[HN Gopher] In Memory of Stiver
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In Memory of Stiver
Author : thunderbong
Score : 444 points
Date : 2024-11-04 06:56 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.jetbrains.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.jetbrains.com)
| oytis wrote:
| Didn't know about that side of his talent. Among broader Russian
| audience Stiver was known as a maintainer of the largest pirate
| library in Russian (see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41634780).
| ptero wrote:
| It is also broader than just Russian and bigger than just
| pirate. Flibusta has been my go-to source for books for many
| years.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Didn't realize that! His death sent shocks across the Russian
| speaking internet because he was the maintainer of Flibusta but
| noone spoke about his other passion.
| rob74 wrote:
| That might explain why the article is so light on personal
| details - either he asked them to keep them private, or maybe
| they're not aware of his real identity at all?
| selivanovp wrote:
| They're aware, that's why they presented him as a "German
| programmer" and completely avoided his flibusta endeavour.
| The author from JetBrains is Russian himself.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Why does everyone have to share their real life identity on
| the Internet? Why do you care?
| znpy wrote:
| Many people base their judgment of somebody on the person's
| ideals rather than actual accomplishments. My gut feeling
| is that gp wanted to evaluate Stiver on something else
| rather than personal accomplishments.
|
| It's another sign of the performative society we live into,
| where work and accomplishments don't matter but virtue
| signalling does.
| rob74 wrote:
| Funny that you're judging _me_ by assuming that I want to
| judge _him_. It just struck me as unusual (and a bit sad)
| to see this obituary without anything personal. But I don
| 't feel in any way "entitled" to get any personal
| details, far from it...
| hnisoss wrote:
| related https://sive.rs/anon
| Kwpolska wrote:
| > If you defiantly refuse to say who you are, it can make
| people angry that you're upsetting social reciprocity.
| You know who they are, but they don't know who you are.
| It feels rude. An obsessive personality might make it
| their damn mission to figure out who you are!
|
| To be frank, fuck them. I'm not inventing an entire
| persona and stuff just to make some weirdos happy.
| jrpelkonen wrote:
| Back in the day, I had to deal with some poorly documented closed
| source Java applications (e.g. IBM WebSphere). Tools like
| Fernflower and its precursors were invaluable to fill the gaps.
|
| Thank you, Stiver, and R.I.P.
| patwolf wrote:
| I worked on WebSphere back in the day. There were a lot of pre-
| compiled libraries provided by other IBM teams. I too made good
| use of decompilers (probably jad at the time) as it was often
| easier than trying to track down the source.
| AstroJetson wrote:
| I also had a huge library of decompiled Websphere libraries.
| IBM was always sending patches and we would go "ok, what does
| this do?" "Fixes your problem?""How""Really well." So it got
| decompiled to see what it did.
|
| There were lots of "We think your patch is doing XYZZY, we
| see where our code should be doing that. We've updated our
| code and the problem went away."
|
| Fernflower was awesome. RIP Stiver, glioblastoma can be an
| ugly way to die.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| > glioblastoma can be an ugly way to die.
|
| He opted for an assisted suicide:
| https://flibusta.is/node/684900.
| melling wrote:
| "A year after undergoing a world-first treatment for
| glioblastoma, Australian doctor Richard Scolyer remains
| cancer-free."
|
| Probably only a decade away from curing it. Unfortunately,
| medicine can evolve slowly.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-69006713.amp
| petesergeant wrote:
| > a German programmer of Russian origin
|
| I wonder how much of a boom Russia will see from emigres
| returning home if the political environment lets up a little
| trhway wrote:
| Not much. Russia is a country of just 140M people. With wider
| availability of education/etc. size of population matters more
| and more.
| cgh wrote:
| And Russia's demographic crisis is going to get a lot worse,
| cementing its irrelevency as a world power:
| https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/03/04/russias-
| populati...
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| So let's see, Russia's population is 1/2 that of the US and
| it's irrelevant. But the US population is 1/5 of China's.
| When do you expect to see irrelevance of the United States
| as a world power?
| trhway wrote:
| Right now US has 156M college educated people, China -
| has been quickly increasing that number during last 10-20
| years and currently reached 218M. Thus we see emergence
| of China as rivaling superpower. You can look at China's
| rate of new college admissions and make a reasonable
| projection when a number of senior (10-15 years of
| experience) professionals in China will dwarf that in US.
|
| >Russia's population is 1/2 that of the US and it's
| irrelevant.
