Near/byuu, creator of Higan/bsnes and game preservationist, has passed away

Copied from the announcement document found on Twitter:

As stated by a friend of mine, Near's endless desire for cycle perfect emulation, despite a lack of demand or need, including hard decapping of chips to ensure perfection, is the reason we have the ability to perform FPGA/MiSTer stuff. She described them as 'a friggin' genius'.

Of course, this is the responsibility of Kiwi Farms, as has been the case many times in the past. (People here on QQ may remember their role in the thankfully short-lived E-Hentai shutdown debacle.) But in general, the desire of those who did this would be to see people who live on the fringes of what society finds acceptable - for instance, being non-binary and using they/them pronouns - die in graves marked in the wrong names, with the wrong pronouns, just to desecrate their living memory, is something we've seen many times before, and will again.

More to the point, given the state of emulation communities, things like this have happened before, and will happen again - and some will try to treat it like some random tragedy, something we couldn't prevent, and forget about the intention these acts of harassment had.

Near isn't just some random victim. What they did for game preservation is a lasting legacy that we'll continue to benefit from long after they passed on. So, in their memory, I ask that they be remembered by the name they chose, and the pronoun they chose. And never let it be treated like a random act of God, or a tragedy - this was preventable, this was an act of violence on the person, and there are people out there who will continue these acts for as long as we allow them to.

Don't let anyone say this wasn't an act of violence, and violence against the queer at that.

 

o7

Their legacy will live forever. Perhaps literally.

 

Dammit.................

Seriously fuck Kiwi Farms for this.

 

Lol what a load of crap. I looked into this yesterday and figured out it was probably a work, and it took me all of 20 minutes to do sko.

a) no one has been talking about byuu for a long time on kiwifarms and in it byuu himself said he didn't care about the thread (which itself was tiny and with little content)
b) byuu has a history of suicide baiting
c) There is absolutely zero proof he's actually dead. The source on it is entirely anonymous, as is byuu himself.

From all indications, far from the claims of him being driven to suicide, the vast majority of kiwifarms apparently never heard of or cared about this guy before yesterday.

 

I took a look at the thread myself and oddly found that he himself participated in it and was received and treated mostly well, quite unlike our friend Train Dodger who was relentlessly mocked. It seems most of the people in that thread actually liked the guy. There were no dox there either, so not sure where the doxing accusations were coming from.

Actually, looking into it deeper, before a few days ago he was indeed complaining about harassment, but he was saying this harassment was occurring on 4chan, not Kiwi Farms. I feel like I've stumbled into a strange rabbit hole.

Looking into it even further, he said his dox were posted on 4chan, but I can't find any sign of these dox or any indication that anyone actually knows who he is.

 

Yeah, byuu has always been a notoriously private individual.

Item of humor: the person who made the thread about byuu ended up getting his own much much longer mock thread when people found out he was much more interesting than byuu.

E: Megaolix, extraordinarily claims require extraordinary evidence. There is no proof byuu is actually dead beyond an anonymous tweet and a Google document also produced anonymously, whereas anyone can go read the relevant threads on kf.

 

Given that the news has reached the media (yes, including non-Kotaku sources), and no one is disputing the claims given how many of their friends have rallied around this, I would say this counts as 'proof', or at least pushes the burden of evidence to prove that Near is not, in fact, dead.

I mean, yes, it's possible, but without proof that they aren't given that it's hit the news, I'd say the 'extraordinary claim' is a faked death, not the suicide.

Also, it's in rather poor taste to misgender the dead.

 

No, I did not realize because I was not paying attention to that detail because I have a fucking life-ruining attention-deficit disorder.

And in case it's not coming across, yes I am stressed as fuck right now. Being labeled a bigot for shit like this is a situation I am unfortunately intimately familiar with.

 

You come into this thread, and not only do you immediately start in on how you might think the circumstances of their death aren't real, but then somebody asks you to make a single correction and now you're claiming it's endangering your mental health. This thread isn't about you, and you chose to be disrespectful about this. You're the one wielding the rules as a weapon in bad faith. You can't tell me that you don't understand what you did while at the same time claiming that you're suffering under the same treatment. The eggshells are on the ground because you threw the eggs. You didn't have to come in here and be like this, but you did, and taking responsibility is at the very least within your means.

 

Yeah, my post was being written when you posted and I didn't see the update.

 

As a postscript on this, State Department numbers on overseas American deaths show that no Americans died in all of Japan in June, meaning the guy who claimed he's dead is incontrovertibly a liar and I was right all along.

