alt Hacker NewsI should clarify that it hasn't been 100% confirmed that "eric_hard_jams" was really him, but many people on the list thought so, including James McCartney himself:
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 22:20:06 -0600
From: James McCartney <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [ OT ]very low signal to noise ratio .
on 1/17/01 9:18 PM, eric_hard_jams at [email protected] wrote:
>
>> ok boss. i'm really sorry. back to normal now. much better.
>> my apologies.
>>
> ass licker.
>
shut the F up already, richard.
JMC and RDJ know each personally and hung out together. Here's a picture of the two together: https://www.reddit.com/r/aphextwin/comments/6oheli/screen_ra...
Replies
roughly • last Friday at 7:12 PM
That audiosynth link is a fine thread for anyone lamenting the loss of civility on the modern internet.
It's worth little coming from some random HN guy, but I can confirm eric_hard_jams was Richard D James. We used to hang around similar circles online, and there were a couple meetups. There were a bunch of other Rephlex and Rephlex-adjacent musicians using pseudonyms, as well.
Richard was sort of annoying at times, in the way someone on the spectrum can be. A bit of a troll with poor timing, and poor social skills, but a good, kind lad who spent his time doing things completely orthogonal to anyone else and that made him quite interesting.
I lost touch with him in around 2000-2001. He kinda went dark in those circles. I don't know what he's up to these days, probably raising a family like me.