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Emulation (Games)

Near, Creator of the Higan and Bsnes Emulators, Has Died (pcgamer.com) 245

Posted by BeauHD from the rest-in-peace dept.
Hmmmmmm shares a report from PC Gamer: Near, also known by their username Byuu, the creator of several groundbreaking videogame emulators and a recent celebrated translation of JRPG Bahamut Lagoon, has died by suicide. Near posted a thread on Twitter explaining how they were affected by a campaign of harassment organized against them on the Kiwi Farms forum. Subsequently, Hector Martin, an IT consultant and Linux hacker, posted a message about Near from a mutual friend (CW: contains explicit details of Near's method of suicide) and said that they had confirmed Near's death with police in a follow-up tweet. The linked document also focuses on the Kiwi Farms forum and the doxing and harassing of Near and their friends.

Near's bsnes was the first Super Nintendo emulator with 100% compatibility, and higan is a multi-system emulator supporting 26 different devices including the NES, SNES, Game Boy and Game Boy Advance, Sega Master System and Genesis/Mega Drive, and PC Engine. If you've played any of the indie games influenced by EarthBound, aka Mother 2, then odds are good that game's designer had a copy of EarthBound open in higan for reference. Parts of the emulator created to keep Stephen Hawking's voice synthesizer working in the final years of the famous physicist's life were even borrowed from higan's open source code.
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Near, Creator of the Higan and Bsnes Emulators, Has Died More

Near, Creator of the Higan and Bsnes Emulators, Has Died

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  • People suck. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tuxkamen ( 157118 ) on Monday June 28, 2021 @08:04PM (#61531782)

    I remember multiple waves of the emulation 'community' bearing down on him because he was so damned particular. The discourse was always hateful yet he continued to do things his way and changed things for the better from a programming perspective in that community.

    I remember several different times simply sending an email that said thank you for your hard work. Never expected an response, never got one. It's a shame more people didn't do the same. Maybe it could have changed things. Maybe not.

    How TF does a community like KiwiFarms exist? I'd never heard of it before today. I weep for humanity.

    I don't know that I even have a point with this comment. I'm just dumbfounded.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Kisai ( 213879 )

      KF is a hate site, and it exists because Cloudflare does nothing, and sees no responsibility to not do business with hate, piracy and daterape sites.

      • Well they are being DDoS'ed right now, so that doesn't say much for Cloudflare.

      • hate, piracy and daterape sites.

        These are three quite different things.

      • Don't blame the soap maker for what is shouted from atop his box.

      • Re:People suck. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2021 @05:04AM (#61532850) Homepage Journal

        Slopey shoulders all round. Nobody wants to take any responsibility, yet they all share in it.

        If you watch the HBO documentary Q: Into The Storm you can get an idea of how they do it. It has interviews with people like the founder and current operator of 8chan and the sub-boards where Q posts, and major figures in the Q conspiracy.

        All of them claim they are "just" doing some little thing, providing a platform for free speech or asking questions. Yet somehow all of them together facilitated the attack on the Capitol building and more.

    • It started off being about a specific person and sort of went off from there.
    • It sounds like a poor man's version of 4chan.
    • I'd never heard of KiwiFarms before today, but judging solely from the people who've turned up to defend it, that's no great loss.

  • There is ZERO evidence (Score:4, Informative)

    by Train0987 ( 1059246 ) on Monday June 28, 2021 @08:15PM (#61531834)

    There is no evidence yet that he actually committed suicide. One person claimed he was on the phone with him while it was happening for almost 90 minutes but didn't call the police or anyone who could help. Instead he spends that time writing a long missive about the wrongs of the world and posts it on the internet instead. Today the guy says he totally called the "Japan Police" who confirmed the death. Which they won't do in Japan to an unrelated person. Oh, and also made a statement saying he was told that the guy did not want any fundraisers or charity donations in his name. Yeah, that happened.

    The whole thing is VERY fishy.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 )

      He's either dead, which is tragic, or faking his own death to escape severe harassment, which is tragic.

      • Re:There is ZERO evidence (Score:5, Informative)

        by Digital Avatar ( 752673 ) on Monday June 28, 2021 @08:37PM (#61531914) Journal

        The "severe harassment" consists of a 13 page thread that no one had posted to in months pointing out numerous instances of Byuu/Near behaving badly. Apparently pointing out people being unethical or crazy is "harassment" now. No one had even looked at that thread until Byuu emailed the admin at KiwiFarms and attempted to extort him into taking down the thread and further threatened suicide if he didn't. That's not the act of a sane person.

