When do we know someone has died

As the blog of record in computational complexity, we like to bring attention to those in the community who have left us. When we learn of someone in our field who has died, Bill and I will talk to each other and decide whether we should do a social media post or a full blog post, and who should write it, Bill, me, or someone else. In fact, if I call Bill, he'll often answer the phone with "who died?"We also remember those who passed away during the year in our end-of-year post.One challenge is how we actually know when somebody has died. Consider Michael Rabin. His death was announced on Wikipedia based on the following announcement in Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper.Haaretz Obit (Translated by Google)That's a pretty simple obituary for a very famous computer scientist. Rabin is a common name in Israel, and there easily could have been another professor named Michael Rabin somewhere in the country. Every mention of Michael Rabin's death that I saw was just citing the Wikipedia article,…