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I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror Software creator John McAfee was found dead in his Spanish jail cell Wednesday evening. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the SoylentNews community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
Netcraft confirms it, as does NYPost - an "apparent suicide".
John McAfee was found dead in his cell in a prison near Barcelona on Wednesday. McAfee was awaiting extradition in a Spanish prison after being charged with tax evasion in the United States last year. McAfee was arrested in Spain in October after being indicted in the United States for tax evasion months earlier. He allegedly failed to file taxes for four years despite earning millions in income between 2014 and 2018 from promoting cryptocurrencies.
Also at the Associated Press, The Register, CNN, and CNBC.
See also: How To Uninstall McAfee Antivirus
Previously: John McAfee Announces He Will Run For President of the United States
On TV, John McAfee Says Cracking an iPhone is Trivial
Johnny Depp to Star in Movie About John McAfee
John McAfee's "Unhackable" Cryptocurrency Wallet Has Been Hacked (Again)
John McAfee Indicted for Tax Evasion
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3 Original Submission #4
(Score: -1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @10:02PM (3 children)
Actually the police chief of Belize City finally caught up with him
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @10:39PM
Are you trying to imply that he might have Epsteined himself?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 24 2021, @05:06PM (1 child)
Well, at least they're now admitting it's all bullshit because you can connect anybody to anybody within six degrees.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @11:28PM
Ah, so you did it
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @10:03PM (3 children)
He better have a good alibi.
(Score: 3, Funny) by turgid on Wednesday June 23 2021, @10:17PM (2 children)
He was round at Dr Solomon's house playing poker and drinking whisky.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @11:29PM (1 child)
With coke and hookers?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Farmer Tim on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:18AM
Came for the news, stayed for the soap opera.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @10:05PM (3 children)
He says that he had at least 47 children. You would think with all those dependents he can claim he would be entitled to a tax refund!!! Sure, he might go broke paying child support but at least he shouldn't be paying taxes.
(then again, given that he jumps from country to country, the question is how many of those children can he claim in the U.S.).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @04:30AM
Based on his tax situation and libertardarian leanings, I'm guessing he's a "free spirit" that refuses to be tied down by the child support thugs.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 24 2021, @05:44PM (1 child)
Or they're all fake and that's why he was in jail in the first place!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 27 2021, @01:48AM
Or maybe there is disagreement over who gets to claim the children as dependents (him or the mother(s))?
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday June 23 2021, @10:16PM (8 children)
https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/1200864283766251521?lang=en [twitter.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday June 23 2021, @10:52PM (6 children)
https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/1137777348919681024?lang=en [twitter.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @01:25AM (5 children)
Well, I guess we'll see if that was all bullshit, like everything else he said, or whether it comes true. If "they" were going to $WHACK him, "they" wouldn't wait to see if his extradition goes forward before doing it.
He died like he lived, spewing BS and duping dopes.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday June 24 2021, @01:44AM (4 children)
"They" do it just as he gets the bad news, creating FUD around his death. But it's perfectly reasonable for a coked up 75-year-old to off themselves rather than face years of legal trouble. As for the tweets, it could just be the ultimate troll.
Yeah, a 31 "terrabyte" data dump would be a nice final gift to the world. At that size, it would probably contain lots of videos. Also, it would be funny if random files in the dump contained viruses that can't be detected by McAfee and other AV software.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @02:35AM (2 children)
CNN-style "It's illegal to view Hillary's e-mails" Jewish scaremongering. McAfee's crime was, of course, calling out Jewish domination in one of those tweets you didn't mention. Now that the Jews are openly exterminating the Goyim with vaccines, it's the perfect time for them to openly get rid of their enemies for fun and profit. If there is a deadman's data dump full of viruses "undetectable by normal means," you can rest assured that they were written and put there by Jews just like all the other state-sponsored malware "undetectable by normal means." Everybody still knows the Jews did it, though.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:30PM (1 child)
i wonder if the dedicated Jew defender who always marks these posts "spam" works for soylentnews....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 25 2021, @03:14AM
I wasn't sure whether these leaks might be legit, but I now I know they are.
Somebody is already trying to associate them with antisemitic garbage.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @12:47PM
Judges don't like jailing old people and old people know it. Oldies are far, far more likely to just not care about legal bullshit.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday June 23 2021, @10:54PM
https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/1316801215083225096?lang=en [twitter.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @10:20PM
After his comments about a certain email scandal, he didn't have a suspiciously Italian prison guard [babylonbee.com] did he?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @10:21PM
Must've been the bath salts. Locked alone in a cell, no one's face to chew off, so, you know.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 23 2021, @10:29PM (12 children)
So, Zombie John will be running against Zombie Joe? I didn't think he was a Republican, so he'll be running as an Independent? Speaking of which - how fast does a zombie run?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 23 2021, @10:32PM
His presidential run was in 2016, in the Libertarian Party. He lost to Gary Johnson in the primary, but would have been up against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and Jill Stein had he made it to the general.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @10:33PM (3 children)
No but he'll defo be voting Democrat from now on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @10:47PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @05:48AM (1 child)
I'm not sure if it's short for de-facto or definitely, either could fit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @03:39PM
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday June 23 2021, @10:36PM
About this fast: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2tszIXno2Q8 [youtube.com]
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @01:28AM
They run faster than Arkansans.