 

... umm. No.

 

That's the same guy who claimed byuu was dead in the first place (with zero evidence other than his word), and who blocks anyone who asks for proof. I think I'll believe the State Department over some Twitter rando who refuses to post any evidence.

Also, anyone who has ever dealt with the Japanese government's bureaucracy should know how ridiculous his claim is. They flat out send people to your house if you are so much as late returning a phone call.

 

Except he's not some Twitter rando, as you put it. He's a personal friend of the dead person, one with known and preexisting associations. He's also provided a rather plausible explanation for the specific datum used as "proof" that he's lying.

Your claim was that he was "incontrovertibly a liar" for saying his friend was dead based on a lack of entry in a database. Again, his friend.

Simply put, you're being an asshole.

You're also overstating the evidence.

The Japanese government has very little to do with this. The "evidence" being used is a US State Department database... and apparently one that's not complete.

The government is not competent, as anyone who's had to repeatedly deal with them should know. I can't get too into it because, well, Rule 8... but it should be fucking obvious.

This isn't proof. Occam's Razor applies.

 

I would point out, we believe that both because no one has any reason to lie about someone else dying nor do they try to pin the blame on anyone else. I would certainly hope that if someone here made a post claiming that they had committed suicide because I was harressing them, that you wouldn't just take them at thier word and ban me with zero investigation. People have regularly tried to smear kiwifarms by claiming they haressed someone into killing themselves when that wasn't true. Chloe Segal, for example, committed suicide as a protest over how the US treats the mentally ill and homeless, and her "friends" tried to use her death against the farms anyway.

As for proof, given the circumstances it's very difficult to prove that near is abosolutely, 100% not dead, however the fact that US state department records say no American citizens have died in japan on the date Near is alleged to have done so seems to be the best we'll get. It's certainly enough to raise questions.

He's some random guy on the internet with exactly zero evidence aside from "dude, trust me, Near's totally dead, because I say so", and his story for how he allegedly knows near is dead has changed repeatedly. Two month in and there's still no body. No death certificate, no obituary, not one shred of official documentation to establish near is dead.

Per Near's own words, near has no close friends.

Not complete according to....some dude. Why exactly should I assume this guy has any expertise when it comes to this even if he was a neutral party and not someone that has vested interest in debunking any evidence that suggests near isn't dead?

Unluckily for you, I can get into it, sort of, by citing the experience of some people that do live there, a couple guys that run a podcast I follow.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcmxOGYGF51T1XsqQLewGtQ

According to them, japan certainly has issues with being bureaucratic, excessively fussy about details, and otherwise aggravating to deal with, but I don't see any reason to conclude they would find the body of a citizen of there closest and most important ally hanging from a ceiling and go "eh, no need to pass that info along".

Occam's Razor says that the theory with the fewest assumptions is most likely to be true.

If near is dead, then in order for that to be true the state department and Japanese government must have screwed up and not listed near on the report nor corrected that screwup for several months, and also everyone else attempting to find solid documentary evidence of thier death must have just made some mistake and failed to find the actual evidence that verifies his death that absolutely must exist, despite their full name know being know and making searching for records much, much easier.

If he's not dead, then we must assume Near, who has a history of faking sucide, has done so again and that some random dude on twitter is lying.

Occam's razor clearly favors "dude on internet is lying" over all alternative theories, and it frankly boggles my mind that after decades of messaging not to believe everything you read on the internet that people are still failing for totally evidnceless claims like this.

 

On the Internet. As for obituaries, that's normal in cases like this, or do you think that Near had the sort of real-life presence, in his real-name identity, that would get one written? And if so, would people make the connection?

It's a cost of being pseudonymous on the Internet.

His friend's story, meanwhile, has not "changed repeatedly." That is, bluntly, something you're making up.

This is called attacking a strawman. I said nothing about how close they were, merely that they were friends.

... are you fucking kidding me?

This in response to a statement that the Japanese government isn't relevant since the commentary is on a US State Department database.

You're misapplying it.

Nope!

Again, not some random dude.

What you are doing is called "assuming bad faith" in the legal profession. By contrast, best practice in general is to assume good faith unless you have evidence to the contrary. Simply put, you are attempting to flip the burden of proof on its head, and while I generally avoid speculating about such matters, this is in the context of ongoing attempts by Kiwifarms and similar groups to absolve themselves of guilt in the affair by attempting to downplay the consequences of their harassment and cyberstalking campaigns.

Simply put, you are also being an asshole.