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Comment by dpedu | Hacker News Reader

> Using a new Emscripten port of Mini vMac

Last I heard, the author of Mini vMac, Paul C. Pratt, is missing. Not missing in the police sense, but in that no one has been able to contact him nor find evidence of a continued online presence in the last couple years. If you know anything, please post.

https://eggfreckles.net/notes/paul-c-pratt-is-missing

https://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11570

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Hoping Paul's okay, but disappearing is something I can relate to heavily, after the passing of a close relative, my emotional and mental health became very turbulent so I simply disappeared by uninstalling all my social media, never picking up calls, stopped working on my OSS projects, not replying to anyone, just because I couldn't handle it. I came back in due course after working on myself but a lot of people also attempted to find out if I was alive and it did give me a lot of anxiety that I couldn't handle at that stage, I believe the people on the forums have done their due diligence and after that, unless there's some actual information we must keep in mind we may do more harm than good even though intentions are pure. Just a thought.

Very well said about doing more harm than good. Yes this "well intentioned " behavior can be a form of unintentional harassment, that is still harassment. It's like when you have a controlling partner that keeps tabs on you because he/she is insecure and worried about you all the time. No matter what the intention, it's still controlling behavior and it's unacceptable.

Went down a rabbit hole after reading your comment - clearly a lot of the people in this community (that I also just learned about) care about him very much. Hope he turns up.

I did notice that his site was renewed on 2022-06-09 16:56:27 UTC, although from a comment on Emaculation it appears that this is exactly one year to the day that it was last renewed, meaning it was probably done automatically.

The Internet has become a social surveillance panopticon. The author of that web page should stay out of that guy's private life. What's wrong about not having an online presence? My God how far the surveillance society has come. One more reason to stay anonymous online with everything you do, let alone someone be "concerned" about you... The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

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