(Score: 5, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 24 2021, @02:19AM
I'd vote Rob Zombie for President...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 24 2021, @05:46PM (2 children)
Hmmm....a criminal tax cheat with zero brain activity running as a Republican. Wouldn't be the first time!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 24 2021, @06:00PM (1 child)
ROFL, the current tax cheat with zero brain activity is a Democrat.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 24 2021, @06:19PM
ROFL, where is Biden's Grand Jury? [usatoday.com]
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday June 24 2021, @09:29PM
Depends on the subtype. There are "fast zombies" dating back to the early 80s IIRC. Don't worry, though, they're on an all-brains diet so basically the entire South bar a few large cities should be fine. ...okay, in DeQueen's case it'd be gentrification, but eh, that's the free market for ya =P
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday June 23 2021, @11:24PM (13 children)
I haven't paid much attention to McAfee. Is he a rich tax cheat, a hero and pioneer of computing, a delusional paranoid and spinner of tall tales, or a persecuted and silenced victim of corrupt powerful people? Maybe a lifelong career in security does something to a person's mind? Pry open enough closets, and you will find skeletons. And make enemies.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday June 23 2021, @11:40PM (5 children)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @03:01AM (4 children)
Trump wasn't nearly as far into Epstein's circle as Bill and Andy. That was a clean-up job for the royal lizards, carried out by the Clinton suicider squad.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Tork on Thursday June 24 2021, @03:22AM (3 children)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:33PM (2 children)
"hilarious false flag bullshit" != "insurrection", you dumb fucking slave. when real insurrection comes you will know it.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:48PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @10:50PM
https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-siege/wife-charged-in-capitol-siege-changed-facebook-profile-to-appear-as-part-of-the-democratic-party-husband-threw-a-chair-at-cops-feds/? [lawandcrime.com]
Yep, false flag alright. Republicans posing as Democrats. 🙄
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 23 2021, @11:49PM (1 child)
He was probably all of the above - plus he was missing a few marbles even before he started using bath salts for supositories. No one is going to sort McAfee out now. A psychoanalyst might have sorted him, but it's too late for that now. (Not that I place much faith in shrinks, but that was the person most likely to figure John out.)
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @04:40AM
There's a documentary about him. He starts drinking in the first scene and gets more and more sloppy throughout. He was a loudmouth bore, just dull and drunk. Surprized you have a blind spot for that type of personality trait.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 24 2021, @02:21AM
Oh, man, you've gotta watch Gringo - it's almost as entertaining as Hunter S. Thompson stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gringo:_The_Dangerous_Life_of_John_McAfee [wikipedia.org]
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:38AM
Yes.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday June 24 2021, @04:36PM (2 children)
While he was in Belize, he was openly talking about both recreational drug use and paying teenagers for sex, and then had to leave because he was accused of murdering his next-door neighbor and didn't want to answer the police's questions. And he also was a tax cheat, not paying a dime on millions in income, spending a bunch of time in international waters trying to avoid the law.
I'm not going to suspect a conspiracy against him without evidence.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:35PM
Sepending on the age of the "teenagers", i don't see a problem. The neighbor probably deserved it. Fuck the IRS. They shouldn't even exist and have no rightful claim.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 25 2021, @03:19AM
Well yes but how is that different from any other bourgeois?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Mojibake Tengu on Thursday June 24 2021, @01:05AM (5 children)
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 3, Touché) by vux984 on Thursday June 24 2021, @02:41AM (1 child)
All I see there is that the the real question is: Why did Snowden kill McAfee and why is he threatening Assange?
In all seriousness; I don't know where truth begins or ends with McAfee, but I hope neither Assange or Snowden are ever subjected to the American "justice" system.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @02:28PM
>> I hope neither Assange or Snowden are ever subjected to the American "justice" system.
I dunno, it turned Reality Winner into a model citizen pretty quickly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @05:44AM (2 children)
Catalonia secessionists got out of jail recently. Not becase they repented, all the contrary, but because the Prime Minister needs their votes in Congress or will be kicked out of power. ETA terrorist are getting moved to prisions under control of Basque nationalists. Same reason, it's the bill to stay in power, not because the law says so. They are event talking publicly about how the State is weak, and the PM just smiles like a dumb.
