Ask HN: Anyone know where Mark Pilgrim went?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3073798

by rileywatkins • 15 years ago

305 84 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I went back to diveintohtml5.org to find something today, and it's gone. Then I checked diveintomark.org, diveintopython3.org, twitter.com/diveintomark...

Is Mark Pilgrim pulling a disappearing act?

dangoor• 15 years ago

Good question

http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2011/10/04/searching-for-m...

kyleslattery• 15 years ago

http://diveintohtml5.com/ seems to still be working

macrael• 15 years ago

I'm not sure the .com is canonical. I don't speak Chineese so I don't really know what is going on with that site. the .org variant and his other pages are all returning 410 Gone.

loire2802• 15 years ago

The domain for that site is owned by a Chinese university, and the IP address of the server it's hosted on looks like a shared server (there's over 200 sites hosted on that IP). I doubt Mark has anything to do with hosting that site.

someone13• 15 years ago

Out of sheer curiosity - how do you tell how many sites (and which ones) are hosted on a shared server?

martey• 15 years ago

Mark Pilgrim's website is diveintohtml5.org. If you compare WHOIS information, it is clear that diveintohtml5.com is owned by Xiaokang Liu, not Mark Pilgrim.

rileywatkins• 15 years ago

I noticed this earlier, but it seems he doesn't actually run the http://diveintohtml5.com, according to a whois search. As macrael pointed out, the rest of the .org variants are gone.

rdhyee• 15 years ago

I'd definitely like to know what happened to Mark Pilgrim and hope he is well. It's still reassuring to know that his websites are still archived by the Internet Archive. (e.g., http://web.archive.org/web/20110726001953/http://diveintohtm...)

chr15• 15 years ago

Looks like one of his last tweets:

Hey everybody! Adobe has acquired another batch of awesome products that they will slowly ruin through incompetence and mismanagement!

From http://topsy.com/twitter.com/diveintomark/status/12091889959...

thefreehunter• 15 years ago

The Adobe cartel has kidnapped him!

bish3al• 15 years ago

Oh no! Dude I'm scared... He taught me Python #sadface

Bo102010• 15 years ago

His github account is gone as well (http://github.com/diveintomark).

This is troubling. I'm glad I downloaded Dive Into Python 3, at least.

patrickaljord• 15 years ago

His G+ account is gone too https://plus.google.com/111966606387715428604/posts

jsdalton• 15 years ago

Reddit account deleted too: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/f545e/i_am_a_fourtime_...

rufibarbatus• 15 years ago

It seems his Github acount has been squatted and is being used as a mirror for his stuff.

WALoeIII• 15 years ago

_why 2.0.

nostromo• 15 years ago

> Is Mark Pilgrim pulling a disappearing act?

Shouldn't we respect his wishes? If he wants to pull the plug on his online identity, he should be allowed to do so without HN sending out an internet search squad.

scott_s• 15 years ago

He expressed no wishes. I think that at this point, people just want to know what happened. That requires doing things like this.

lizzard• 15 years ago

People are worried he might be suicidal and are concerned for him. It is a fairly unusual act for someone with such a strong Internet presence to delete it; I would think it is a warning sign, like giving away all your things.

solutionyogi• 15 years ago

That's a really sad news.

He hasn't deleted his Hacker News Account yet. He last commented 27 days ago.

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=MarkPilgrim

[I loved his blog and I wish someone has archive for it. I did not archive it locally because Mark used to write articles about long term archival of his data and I didn't think he would ever delete all his public writings.]

inconditus2• 15 years ago

A July snapshot: http://web.archive.org/web/20110718034434/http://diveintomar.... The newer ones may be able to be retrieved through Google cache.

naner• 15 years ago

He hasn't deleted his Hacker News Account yet.

I don't believe you can delete an HN account.

scq• 15 years ago

I think you can email pg to delete your account.

shareme3• 15 years ago

Respect his wishes, even his google accounts/profiles gone..

As far as I know he is still working at Google

8ig8• 15 years ago

The problem is that there are no wishes to respect. I think everyone mainly just wants to know he is okay. If he is and he wants space, I'm sure he'll get it.

alnayyir2• 15 years ago

I think Zed lucky-stiff'd him.

