Fredrik Knudsen
7 HN recommenders · recommended in 8 months, 2019–2022
1:25:52 · 7.8M views · Dec 22, 2018
Fredrik Knudsen's 86-minute documentary on Terry A. Davis, creator of TempleOS, tracing his work, his schizophrenia and his decline. It is a chronological video essay built on his public posts and videos.
Regarded as the definitive, if heartbreaking, account of Terry Davis and TempleOS.
9 comments from Hacker News
(Context, the late creator of the original TempleOS, Terry Davis, was very schizophrenic.) This video is the definitive rundown on his life and illness: this video Terry Davis, in life and online, was completely wild. What's interesting though is that when you play in TempleOS for a little while, it's easy to forget that. The OS is religious and super idiosyncratic, but that nasty, manic, hateful, attitude isn't there (with few exceptions). And the code and docs are damn good. I think Terry tried hard to keep the actual OS and documentation "pure", in a way. I think digging in and working on extremely complex C code was a regulating force that calmed him, in the exact opposite way that being jeered at online (especially by 4Chan and the like) upset him and made his condition worse.
Here is a great video on TempleOS and Terry Davis himself. It talks about the development of the OS, it's history and his life in a chronological order. this video
I felt similarly when I heard the news. I can't explain the sadness I felt when I learned that 4Chan brigades are largely responsible for how quickly his situation deteriorated. For those who, like me, didn't know, he had begun live-streaming, where he would take call-ins to his landline. It's there that a concerted campaign to get Terry to alienate himself from his parents (with whom he lived) and stop taking his medication. This is not to mention how they egged on romantic feelings for a YouTube personality who they would later impersonate and torture him with in awful ways. All this led to Terry's parents being unable to house him. They were very old and the situation became impossible. Terry survived on the streets for sometime, meeting up with (genuine and loving) fans along the way. Terry sadly was struck by a train. We were able to celebrate an eccentric and strange life because of the internet. It also ended it. I hope the internet can heal... I know people like you and I hope it can. It didn't here. If you want to learn more about Terry's life and death, please check out Fredrick Knudsen's video essay. It is in-depth and important, although very challenging because of the subject matter. this video Finally, if you feel like you or someone you care for are in crisis, or might be soon, consider speaking to the folks at NAMI in the US. If you're not in the US, they can direct you to people in your country. 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or info@nami.org
I love seeing interest in the OS! > I've never understood how much criticism the creator of TempleOS got. Terry Davis was very mentally ill, much moreso than I think some people realize. His schizophrenia made him think that he was married to a Youtuber, that Larry Page was watching his videos, and that he had a telepathic connection to Elon Musk. There's a good video about him and TempleOS by Fredrick Knudsen. [1] > Instead of being elitist and shooting down his contributions, the computer science crowd could have focused on getting this member of the community the help he would have needed concerning other parts of life. I think a lot of the CS community enjoyed seeing his contributions, especially here on Hacker News in the later days of his life. I know that people wanted to help him, but I'm not sure how much could've been done beyond what his family was doing, honestly. Some people tried to help and ended up making things worse. > I would love to look at its source code though! I want to make some more videos about just that, but in the meantime, the source code is included in the operating system (since everything except the boot code is JIT), and if you ever want to develop inside TempleOS, you'll be referring to it a whole lot I can tell you that :D (Terry Davis mirrored the OS online with a DolDoc -> HTML tool, you can browse the source code / system files on the archived site [2]) 1. this video 2. [LINK]
There's a long video about Terry and TempleOS by YouTube creator Fredrik Knudsen, this video It's pretty heart-breaking to watch, though. Had he not drawn the short straw, he could've gone down as a legend. He built his own home-made CNC milling machine in the 90s. Who knows what he could've accomplished? Rest in peace, Terry. May the Internet never forget your struggle.