So maybe McAfee morale was down. USA IRS wants taxes when abroad, get in jail. Get the PM by the balls, get out of jail or at least better treatment.
Spain is a Paella Republic. Even Morocco have been abusing the current Goverment "aptitudes". If USA wants a better deal for the military bases, now it's the time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:39PM (1 child)
#freecatalonia
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @10:27PM
Free? That's a price that makes Putin happy. Another Russian Navy base in the Mediterranean Sea, yay!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @01:07AM (4 children)
That fiction can always be found in abundance, while the truth is scarce.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @01:28AM (2 children)
Put Rudy G. on the case! He'll get to the bottom of it!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @03:33PM
He'll get to the bottom alright, the bottom of the barrel.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 24 2021, @05:54PM
Offer not valid in New York State!
Rudy Giuliani suspended from practice of law in New York [go.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @02:00AM
Well obviously. There is only one way that things could be true, but an almost infinite number of ways they could be false.
(Score: 1) by bluehorizons on Thursday June 24 2021, @02:40AM
I hear he writes clean code. Something to do with windows. What is that? I'll take my answer off line.
There is nothing general about the general public.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by EJ on Thursday June 24 2021, @02:42AM (4 children)
Are we supposed to blame Biden now? I'm confused.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @03:05AM (3 children)
Why would you blame Biden? He's just a confused old man doing what he's told and trying to read from a teleprompter.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:48AM
Atleast he doesn't try to make up words when he makes a mistake, like the head cheetos does.
(Score: 1, Troll) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 24 2021, @05:51PM (1 child)
Thanks for reminding me how nice it is to have a President who can read!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 25 2021, @01:22AM
That's a pretty low bar you've set there, for the job of President. Explains the last few democrat candidates I guess. Is it some sort of affirmative action or something?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday June 24 2021, @10:17AM (5 children)
Was he once upon a time actually a good programmer? I never really gave it that much thought. I don't really recall McAfee AV when it was first released. His early jobs has sort of been overshadowed by his later shenanigans and heavy drug usage.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 24 2021, @03:21PM (3 children)
Once upon a time Hans Reiser [wikipedia.org] of ReiserFS [wikipedia.org] fame was a good programmer.
Why is it that when I hold a stick, everyone begins to look like a pinata?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday June 24 2021, @04:02PM (2 children)
It's not that good programmers can't be bad people or do bad things. It was more like was he even once upon a time actually a good programmer or was McAfee more of manager and brand guy then an actual code monkey?
I seem to recall some anecdote, that I don't know if it's true or not, that Bill wasn't a very good programmer either. Someone said something about some code snippet and how crap and bad it was and it got all uncomfortable cause it turned out it was something Bill wrote back in the day. But he was clearly a very savvy businessman. That is just hard to deny.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 24 2021, @04:37PM
It is hard to deny that Bill knew what he was doing. At age 19 he understood the significance of the Altair 8800. He pitched his BASIC language to MITS telling them they were working on it and it was almost finished. In truth, he had not even begun. I recently saw a good YouTube video about this. It included the story of emulating the 8080 instruction set on the school computer, hoping they go the emulation right. Creating the BASIC. Flying to the demo of BASIC to show MITS a nearly complete product. Hoping it would work. Hoping it would even load. Untested on the real actual Altair 8800 hardware. The paper tape reader / boot loader was written during the flight.
Why is it that when I hold a stick, everyone begins to look like a pinata?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday June 24 2021, @05:23PM
My impression from Joel Spolsky's account [joelonsoftware.com] is that BillG was at least a pretty good software architect / designer, even if his code wasn't great. I always got the impression Paul Allen was really the coding brains in early Microsoft (it definitely wasn't Ballmer).
As for early McAfee AV, if I recall from my youth playing around with DOS machines it wasn't all that sophisticated: It basically had a list of byte strings to look for in files, and would go through everything on disk searching for those strings on that list. That wouldn't work now, but back then most viruses hadn't been up against something like that before McAfee AV, so they weren't adept at hiding from it. Also, the disks they were searching through were typically under 1 Mb, so that didn't take *that* long even though the machines in question weren't anything remotely fast by modern standards.
If you want to look for a contemporary who by all appearances really knew his stuff, Peter Norton would qualify: The original Norton Utilities relied on features of DOS that weren't generally known outside of Microsoft (and maybe Seattle Computing), bypassing DOS's features at the BIOS level (e.g. his "undelete" went into the FAT control blocks), and other fairly sophisticated techniques. One of my favorite computing books from that era, Undocumented DOS [goodreads.com], gets into some of the techniques Norton used.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday June 25 2021, @01:24AM
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] puts him at NASA working on the Apollo program, Univac, Xerox as an operating system architect, Computer Sciences Corporation, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Lockheed, all before he founded McAfee to sell anti-virus software. Sounds like an interesting career, at least.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]