|
| not yet. Quickly moving that direction though. No yet
| there mostly because of USSR built resources like nuclear
| weapons, space program, educational and scientific
| foundations from that time (USSR was an empire of 250M
| population of proper USSR plus the Eastern Block which in
| particular produced technology - Bulgarian computers,
| Hungarian buses, Polish built ships, including Navy ones,
| etc.) All that in Russia is falling behind and apart.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| 156M out of a total ~300M population are college
| educated?
| trhway wrote:
| My mistake - i used 46% out of 340M from the quick Google
| search. Actually it is
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2024/02/01/p
| erc...
|
| "The percentage of adults in the U. S. between the ages
| of 25 to 64 with college degrees, certificates or
| industry-recognized certifications has increased from
| 38.1% in 2009 to 54.3% in 2021"
|
| so something like 100M.
|
| And if we look here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educati
| onal_attainment_in_the_... it is more like 70M.
| ekianjo wrote:
| College education is not a super good proxy for
| superpower status... Even more so nowadays.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| A << college >> being what in the States would be called
| a "Jr High", probably not.
|
| (that said, china seems to have done much better with
| broad secondary education than india did with targeted
| tertiary education)
| cgh wrote:
| Maybe read the article, Ivan.
| FpUser wrote:
| Maybe learn to be civil Joe.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| Hey, it's OK, I'm just a bot after all.
| christophilus wrote:
| I'm not an expert, but demographic trends are bleak for
| Russia, not particularly good for China, and only a bit
| better for the US. Only time will tell what it all means.
| The world has never seen demographic collapse on the
| scale we're witnessing, so people who confidently predict
| the consequences are speculating. That said, losing super
| power status seems like a reasonable bit of speculation.
| I don't see a path to maintaining it while in demographic
| collapse.
| protomolecule wrote:
| Most likely Stiver emigrated in the 90s for economic reasons --
| Russia was in shambles. There are about 11 millions of
| emigrants of Russian origin [0], but I highly doubt that many
| will come back even if tomorrow we get a new liberal president.
|
| [0] https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/WMR-2022.pdf
| pk-protect-ai wrote:
| How do you change the political environment in a dictatorship
| where ruling class has all the power and majority of the money
| and controls what you should read, watch or talk about?
| rob74 wrote:
| Well, the Russians already tried it once, more than 100 years
| ago, with limited success unfortunately...
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| A while ago on HN I said the Cheka learned all their
| techniques from the Okhrana and people took me literally,
| even replying to the effect that there was no personnel
| continuity.
|
| What I'd meant is that, having been on the receiving end of
| all the Okhrana's dirty tricks, and having learned the hard
| way, the Cheka knew very well indeed how to play those
| games by the time they were on top.
| protomolecule wrote:
| I'd say it was too successful.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| The ruling class is not a monolith, it's made of people with
| their own idea who are constantly vying for a better
| position.
|
| Just this week some part of the US ruling class got some
| better seats in the game of musical chairs. The game's not
| much different anywhere in the world, other than the window
| dressing.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Goldstein, _The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical
| Collectivism_ (1948) has a description of the game which
| agrees with Veblen, Luttwak, Bueno de Mesquita & Smith,
| and probably a few others over the last five thousand
| years.
|
| If the mid wishes a circulation of elites, they must ally
| with the low against the high; if the high wishes to
| prevent this, they can ally with the low against the mid.
|
| A crucial point on which Goldstein, Squealer, and the 2
| Ronnies, agree is that no matter which way these alliances
| are sorted in theory, somehow in practice the low always
| wind up more or less where they started.
|
| > _Oh, it 's the meek! Blessed are the meek! Oh, that's
| nice, isn't it? I'm glad they're getting something, 'cause
| they have a hell of a time._ --Mrs. BN
| centur wrote:
| I don't think it will see any, people moved from Russia not
| because a single person in power, but because of systemic
| problems on all levels - kindergartens, schools, police and
| safety, rights to do a legit business. It's never a head
| person, it's always a system that been enabled and groomed by a
| head person or party
| danielodievich wrote:
| Nobody will go back.
|
| One of more interesting experiences from early 2000s in
| Microsoft was when Microsoft Russia finally crossed 1B in
| revenue by finally having Gazprom/Sberbank buy all the sh*t
| that they were pirating before. By doing so, the country was
| eligible to do the yearly business review in person, instead of
| over whatever passed for Zoom back then, I don't remember
| anymore. Olga D...can't remember her last name was the country
| manager, one of the few women in such position at the time. She
| invited everyone in russian community (hello rodina email list)
| to come to the Microsoft conference center in building 34 to
| listen to repeat of what she did earlier that week to Ballmer.
| This was the only microsoft event with catered vodka and caviar
| I've been to, but anyhow, after presentation of the financial
| stuff it turned a bit into a recruiting event - hey, come back
| to the motherland, the water is nice, look they are buying
| software licenses like civilized people, here is the pay scale
| from levels 61 and up, etc etc. There were ~400 people in the
| room, and the uptake was 0 (zero). All of us who were there in
| the room were not there in motherland for a reason.