        What's even fishier about this is that there is zero evidence that he's dead. All we have to go on is one guy who supposedly knows him and spent 90 minutes on the phone with him yet did nothing to stop him. This same guy supposedly contacted the police only after he was dead who totally assured him "yep, he's dead". Despite claiming that Byuu's been doxed before and his name is known he's refusing to release any information that would allow anyone to independently verify his claim.

        Truth is this whole thing reads like Byuu having a mental breakdown and other people seizing it as a pretext to harass a site they don't like.

  • Gee, I wonder what made it acceptable for gamers to harass people because someone did or said something that triggered their snowflake sensibilities?

    • Not only gamers, sadly.

      Alll you have to do is speak the truth about âoeinsert celebrity, corporation, brand, cops, military, sacred countryâ etc and watch how the rabid followers will tear you a new one.

      Really no hope for humanity.

      Ps, so i had to format this in all kinds of ways because the ascii filter thought i was spamming, yet the real spammers have no issues in doing so, oh well.

      • Gamergate was the incident that made it acceptable to harass and dox people on a massive scale. Even to this day, it's acceptable for gamers to threaten people because they were triggered.

        • No one was doxed here. The only thing that seems to be at work here is some people don't like their bad behavior being exposed, so they call it 'harassment' and hope people just take them at their word. Oh, and protip: Doxing was a thing long before Gamergate. The only thing that changed post-GG was that some of the people who were doing the doxing and harassing advertisers discovered that they and theirs were vulnerable too and they panicked.

          Maybe people should just stop doing that and learn to accept th

        • I was watching that whole debacle from the start, every GG forum on 8chan and reddit would ban your ass on the spot if you posted PI or said to harass someone. Some went as far as to outright ban mentioning specific people because they were of zero relevance to the issue. Doxxing is much more likely to happen on Twitter which is as big of a cesspool as kiwifarms. Remember Osvaldo12 who made those jokes like "in africa your height depends on how tall you are"? He was doxxed and swatted for it.

          Didn't the FBI

      • Ah when discussing a certain three letter famous name. Those were the days.

  • Kiwi Farm's response: smells like a setup (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 28, 2021 @09:34PM (#61532074)

    Kiwi Farms is suffering a DoS attack right now, but this is their response when the site does load:

    Hello!

    Someone is currently paying money to DoS attack the forum. While the Kiwi Farms and everything on it is legal, DoS attacks are a federal crime.
    You may be looking for information on Byuu / Near. Since I can define this error page, I will use it to relay some information.
    If you're a regular, I promise the site will be back up this week, probably sooner rather than later.

    A Twitter user published a Google Doc explicitly blaming the Kiwi Farms for harassing Byuu. No evidence of this harassment exists.
    Byuu had a 13 page thread on the forum. Byuu participated in this thread. You can read the thread in archives here. [archive.vn] 13 pages on the Kiwi Farms is an extremely small amount of discussion, especially for a thread as old as Byuu's.

    Last year, Byuu said in this thread directly that he was not affected by the thread in any way. You can read the archive here [archive.vn] and here. [archive.vn]
    The document claims that Byuu took his own life. No evidence of this exists. The person claiming to know he has died refuses to elaborate or provide evidence.
    The last call with Byuu described in the accusation does not make sense. Consider that this person is supposedly an real life friend of Byuu (when Byuu also claims he had no real life friends), and consider that he did nothing for half an hour, but could remember the call well enough to describe an obscure French metal song playing in the background.
    This is a ridiculous story. It does not pass any level of scrutiny and is not told in a way that makes sense.

    Byuu has a history of accusing people of stalking and harassing him.
    He made a post on his forum (which has since been deleted) accusing a rival emulator developer named Squarepusher from Retroarch of doing the same. A copy of this post is here. [kiwifarms.net]

    There is a claim that Byuu was 'doxed', then harassed in real life. This is also false.
    Nobody knows who Byuu is. Even after years, nobody knows his last name. Nobody knows where he lives. Nobody knows where he works. He is completely anonymous and even now it is not possible to do a wellness check on him.

