skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you react really negatively to the news of this suicide, one thing you can do is seek out company. I have basically been suicidal for years but I am rarely alone. I am actually pretty pissed off and disgusted by the bullshit I am reading on hn today. Most people are assholes most of the time, then someone commits suicide and they try to say something nice for a change. A forum I belonged to posthumously reinstated a former member whom they had banned. I thought they were assholes. They couldn't be supportive while he was alive but he committed suicide so now they have to find some way to make peace with the reality that they were assholes to him while he still lived. Suddenly, the faux niceties come out. Try being supportive and tolerant to the living. The dead don't need your bullshit fake nice words. They are beyond helping.

I may need to start a blog post. I am sure hn isn't interested in more of my cranky ranting about what is very normal behavior but which I happen to think is completely shitty behavior.

TLDR:

If you are at risk for finally offing yourself because Aaron did, try to avoid being alone. Suicide usually occurs when one is alone. Never being alone is a big part of why I am still alive, in spite of having abundant reason to say "fuck you, world, I have had enough of your shit".
And thanks to the carrier-grade firewall, you have to start wasting your battery on keep-alives again.
The abominable human beings who chose to victimize Aaron, as well as the irresponsible academics who shrugged their shoulders in indifference and the various media outlets that casually reported on his arrest, should think carefully about the lack of proportion in our criminal justice system, and the devastating impact it can have on the lives of talented people. There is such a thing as collective guilt.

Authorities in New York have undertaken a similarly disproportionate and arrogant assault on Internet freedom, spending what must be close to a million dollars of taxpayers' money on the aggressive criminal prosecution of a blogger who sent out satirical “Gmail confessions” in which a well-known New York University department chairman appeared to be foolishly accusing himself of plagiarism. And again, there appears to be nothing but silence from the relevant communities. For further information on the case, see:

http://raphaelgolbtrial.wordpress.com/
No, I don't think so.

If we want to learn from history it is important that we allow ourselves to make comparisons to the past, even if the magnitude of severity is completely off. If we assume that we are progressing as time passes, then with any luck the severity in comparisons to the past should always be off. That should not phase us, but rather be seen as a sign of progress.

Now, if the situation is a teenager calling his mother "literally Hitler" because he was given a bedtime, then Godwin's law is probably pretty applicable, but that is an incredibly extreme case.

The topic here is civil disobedience in the face of unjust laws. One law happens to be much worse than other, but I simply cannot find the comparison itself to be tasteless or offensive. That period in our history teaches us a painful collective lesson about the ethics of civil disobedience, I would find it more offensive to ignore that lesson.

Assertions of equivalency would be troubling, but I see none here.
Your evidence that she was doing "what she believed was right" rather than "what she believed would enhance her career" would be?
This is worth reading, in spite of it's inflammatory title, as it's really about a new project: moe ( https://github.com/stevan/moe ) an "ultra-modern perl 5" written in Scala.
Being a chronic depressed and chronic pain sufferer, I wonder how much problems like these contributed to him killing himself. I think about killing myself everyday. I haven't done it yet because I am a devout Catholic and I believe I can be in a worst place (or better) after death.
Nixon was still alive at the time of his pardon and thus was still in a position to be convicted.

There is no precedent for pardoning a dead person who was not convicted of a crime because it is a legal impossibility as described above.
Which sites do you get this information from? So far, you've done nothing to illustrate your point with anything other than 1 untrusted source. That's why it remains a conspiracy theory and not accepted fact.

Conspiracy nuts like to frame the media/government as corrupt yet you provide "proof" in the way I would expect a corrupted government would diseminate propaganda.

When you can get your shit together and provide some actual proof, not embarrass yourself by calling the president "Barry", then you'll get some respect. I'm not against the idea of conspiracy, but we'll never know when it's time to pay attention when your ilk goes around calling the president a crypto Muslim named Barry.
The law already is what it needs to be. JSTOR has limited access— and continues to do so through their terms of services— access to even old documents which are already lawfully in the public domain.
Do you really think either one of these should serve as a model?

(Shrug) bin Laden got shit done. McVeigh did not.

