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Diaspora Co-founder Dies At 22
phaedrus5001 writes "Tech Crunch is reporting that one of the co-founders of Diaspora, Ilya Zhitomirskiy, has passed away. He was only 22. At the moment, the cause of his death is unknown."
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To all young, horny, self-absorbed, invincible little gods of the internet: you're never too young. The cosmos cares not for you.
Value your health. Value your safety.
Accomplish something while you still can, just as Ilya did.
u mean facebook, they allready trained the stalkers
warning pointless sig
This is sad, he had a bright future. I wonder what was bothering him enough to commit suicide assuming thats what actually happened.
TekGoblin
Actually that could lead to the most ironic possible turn of events... Diaspora's failure was not so much the product, as a failure to have a working product for the public at a time when the general media was paying attention... I don't know about anyone else but I actually got my diaspora invite yesterday (that I signed up for a year back). Before I get flamed, no I do not think this was planned for such, but I do think there is a 1/100 chance that his death may draw the media, that may possibly draw the public to check out his work. 10 years from now we may be looking at the digital equivalent of Van Gogh.
Please, guys, I know only a moron like myself doesn't know what this Diaspora project is, but couldn't you put a link or a two-word explanation? Yes, I know Google is my friend. Feel free to mod me down now.
Diaspora has only really just launched and it works reasonably well for it too. It's a little slow but the experience is slick and I would have thought the privacy guarantees would meant at least geeks but possibly a wider audience would find the attraction in using it.
Well, it's a bit late now, isn't it AC! Sheesh. Geez... I'm not even going to respond to you any further.
To Ilya: R.I.P
To Ilya's family, friends, colleagues and associates: I offer my condolences and wish you peace also and wish you the strength to get through this.
Regards
Craig
When someone commits suicide, it's not always the case that they're going to smother the Internet with cries for help -- introverted especially, especially the geeky kind, tend to bundle up their emotions. Suicides can and do happen out of the blue.
Condolences to his family and friends.
Well, yeah. Championing the cause of privacy protection in social networks earns you that right many times over.
Awful and upsetting for the family and friends, sure. But for himself, I don't know.
I'm not sure life deserves the worship it gets. Ok, life can be fun but not fun enough to justify the overhead. By the time you're 20 you kinda get the plot, and it usually doesn't get any better after that.
I've been trying to shield my children from discovering this, but my 13-year-old son, who's of a very contemplating kind, voices similar thoughts already. While I will in no way encourage this line of thinking, I'm having a hard time countering his arguments because he's totally right.
As an educated (BS in SE), 25 year old male who has attempted suicide twice (and failed by chance/luck/bad luck), in general we do send out cries for help. They get dismissed or go unnoticed. They aren't "I'm going to kill myself tonight. Don't try to stop me." but more like "I don't really care" or "I just cause problems" along with a passive shrug cause you don't want to make the other person feel bad too.
Personally if someone had noticed my attempts, I think I would've been better off. The ones that are vocal about it get help, the ones that are discovered before death get help, but the ones that are barely strong enough to keep from going all the way just linger on in quiet misery without being able to get help or end it.
My respect to the guy. Humans die easily, but it takes a lot to kill yourself. He was stronger than me.
What? Life didn't even get interesting until I was at least 22. The best years of life are in you 30s when you have money, friends who are more than just coincidental classmates. I pity your children.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I disagree strongly with that. I'm in my mid-40s, and so far I have to say that life has got better with each passing decade. Not necessily easier, mind you, but certainly better. My job has never been more interesting, and my kids are getting old enough to be not just fun but interesting to have deep discussions with. Perhaps most importantly, I know myself, my strengths and weaknesses better than I ever used to, I've got far more confidence than when I was younger, I'm happy with who I am, and I know how to apply myself and to work with the people around me to get stuff done.
Life is what you make of it. Whatever age you are.
I would tend to say this post is a cry for help.
Flip that statement around: claiming that suicide is selfish is proclaiming that the temporary grief I will experience by the suicide of a loved one is more important than the constant suffering of that loved one. Or to put it another way, my wants are more important than the wants of those I love.
It's the same thing. I don't think you can so easily find and take a moral high ground in such a complex philosophical issue. I think most people would agree that anyone contemplating or attempting suicide needs help, I'm just not sure that insulting someone in such a fragile mental state by calling them selfish is very helpful.
Don't kill yourself. Just don't.
Throw away all your stuff, shave your head, leave your home and your hometown, and start walking, heading in one direction. Drop your job. Stand and pee on the desk of your Boss. Run away from school. Do whatever you must, but do *not* kill yourself. It's about the stupidest thing you can do.
My Grandpa who dug the whole Nazi-Wehrmacht thing back then and went on to invade and fight on the eastern front in WW2 as a Waffen-SS Officer (Kompanieführer) gave me this advice he took home after the war: If everything you believed in is gone, the 3rd Reich, the Wehrmacht, your hometown and half of your homeland burned and lost to the russians of which a few million are now rightfull super-pissed and heading straight your way, raping and killing their way through whatever is left of the eastern german population, if your entire Kompanie is dead (two assistants aside, which got captured a few days ago) if the beloved Führer is dead (*his* beloved Füher - not mine (emphasis mine!)), Berlin is falling and you're hearing the gunfire, the Stalinorgel and their bombshells crashing in near Zossen just a few Kilometers away, your injured and they are coming to get you and they will tear you to tiny bits and pieces, and the maggots are eating away at the festering wound in your leg, your career and your life and everything you've ever believed in is basically over and out with no stone on another in bombed out Berlin for Kilometers in each direction ... if all that has and just is happening before your very eyes right here and now ... you might aswell just crawl on a few more meters and see if something interesting happens instead of putting a gun to your head.
He crawled on, found a deserted Wehrmacht horse, crawled on to its back sideways. The horse eventually rode to a gathering-camp. The nurses picked him up and the russians didn't deport him because his injuries were to severe - the lucky bastard.
Long story short, he lives to this very day (age 97) to tell us this advice. Old Type-A nazi or not, that actually *is* a very valuable advice. If *he* in that situation decided *not* to kill himself, so can you.
Bottom line:
Don't kill yourself. It's that simple.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Suicide isn't about what's happening to you, it's about what's happening inside you.
Changing everything won't stop suicidal people from killing themselves, just like non-suicidal people like you Grandfather won't kill themselves even when everything has changed for the worst.