    Byuu emailed me before posting his tweet chain. You can read it here. [archive.vn]
    In it, he attempted to exort me. Byuu claimed that if I did not delete all information about him on the forum, he would kill himself and blame me.
    He offered me $120,000 cash. I saw this as a legally and morally dubious offer at best, entrapment at worst, so I declined.
    He also offered me his services helping write software for the Kiwi Farms.
    I told him I would have to consult an attorney regardless. He did not wait even 24 hours after his first email before closing communications and deciding to go through with his plan at 3am my time.
    In his emails to me, he promised a trusted friend would deliver a scan of his passport on Twitter within 5 hours of him killing himself as proof. Two days later, we still do not have this passport scan or any evidence he has killed himself besides the testimony of a Twitter user, citing an anoynmous third party.

    The Kiwi Farms is an entertainment site. It exists to talk about people.
    The site does not exist to punish people. It's not a Jigsaw-esque torture chamber to teach people the value of life. It's Internet nerds gossiping about their favorite e-celebs.
    In the 8 years we've been around, Byuu is the first person to name the Kiwi Farms as a cause of suicide, despite claiming not even a year ago he had no issues with his forum thread.
    His intentions are clear, but nothing else about this story is. If he was going to have to abandon the 'Byuu' persona and disappear anyways, why not pull this stunt?

    I will not be extorted.
    Josh [ josh@jaw.sh ]

    • "13 pages on the Kiwi Farms is an extremely small amount of discussion, especially for a thread as old as Byuu's."

      For some perspective the thread about this event is over 200 pages in 24 hours.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Moryath ( 553296 )
      The only appropriate response to the existence of Kiwi Farms is to channel Ellen Ripley: " Nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. [youtube.com] "

      • ...or you could just admit that some people aren't going to agree with you on everything you do, and may make fun of you, learn to accept that, and move on. You might also want to consider that Byuu clearly had psychological issues and taking the thread down wasn't going to solve that.

    • That sounds like the Bart Simpson Defense:

      "I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, there is no way you can prove anything."

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        That sounds like the Bart Simpson Defense:

        "I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, there is no way you can prove anything."

        That's exactly what it is. Kiwi Farms is skating the very thin line between legal and illegal. If you ask to kill someone, they'll ban you. But if you do it in a roundabout way to cause mental distress, hey, it's all good.

        Sure, what they do is technically legal - but that's only because they turn a blind eye to all the "wink wink" stuff that goes unsaid. It's like a forum stating there wer

    • Wait... Suicide is an extortion tactic? While I do agree no human being can be held hostage by the threat of suicide, at the same time this was a request to stop and leave Near alone.

      Awesome display of your human values and logic reasoning there!

  • over the gaming software emulators i was developing, it would mean that i was winning a battle so i would keep pressing forward (not quit and KYS) the poor guy did not understand they were harassing him because they were losing a battle to what he was doing, i would have taken some self defense courses and carried a firearm or something but i surely would NOT have KYSed, thats unfortunate, the cops should hunt down the harassers and do something about if

    • It was not themselves they were worried about, but their friends. The shitheads went after friends and family when direct harassment didn't work.

  • This is sad (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LKM ( 227954 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2021 @03:28AM (#61532718)
    I came here to read comments eulogizing Near. Instead, I found a thread full of people complaining about how they used "they". This seems like a good moment to take a step back and reflect on your priorities. It's fine that you don't like people using the singular they, but maybe you shouldn't dislike it so much that it overwhelms your ability to empathize with somebody who just committed suicide after getting bullied online for not conforming to other people's preferences.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Non binary people have higher than average suicide rates and this is one of the reasons why. There is a lot of pressure to fit into the little boxes people have created to categorize the world in their minds. It's understandable, it's very comfortable for them to be able to see and immediately understand something, know how to act and to make safe assumptions.

      Imagine if you don't fit into one of those boxes. A hundred little things every day reminds you that the world isn't designed for what you are, and yo

  • Why would someone kill their self because strangers were mean to them on an internet forum? Nobody forces anyone to participate nor pay attention to bullies, so why let oneself be destroyed? The simple fact that whatever pleasure one derived from participating in the conversations has been ruined by anonymous jerks means there's no reason to stick around anymore. They aren't suddenly going to become nice, they're unrepentant assholes who are only happy when making others miserable. So why let them? Why

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Pimpy ( 143938 )

      The more likely scenario is that this was an already disturbed individual that had been struggling with mental health issues throughout their life, and things like this were the kind of push needed to get them across the line. I don't buy into this idea that online trolling in and of itself is what made someone suicidal, but it can definitely make a bad situation worse for someone that's not in a great place to begin with, especially when that person lacks the self control or ability to disengage and walk a

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