They both ended up exactly where they deserved, but you can't ignore the fact that one of them was an effective political strategist while the other one was nothing but a plain old mass murderer.
What's wrong with the "I want to beat you with an oar" approach? This is what I do and it works great.
The state could provide every defendant a line of credit with a limit roughly equivalent to the amount the state prosecution is spending. If the defendant wins, the balance is paid by the state. If the defendant loses, then the balance must be paid back by the defendant.
>> Depression robs you of the ability to: 1. remember happiness 2. feel happiness 3. anticipate happiness 4. make considered decisions

Just a friendly reminder that depressed people cannot, for the most part "snap [ourselves] out." If the solution was to double down and power through I'd have cured my own depression years ago.

The shitty thing is that it's a long-living subconscious emotional drain. It's a downward slide that for me happened so slowly I didn't even notice until I'd lived at the bottom, completely burned out on life and barely functional for two years. It's not only a mental disorder, it's technically called "psychomotor depression" because it will by degrees affect mind and body in a downward spiral.

I've never lost sight of the bigger issues, the disorder and opportunity for change in world-at-large, but it's impossible to make meaningful progress toward /anything/ whilst waking up every day with a gnawing emotional emptiness and pain thrusting itself into the center of my consciousness. It's care about those bigger issues and for my family that has kept me in this world.

My point is this: whether you mean to or not, you suggest that people can get themselves out of depression. In general, this doesn't happen. Therapy, medication, and support of friends, combined with healthy living have begun to move me forward in my own struggle.

I hope to see in my lifetime an elimination of the social stigma of depression. We're not miserable entitled bastards that need a reminder of our incredible opportunities. We're folk who feel sad and whose brains work in a way such that we can't always see the way forward. That's all there is to it.
Absolute rubbish. Why should we not use individuals as catalysts for greater change? Doing so has a long, successful, and proud history in this country. Hell, it predates the country.
Did he really leave? His office is in the Stata center at MIT. I thought he was still an unpaid "research associate" at MIT. Is that no longer correct?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_and_Maria_Stata_Center
I don't like the stereoyype of the nerdy recluse programmer. Sure there are many of them, but just as many socially-comfortable programmers. The generalizations can be harmful and lead people away from the stigma, and away from the field.
"you should get help from people who are a few steps ahead of you."

I think you are exactly correct, but how do I find the people a few steps ahead that are willing to help me? Again should I move to SV to find that community?

In terms of business I have owned my own profitable law firm and simultaneously created V-Blood, LLC a vampire themed energy drink company. I never had any experience in beverages, sales, product packaging, product design, bottling, but within 6 months I had created from scratch V-Blood vampire energy vials and sold 65,000 units to Hot Topic a Fortune 500 retailer. Ironically, V-Blood received a cease and desist threatening lawsuit, but as an attorney I got the other side to dismiss their claim before even filing suit.

I am not a stranger to starting and "running profitable businesses." As I noted I faced success and the lawsuits that come with it and instead of backing down successfully fought those too. So please understand I have previously journeyed 1000 steps and have more than enough energy to do it again, being on step 1 or 2 does not take the wind from my sails. That said before you peg my current start-up on 1 or 2, which it very well maybe, please take a look at it: www.ommageo.com
Very entirely possible. However I have a hard time believing that someone smart enought to make it through law school and pass the bar is not be able to learn enough about technology and motivations behind the actions in this case.

As a tax payer I don't want a prosecutor who doesn't know who to go after or how far to go. From reading the thread(s) here and loosely following the case in the news I am not convinced that the money spent to prosecute this case was the best possible use of my tax dollars.
it is legally impossible to grant a pardon when someone has not been convicted (or plead guilty to) a crime to finality (i.e., the exhaustion of appeals).

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Proclamation_4311 is a famous example disproving that.
He wasn't a member of the MIT Community, and was in a wiring closet.

If they'd charged him with trespassing, I would have contributed to his legal defense fund and bought him a drink when he finished his ~30 days of community service or whatever. Minimal harm, minimal foul.

I did way worse stuff from my machines at MIT when I was an undergrad. I actually was called to testify in a federal case over it, but told them to eat a bowl of dicks (well, more politely, and through the awesome attorney Jennifer Granick -- I was out of the country and didn't return until the trial was over, because you NEVER win if you set foot in a federal court, even as a witness).

