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Nickb missing?

63 points by miles ↗ HN
Prakash and I help moderate nickb's NewMogul.com, which has been down for a day or so. We haven't heard from him for over 40 days, and cannot reach him by phone or email. Does anyone have any information on his whereabouts? (For those who are new to Hacker News, nickb is one of its oldest members: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nickb )

44 comments

[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 92.2 ms ] thread
berrow
I hope it can be resolved soon. I am really missing New Mogul
sant0sk1
nickb == _why?
staunch
He's already pg, so he can't be _why.
andreyf
Surely, he can be both!
kyro
They outed him, too, and discovered his real name to be Nicholas B-something.
unalone
I thought nickb was a pseudonym as well. There was a conversation wherein one of the HN biggies hinted he was a well-known tech person who didn't want his name getting in the way of conversation. I could be misremembering, though.
prakash
nickb is not a pseudonym.
rms
He posted his real name/email address on Hacker News in the early days.
gaius
I am Spartacus.
notaddicted
I am really missing my NewMogul :S.

If I were to guess he is probably just too busy to go through email, and doesn't know NewMogul is down. If anyone knows him personally please call him and let him know.

bsaunder
He hasn't commented on HN in 48 days.
prakash
More than NM, we want to make sure if everything is ok with NickB.
mcxx
There has to be a great party somewhere. I guess nickb and _why are attending.
shard
Those people party hard. Lance Davis was there and didn't want to leave either.
adrianwaj
From NM's whois, he's based in Ottawa, Canada (there's an exact address in fact). Someone who lives nearby can check in with Prakash or Miles and then do some knocking or doorbelling.
prakash
Left a VM. called a couple of numbers. Not sure if that is his current address.
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ojbyrne
I've met him (in Ottawa). He hasn't responded to emails since early July. That address is a multi-unit building.

I don't see that it's really appropriate for me to go knock on his door though. There is a thing called privacy and he does have family.

prakash
Thanks for that info, Owen.
adrianwaj
Would you set a deadline on it though, say 5 months if nothing happens, more, or never?
ojbyrne
I'll email him again, but I don't see much more than that being in any way appropriate. If I had been to his house, maybe, but I haven't.
adrianwaj
I don't think it'd be rude to go knocking on his door (if you know it). It's just that it's a major anomaly to cease communications in such a way, isn't it?

NM and HN may be a low priority for him, and that's fair enough, and he can't be doing both forever, so you're not going to be saying "where have you been?" or "what's going on?" it's more like "is everything okay?"

A few people have been left high and dry, and if it wasn't for them, you'd probably back off completely.

ojbyrne
I might have a phone number (have to check my emails). I would feel comfortable calling him.
morbidkk
who's next? bad one but It reminded me of Atlas Shrugged
BrentRitterbeck
I believe he did say at one point that he was working for a startup. Maybe they hit crunch time.
jasonlbaptiste
Demo Day was yesterday, so I doubt PG had time to manage two accounts.
racerrick
New Mogul is great. Hope this gets resolved.

It's hosted at Godaddy. The domain is current. And it's not that he didn't pay a hosting bill - when that happens at Godaddy they make the site forward to a godaddy page.

That means that someone manually took the site down.

rcoder 

  > That means that someone manually took the site down.
Since the News.YC code (which NewMogul also uses) runs in a single Scheme process, it could have shut down for any number of reasons: it might have crashed, failed to start after a server reboot, been killed by the OS or hosting provider due to a memory leak, etc.

I don't know what kind of monitoring nickb might have set up, but if he's not responding to personal email or phone calls, it seems reasonable that he simply doesn't/can't know that the site is down.

adrianwaj
Something's happened to Nickb, but he'll bounce back eventually.
gmate
Do you know or are you guessing?

I've called him, emailed, etc. but no answer. He went radio silent a few weeks ago, was back in contact, and now again radio silent.

If you do know what's up, maybe fill us in. Some of us here in Ottawa are a tad worried.

adrianwaj
It's an educated guess.

If something had happened seriously to him, his family would be attending to it on a practical level. If so, I'd have expected them to have contacted someone already in the online community via his emails or by his direction. That expectation may be wrong, but you'd expect him to at least shoot a message out somehow already.

So either something extremely bad has happened and news hasn't got out, or he'll bounce back in some way. I think the latter. Furthermore, by the removal of NM's submissions of NickB, there could be a _why scenario: maybe he's wanting to rearrange his life: hopefully for positive reasons.

OTOH if something serious has happened, we could provide emotional support: but he might not want that.

adrianwaj
Why did you open an account to just ask me that? Why don't you seek him out?
brandon272
Hopefully he's okay.
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anigbrowl
I was wondering what had happened to NM as well. Another vote for doorbelling, and good wishes.
peterwwillis
People tend to relate their whereabouts to people they know IRL more often than those they communicate with online. If you don't know where someone is, you ask their friend, their parents, their wife, co-workers, etc as the amount of socially-relevant information (such as location) will be much greater and with a larger history of previous knowledge in those person IRL than those met online. After all, why does Markus in Timbuktu need to know you vacation in the hamptons every 6 months when you've got your Crackberry on you for the duration? Markus' co-workers, family members, and friends will be much more aware of such information.

And sometimes people need a break from the internet.