It is with a broken heart we share the news that longtime NYC2600 friend Joel D’Ort, also known as Dernyn, was killed in a traffic accident on Tuesday, December 21, during a visit to Hawaii. He was 40.
Joel began attending NYC2600 meetings in 2000, and was known by many of us as an eager learner and a fun presence with an endlessly curious mind. He was an avid attendee of the HOPE conferences, eventually taking the stage himself as part of a panel discussion of weird technology in 2006 and for a solo presentation about reverse-engineering a USB firewall in 2018.
Many of us in the NYC2600 crowd, this writer included, counted Joel as a close friend and companion in adventures beyond just the hacker scene. While he had his struggles in life he pushed past them with enthusiasm and determination, and it devastates us to know that the promising future he’d been working long and hard toward for himself will now not come to pass. Joel meant a great deal to a great many, and will be sorely missed.
A fundraiser has been posted by Joel’s family to help with the expenses of transporting his remains home from Hawaii and funeral arrangements, and it is planned to update that page with the details of services when they are announced. We strongly encourage all who are able to donate what they can.
While Joel was not the most avid user of public-facing social media, you can see a little bit of the imprint he made on the Web at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and GitHub.