UK tech pioneer Mike Lynch dead at 59 UK software tycoon Mike Lynch has been found dead two days after he went missing in a sailing tragedy off the coast of Sicily. The news ends a period of speculation since reports emerged describing the British entrepreneur's disappearance after the Bayesian, the billionaire's 56-metre superyacht, went down near Porticello in …
"the enemy" have the power to control the weather
Not really... they just need enough patience to wait for bad weather before using their super-secret remote-operated boat-sinking equipment they previously planted.
NOTE: Not that I endorse any such crazy theories. After all... this was clearly the work of Cthulhu
The sinking of the yacht is thought to be primarily due to its design - a 75m main mast in aluminium with a stow-able keel that would typically be stowed whilst at anchor. Water spout hits vessel, tips it and the large mast that isn't being counteracted by the keel means it lays side on in the water and fills up through open hatches. There's a video of a water spout incident (in Auckland I think) where a catamaran gets backflipped and a yacht gets pushed over but its keel manages to right the vessel.
The current investigation is centered around whether the storm hatches had been left open. That's a human error thing, not a random storm thing. It's within the realm of possibility that it was an inside job.
The timing between this and Stephen Chamberlain's car crash might appear coincidental, but bear in mind that while the timing of a storm probably can't be controlled, the timing of a car crash most definitely can be.
To have these two particular people dying in "freak accidents" in such close proximity to each other, after what they've just been through and the enemies they made along the way, stretches the definition of 'accident' to breaking point. And to quote Conan Doyle: "when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains; however improbable; must be the truth."
True. There was a sailor there, that took the BBC reporter out yesterday and he said it was odd. He said the only thing he can think of why it sunk was massive human error. He said he's been in water spouts in smaller boats and been fine. He said for it to take in that much water, that quickly means someone fucked up badly. He also pointed out it should of been birth in port knowing the storm was coming as there was room.
On the other hand, to quote Richard Feynman:
“You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!”
If you want to make this a correct analogy...
“You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate A1. An incredible, almost unbelievably rare sighting. And what's even more amazing is, yesterday I saw the license plate A2, which is also incredibly rare!! Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see two of the absolute rarest plates possible, 2 nights in a row? Amazing!”
I assume A1 is the coincidence of the death of one defendant so soon after acquittal, and A2 is the coincidence of the other defendant dying soon after the trial? In which case, wouldn't the fact they both died on the same day be a third coincidence, albeit with shorter odds, like seeing A1 and A2 on the same street, perhaps?
It'd be more useful if we had a bell curves of time between acquittal and death for various damages amounts.
Without any useful data, I'd be inclined to suspect foul play.
The woman who hit him apparently stayed at the scene and reported herself to police. How many shady hitmen, male or female, do that?
So you're down to one single "freak" accident; nothing there _to_ co-incide, so not even co-incidence.
The yacht sinking being an accident is not at all impossible, so don't eliminate it. Which leaves it far more probable than any silly conspiracy theries.
Very easy to dismiss "conspiracy" theorists. I used to be exactly like you, believe whatever the gov or BBC spewed out.
A viral outbreak that was in the same place as a BL4 lab, what a coicidence.
Lee Harvey Oswald killed by Jack Ruby before authorities could get the truth out of him, what a coincidence.
Boeing whistleblowers die suddenly, what a coincidence.
Nordstream 2 blew up, and nobody can figure out exaclty who did it, I'm sure its just circumstantial.
I'm sure we went into Iraq to "liberate" the people, nothing to do with oil at all.
Thing is, the dark forces / perps rely on brain dead believers of anything authority figures spit out to carry on doing what they do.
This could be coincidence. Thing is, the dismiss an alternative and label anyone who questions it in the way you did says more about you chief.
No, it is easy to dismiss conspiracy theorists because they are weak minded and look for (a), the easiest 'answers' to their lack of understanding of what the world can accomplish / screw up under its own accord, and (b) use the belief of their constructed conspiracies to believe that they hold a "special secret of understanding" that the rest [of the world] doesn't.