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| You and your peers remember the Russia of the 1990s, dirt
| poor, barely avoiding famine, with a completely collapsed
| society and state. The new emigrants remember the Russia of
| the 2010s, with classy restaurants, developing
| infrastructure, cheap housing and whatever consumer goods
| money can buy, and that's very different. Your experience
| from 20 years ago does not apply anymore.
| usrnm wrote:
| To be fair, your experience from 5 years ago is just as
| irrelevant. Russia under sanctions is very different.
| protomolecule wrote:
| Only politically. Economically it's mostly the same.
| aix1 wrote:
| I assume when you say "politically" you include the
| ongoing war in Ukraine. I think it's a huge factor in
| this context, given its impact and the risks it presents
| to folks (especially young men) who choose to remain in
| Russia.
|
| By some estimates, 900K people have left Russia since the
| invasion [1], of whom 100K were IT specialists leaving in
| 2022 alone [2] (I haven't looked at the figures since
| then). I think that's a pretty strong indication of the
| sentiment.
|
| And wrt the economy, didn't the Central Bank just
| increase the benchmark rate to 21% [3] (with another 2%
| hike widely expected in December)?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_emigration_during_t
| he_...
|
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/04/04/1070352/ukrai
| ne-...
|
| https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/10/29/russia-s-key-
| interes...
| protomolecule wrote:
| In Russia programmers working at accredited IT-companies
| are safe from mobilization [0]
|
| > I think that's a pretty strong indication of the
| sentiment.
|
| Some left following their western employers, some fled
| from the mobilization in 2022.
|
| >And wrt the economy, didn't the Central Bank just
| increase the benchmark rate to 21%
|
| It did, that's why I said 'mostly'. Kremlin is pumping
| money into defense industry and into payments to contract
| soldiers, the Central Bank is doing what it can to curb
| the inflation. Overall it hasn't affected the life much.
|
| [0] https://www.gosuslugi.ru/armydelay
| oytis wrote:
| > Kremlin is pumping money into defense industry and into
| payments to contract soldiers, the Central Bank is doing
| what it can to curb the inflation.
|
| Well, yes, and what do you think the impact of it is
| going to be on the economy?
| protomolecule wrote:
| The lowest unemployment ever, some redistribution of
| wealth in favor of workers in the military industry and
| soldiers.
| oytis wrote:
| That's the immediate result. But what about later, when
| the war is over? Military expense is non-productive,
| economically it's the same as just giving people money
| for free while they are sitting on the couch (nobody is
| killed in the latter case though).
|
| Military overspending literally killed Soviet Union, and
| people returning from Afghanistan war made guaranteed the
| unforgettable social climate after that. I don't see any
| reason to be bullish on Russia, even if Trump now gives
| up Ukraine for Putin.
| protomolecule wrote:
| Yes, Russian economy will crash after the war, just like
| American after the end of WW2.
| pkd wrote:
| I know somebody who relocated his entire family after 20+
| years in the U.S and is loving it. People are not as
| monolithic as we are likely to believe sometimes.
| zczc wrote:
| Head of Microsoft Russia was Olga Dergunova.
|
| As for "nobody will go back" - agree in general, but at least
| Anton Nossik did go back.
| cyberax wrote:
| Russia has plenty of resources, and is severely under-
| populated. So yep, it has a huge growth potential.
|
| But the political system will have to be reformed first.
| jojobas wrote:
| And by "reformed", you mean "burnt to the ground, for real
| this time".
| cyberax wrote:
| Burning systems to the ground does not work. The end result
| is almost always worse than before.
|
| Russia actually has a rather functional bureaucracy that is
| holding the country together. All it really needs is
| decentralization of power, probably similar to the German's
| model.
| selivanovp wrote:
| It's happening already. Like significant part of recent
| JetBrains struggles with lower quality of their products is due
| to they had to relocate people out of Russia, and some people
| just don't like to live abroad. Their Kotlin lead returned to
| Russia and works in Yandex now. About half the people that
| relocated during 2022 returned already, and if the war in
| Ukraine will finally end in 2025 a lot more will return back
| home.
| 9dev wrote:
| > if the war in Ukraine will finally end in 2025 a lot more
| will return back home.
|
| And how do you suppose this will happen? By Trump cutting a
| deal with Putin leaving Ukraine out to die, or what?
