. I don’t care if McAffee owed some taxes - leave the guy alone, he’s obviously unstable, has major problems with drug and alcohol addiction and all they can do is try to bring him even lower. Poor guy had major problems even before the “heroes” of the FBI or the IRS or whatever started screwing with him. Let the poor guy ride off into the sunset for Pete’s sake.

Well sure.

But do it for poor people first. There are a million people without millions suffering from similar treatment in the US.

Thank you for taking the time to reply, I appreciate it. I also agree with you. What I’m emphasizing is that our government prefers to go after weak targets.

Not sure why you are being downvoted, you make a good point.

> I don’t care if McAffee owed some taxes - leave the guy alone, he's obviously unstable

This is ridiculous. Okay so let's leave all the rich people alone who claim they are unstable. McAfee made millions, from what I understand, he paid little taxes on that. That's stupid. I don't care how unstable you are, or how good you are donating your "fair share". You're still not excused from paying your taxes.

Parent poster meant let's not make him look like a loon and hound him relentlessly because of it.

But he was a loon and a thief/tax cheat

Was he? He was accused of not reporting potential cryto gains from talking about some cryptos. But if it didn’t realized any gains, he really didn’t have anything to report.

Article says he didn't file for four years.

You don’t have to file taxes if you make less than $10k…I think that figure rose to $12k in 2020…how can you or the article prove he made more than that each of those 4 years? Always have to keep an ear open to both sides of the discussion!

TIL! I thought federal was required even with no income.

Still, you're probably leaving money on the table if you don't file with no income, especially this last year with all the stimulus.

About whether McAfee could prove no income, I guess he would've had his day in court to show it.

> About whether McAfee could prove no income, I guess he would've had his day in court to show it.

I would say the burden of proof is on the government.

Yes, I could have phrased that differently.

Exactly. Thank you.

Ok but AFAICT the US government didn't make him look like a loon nor did they hound him relentlessly because he was a loon. They hounded him relentlessly to pay his taxes which is easily resolved by paying taxes, something even loons are capable of.

> The US Justice Department alleged that McAfee evaded tax liability by having his income paid into bank accounts and cryptocurrency exchange accounts in the names of nominees. He was also accused of concealing assets, including a yacht and real estate property, also in other people's names.

> In recent years, McAfee repeatedly claimed that there was a plot to get him - however the [Spanish National] court said there was "no revealing evidence" that he was being prosecuted for political or ideological reasons, El Pais reported.

As use hugi said, that's exactly what he was, so why shouldn't we?

I'd bet my entire net worth you've never even met the guy you're so confident you know enough about to drag his name through the mud.

I find it bizarre how many comments are focused on the virtues of the man over tax fraud and how few people are mentioning he's wanted for murder in Belize. And I didn't just skim some articles on it - I believe he killed someone. He's also been accused of rape.

I've never met the guy but when there's evidence he killed someone and another person claiming she was raped by him, it seems like maybe he's not so great?

I'm not claiming otherwise, he may have well been crazy and horrible, but the fact of the matter is that he's a controversial character and controversial characters don't exactly have nothing but truth being spoken about them on the internet.

That's a fair point, and I guess I very poorly incorporated that into my original comment. I just find it so weird we're arguing over ethics of tax fraud when there's reason to believe he's a murderer and a rapist.

That said, he never had a trial for those crimes. The media has lied about stuff before. He seems pretty shady to me but I'm not pretending to have all the facts.

can you link some evidence that he's a murderer? I'm reading up on it now and it doesn't appear he was ever even a suspect in the murder case from the local authorities.

It's been a couple years since I first heard about the story of him being a murderer and I don't remember what my sources were. Googling is slightly harder because this news is coming to the top for search results. If I sent you any articles it would just be from searching online right now (which you could do just as easily as me), so I'm not particularly helpful here.

Sounds like you answered the question as to by people are focusing on the tax fraud rather than murder.

Maybe for you, but not for me. I really don't care about the ethics of tax evasion when we're talking about a suspected murderer. It's like having a debate about how notorious Al Capone was and only talking about his taxes, because nobody could actually prove anything else the guy supposedly did.

I guess Google, Facebook and Apple are stupid then too.

Yes. Yes, they absolutely are, and they should be prosecuted for their tax avoidance. Same with Amazon and all other companies. I, as lone individual tax payer, paid more in taxes in the UK than Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple did, probably combined. That is not okay.

Edit: evasion > avoidance.

There is a big difference between illegal tax evasion and leveraging existing tax code to reduce your taxes as much as possible.

I edited my comment. I meant tax avoidance.

I totally understand that there is legal means of essentially not paying taxes. That still does not make it okay. As I mentioned, I, as a lone tax payer, who made less then £100k, paid more in taxes in FAANG combined in the UK. That FAANG, who made billions. I probably paid more in the UK than FAANG paid in federal taxes (in the US) combined. The fact that Bezos was able to claim tax refunds despite him literally being the richest person in the world and to hear/read people defending him because "he legally did so" is absolutely mind boggling.

Your outrage might be aimed at the wrong people. Consider the law. They’re following it, and you’re saying “we should punish them for following the law”. That’s never going to happen. Ask yourself why the law allows stuff like that to happen in the first place. It should not. It clearly has been cracked, and needs an update.

>As I mentioned, I, as a lone tax payer, who made less then £100k, paid more in taxes in FAANG combined in the UK.