Which is the proper punitive measure for anybody that actually teaches the usage of JDBC.

alnayyir2• 15 years ago

He's making recompense for making JDBC part of the first exercise in a Python book.

He'll return from the self-flagellation in two years after some time spent at a monastery.

I fully expect his enlightenment will bring much into the world of programming.

lazugod• 15 years ago

You are being needlessly insulting to someone who could be in serious trouble.

adriand• 15 years ago

I really hope Mark is okay, and I'm really going to miss Dive Into HTML5. That resource had a truly unique writing style, featured a great design, and was an a absolute treasure trove of valuable information. I was literally on the site just yesterday, reading up on local storage.

nickzoic• 15 years ago

Yeah, one of the few books of that nature which I really enjoyed AND found useful. Thanks, Mark, where-ever you are.

loire2802• 15 years ago

His contributions to the community were released under liberal licenses and will undoubtedly be widely available tomorrow. Heck, you can `apt-get install diveintopython` on an Ubuntu system. However, a lot of links just got broken across the internet - and his books are popular entry points for novices. Hopefully when whatever is going on in his life cools down, he can transfer the domain names to a responsible custodian.

sudonim• 15 years ago

Maybe he and _why are in Galt's Gulch? (Any Atlas Shrugged fans?)

DanI-S• 15 years ago

I can't imagine _why being an objectivist...

jinfiesto• 15 years ago

Lol, seconded.

wooswiff• 15 years ago

As pointed out by user mikelietz on Eric Meyer's site, http://firehose.diveintomark.org/ is still up.

inportb• 15 years ago

Mirrored!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1213413/markpilgrim.htm

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1213413/markpilgrim.xml

esigler• 15 years ago

Similar (though not as extreme) behavior has occurred in the past:

http://web.archive.org/web/20110726001259/http://diveintomar...

jdnier• 15 years ago

So check this out: Google "http error code 410" and the second hit is from diveintomark.org circa 2003.

""" Let’s all talk about HTTP error code 410. ... Error 410 means Resource gone, as in, a resource used to exist at this location, but now it’s gone. Not only is it gone, but I don’t know (or I don’t want to tell you) where it went. ... Now, there is not a lot of information about error 410... I suppose because it addresses a condition that doesn’t come up very often. Also, we’ve all been brainwashed into believing that all resources should be permanent, which simply isn’t true. """ Google cache: http://bit.ly/qxdBi5

His servers are returning 410 errors but also the same very deliberate HTML:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN"> <html><head> <title>410 Gone</title> </head><body> <h1>Gone</h1> <p>The requested resource<br />/<br /> is no longer available on this server and there is no forwarding address. Please remove all references to this resource.</p> </body></html>

Clearly Mark's invocation of the 410 error is deliberate.

wiredfool• 15 years ago

Yep, that's him. 410 is intentional.

shareme3• 15 years ago

surprising how many people did not notice its 410 not another http code..

zach• 15 years ago

410 Gone (but alive/annoyed) is the new 200 OK.

pingswept• 15 years ago

There's a precedent for this. He disappeared from his blog for a while in 2004. Check the Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:diveint...

robbiet480• 15 years ago

Jason Scott of textfiles.org has called his local police department for a welfare check...

https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/121430050930298880

jerf• 15 years ago

https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/121436177298493440 : "Mark Pilgrim is alive/annoyed we called the police. Please stand down and give the man privacy and space, and thanks everyone for caring."

shareme3• 15 years ago

per Jsaon Scott via his twitter:

Mark Pilgrim is alive/annoyed we called the police. Please stand down and give the man privacy and space, and thanks everyone for caring.

So everyone stand down and respect Mark's wishes

artursapek• 15 years ago

Holy shit, I was just using "Dive Into HTML5" at a hackathon this weekend. It helped a ton, I loved the way that site was designed. This is eery.

andyfleming2• 15 years ago

"Stand down Mark Pilgrim alert. Google, his employer, is on it. Thank you all. Hoping for “he’s just pissed off at Internet” as outcome."