|
| The Russian soldiers might return home. The Ukrainians won't.
| There won't be a home to return to, and in many cases, there
| won't be anyone left to return.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| Generally speaking, wars tend to end.
| 9dev wrote:
| Specifically speaking, however, we are talking about
| Russia illegally invading and occupying Ukraine, a
| sovereign state both Russia and the USA have explicitly
| declared to keep its territorial integrity intact in
| exchange for its nuclear weapons. We are talking about
| this because the president-elect of the USA has curiously
| exclaimed to be able to "end the war" in a single day,
| and the only way that is possible is by simply
| sacrificing the country to Russias imperialist urges;
| that _specifically_ implies millions of people loosing
| their lives, their home, their language, their history,
| their families, and their belongings.
|
| Wars end, true. Exactly _how_ this war ends is crucial.
| selivanovp wrote:
| Russia is not imperialistic, Russia was fine with Ukraine
| as a sovereign state. More of it, due to current
| geopolitical shift, Russia is even more interested in
| Ukraine being a sovereign state, a buffer between Russia
| and NATO.
|
| The problem is that USA twice messed with Ukraine
| sovereignty, first in 2004, and then in 2014 turned this
| country to a proxy, puppet state, bulwark against Russia.
| And that's why this war started, because Russia can not
| allow Ukraine to be turned into a hostile state,
| ideologically driven by hatred towards Russia and
| Russians and manipulated by NATO, with bases on its
| territory.
|
| Russia is fine with Ukrainians, if you're unaware, Russia
| accepted the largest number of Ukrainian refugees of all
| countries. Most of these people got Russian citizenship.
| It's actually Ukraine, that turned Zelensky into a king
| with absolute power, dismantled all the opposition party,
| oppressed Russian language, culture, religion, wiping
| history, and basically brainwashing population with
| targeted hatred. The reality is: Ukrainian dystopian
| regime is hanging on Western support. Without money and
| weapons they can't even feed their people anymore, but
| already turning women to cannon fodder, and no doubt,
| that in a few month they'll force their kids to go to
| tranches also. Because Ukrainian leaders don't care about
| Ukraine or Ukrainians, all they care is their pockets,
| that are filled by the war, and their goal is to prolong
| this war for as much as possible.
| aguaviva wrote:
| _The problem is that USA twice messed with Ukraine
| sovereignty, first in 2004, and then in 2014 turned this
| country to a proxy, puppet state, bulwark against Russia.
| And that 's why this war started, because Russia can not
| allow Ukraine to be turned into a hostile state,
| ideologically driven by hatred towards Russia and
| Russians and manipulated by NATO, with bases on its
| territory._
|
| It seems you may not appreciate the extent to which the
| sources you're getting these narratives from may be
| woefully uninformed, and/or simply lying to you.
|
| None of this "puppet state" stuff, or the descriptions of
| events in 2004/2014 that you're echoing here has any
| connection to reality. If the Ukrainian government were
| simply a "puppet" of the United States, then it would
| have evacuated from Kyiv after the 2022 invasion just
| like the former was advising it to do. But it did the
| complete opposite, instead.
| 9dev wrote:
| Most of what you've written is just plain wrong, but I'm
| not responsible for clearing up the propaganda.
|
| Let me just say this: No political fear of any foreign
| influence on a bordering country ever justifies invading
| this country, killing its citizens, and destroying its
| infrastructure. No matter how you try to frame it, Russia
| committed crimes in Ukraine, which it is completely
| responsible for. You may try to blame the victim here,
| but that will never become the truth.
| oytis wrote:
| It's a different case. People who didn't want to move
| anywhere were virtually forced to, and after realising the
| struggles of being an immigrant decided to return.
|
| People who made the decision themselves and have already
| settled in the new place seldom come back.
| dvektor wrote:
| Really appreciated the time someone spent putting that together,
| good article.
|
| R.I.P Stiver
| ssousa666 wrote:
| Interesting to learn the human side of a tool I use almost every
| day. RIP Stiver
| indrora wrote:
| Fernflower is one of the few really powerful java decompilers out
| there that had good support for the bad bytecode that dex2jar
| would produce.
|
| I've spent many hours pouring through the output of Fernflower
| looking for what some obfuscation algorithm has come up with.
|
| Dogspeed, Stiver. Your work, "legitimate" or not, has benefitted
| the world. o7
| YouWhy wrote:
| Here's a man who lived for much of the same ideals as Aaron
| Swartz, and was able to make a tremendous impact on the Russian
| internet universe while also laying low and quiet.
|
| I'm awfully sad Stiver passed away before old age, but happy that
| at least it was not due to adversity.
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