Only true if you think companies shoulder none of the burden of VAT, income tax etc.

So what do you suggest? We move to a feeling-based tax rate? Because I feel Apple should pay $26.55bn in taxes and they have a LOT of money.

There is a massive difference between following poorly written laws correctly and breaking the law.

Yes -- one writes the laws, the other disregards them.

Huh? The government writes the laws, the people elect them. These laws could say "95% maximum tax bracket" (They used to) but they don't. There could be a CEO tax, but there isn't.

Lobbying groups often write the laws, politicians then just put them up for the vote unchanged. At least if we're talking about the US.

> The government writes the laws, the people elect them.

Yes I remember when I still believed this.

Funny thing is this is demonstrably false, as in you can try to study the correlation between voter's opinions and legislation (and find virtually no correlation) and the correlation between opinions of the 1% and legislation (orders of magnitude better correlation).

I mean he certainly could afford some good CPAs to mitigate his tax burden if he wanted to.

Bezos and McAffee paid about the same amount of taxes.

That isn't relevant for two reasons:

1. Tax evasion and tax avoidance are not the same thing.

2. Most people who think McAffee didn't pay enough taxes probably also believe Bezos doesn't pay enough taxes.

Tax avoidance is tax evasion in all ways but legal.

Well yes, but the legality is the most important criteria. Does anyone voluntarily pay more in taxes than they legally have to pay?

I am completely onboard with the position that the rich don't pay enough taxes. I also agree that it is unfair how much control over the political system their money gives them and how that power can be used to add in even more tax breaks. However it is silly to pretend that rich people should pay more in taxes than they are legally required to pay.

Leaked tax returns show Bezos paid $973 million in taxes. I don’t think mcafee ever had that much to his name much less paying taxes at that level. He publicly said he hadn’t filed taxes, blatantly flouting the law. He was also a scammer indicted for cryptocurrency pump and dump schemes that fleeced twitter users.

I see your point... but we do leave the rich people alone. That's why we have individual people who have more money than entire countries.

We do a lot of counter-intuitive things to keep the rich people on board.

We haven't evolved from aristocracy, I'm not sure we can.

The existence of injustice doesn't justify injustice.

It does, by virtue of existing.

Injustice is valid, that is why people appeal against justice and other people appeal for it.

We haven't actually agreed on what justice and injustice mean.

You can't take one part of the dichotomy and ignore the rest.

How many rich people do get charged for tax avoidance? Often times I feel like there's a whole class of rules which mainly exist to punish you if you step out of line. Take for instance gun permits in blue states.

Not saying that he didn't avoid taxes egregiously enough to get caught, just interesting to consider.

Most rich people evade taxes legally, by following the letter of the law but structuring their assets and income in a way that they just happen to owe no taxes.

The IRS are consummate bureaucrats. They don't write the tax code, they just enforce it. They enforce it quite firmly, but if you happen to get a loophole written into the tax code and drive a billion-dollar LLC through it, they aren't going to care.

McAfee made the mistake of open defiance of the tax code, and that's a big no-no. If the government starts letting open defiance slide, everyone will openly defy it, and there won't be a government. That's why they threw the book at him.

Ah, ok. That makes complete sense.

IMO extradition over unpaid taxes is kind of severe. I agree that we should all pay our taxes, but why not just hold him at the gate whenever he happens to fly in the US? Is this really something that requires extradition?

> IMO extradition over unpaid taxes is kind of severe?

He wasn't indicted for unpaid taxes, but for tax evasion, which is a different thing (and securities fraud.)

That's true! My bad. Nonetheless, I think financial crimes really do not deserve extradition, especially for a deranged geriatric. He would have likely came to the US again at some point, I have no idea why this was necessary.

> He would have likely came to the US again at some point,

He announced he waa on the run from the tax investigation before he was criminally indicted for invasion (Jan 2019, the indictment was issued in 2020.) Why do you think he would come back after being indicted?

To be fair, you can't really do that because then that lowly waitress who owes, say, 3 grand because her manager reported her tips will say, "Why do rich people get off?"

And she'd be right.

If you go after anyone, you have to go after everyone in my view. If anything, you should go soft on the low income people rather than the wealthy. But on the federal level, going soft on a famous and wealthy person when you have the exact same evidence is just not something you can do in a rule of law society. Particularly in today's environment. You can do that on a state and local level, but on a federal level the IRS, FBI and the prosecutors would be crucified.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

I've always used this as an excuse for what might be considered being weird (at least that's what my family tells me).

As Hunter Thompson would say, when the going gets weird the weird turn pro.

There are lots of weird and unreasonable people in the world who are not tax cheats, rapists, or murderers. Many of them are wonderful people deserving of praise. McAfee is not.

Reminds me of the movie American Hustle. The government has a choice of going after criminals who badly hurt a lot of people or going after the easily-demonized bit players. Guess which is good for their careers.

The dude was found liable for two people's deaths, and evaded taxes, like... I dunno. He doesn't seem like that great of a guy. He seems like a self-centered reckless narcissist leaving destruction in his wake.

When was he found guilty for the dead neighbor?

Anyways---you don't poison a guy's dogs.

(Yea--I know, I'm suspose to be compassionate over rich dead guys. By rich dead guys, I mean the neighbor who was constantly complaining over John's dogs whom was found dead. As far as today, they had no evidence against John.)