It is a 'conspiracy', in a way, because tragedies and dramatic events don't happen in a vacuum, they happen after a sequence of failures and decisions, and the circumstances that bring those failures to a exceptional point in time. So, for example, Boeing's 737 Max failures are a 'conspiracy' because prior decisions (MCAS, no training, hiding its existence from pilots and the FAA, single point of failure, etc.) because those failures were brought into tragedy because of circumstance. Twice.
Once you understand that complex things happen in complex systems, most often you don't *need* a conspiracy theory to understand what happened, and why. But you *do* need to know all the complexities to understand that - and that's where conspiracy theorists FAIL. They pick-and-choose their data and facts and don't know everything involved, yet believe they do, and their made-up story explains it all in a far more simple manner than the complex truth.
Hmm, I'd say the truth is somewhere in the middle. I mean "the Government is listening to all your phone calls and reading all your emails" was conspiracy theorist bullshit until it was proven to be a fact. The yacht sinking seems reasonable - 75m mast in metal with a stowed keel, so inherently unstable in the right conditions.
The waterspout is the only part of this that wasn't (obviously) caused by humans; everything else was plannable.
- Open hatches on an otherwise unsinkable boat? Caused by humans.
- Almost unbelievable breakdown in evacuation and safety protocols by the highly trained crew of a £30m yacht? Caused by humans.
- Deadly car crash? Caused by humans.
It's not a huge leap of imagination to see how this could be "arranged".
Is it not a very strange and inexplicable coincidence that a waterspout should turn up just as there were sinister plots afoot to sink the boat ?
I'm assuming that we have incontrovertible evidence that there was a waterspout, and that beyond a little cloud seeding weather control remains firmly in the field of science fiction.
Riiiight...because leaving open hatches, for example, doesn't risk the very people who would need to leave those hatches open (because they would be closed over time, so the only way to assure that they stay open is to actually be there to confirm they stay that way).
Assassin: I'll target you through my own head and I'll get you! (see Richard Hammond, Top Gear)
...
It's not a very practical idea, no.
Let me first of all be clear here that I'm not claiming this is the case, just thinking aloud on possibilities. You can't arrange a waterspout (as far as I know, but stranger things have happened) but you can have somebody primed and ready to take advantage of ANY suitably dangerous natural phenomena that might give cover, as and when they occur. Could be done with an inside person, waiting for the 'go' signal, and fully under the impression that should something be "arranged", they would be taken care of afterward.
Of course, their definition of 'taken care of' and the order-givers' definition may well vary depending on how much of a loose end they were, but the point being; it didn't have to consciously be a suicide mission as far as they were concerned.
Then on a given day a suitable phenomenon does turn up, the powers-that-be decide that yes this is the moment, give the order to open all hatches and jump overboard (don't worry we'll save you) and Robert's your father's brother.
Same applies for Chamberlain's car crash. It was a car crash because that's what happened to be arrangeable given the timing. If it wasn't that, it would have been a mugging or burglary gone wrong, a heart attack, an inopportune slip on wet road leading to a fall off a cliff... whatever was plausible when the takeout team were given the go signal.
Safe in the knowledge that most people would look at what happened and say "what are the chances that THAT would happen" - answer, very low. But the chance that SOMETHING lethal would happen, practically a certainty.
I'm sure the driver is innocent. He wouldn't be the first person to be pushed into the path of oncoming traffic.
While we're on the subject, I'm sure you've read the news from this morning that an investigation has been started into “intentional shipwreck and multiple counts of culpable homicide against an unknown person” in regard to the Bayesian sinking?
There's definitely something rotten in the State of Denmark.
I haven't read up on the Chamberlain accident, but the comment you replied to talked about a country road. Are there usually sidewalks bustling with crowds for a pusher hitman to hide among on the country roadfs where you're from?
These conspiracy theories don't only look absolutely dranged in themselves, but make the people spouting them look even more so.
