I thought it was interesting that her name is Jessica -- that's not a Czech name and there's no equivalent. So I looked her up and she was born George (Jiri) Fridrich. She's a transsexual. (Not that there's anything wrong with that. Just interesting.)
Wait. That's not quite fair. First, I found out that she's a transexual quite easily and so that can hardly be called "outing" someone. Second, I did think about whether I should write that comment, and I thought by pointing it out I was helping, by saying "Look, this person is amazing and she's also a transexual." It's a push against the stigma.
To go to your Nazi example, I felt I was saying, "Jessie Owens just kicked your ass, and look -- he's black."
I'm surprised to see this getting voted up; seems like pure gossip.
If anyone on HN wants a detailed list of _my_ sexual activities my contact information is in my profile. Otherwise I'd be happier if you just looked at my code and writing.
Someone changing their gender is not a sexual activity. There was nothing salacious about david927's comment. If anything it is an interesting sociological data point, given the small number of prominent women in math and science.
Sexual reassignment surgery is not a sexual activity, but it is part of someone's medical history, and I think it is in poor taste to gossip about someone's medical history. If Ms. Fridrich had been hospitalized for depression as a teenager, would that also be suitable for discussing on HN?
I completely agree with you, and yet I can't help but admire that he noticed that random detail and followed up on it. So I'm voting you up and leaving him be.
Also wrote the BBC BASIC ROMs used on Acorn computers in 6502, and later BBC BASIC V (five) in ARM. (ARM originally stood for Acorn RISC Machine.) Being able to successfully run the 6502 BASIC ROM is considered a test of how good a 6502 emulator is; his 16KiB of machine code, generated from hand-written assembler, used every trick of the CPU to squeeze in the code. This meant that when the BBC Master 128 came along, with its slightly later 6502 deriative, he could re-write some of it to use the new op-codes, taking less space, and thereby getting in a few more BASIC commands.