I liked John. I liked he was different than most rich guys. I painfully remember him stating he doesn't pay taxes. I remember wishing he didn't say that in a documentary.

Also the death of his nephew and the passenger of the glider that crashed from the extreme sport he was trying to promote.

"Not like other rich dudes", uhh, we have plenty of other eccentric rich people, like Richard Branson or Elon Musk, etc... I am sure there are plenty more examples out there.

Constantly "complaining" about McAfee's _aggressive_ dogs which had a history of biting and attacking people in the neighborhood.

Yeah, you don't poison a dog. To be clear, they weren't poisoned fatally, they were made sick. Still not okay. McAfee put them down (debates on necessity ensued).

Was he found guilty? No. Because he immediately made a run for the border, crossed illegally into another country. He wasn't found guilty because Belize didn't try him in absentia, not because he faced justice.

A civil suit found him, like OJ, liable for the other guy's death.

> When was he found guilty for the dead neighbor?

> Anyways---you don't poison a guy's dogs.

When was the neighbor found guilty for that?

To be fair he killed a guy so...

Musk's a rich kook and I sure don't see the government screwing with him.

Probably because he pays his taxes and doesnt try to flee to Turkey?

I mean you could ask him but I'm pretty sure he'd say the SEC is out to get him.

You know, the FBI, the IRS... or the family of the guy he most likely had murdered in Belize for poisoning his aggressive dogs? (Not fatally, the guy gave them something that made them sick, McAfee decided to shoot them, and mysteriously, the next day, the guy was found with a bullet in the back of his head, and evidence of electro-torture to the face and genitals.

I agree a more humane approach would have avoided his death probably, but look. He has to pay his taxes like everyone else to pay for all these stimulus, vaccines, medicare, debt interest, foreign invasions the US does all the time.

He could have renunced US citizenship and found something else, could have made money elsewhere. Im in Hong Kong with French citizenship and it s clear if France starts making me pay taxes while im abroad, Ill just find a way out of the citizenship.

No instead he paraded everywhere saying taxes were illegal... idiot.

> The sad thing is that our government seems to make a point of screwing with kooks.

Does it? Or is it just that kooks are likely to commit crimes in ways that result in them getting caught at a higher frequency than non-kooks, especially rich kooks compared to other equally rich people, since rich non-kooks exploit their resources to either structure their misdeeds within the law or arrange means to avoid accountability for their crimes?

Are you being serious? Everyone and their mother has mental health issues.

Im not cool working for the government 4 months/year while rich assholes run off screaming “taxation is theft!” and using personal instability as a defense.

I'm confused by why/how he was arrested in Spain for failing to pay US taxes? Or am I missing something?

It's known as extradition and many countries have extradition treaties with the US https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/US_extra... the details of how it works depends on the particular treaty.

It wasn't the extradition that I was confused by, that I get. It was the arrest. I thought extradition only applied to people who had been arrested in one country for another crime and were then being tried in a different country for a different crime.

I didn't understand that the Spanish police would arrest somebody on an accused crime commited in another country.

https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/131680121508322509...

   I am content in here. I have friends.

   The food is good. All is well.

   Know that if I hang myself, a la Epstein, it will be no fault of mine.

   — John McAfee (@officialmcafee) October 15, 2020

There is a documentary about his time in Belize:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/nov/18/gringo-dangerou...

Didn't he always say he had a bunch of "dirt" that was triggered to release on a coffin switch? Guess we'll find out soon.

Definitely seems like the sort of man that would have a lot of other people's secrets. It would be a shame if he took them to his grave with him.

Interview with Jena Friedman:

https://youtu.be/tfe4Fjf3sds

I only wish it was longer.

Well lucky you! https://youtu.be/i0dhBGZgJnk

Awesome. The man had a wonderful sense of humor.

No black band for McAfee?

He probably deserves it for his tech contributions, but unlikely in this day and age due to the sordid nature of his final few decades

We should make a conscious effort to avoid this thinking. It's way too common for people to dismiss a brilliant man because of a few bad deeds or events that happened surrounding him. Genius is rarely accompanied by butterflies and rainbows. If we expect everyone to be perfect, there will be no one left worth respecting.

Nowadays people put the politics and social sensitivities first, unfortunately even HN crowd which should be way more objective than your average twitter warriors. Unproven accusations against a dead man who can no longer defend himself suddenly become facts.

> It's way too common for people to dismiss a brilliant man because of a few bad deeds

There's a difference between "a few bad deeds" and a few bad decades.

> or events that happened surrounding him.

Yeah, all that stuff just happened to happen around him.

I created an HN poll asking the community their thoughts.

And sadly it has been deleted..

I don't know if it was deleted, as I can still see it, but it was flagged.

Based on the votes , there should not be a black bar (which is probably why there isn't).

Reminder that McAfee was a rapist and murderer who was never brought to answer to his crimes.

I hope there is security footage. If not, I don't like the trend for governments / organizations / powerful people in exacting justice.

Our culture has hit an all-time low (or some may argue ATH?) to adore and idolize a manic degenerate like McAfee, may he Rest In Peace.

Should the title be changed to the more journalistic "died by suicide", or just "died" with suicide left to the article body? "Committed suicide" is generally not the recommended phrasing largely due to associations with criminality - see https://reportingonsuicide.org/recommendations/ as well as https://ethics.journalism.wisc.edu/2018/10/04/a-guide-to-res... and https://www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/June-2018/Why-Suicide-R...