It happened on the A1123 Newmarket Road in Stretham; that's a fairly substantial road. Also bearing in mind the Prosecutor’s Office of Termini Imerese have after all opened a criminal investigation into the Bayesian sinking: multiple counts of culpable homicide against an unknown person.
Remember, it's all a deranged conspiracy theory until it turns out to be true.
I subscribe to no particular hypothesis other than the "freak weather related accident" that seems the most plausible.
However, just to toss a few sticks on conspiracy kindling on the fire, as of this writing there is an investigation into manslaughter and "negligent shipwreck." It's also to be noted that all but one of the crew of the Bayesian survived. Make of that what you will.
Here in California we had a tragic dive boat fire a couple of years ago and five crew survived. The captain of the boat was convicted of "seaman's manslaughter" and sentenced earlier this year to four years in the clink and three years "supervised release" for his negligence. No conspiracy there, just negligence on several levels.
Personally, I have a hard time coming up with anyone with a motive for either death.
I mean HP? Come on, inkstortion is more to their liking.
The US DoJ, angry they couldn't get a conviction? Having observed the American justice system bungle many a case, I think they'd have trouble sinking a rowboat.
Probably not the Russians, since polonium spice tea and novichok-laced door knobs are more their style.
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Okay. how would you work out that probability then? To calculate a probability, you need to state in advance (1) the set of all things which fall into the class of events under consideration that could potentially occur, (2) the probability distribution over that set of events (which might or might not be uniform), and (3) the subset of those events for which you want to know the probability.
So... e.g.,
Would you include cases where the victim was not Lynch, but someone else, say, any business tycoon and (one of) his associates?
Did it have to be a waterspout or would some other unpredictable weather phenomenon make the cut?
Would it count if the trial was for something different? Or there was no trial, but perhaps something else contentious going on with the victims?
Over what period are we considering the probability? A year? A decade? A century? A millennium?
How close together in time do the deaths have to be to count?
...
...
...
I'm sure you can think of a few zillion more.
I know I've already done so in this thread, but I'm again going to have to leave the last word on coincidence to Richard Feynman:
“You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!”
And as I also have said elsewhere; to make it truly fit, you'd need to paraphrase Feynman.
“You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate A1. An incredible, almost unbelievably rare sighting. And what's even more amazing is, yesterday I saw the license plate A2, which is also incredibly rare!! Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see two of the absolute rarest plates possible, 2 nights in a row? Amazing!”
The problem is, I guess, that many people do not appreciate the difference between those scenarios, or even recognise them as distinct.
Human intuition for probability and statistics is notoriously rubbish. We are evolved to see patterns everywhere - we are inclined to overfit the world (to varying degree... conspiracy theorists sit at one end of that spectrum).
It was during his Lynett Systems venture that Lynch designed a synthesiser that was marketed as the Cheetah MD800. Cheetah are probably best known for computer peripherals such as joysticks during the home computer boom of the 1980s, but branched out into affordable and often innovative music equipment. The MD800 was a curious machine and rushed out as Cheetah were in financial trouble. Regardless of the controversy that surrounded him in recent years, Lynch was clearly a very smart guy with achievements in a surprisingly broad range of areas.
"Regardless of the controversy that surrounded him in recent years, Lynch was clearly a very smart guy with achievements in a surprisingly broad range of areas."
And a tragedy that so many of his final years were spent battling the gormless corporate retards of HP, who bought a business they didn't understand, and then tried to stitch him up when they got a bad case of buyer's remorse. Bastards, the lot of them.
Making money certainly doesn't make you a good person, but it doesn't mean you're evil either.
I think the obituary makes clear that Lynch was a gifted person who was successful largely due to his own work. Yes, he and others made a packet selling Autonomy to HP, but this was (and probably still is) par for the course for the industry: HP wanted to expand into services and was determined to by Autonomy at any price.
Two classics in one comment!!!
Number one: "If you can't say something nice about somebody........." - that license for people to be assholes as calling them out would break this so-called rule
Number two: When someone dies they achieve instant sainthood. The only thing different about a dead person is they usually cannot do any further harm to society.
