RIP, Bob Cringely
Bob Cringely has passed (died)
At the beginning of this year we praised Bob Cringely for his good journalism about IBM. He stopped blogging in July. He came back to blogging (after a 3-year hiatus) only to say his young child had died suddenly, unexpectedly, some time earlier. He spoke about a surgery, then wrote a great deal against the slop industry [1, 2]. We hypothesised about why he suddenly stopped back in July. Now the "mystery [is] solved," an associate told me, "with a sad end" (he died).
And "that's why he suddenly went so quiet in his criticism of AI" [sic].
What an awful loss to society and a colossal loss to IT. He was too young to leave us, his articles were still brilliant and his mind as lucid as ever. █
"They [Microsoft] have the deepest of pockets, unlimited ambition, and they are willing to lose money for years and years just to make sure that you don't make any money, either. And they are mean, REALLY mean."
-Robert X. Cringely