Are the autopsy results in already? If not... no.

It would be good journalistic practice if they would not jump to conclusions too quickly, try to influence the public opinion with (their) assumptions or just try to heat the debate by taking a side too early ("suicide"). We are on Hacker News: The upvoted article usually has a high quality/standard, which is a quite positive thing.

Sad ending of one of the first innovators of the new technology era.

Rest In Peace.

He once offered me 3 BTC to get a tattoo of his face. Genuinely the most interesting person I followed on twitter.

RIP McAfee. You're a testament to the concept in which many intelligent people find a windfall of success but face the dark void of "what now?" While many like you have flamed out into drugs and mental illness, few have made it so public. May the people you so gravely hurt also find peace.

He made it to 75 and had an absolutely insane, wild ride. What a scoundrel and magnificent bastard. RIP.

This is one of the most important tweets made by McAfee: https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/100016379550176870...

Jena Friedman did a great interview with him back in 2018. Kind of a Nathan for You vibe to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfe4Fjf3sds

I am sorry to hear it. May he rest in peace. I never knew him personally, but I really liked his explicit non-conformity.

Strange... I have an emotional disconnect that prevents me from being sad about conventional things. Death of close family members - depressing, but not acutely sad. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I see most of those coming? This bit of news on the other hand...

I felt a sharp crack in my stony facade. Probably has something to do with the psychology behind valuing what John McAfee stood for, and what his demise means for those things valued.

I hear ya...

There was a time when I wouldn't leave home without a 5 1/4-inch, 1.2 MB, write-protected MS-DOS boot floppy with my trusty McAfee anti-virus, SCAN.EXE.

I helped many people with just that.

It was my first contact with shareware too.

Thanks, John.

Serious question: why are so many people here praising John McAfee, even calling him a visionary? I know he started the anti-virus software of the same name, but that alone can hardly be the reason...

Hard to beat "a colorful life until seventy five". Looking forward to the facts, the movie. I don't want to judge. A person can be many things. A hero. A myth. A criminal. I mean, hyphthetically speaking. Many dimensions. But I guess in "our" society, one is judged after a single thing. One dimension. An open ended movie where you have to make up your own mind would be great. RIP

https://elpais-com.translate.goog/economia/2021-06-23/el-fun...

Google translate.

He has lived a very interesting life, to say it mildly. I can think of worse lives to have lived, especially considering how rich he was, how salacious a life he lead with his drug-and-sex filled decades and even killing someone. Ending it via suicide in a Spanish prison seems just about par for the course given the rest of his life.

I remember that time, maybe 5-7 years ago, when he had a car chase with the police, followed by a little shootout. After the police apprehended him, he claimed he had mistaken them for his ex-wife, and also that he was on Xanax (and who knows what else).

One of a kind, that's for sure.

Here's a story of how I'll remember John McAfee: https://www.wired.com/2012/12/ff-john-mcafees-last-stand/

Why hasn’t anyone questioned the order of the presented events? Could he have easily killed himself first, then have been extradited?

It would be a convenient front run story to alter public perceptions — and front running would be the appropriate way to classify the death

What an incredible life.

Annoying antivirus creator, Belizean designer drug producer (and possibly murderer), bitcoin enthusiast, international outlaw, possible creator of the LSJ island drone videos...

I never really interacted with him but I will miss him all the same

Just because someone lived a colorful life does not mean that it is appropriate to inundate the forum with gossip and slander when misfortune befalls him. I believe a little respect is in order. RIP.

Don't know nearly anything about the guy, but as a rule anytime an enemy of a government dies of "suicide" or natural causes and there is no video footage I am suspect. You can buy a security cam and a year of monitoring for a the price of a hamburger. Nowadays a 3 year old can't eat a cookie without there being video footage.

These should be assumed murders until proven otherwise.

If you need a reminder of why, watch this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJujIwtdk8w)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_al-Mabhouh

People in prison are already living under an extreme degree of observation and control. Now you want to deprive them of the last tiny bit of privacy they can hope for and record them 24/7 in their cells?

An interesting point.

I'll clarify. Anyone imprisoned while awaiting trial, should have the right to live stream their imprisonment. An absolute dirt cheap way to safeguard justice.

It is absolute sure way to ensure accused will be threatened with violence if he dont agree with it. And then the public broadcast used to harass him, his familly and used to extract plead guilty just so that it ends.

This guy was just so colourful and full of shit XD

Also, so what if he "died" in jail in Spain. It's a way to go that's in keeping with his life. Everyone dies but not everyone lives.

Why is it when I use the safari share button on my iPhone and select someone to share this article to the URL is swapped for this other nxsttv domain with an article on the same topic?

Somehow that seems exactly like he was always going to die.

Nevertheless, a man is dead. May he Rest In Peace.

Sad that the punishment is so extreme and state of US prisons is so bad that people rather kill them selves than face their charges.

Shouldn't that be a Catalan jail?

No, "Catalan Jail" is only for positive news; for negatives, you have to use Spanish.

Come on! That is the first rule of brainwashing.

They want independence but are not independent (from Spain). Otherwise both is right. "Spain" is the country and "Catalan" the region (within Spain).

I know this is fiction. But I really can see McAfee paying people in the jail and faking his death. Or at least trying.