Now I want to make it CLEAR that I am not making any specific comment about Mike Lynch as I feel I don't know nearly enough about him to try and form an opinion. This response to Lord Elpuss is just a general observation of his comments. Which by the way break the "If you can't say something nice about somebody........." by calling the previous poster "a deeply, deeply unpleasant individual" :-)
Why don't you get out of the house and achieve something yourself, rather than trying to bring down the achievements of others? If you manage to achieve one hundredth of what Mike Lynch did in his lifetime, you will be doing better than 99% of Humanity.
You won't though. You're a Chairborne Ranger.
Condolences to his wife, what a horrendous experience.
There are certainly questions about how it sank considering a neighboring boat managed to stay afloat despite the weather conditions.
Also I thought modern boats were all supposed to be buoyant.
I do hope it's properly investigated and understood.
The Herald of Free Enterprise was buoyant until someone forgot to close the back doors and let the water in. It sounds like something similar may have happened here, as Italian police divers found that the hatch was open. This could have easily led to the boat becoming unstable (and less buoyant) in extreme conditions like those reported at the time of the accident.
Either way, this is a terrible and horrific thing to happen to any family, especially as it involves his daughter. It's truly horrendous and must have been terrifying for everyone involved. My heart goes out to anyone affected by this tragedy, and I wish them all the best. It should remind us all that irrespective of wealth, success or anything else, we're all subject to the laws of physics and the random terrors that may arise in our day-to-day lives.
Look like something similar happened here.
You know that old phrase "Batten down the hatches"?
Ever wondered why you hear it?
Multiple (small) portholes --> 1 big door left open.
The UK's Marine Accident Investigation Branch are investigating.
The Herald of Free Enterprise. I remember being a kid and seeing that on the news. Just looking it up again and to here the management failing. When the captain raised concerns there was no indication when the doors were open or closed. A £5 bell system would of helped yet, they rejected it. They should of all been prisoned for manslaughter. When you become so penny pinching you put lives at risk. Much like Boeing now.
And I see this qoute
“An alarming number of disasters are caused by sheer greed, putting profits before people.”
— Barbara Hooks, "Sydney Morning Herald"
https://owlcation.com/humanities/The-Herald-of-Free-Enterprise-Disaster
Catamarans and trimarans are usually positively buoyant, ie. their overall density is less than the water they float in as they have no keel.
Monohulls are not. If the keel falls off (not supposed to happen, but did in a well reported disaster a few years back), what’s left of a fibreglass or CF boat will often float at the waterline - the hull is foam sandwiched between layers of glass and carbon, so it floats. However this one was aluminium and it’s not what happened here. Once it filled with water, it would have gone straight down.
One possible explanation is that she had a lifting (ballasted) keel and a very tall mast. If they had lifted the keel when at anchor -- not unreasonable -- she would have been very succeptible to capsize. According to the news the nearby yatch had to use their motor to stay correcly aligned to the wind.
And once a yatch is filling with water she would go down very fast: a boat with a ballasted keel is only boyant if the water is on the outside.
Liferafts deploy automatically when sufficiently submerged.
According to what I have found out just now, she was nearer 500 tons. Don't know how much of that was keel, but probably not that high a percentage, as it was a bulb keel, nearly 10 meters long. At a guess, somewhere around 100 tons (purely my guess). The keel would rise vertically though the boat, in a housing, and would normally be operated by hydraulics.
OK, I stand corrected. There's a video at https://www.reddit.com/r/sailing/comments/1expvcd/part_2_discussion_of_bayesian_design/ and yes, it's a hydraulic lifting design.
I'm well aware of what it would do to stability and I agree that if it was up it would not have helped. I'd be astonished if it were up, it sounds like they were in plenty of water and the entire boat would have been awake due to the noise - the captain would have had plenty of time to lower the keel, pretty much the only decision he would have been able to make easily. I guess we'll have to wait for the divers to say what they found, and then the MAIB report to find out.
