Terry Davis, Author of TempleOS, has passed away [unconfirmed, mods please rm] | Hacker News Reader

Terry Davis, Author of TempleOS, has passed away [unconfirmed, mods please rm]

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164 pointsrjeli60 comments

Neither the post nor the Album stated appear in her timeline. Are they private? I'd hate to be the skeptic here, but there's no way I'm believing a screenshot that appeared on 4chan[0] without verifying first.

[0] http://boards.4chan.org/g/thread/67398108#p67398129

yeah sorry, I didn't realize it was so dubious, just got emotional... I messaged HN mods to remove this post until it's confirmed.

As much as I don't like going through KF threads, it looks like it's pretty likely, and his mom is also dead.

https://kiwifarms.net/threads/terry-a-davis-terrence-andrew-... https://kiwifarms.net/threads/terry-a-davis-terrence-andrew-... https://kiwifarms.net/threads/terry-a-davis-terrence-andrew-...

Someone else with a childhood Facebook picture of him claims it's not true. http://boards.4chan.org/g/thread/67398108#p67399396

Reverse Image Search has no results.

I don't believe the OP.

That image doesn't mean anything.

He used to share his personal family pictures a lot back when he was streaming in the van.

The image name makes it look like it came from a Facebook CDN.

For those who don't know:

TempleOS (formerly J Operating System, SparrowOS and LoseThos) is a biblical-themed lightweight operating system created by the American programmer Terry A. Davis. He developed the system alone over the course of 10 years. It was designed to be the Third Temple, according to Davis, and uses an interface similar to a mixture of DOS and Turbo C. Davis describes the operating system as a modern x86-64 Commodore 64 with a variation of C (named HolyC) in place of BASIC.

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

More interestingly, it was 64-bit from the core, and eschewed the use of traditional MMU in favor of just using the 64-bit address space to separate process's memory.

Except, Terry Davis became schizophrenic and wouldn't take his meds. He changed the name of his OS to TempleOS after he decided he was hearing god through it.

He used to comment here on HN (user "templeos" now deleted apparently), but his increasingly irrelevant and (literally) insanely racist comments quickly led him to being shadowbanned.

Vice wrote an article about him: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wnj43x/gods-lonel...

Last we heard a year or so ago, he was homeless in Vegas after getting kicked out by his parents: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16105043

He commented/posted as "losethos" for a while.

He kept posting on his account after being hellbanned, up to 3 months ago. You need showdead on.

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TempleOS

These sorts of things interest me so I went though a few of his posts. It’s interesting that his “God says” messages are all 32 words long. Makes me wonder if it’s a cypher, just gibberish or some combination of both.

He generated them in TempleOS. A lot of features in the OS were supposed to be direct messages from God.

> He used to comment here on HN (user "templeos"

HN usernames are case sensitive. danbc is not DanBC.

That's quite useful information. Thank you.

Very few people can say they have built something as interesting as TempleOS. It was incredibly tragic to watch Terry's condition deteriorate over the years.

This guy definitely belongs to the hacker community. He was a weirdo, a misfit, a nerd, like many of us. There is always a thin line between being a genius and being insane.

There's a fairly interesting write up on TempleOS here: http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/a-constructive-look-at-temp...

A very bizarre set of reaction tweets, was Terry big among the alt-right/4chan crowds?

It was very sad to witness his condition deteriorating over the past months.

He was a cultural icon of 4chan's technology board, who would watch his livestreams by the thousands.

Terry, despite his achievements, was erratic and schizophrenic, which led to him posting a lot of racist rants. Qualities which I assume made him attractive to 4chan.

>A very bizarre set of reaction tweets, was Terry big among the alt-right/4chan crowds?

What makes you say that? And what does the alt-right have to do with 4chan?

>And what does the alt-right have to do with 4chan?

Oof

Yeah, not sure I really felt old until this moment.

I can't really tell, but it's my considered opinion that the intersection of 4chan and the alt-right is so recursively lulzing that nobody involved really knows who's serious. Or even what "serious" might actually mean. But maybe I'm just old, and set in my ways.

For a while in the early-mid 2010s, /v/ and /pol/ were rallying points for what we would today call the alt-right.

To this day, the pervasive politics of most of 4chan are hard right, leaning into ethnostatism.