Another one of my street pharmacist brothers bites the dust. Pour one out for our fallen homie.

All because he dared to be human.

I'm sadder about this than I expected. :-(

He was most likely a drug abusing criminal. But what a special mind to lose.

I honestly forgot he existed. He always seemed more like a mythical character than anything else to me.

Never speak ill of the dead, unless it's the truth.. seems like a final, fatalist drama move. Always with the drama for attention: guns, police, random projects, extreme this or that, vaporware never delivered, moving around a lot like a psychopath.. while light on the getting anything real accomplished other than staying in the media. Sigh.

Considering Mr MacAfee lifestyle and unusual... fetiches... he died older than I expected.

I once actually paid real money to read a short story about his adventures in Belize.

He had a good run.

May he rest in peace. Sometimes is best to realize we are not in a position to judge.

Respect where it's due.

The world would be a better place if more of you were more like him. RIP

Say what you want about him, he lived a life that should inspire a lot of people in today's Instagram world... he did whatever entertained him while not caring what other people thought of him. Something mostly lost these days.

I can't wait for the movie.

This is extremely hard to believe with, you know, John being John.

I'm going to be that guy. He was suicided, probably by some other country that had business they didn't want him sharing with the USA. He was offering to help Cuba use crypto to get around embargo. Who else might he have helped?

RIP John, the world will miss you. You surely lived a full life.

Just like that Epstein guy killed himself

Funny you get downvoted for stating the truth :^)

One man's truth is another man's uncomfortable thought. Can't have that

I doubt anybody in Spain or the US was afraid of what he could say.

So no...not just like it at all.

Surely you are not implying countries don't ever orchestrate such things.

They usually don't without being afraid of what the person can say, no.

McAfee could easily have had plenty of dirt on ton of powerful people. He would have given up all that info for reducing his sentence in the US.

It is not super crazy to think that there would be plenty of people who would have rather see him die vs get extradited to US.

I don’t think so, he was too impulsive to keep his mouth shut

Is there ANY sign this man had ANYTHING? Because...you know...he was talking pretty much about anything and is why he ended up being such a joke.

End of an era. What a shame.

Given his recent history, I suppose he probably tried to break out of jail and failed?

Another reminder that taxation is theft, and sometimes murder.

A flawed genius.

Oh come on HN, where's the black bar at the top of the page?

When is he getting a black bar?

I remember that John McAfee was a strong supporter of prostitution. In one of the Libertarian party debates he said he is the most qualified person to support this issue because he married a prostitute.

McAfee represented the old west styled "good outlaw" stereotype. Sadly, their times has passed away.

Thats awful.

From DeepL:

> McAfee anti-virus founder John McAfee commits suicide in a Barcelona prison

> The antivirus founder was arrested at El Prat airport and was awaiting extradition to the United States for tax evasion.

> The founder of McAfee antivirus, John McAfee, has been found dead this afternoon in his cell in Brians 2 prison, in Sant Esteve de Sesrovires (Barcelona), according to police sources. The Mossos are investigating what happened, and everything points to a suicide, according to the Department of Justice. McAfee was pending extradition to the United States after being arrested by the National Police at El Prat airport.

> McAfee, 75 years old, was being held in Module 1 of the Brians 1 penitentiary center. The prison guards, who found him dead in his cell, and the prison medical services intervened to perform resuscitation maneuvers, according to the Department of Justice, but were unable to save his life.

> The controversial antivirus founder was arrested on October 3, 2020 at the airport of El Prat, when he was about to take a plane to Turkey. The arrest came at the request of the US justice system, which accuses McAfee of evading millions of dollars in taxes from profits allegedly obtained from activities such as cryptocurrency trading. The judge of the Audiencia Nacional José de la Mata ordered his imprisonment, and his extradition to the United States was already planned.

English translation by Google (via archive.is): https://archive.is/pxc4H

Is there currently any information out there as to the cause of his death?

It probably was suicide by hanging himself.

Never followed his story but the translated article on NyPost only mentions his cryptocurrency pump and dump scheme.

Which naturally leads me to the question, why was McAffee pursued for this all the way to Europe but Elon Musk isn't even investigated while millions watched him do the same?

I am not loading this politically at all. I am not from the US and I am mostly apathetic to celebrities. But I am genuinely curious why is it OK for one guy to do it and very illegal for another one doing the same?

Musk was fined 40 million for his stock tweets but I don't think he technically ever engaged in any crypto pump and dump because I don't think he ever actually held (or dumped) any crypto. I assume you have to actually financially benefit from such a scheme to commit some sort of crime. Otherwise you're basically just shitposting about crypto.

Did you miss the "Tesla buys billions of USD in bitcoin" headlines? Along with the "will accept payment in BTC" pump and "never mind, selling" dump?

did they actually dump their bitcoin? If yes I'd agree that it deserves attention but I don't think that's the case. Probably for that reason Elon actually posted in May or whatever that they have not sold their coins.

Unless you can show that he actually mislead users for financial gain I don't think you're going to get authorities involved.

I think he's pumping crypto in order to pump Telsa stock price. If Telsa falls out of the S&P500, it will probably descend into a death spiral.

Musk claims that Telsa never sold any of their bitcoins before the price collapsed when he reversed course on BTC, but who the hell really knows at this point?