According the linked article and other sources, the Bayesian had a 10 metre keel that could lifted to become a 3 metre keel to allow it to enter shallow harbours.
https://www.ft.com/content/1db169f0-8040-4150-900e-68c9b0174b8d?sharetype=gift
More information here.
> The Bayesian had an extractable keel (an underwater fin) that was almost 10 metres in length when extended and acted as a counterbalance for the vessel.
>
> Its final position will be crucial for investigators to discover.
>
> If it was stowed when the storm hit, it would have made the yacht much less stable.
https://news.sky.com/story/how-is-the-sinking-of-mike-lynchs-bayesian-superyacht-being-investigated-13201245
(Or, adding them up: Ignorant + unimaginative = stupid.)
So please feel free to explain how you think such a lifting keel mechanism would work,You don't think they had electric power on board that luxury superyacht to power a winch? Or, as apparently was the case here, a hydraulic pump? (Or any of the myriad other tried-and-true ways of converting power into movement, like, say, a rack-and-pinion system.)
and maybe where they would keep it when it was retracted.Just like on any tiny lifting-keel dinghy, in a shaft in the center of the vessel. Sure, the keel is much bigger than on a dinghy, but so is the craft itself. So it fits and works pretty much exactly the same way, only on a larger scale.
Like, duh.
What does Richard Dawkins say about this?
Presumably asked because Dawkins is a flag bearer for atheism.
I cannot imagine an atheist is likely to see the hand of a non-existent albeit vengeful deity in what was in the normal course of events a tragedy.
Given the unusually large number of coincidences and rare weather event, Terry Pratchett might on the Disc, have written that these alone would have brought into existence the requisite deity. Ex nihilo nisi ex necessitate?
I guess innocent victims aside, quite a few people now have three or four parties crossed off their little list.
The surface water temperature was very high, which is what drives this kind of weather.
It also means people are more likely to be out on yachts and small motor vessels because it's really nice weather during the day. And because it's hot, people are more likely to leave hatches and portholes open at night (a possible cause of the sinking) - or to sleep on deck, which seems to have saved at least one couple and their child.
There were multiple (possibly as many as 16) reports of waterspouts in the local area. It's unclear how many individual waterspouts were seen in that particular bay yet, but no doubt this will all be in the report.
Another billionaire sacrificed for Poseidon.
Yet in other news, kids are still being blown to bits. But I guess that's OK because none of them are billionaire tech bros. (This is less about the view point of this publication, but it's all over the news like it's some major life changing event, when it isn't for the vast majority of the world).
This is a tech news site. Obituaries are an accepted part of news media. There have been occasional obits here of people prominent in tech, some rich, many not. If you'd read the actual text you might have realised that he deserved to be remembered for his technical achievements which makes it on-topic, unlike what other media sites have to say about this or about the Middle East.
Ya know... billionaires dying in in unexpected events... or rather hubris related events.
2023, shoddily constructed submarine implodes
2024, yacht sinks during storm
2025, Orange felon doesn't die from suicide
2026, immigrant bigot dies when his own EV explodes.
Or is that just wishful thinking?
Just think of Neptune as Minerva's enforcer of Nemesis and there is no need for any conspiracy theories.
Maxwell stumbled around a dark yacht at night and fell overboard. Beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Lynch fell to Tempestas's fury in the Mare Tyrrhenium. A victim of Hubris. Like so many before him over the millennia.
May his soul find peace in its eventual destination.
Criminal psychopaths like Maxwell never jump. If they come to an unplanned demise it is always unintentional. Anyone who was paying attention even back in the 1970's knew that Maxwell was a crook who used UK libel law and outright threats to silence anyone who tried to make public his many criminal activities. Just ask the guys at Private Eye.
Lynch was a small time conman who got in way over his head. Once he started playing the corporate acquisition revenue kiting game in the US he made the classic mistake made by almost all foreigners who try to play with the Big Boys. Not lining up his legal / political lobbyist heavies before the inevitable Ordure Hitting the Quickly Rotating Blades. Which it always will. Someday. With revenue kiting frauds like this. There is a very good reason why Kevin O'Leary of SoftKey (or Carly Fiorina for that matter) was never prosecuted or went to jail for much more blatant corporate frauds. Because they had lined up their legal / political lobbying teams long before the day of reckoning. Their very expensive Get Out Of Jail card. Which worked like a charm.
