A gracious end to Webb-site | Hacker News Reader

A gracious end to Webb-site

webb-site.com

168 pointsgregorvand26 comments

> hope to reach 60 in August and all I want for my birthday is another one

This sentence is so powerful. I am very sorry to hear this. In these situations, I can't help but feel it's so unfair.

I'm not talking about unfair as in people dying young. Unfair as in there is a particular combination of alterations to physical matter that is going to solve this problem. It's out there. We just haven't found it.

I know it's not this easy but I grind my teeth thinking that if someone, somewhere has an epiphany today, this person can be back to fill health in no time. today was not that day.

By the time you get to that age you've lost so many younger friends and family that in comparison the prospect of your own death doesn't feel so unfair. Instead it feels like a privilege to draw breath.

Once loved ones or you had something serious at mostly any age this feeling will creep in. I had a bout with cancer at 35 and had friends die from different things (mostly suicide) that I have been feeling privileged for being alive since my mid thirties (I am in my 50s now). I think it was a gift... and a curse, to be ill quite young; nothing that other people care so much about during their 'working years' means anything in the grand scheme of things.

> I know it's not this easy but I grind my teeth thinking that if someone, somewhere has an epiphany today, this person can be back to full health in no time

Your are correct, and I understand the feeling. Not a great consolation, but we are that close to fixing these diseases because of everything else we have accomplished. Automation. Research on biology. Computing and all its many, many branches of research. Even AI. Humanity has been busy killing God since the dawn of time. We just need to wrap our pain as best we can, hoist that heavy burden onto our shoulders, and keep going.

Work in the financial industry here in HK. Fantastic to see this float to the top of Hacker News. David Webb is absolutely legendary in my mind. Not only is his site very valuable to me professionally, his values also resonate strongly with me. To cap it all off, he's an incredible value investor as well.

Thanks to you and everyone bringing this to the top. I have admired, followed, ridden the coat tails of DW for years. I lived in the city for many years. I hope the archives give inspiration for decades to come on real financial activism.

Very unfortunate - but I can see how a site that depended heavily on its founder's personal integrity; and that also had a non-trivial net cost to running it; could be hard to hand on to someone else satisfactorily.

Journalists are constantly given opportunities to be a bit more friendly to those in power to get more access, to accept some free samples so you can write an 'unbiased' review, to decide that advertiser's dirty laundry really isn't particularly newsworthy. The only protection against this is the strength of character of the owners and editors.

> The only protection against this is the strength of character of the owners and editors.

I couldn’t agree more. Sometimes I wonder whether it actually is a loss that people are less Christian. Especially protestantism which places a high emphasis on always doing the right thing even if nobody is watching (because God is always watching and you can’t just pay your way out of sins like in Catholicism). I’m not saying religions are perfect. They often hinder innovation which I think is a problem, but there is definitely something to say in favor of it.

Relatedly, Buffett learned from his father (biological; not holy) to keep an “inner scorecard”. So don’t do things you think other people want think is best (external scorecard), but do things you think are best. I suspect Buffett’s inner scorecard has helped him a lot in his career. And probably also helped him sleep good too.

I was routinely beaten and tortured by a Catholic deacon. Before I hit puberty and began, to have the strength to fight back, since the age of 5, he would regularly whip me with the metal end of his belt for hours until I stopped crying, in order to teach me how to be man, since men don't cry.

And don't tell me Protestantism is better. King Henry VIII began converting England to Protestantism so that he could divorce and decapitate his wife after the Pope refused to let him do it. All of these historic religious institutions ultimately exist in order to accumulate power and influence.

Very very sad to hear. I didn't even know the site exists, let alone what a vast dataset it has.

I am somehow surprised and not surprised at the same time, the HK people I know are very diligent, dedicated, hard working individuals. It's always a pleasure to visit hong kong or work with someone from hong kong.

Curious, if anybody ever thought that it would be a good idea not to have that dataset about hk and presumably a lot of china in hong kong but outside. The influence from the central party is getting bigger in hk and if it really tracks that many overspendings (?) ("I deciphered the pseudo-disclosure on who received over HK$90bn of hand-outs under the so-called Employment Support Scheme, draining a substantial portion of HK's fiscal reserves") some might not be happy and want to remove or alter the data. Isn't that a concern?

Very focused chap

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Webb_(Hong_Kong_activist...

Born 1965

Commercial Computer Games c. 1981 - 1985

Investment Banker London c. 1986 - 1991

Investment Banker Hong Kong c. 1991 - 1998

So at 33 he's effectively done and dusted but he goes on to be:

Deputy Chairman of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission's Takeover and Mergers Panel c. 2013

Member of the Vice Chancellor's Circle, University of Oxford

etc etc....

From his bio:

Mr Webb graduated in mathematics from Exeter College, Oxford University in 1986 and prior to that was a computer geek, authoring "Supercharge Your Spectrum" (1983) and "Advanced Spectrum Machine Language" (1984), both books on the subject of machine language programming for the Z-80 based Sinclair Spectrum computer. He also wrote a number of best-selling games for the Sinclair Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64, which were in the first generation of 8-bit home computers, including the space-time epic Starion (1985).

Ugh, this is such a trigger for me and my high PSA levels. Currently rocking 3.0 and 46 years old and on a yearly checkup routine since several years.

When did you start screening? When should I start screening?

Recommendations vary, but in general earlier is better so you can establish a baseline PSA level.

My father managed to survive it (he's now in his mid 70s). He says start at 40. It's very easy, just a blood test.

His catchphrase 'most die with prostate cancer, not of it. What is there to lose?'

What prevention methods did he use?

I pity you for the biopsies you must (have) undergo(ne). Don't ask me how I know to say that.

This is so sobering, to be sure. What legacy do each of us leave behind on the Internet? Rather, what legacy do we _want_ to leave behind? Something to think about as the self-hosted/smolweb/indieweb movement continues to grow in the face of a corporate web.

Sometimes resistance is about the journey and not the destination. Leaving a trail of bread crumbs to inspire the next generation of dissenters who might find greater public support in their time.

That's a good way to look at it. What we leave behind may not necessarily accomplish anything in our lifetime, or help anyone ever, but we still have to consider the quality of the content, which speaks to our character.

Webb I wish you a great long and healthy life despite the sickness. May you enjoy every moment and won't suffer. Thank you for your work!

I feel this community could contribute towards this and preserve this monumental piece of work

It bear a question whether it is possible to trigger Internet Archive to backup the whole website and data for future reference.

Archive Team[1] (no relation, allegedly) usually puts their dumps on Archive.org in one way or another, so someone should probably hop on their IRC and ask them to launch a crawl.

[1] https://archiveteam.org/

Someone did this and there is an ArchiveBot job running right now, over a million URLs queued:

http://archivebot.com/

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