Hmm I thought they had but apparently that was just the news being the news. (Although I'll note that Elon has lied on Twitter plenty of times before :) )

Either way, he has certainly gained financially from boosting Tesla's stock, which lying about crypto is part of...

Tesla sold bitcoin before their last quarterly report. They were about to underperform but thankfully their BTC announcement made sure they could dump and then beat earnings instead.

Weirdly, they announced they would no longer accept BTC (on grounds known for years) right after they dumped.

https://www.coindesk.com/tesla-sold-bitcoin-in-q1-for-procee...

This was very easy to find, and makes me question your position that you weren't aware of it.

that sale appears to have taken place before any of the communication, so that can't have been part of any pump&dump scheme either.

Well technically Musk said "Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin" when the policy change was announced. I haven't seen anything where he claims he didn't sell _before_ the change was announced.

I have no idea if he dumped his Bitcoin before announcing the change at Tesla, but misleading a bunch of people while leaving himself a technicality escape hatch would be extremely on brand for him.

Because (according to the allegations) McAfee didn't pay the tax man.

Neither do Musk, Bezos, Soros etc. They just manage to get away with it. I guess McAfee was just not rich enough and didn't have the right tax attorney.

There's a difference between legally paying no taxes despite being rich and illegally paying no taxes. The tax laws need to be reformed, but that's a separate issue.

In Spanish we use two terms, what McAfee presumably did was "evasión"(evasion) which is illegal while what Musk,Bezos, et al. do is "elusión" (avoidance) which is totally legal.

The trick is in knowing how to do Tax Avoidance.

Well, more accurately, the allegation is that he didn't even tell the tax man how much he owed: he never filed, despite being required to file.

The others all file, they just recognize very little income and make sure to recognize enough losses to cover it.

He also said he would eat is own anatomy regarding bitcoin price.. I guess this bet is gonna happen in another dimension.

Doctor, doctor, my anatomy hurts?

Because Elon Musk is significantly more sane and did not actually done very same thing. Having enough sanity to keep you schemes just on the safer side help. He is also not accused of rape and murder both of which make law enforcement look more closely on you in general.

Also, Musk is rich and powerful right now. That alone makes it harder to go after him as he will pay for better justice. McAffee is not that powerful.

Abolishing taxes on movable private property, in favor of a tax on land ownership, would solve this.

No one would be persecuted internationally because they refused to surrender their privacy and property in filing an income tax return and fulfilling the payment obligations imposed on them, respectively. To enforce a land tax is straightforward: you don't pay the tax, you are evicted from the land, and lose your rights over it. Who owns what land is also always known, by virtue of the fact that registry of a land title with the government is a prerequisite of owning land.

Economists also consider it "the perfect tax":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

Simplicity is not for ordinary mortals. How many people did you think can wrap their head around simple taxation rules?

Or just sell bonds like they already do for 10x what they collect in tax revenue. Taxation just lowers the interest rate.

BTC/ETH/etc create public utility (security etc) by controlled inflation without any tax. And no Bitcoin miner will ever show up at your house with guns demanding their fair share.

Tax is an anachronism of notes backed by land or gold. It’s inefficient, expensive, nearly impossible to enforce, and altogether obsolete.

You have a great username. I hope that in the future you’ll avoid promoting solutions that require violence to enforce.

>Or just sell bonds like they already do for 10x what they collect in tax revenue.

Bonds backed what? It's future tax obligations and revenue that creates the demand for the fiat currency the bonds pay interest in, and guarantee that the government will have revenue with which to pay that interest and the principal back, respectively.

>I hope that in the future you’ll avoid promoting solutions that require violence to enforce.

Violence to prevent the misuse of scarce natural resources is not aggression.

Society at large has a legitimate right to govern the usage of scarce natural resources to ensure their socially optimal utilization. Scarce natural resources are not true private property.

That is what makes a tax on scarce natural resource usage, like a land tax, different from a tax on people, like a head tax, or their movable private property, like a wealth, income or sales tax.

This is a good debate to have, so I hope you are willing to have it with an open mind.

> Bonds backed [by] what?

The train has already left the station on that. It is not now and never will be backed by revenues. It’s backed by all the protections and encumbrances of legal tender. Supply and demand. Legal stability and efficiency of governance is a massive demand multiplier for dollar investment. The inefficiencies of taxation reduce demand by far more than the revenues received.

> violence … not aggression

I think you mean that it is justified and necessary. All aggressors believe this about their own actions. It is factual aggression by a neutral viewpoint. But my point is not moral. Land tax is ill-defined, inefficient, and fails dramatically to capture the sum of scarce resources and externalities. We know this because it already exists. If your goal is redistribution, property tax may be appropriate; I’m not sure. If your goal is efficient capital reallocation, property tax is a maybe, but definitely eliminate any tax on transfer or gains.

There are mechanisms to make property tax fair and easy, with zero aggression in enforcement. The key is that the government does not seize property, it only defends property. So, if you hold title by agreement of all parties, former owner, new owner, and jurisdiction, then the government would defend your property rights. Otherwise, it would not. The government may set the price for this service, open to any party. If someone does not pay, they would not be evicted, nor would they lose ownership, but they would lose the legal and physical protection afforded by the government for those assets. Presumably this is valuable enough that most would much rather pay. This would be merely an accessory to the central fund raising mechanism, which is now and always will be bond sales.

>>The train has already left the station on that. It is not now and never will be backed by revenues.