Lynch was just a wide boy. Nothing more. Who died in a very wide boy manner. Killed by one of his very ostentatious and tacky toys. No matter how expensive the suits he would always be a second generation culchie from the wrong part of Ilford.
> And yet the jury acquitted him.
You mean, just like with OJ Simpson?
Proves nothing. Except in this case the Federal Attorneys team who presented the case in the Federal Court in SF did a cack-handed job of trying to get a successful prosecution. By design. This was pretty much a Ham Sandwich case so there should have been only one possible outcome. Federal Attorneys very rarely lose cases they actually are trying to win. In fact the term "Prosecutorial Misconduct" pretty much goes with the territory in these cases when they actually want to win. A good defense legal team will factor the almost inevitable "Prosecutorial Misconduct", or very close to it, into their defense strategy from the get go.
This is not a Crown Court. This is most certainly not tennis, legally speaking. As understood in the UK legal system.
> Points though for the correct use of culchie.
So not a jackeen then..
Because something sunk the media instantly talk up the severity of the storm or weather.
I hope the UK grows a pair and investigates this properly.
US interests have a long and documented history in taking revenge on people that cross them. See most of south america and the middle east.
For balance,the Lynch/autonomy story seems the usual talked up tech which does nothing really useful for mankind. The only thing I can glean from this is it kick started the constant spying on every aspect of everyday activity on the internet and on all windows computers.
For balance, cinema, TV, photography and newspapers have done nothing really useful for mankind. Don't even get me started on "social" media.
All those things only seem to have created more of easily led morons. Does that mean all people inventing those things were evil?
As for your conspiracy theory, get a thicker tin foil hat.
Is it too soon to ask the question above? The media, most of which being ignorant of IT matters, is lauding the late Mr Lynch as UK's "Bill Gates".
Has anyone on this forum got direct experience of using Autonomy? Is it any good? Are any enterprises using it, today? Genuine, & authoritative information would be very interesting.
Not directly but I have a friend I would trust who said it was absolute shit when it was forced upon them by management. That was some time ago and became the source of much laughter when HP paid so much for what they considered a lemon.
HP seemingly arrived at the same conclusion.
I worked for Autonomy for a while in the early 2000s. The core search was good - streets ahead of its competitors at the time, though by the early 2010s I found that others like SOLR and Elastic had exceeded it. I doubt many enterprises are still using it, and if they are then I'd guess only as a vertical search (i.e. a single data store) rather than true enterprise search. Like all enterprise search products, it was hard to configure well, so unless the purchaser had a dedicated search team, and most didn't (and still don't), then it underwhelmed the end user.
Autonomy seemed well set up. There were the founders and C-suite, who were generally mid-30s at the time, and then the best uni-leavers they could hire, all in our early 20s. It is still the highest concentration of extremely talented people of any place I've ever worked at. I was neither dedicated or talented enough to last there, and didn't.
I'd say Mike and Richard's attitude to management was more Machiavelli's fear rather than love. But they were also fair. A lot of the smart bods did well and made loads of cash from the shares they received.
When I worked for him I was quite scared and awed by Mike, but when I met him subsequently I found him genial and decent. I'm very sorry for him to have died so young.
When I initially heard about Autonomy over ten years ago I thought there is something fishy going on here. I guessed that Mr Lynch was the guilty party (How wrong I was.)
However, over time, it began to appear that Mr Lynch was a man on integrity. A proud man who would not stoop so low over such a tainted thing as money.
It was an absolute disgrace that the British Government allowed him to be extradited. It should never have happened.
Here we are today with a Shakespearian tragedy on our hands. We have lost a giant from the tech world.
My condolences to all involved, especially his wife and daughter, especially the families of everyone else who perished. May they find peace over time.
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