Source: http://twitter.com/#!/GlennF/status/121434638282530816

samuel• 15 years ago

He's OK. I don't know how to link a tweet but see textfiles account(https://twitter.com/#!/textfiles)

Mark Pilgrim is alive/annoyed we called the police. Please stand down and give the man privacy and space, and thanks everyone for caring. ... The communication was specifically verified, it was him, and that's that. That was the single hardest decision I've had to make this year.

joahua• 15 years ago

https://twitter.com/#!/textfiles/status/121436177298493440

(clicking on "x minutes ago" does it)

jonathantneal• 15 years ago

http://diveintohtml5.info/

jerrya2• 15 years ago

Mark is annoyed? How about Mark is goddamn lucky and should be both embarrassed and grateful that he's enough of a character that a chunk of the internet cares about him.

Mark is annoyed?

It is Mark Pilgrim's right to disappear, but to disappear in a puff of greasy black smoke and 4̶0̶4̶s̶ 410s is just attention whoring and begging people to look for him and call the police.

There is no reason for Mark to be annoyed that some caring people looked for him. There is every reason for him to count his blessings.

I sincerely wish him the best and hope he recovers from whatever ails him, but please don't tell me how annoyed he is.

mathias• 15 years ago

> 410s

FTFY.

saurik3• 15 years ago

He probably/hopefully/certainly also has friends and family that he interacts with on a day-to-day basis that, were he to actually-really-really disappear, would care about him and call the police. It is frankly kind of creepy/scary that a bunch of people he barely knows think it is their place to /call the police/ if he gets sick of the weird kind of attention you get from that kind of audience (and frankly reinforces the behavior of wanting to "go 410").

kenferry• 15 years ago

This doesn't make sense to me. Is there any example of a way Mark could have not been okay in a way that is helped by people on the internet tracking him down? Clearly his material was intentionally taken down.. short of "silenced by the gubbermint", I'm not sure how tracking him down could help. It seems more like voyeurism..

212316513• 15 years ago

It is Mark Pilgrim's right to disappear, but to disappear in a puff of greasy black smoke and 4̶0̶4̶s̶ 410s is just attention whoring and begging people to look for him and call the police.

Come on. If I could, I would downvote you to hell. Seriously? You think nobody has a right to delete stuff they put there? They do not have the choice to lose interest in one thing and considering that maintaining it is a liability "take care of it" the old fashioned way? How can you be annoyed that a guy is annoyed that people sent a police car in front of his house. That is just the most ridiculous thing I heard since this morning.

andyfleming2• 15 years ago

"Mark Pilgrim is alive/annoyed we called the police. Please stand down and give the man privacy and space, and thanks everyone for caring."

Source: http://twitter.com/#!/textfiles/status/121436177298493440

unreal37• 15 years ago

Apparently it has been verified he is alive.

http://twitter.com/#!/textfiles/status/121436177298493440

@textfiles (Jason Scott) Mark Pilgrim is alive/annoyed we called the police. Please stand down and give the man privacy and space, and thanks everyone for caring.

@textfiles (Jason Scott) The communication was specifically verified, it was him, and that's that. That was the single hardest decision I've had to make this year.

mbrubeck2• 15 years ago

This isn't totally unprecedented.

In October 2004, Mark stopped blogging after a post titled "Every Exit" which read: "It’s time for me to find a new hobby. Preferably one that doesn’t involve angle brackets. Or computers. Or electricity." [1] That post sat at the top of his previously very active weblog for 18 months until he returned in April 2006. Of course, that time he only stopped posting new material; he didn't delete all his existing resources. But he did disappear from online life for a while.

[1] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Mqb93dp...

itsnotvalid• 15 years ago

Perhaps he read this

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/09/30/the-upside-of-quittin...

(discussion at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3071854 )

kenneth_reitz• 15 years ago

His GitHub projects have been mirrored: https://github.com/diveintomark/

Dive Into Python 3: http://diveintopython3.ep.io/ GitHub: https://github.com/diveintomark/diveintopython3

Dive Into HTML5: http://diveintohtml5.ep.io/ GitHub: https://github.com/diveintomark/diveintohtml5

tuna• 15 years ago

10/4 - never forget. the gayest day on the interwebs. everyone acting like old ladies towards a grown man. [eagle_cries]

Ask HN: Anyone know where Mark Pilgrim went?

Related Stories