The $6 trillion in tax obligations created each year create massive fundamental demand for USD.

>>It’s backed by all the protections and encumbrances of legal tender.

What protections and encumberances are you referring to?

>>I think you mean that it is justified and necessary. All aggressors believe this about their own actions.

Not all violence is aggression. If the land belongs to the collective, then the collective has a right to access it, and a person asserting individual ownership over a parcel is the aggressor, who is violating the rights of the collective.

>>Land tax is ill-defined, inefficient, and fails dramatically to capture the sum of scarce resources and externalities. We know this because it already exists.

I have no idea what you mean by ill-defined and inefficient. And of course, we shouldn't just be limited to land when taxing scarce natural resources. Land is just the most valuable resource in this category.

> $6T

$1.72/0.6T personal/corp income tax. $1.2T SSI. $8T bond sales (and accelerating).

> violence … the collective has a right

It’s a noble concept, but, “the collective” has never been historically distinguishable from despotism by whoever controls the money that pays the people authorized to do violence on its behalf. It is the nature of power to consolidate.

Any international criminal law expert here?

Why can the US arrest everybody in Europe but the colony of fraudsters living in St.Kitts&Nevis (among them Paul Bilzerian) is untouchable?

Admittedly I haven't looked into this at all, but the likely answer is extradition treaties.

Tax evasion (IRS) is much more serious than a securities crime (SEC). Also, he did go to jail for some time.

We changed the URL from https://elpais.com/economia/2021-06-23/el-fundador-del-antiv... to the most neutral English-language article that was easy to Google.

The new URL is not available from EU

Not available to European readers.

Alternative examples here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57589822

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/23/john-mcafee-...

Thanks to you both for letting me know. Let's go with the BBC link for now. (URL changed from https://www.nbc4i.com/news/u-s-world/john-mcafee-found-dead-...)

big F for my man john mcafee. epsteined in his prime. he will be missed.

McAffee didn't kill himself

Americans murdered him because he refused to help them spy on everyone with his software like other western companies do?

This might be the dumbest McAfee conspiracy theory yet.

He hasn’t run any software since 1994 - if he had any power, it was only secrets held in his mind.

It has not been "his software" for more than a decade now. He sold to Intel in 2010/2011.

Spanish prisons are apparently among the worst in Europe according to some documentary I saw. I wonder if there's a connection.

At least Mcafee said Spanish prisons are like Hilton in comparison to USA ones[1], do you have the documentary name, it’s the one about Norway prisons? Just curious.

[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9718567/amp/Antivir...

Sorry I don't recall. I don't think I ever knew actually. It was just something I came across.

We need a black bar to salute this man.

He'd probably prefer a powdery white line.

RIP John

Check out his instagram

So which kind of suicide is this? A suicide, or a "suicide"?

That's the fun - you decide!

Getting Epstein "suicide" vibes from this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27609146

Q was his last post https://www.instagram.com/officialjohnmcafee/?hl=en

"I am content in here. I have friends. The food is good. All is well. Know that if I hang myself, a la Epstein, it will be no fault of mine." (Tweet by John McAfee) 10/15/20

It may seem odd to some, but I think the world was better off with McAffee alive. I doubt he took his own life. He seems to be the sort of fellow who would in some way enjoy going to court, even if only to have his point of view heard.

Even though he lived a cuestionable life. He was a free man until the end. I respect him for that.

Technically still a free man. No convictions against him as related to the extradition request.

> He was a free man until the end.

He literally died in jail.

Jail is detention before trial, not imprisonment in a penitentiary.

Isn’t the end result the same: you can’t go anywhere? I wouldn’t call that free.

I wouldn't describe being held in custody pending extradition as "being free". YMMV.

Yes and no. It's not like I'd expect him to carry a cyanide pill and just as he's about to be arrested swallows it to be technically correct.

I think this qualifies "dying free" in spirit since his death means objection to remaining in custody.

Just to be clear: We're saying it's admirable to kill yourself rather than face the consequences of your illegal behavior? That's what we're respecting in this thread?

The man was believed to have committed a litany of offenses including attacking other humans but "he was so respectable because he never let them convict him"?

"Bad rich guy kills himself in pathetic attempt to avoid justice" would be my preferred headline personally.

It is still being held captive against ones will.

Either way it’s questionable if he was “free”.

He lived his life the way he wanted and he even decided how to die.

its interesting to read reflections of people locked up. very often they talk of how we are all in our own forms of jail. freedom is a state of mind.

Hold on. I talk like this and I'm a free man with a good job, good friends, and a good life. Sure, it becomes even more apparent when you are in a cage. But it's true, everyone really is in a cage of their own making. Even worse, being in a cage of someone else's making.

Everyone seems to forget that he likely had his neighbor tortured and killed: https://www.theregister.com/2019/03/20/mcafee_25m_lawsuit_ne...

He also raped a business partner.

He's so frequently called "colorful" and "successful". In fact, he was a nutjob who most likely did unspeakable things when he wasn't busy doing just terrible things.

Charisma is a helluva drug.

so is MDPV.

John was "stuffmonger" on a drug forum here: https://www.bluelight.org/xf/threads/hello-and-an-mdpv-quest...

A good summary here: https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/8utitu/john_mcafe...

Funniest stuff I've read in years. Lit up my mood a bit after the bad news.

