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Comment by mdp2021 | Hacker News Reader

mdp2021

I would just like to note that I collect RSS feeds from a large number of sources, and none of them contained this non-trivial piece of news (I just did a search on the database).

I just checked on the websites of the NYT, on the Guardian - nothing.

It is like in typical treatment of History: progress is at or beyond the margin.

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It is extremely sad how the sciency or tech media largely ignores the demise of computer scientists and engineers who contributed a lot to the field. Most of them face a lack of recognition outside their immediate co-workers in their lifetime as well. The foreshadowing of Dennis Ritchie's death was the most flagrant one that comes to mind immediately.

I know that many great scientists and engineers have unfortunately been left in the depths of history, but I also believe that the people who contributed to the foundations of our modern digital world should be known by outsiders as well.

in late 2011 my teacher was giving a motivational speech about steve jobs and i was the only one to recognize jobs from an old photo the teacher showed us. so even the more public facing influences are not widely recognized for there past works.

I also feel ritchie's death was overshadowed by jobs death, despite his life having a more fundamental impact on this industry.

Her relative obscurity highlights how we stand upon shoulders of more giants than we are aware.

I just looked at the Wikipedia article about her and it appears her and her husband were often overlooked while making huge contributions.

I learned of her death when The Telegraph published her obituary last Tuesday, but it’s paywalled. I haven’t seen her death mentioned elsewhere either.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2022/10/25/kathleen-b...

It was mentioned on reddit August 18, 2022. How this person came to this conclusion is unknown. There is no source. Notably, this is more than a month before her death. Strange.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/ws3kk1/kat...

Seems from Wikipedia?

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/ws3kk1/com...

I only knew about her passing because I happened to open the Wikipedia page this morning, and I have not seen a single news article about her passing. Even then, the Wikipedia page only says "Died August 14, 2022 (aged 100)", and the most recent information the article contains is "In May 2019, Booth was reported to be living in retirement, at the age of 97."

https://archive.ph/avCeI

The Times also had one: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/kathleen-booth-obituary-s...

And that obituary was submitted to HN multiple times.

The Register itself has an RSS feed, you could add that to your collection

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