You'd be hard pressed to find an alt right rally without heavy 4chan cultural aesthetic (pepe, kekistan, etc)

I tried templeOS because it did sound like a fairly cool project or at least some of the ideas behind it. I was never really able to do much with it though and I didn't really have the patience to learn all the obscure nonsense built into it. But I do like the idea of a simple operating system with flat memory that encourages hacking and playing with it in a way that's not really possible with most modern operating systems.

I know his behaviour wasn't looked at the best and he generally offended just about everybody that read the stuff he wrote but, it's kinda funny, when I first discovered templeOS I was right in the middle of trying to help a fairly intensely schizophrenic friend of mine get their life together. A lot of stuff I read about Terry's life and the stuff he did reminded me a lot of the stuff my friend was going through. Terry seemed like he could have had some semblance of a reasonable life if he'd gotten the kind of help he needed but the way he acted seemed to alienate anyone who tried even his family. It's sad. He really did seem like a genius in a lot of ways. It's too bad he was totally fucked and never got the help he needed.

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum

"Of the dead, speak no evil"

I wasn't trying to speak poorly of him. I'm not very good at wording such things. Personally, I think it sucks people let the things he said stop them from doing anything for him. Sometimes all it takes is one person caring and putting effort in to help someone change their life for the better.

He reminded me of Henry Darger in many ways. He spent a troubled life building his own world from the ground up, resulting in something inconsequential yet truly cool.

His statements were offensive, but I don't blame him at all - I empathize with his mental health struggles. May he rest in peace.

I was very sad to hear about this. Terry always had a special place in my heart and I'm sad to hear of his passing. I don't think I'll ever forget him.

We'll miss watching your live streams Terry. See you on the other side.

This is terrible news... I'll never forget the glory of TempleOS and holyC.

Dang, how do we confirm this?

We wait for a reliable source.

Why do you assume he was addressing you?

I wasn't assuming that.

He could be using "dang" in the "damn" "darn" sense.

Which makes the original parent and dang's post even better.

If it is confirmed, can we please black-bar HN? Terry was one-of-a-kind.

Thats a good idea.

Godspeed, Terry! You was crazily talented and I will miss you :'(

Wait really? That's extremely sad. I hope this is not true.

Sad if true, a troll on us if not true.

usermod -a -G Heaven Terry

NOOOOOO

Do not stand at my grave and weep

Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there; I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow, I am the diamond glints on snow, I am the sun on ripened grain, I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning’s hush I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circling flight. I am the soft star-shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there; I did not die.

Genuinely curious about what other people think about this, but why do people think it's an acceptable excuse for formerly mentally healthy people making insanely offensive comments after they start suffering from a mental health issue? I truly feel compassion for those going through mental health issues, but is it possible that the people who become offensive after becoming mentally ill always thought these things but just had a filter? Should we accept that?

He's obviously been deteriorating mentally for a long time. What do you think the proper response is, shaming him? He needed professional help—lots of it—and unfortunately, in the United States and many other places around the world, there are a lot of barriers that prevent people from getting that help so he ended up homeless and (possibly) dead.

This probably isn't the time or place to discuss it.

But FWIW, if someone thinks racist things but never speaks nor acts upon them, I'm not sure what it means to "accept" that or not; and I'm not sure how we could possibly know if they only came out because of schizophrenia or if schizophrenia triggered them in the first place. It all just seems to be kind of moot.

"I know the guy just died, but let's talk about how shitty he was."

Read that, and try to understand why it is tasteless.

his outburts of overt racism coincided with defining his life around being a technological prophet of god/being actively pursued by the CIA; if you're to believe that he held racist thoughts all along and that his illness only removed the filter, are you to believe that he also espoused those other two beliefs and they were only being kept in check?

Your comment assumes a clear demarcation line between mental health and mental illness. It also assumes a clear demarcation line between people "like us" who only think nice thoughts, and people who think evil thoughts. Human nature is just not that simple. That should be the thing to contemplate here.

No you're not. You just want to feel good about shunning him while he was alive.

We'll he's dead now. You don't have to worry about hell banning him anymore so you can feel good about yourself.

> but why do people think it's an acceptable excuse for formerly mentally healthy people making insanely offensive comments after they start suffering from a mental health issue?

People don't think it's acceptable, which is why he was constantly being banned from online forums. People think it's understandable because it's a function of illness, not a core part of his personality.

Please don't lump all mental health "issues" together as you have here. Schizophrenia is quite different to something like depression. Psychosis does not "remove the filter" or "reveal the true identity".

Terry was an ill person who was failed by society -- he didn't get the treatment he needed. We don't need to add to that by blaming him for things caused by his illness.

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