Posted by paveworld 21 hours ago
Tell HN: Bob Cringely has died
https://www.jeremyreimer.com/rockets-item.lsp?f=true&p=272 makes it sound like the "crazy shit over the last few years" wasn't rue.
The post makes a strong case that the cataracts story and the losing his house story were false, among others.
If you're wondering why someone would make things like this up, it appears that they were cover stories for his Mineserver Kickstarter never shipping despite him saying "[i]n terms of development, this project was almost finished before the Kickstarter campaign began", "[a]ll these Mineservers will ship this week. Software is complete and SD cards are being duplicated. T-shirts are being printed every night", etc.
If it sounds unbelievable that someone would make these things up to have something to blame for a failed kickstarter, I recommend reading the post. The evidence against the house burning down is hard to argue with (later Google Maps/Street View imaging shows no apparent damage, in a later post he accidentally revealed that he used the exact laptop that he said he replaced because it was lost in the fire) and there's even stronger evidence that a number of his other claims are fabricated.
I used to read his articles back a decade ago. I really enjoyed them. This quote from the article resonated with me. It’s a sobering feeling having dedicated a career to the field to struggle keeping up.
RIP. He seemed to face a lot of struggles both physically and emotionally towards the end of his life.
Watching him try (and fail) to build a composite airplane says so much about the allure of modern techniques (I won't spoil the end, but old-school gets the last laugh). I've been less than enthusiastic about modern composites ever since seeing this show.
Bob's attempt (and short temper) reveals a good deal of hubris on his part.
The documentary is a fascinating failure and a masterclass in attempting to salvage a show when the whole premise for the show completely collapses.
If you're familiar with it, maybe you could answer one question: Cringely sourced a lot of the materials and know-how for the plane from American companies and workers. Would that be possible today?
Wouldn't HN be one of the most likely places?
But the plane did fly.
The top comment lays it out as it is, lmao. And it was far more than 30 days as well.
Unfortunately, the site became more difficult to read in later years when it turned out that a lot of what he was saying was evidently false. Even more so when he switched over to AI-generated content.
Still, Triumph is an amazing documentary that I’ve watched many, many times.
However, he was also ripping people off and making up stuff: https://www.jeremyreimer.com/rockets-item.lsp?f=true&p=272
It is OK to fail. It is not OK to continuously lye to people who have provided you with money (or anyone else for that matter).
Here's a fun clip. I think this company is the one which eventually became the one behind the excite search engine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf4SKkTEkfU
I think this is also a clip from the same documentary. We had to watch this as part of IT class in high school, everyone laughed pretty hard
PBS website: He wrote a column that their site no longer hosts, but the Wayback Machine has it snapshotted frequently, including just after his final submission for the outlet in 2008: https://web.archive.org/web/20081223220604/http://www.pbs.or...
NerdTV: In an era of nascent web video, he produced long-form video interviews with tech types, and clipped what might now be called "Shorts/Tiktoks" from the conversations, pulling out the of "the juicy bit" and "the nerdy bit". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NerdTV (h/t to u/Keyframe)
And obliquely, Cringely's columns or videos were the first place I recall hearing about foveated approaches to video compression for streaming. I thought it sounded like a terrible idea, but I guess Valve delivered, 20 years on, using the technique to good effect with the Steam Frame. Chalk one up for Cringely; RIP.
Early employee at Apple who was offered to be paid in stock. He “held out for the cash”.
I really like the triumph of the nerds series. Getting bill Gates, Balmer, Jobs and those IBMers to explain how it all came together and how MS who didn’t have an OS ended up getting one to sell to IBM.
The transcripts are a good
But yeah..
“well for a short time I was an employee of Apple Computer, employee number 12 and one day I helped move materials out of this garage. At the time Steve Jobs said that the company was short of loot so he offered to pay me in company shares, but I held out for the money - my mother still reminds me of that incident.”
Mark Stephens does not appear anywhere in this list, nor have any other early employees confirmed that he worked there.
Yes, this might have just been a small slip-up on Cringely's part, but the trouble is that he continued to make claims about being employed by Apple that were clearly fabricated. For example, Cringely claimed to have invented the Lisa's trash can icon in this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06M64l7pPIk&t=373s but if you read about the same story from other Apple employees, they don't mention him at all: https://folklore.org/Rosings_Rascals.html
These "tall tales" start to add up, and it becomes very hard to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Cringely was a great writer, a great documentarian, and really wonderful at finding the human stories behind the giants of the personal computer industry. Unfortunately, he also often made up stories about himself that were later found to be untrue. He didn't need to do this, because his work stood on its own. It was just a flaw in his personality.
In any case, this is sad news. Rest in peace, Mark Stephens.
https://web.archive.org/web/20001015151303/http://www.pbs.or...
You can ask you favorite LLM to compare the parallels; I did and it was enlightening.
(Just realized I've never read the 1996 update/revision. Adding it to the top of my list.)