This is a community built around aspiring to be a rich freak, what do you expect?

Though they caged his body, his soul was unchained.

Maybe he was killed for his bitcoin/crypto? Is it a possibility? How can we know if it was suicide or murder?

No one deserves to be kidnapped and throw in a cell for the victimless crime of tax evasion.

RIP, McAfee.

In the 20th century: ~8 million were murdered in mundane crimes. ~175 million people were murdered by the state.

Democracy is just violence in disguise. Pure evil.

Tax evasion isn't victimless. It is a civic duty to pay into the system that you benefit directly from. Freedom isn't free.

Tax evasion is theft from the public. Tax evaders steal from you.

No. The state is a criminal racket, and you have no obligation to sponsor it (if something, you're morally obliged to try to avoid being a victim).

And this is not only because 99% of whatever you pay in tax doesn't come back in terms of services that actually have any value, but because it's rotten at its very foundations.

No wonder in the 20th century 8 million people were victims of murder by mundane crimes committed by private citizens worldwide, while 175 million were murdered by the state.

You only think this because you were brainwashed by statism ever since you were a kid.

> You only think this because you were brainwashed by statism ever since you were a kid.

This can be flipped back to you without much effort:

You only think this because you were brainwashed by your preferred flavor of anarchism ever since you started reading those propaganda web sites on the internet.

Making such a claim doesn't bring any value to the conversation and only serves to estrange you from this community, which is a form of self-ostracization and self-censorship, which in itself is quite funny and ironic.

> You only think this because you were brainwashed by your preferred flavor of anarchism ever since you started reading those propaganda web sites on the internet.

No, you're lying. The state is an artificial construction, and I'm advocating the lack of thereof. I'm not promoting the construction of an institution that is supported by enslaving men and women. If you're, finding a way to defend this sick vision of the world is on you.

> Making such a claim doesn't bring any value to the conversation and only serves to estrange you from this community, which is a form of self-ostracization and self-censorship, which in itself is quite funny and ironic.

In other words: you disagree with me, and you want to ostracize me, and would be happy to see me estranged by society. This is a psychopath thinking. If I were you, I'd rethink it.

> No, you're lying. The state is an artificial construction, and I'm advocating the lack of thereof. I'm not promoting the construction of an institution that is supported by enslaving men and women. If you're, finding a way to defend this sick vision of the world is on you.

You only think this because you were brainwashed by your preferred flavor of anarchism ever since you started reading those propaganda web sites on the internet.

See how easy it is to debate using your style?

On a serious note - government and state are self-emergent phenomenons in any society. The problem you really have is how much control that society has over it’s governance and how much accountability people in government have.

But instead of discussing actually interesting things you choose to regurgitate slogans and propaganda from anarchist websites, firmly entrenching yourself into confirmation, sunk cost and other biases, without actually trying to understand the subject.

Oh. "Discussing interesting things" for you is embracing evil and "trying a solution". What a bs.

If you think you've a right to enslave people and kidnap then if they somehow avoid to pay ransom, you're evil. Period. No lame excuses can justify such atrocity.

Well if emergent properties of a society is by definition evil for you, then yes, I like discussing evil very much. I also love to participate in evil and promote evil to everybody around me. I think it’s especially important to teach evil to little kids too. Evil is amazing!

No. What you're defending is not merely common "emergent properties of a society", but the one of the most wicked ones.

Rape and murdering disabled people is also associated with humanity. Do you waste your time looking for arguments to defend them? I certainly not, and I really hope you don't.

Just putting everything in a bucket, and saying "oh, it's society, just accept it" doesn't cut it.

It’s only your opinion that it’s wicked.

Yeah, definitely democracy killed all those people.

>Democracy is just violence in disguise. Pure evil.

Slightly better way to put it IMHO: Democracy is the tyranny of the masses.

Definitely. Unfortunately here this would get downvoted really fast, and fewer readers would see what I wrote. I didn't want to get downvoted so fast. There's not much space for respecting the opinions of people who care about liberty and principles here.

Please don't link to websites that snub Europeans with the infamous

"Our European visitors are important to us.

This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic Area while we work to ensure your data is protected in accordance with applicable EU laws."

How about you fix ur laws then and stop banning EU companies from using US companies.

EU companies can do business with US companies as long as they're following the law. Thousands of companies and websites have no problem doing so.

Tell that to the companies fined for using mail chimp. You might to look up the regulatory requirements to "follow the law". when it comes to EU companies using services from US based companies. Even if the data never leaves the EU...

AFAIK They weren't ultimately fined, just warned... and it was one company.

They were warned because they were transferring email addresses to a company that falls under US Surveillance law and there weren't any relevant legal protections in place... and the company facing the fine never did any due diligence to check.

If you run a business and don't consult a lawyer about privacy laws you're taking a big risk... many countries have laws that you could easily run afoul, even other states in the US.

But how would somebody not in Europe know that the website does that?

I don’t blame any website for protecting themselves against the moronic laws of other nations. It’s not ok for a government to presume it’s right to fine companies in another sovereign nation just because the company servers maintain data about who used their services when it was the voluntary action of the individuals using the services that caused the collection of data. That’s like going into someone’s shop and then trying to sue them because their security cameras filmed you.

If you see the GDPR block page (as I did), here's the Outline.com version: https://outline.com/Sc93ds

Reply on news.ycombinator.com