MIT sold out Drink or Die, too, so fuck them in general.
Wasn't bin Laden's issue the American involvement/support of Israel? I'm not sure you can say he got shit done anymore than McVeigh did.
In that case, if the trespassing charge was dropped, what was he being charged with? Sorry, I do not know a lot about this story.
Official Remembering Aaron Swartz Site
UTOPIA in Utah with the ISP being XMission
Duplicate. This one has 1500 signatures already: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-stat...
People make mistakes. Responsible people take responsibility for their mistakes.
I'm upset as well. It just all seems so absurd and unnecessary, like a cruel game.

>We live in a very unfair world.

I thought I already understood this. Today puts it in even sharper focus.
LEMP stack for Ubuntu Quantal
I find it sad that you find it sad. There is nothing sad about depression caused by the acknowledgement of purposefulness. Lack of purpose is sad.
How was Steve Jobs "big"?

The man was an asshole who became what he was by exploiting other people and taking credit for their work.

That's precisely why any nice guy is "bigger" than Jobs.

(And probably any random hacker was more technical than Jobs)
this bit from greenspun's blog is relevant:

I asked the lawyers “Suppose that the government’s case is completely frivolous and Swartz is guaranteed to be acquitted. What would he expect to spend in legal fees to defend the case?” They didn’t want to reveal anything particular to Aaron’s case but said “Generally the minimum cost to defend a federal criminal lawsuit is $1.5 million.”

A daunting prospect for anyone. Apparently too daunting for a 26-year-old.
Have you ever considered why you value what you do? You can't have a rational conversation and say doing whatever you value is justified by the act of valuing it.
Hopefully there's a successful civil suit against the Institute, with funds going to Givewell.
Actually, I believe that the biggest bee in bin Laden's bonnet was the Americans' use of Saudi territory for military bases. The story of the US withdrawal ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_S... ) reminds me a lot of the resolution of the Cuban missile crisis, where the US quietly agreed to withdraw similar missiles from Turkey and Italy.

To the extent that bin Laden's ultimate goal was to cause severe financial damage to US interests, there's no question but that he succeeded grandly. Sure, 99% of the damage that resulted from 9/11 was self-inflicted by the Bush administration, but the outcome was the same as if bin Laden had destroyed trillions of dollars in US wealth himself.
Even if the same amount of money could save five lives elsewhere? As a person who continually deals with depression, I'm glad the hotlines exist and absolutely think they are worth it; but I cringe every time I hear, "if it only saves one life" regardless of the cost (which is usually billions of dollars and a few civil rights when the government is involved).
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
The objective of life is dying.
Regulators want to make sure, above all, that the drivers are paying taxes and paying for the use of their vastly (and artificially) expensive taxi medallions. So the regulations tend to require the use of an expensive and finicky and limiting piece of equipment - a taxi meter. Private jitneys don't need a meter, so they're immediately less expensive. The private alternative to a meter that works as well or better for a nearly zero cost is a "zone card". Draw a stylized map of the area divided into "zones"; there's a fare for within-zone travel or a higher fare to cross some number of zones to get to another area. The zone map and price schedule can be printed on a card handed to the passenger or (where jitneys are legal) put on a sticker on the door of the car, so the passenger knows the charges before they get in.

Now the cab driver has no incentive to avoid passengers who want to cross a bridge to a less profitable area (ever try to get a cab to Brooklyn from downtown manhattan?) and no incentive to take the long way around to bump up the meter charge in slow periods - the driver's interests and the passenger's are aligned. Better yet, drivers have the flexibility that they can negotiate other fares when that's appropriate - for instance, charging more in a hurricane.

Rigidly fixed prices are NOT a good thing for customers if you want there to be service at any time to/from any region. Fixed prices mean many areas get little or no service - the cabs stick to the more popular routes and people who live in poor neighborhoods get shafted.

The regulations on cabs are not at all utilitarian - they are pure rent-seeking. Concentrated benefits accrue to the few who own medallions; distributed costs are paid by drivers and passengers everwhere.
It's not just getting her fired, but also the public shaming as an end in itself. Political figures, who are in a position of an incredible amount of power/leverage over the rest of us, need to know that they must do only what "the public" thinks is acceptable and not whatever day-to-day tirade they get off on.
Robbery is not a federal crime.

Train robbery and bank robbery, on the other hand...
Aaron Swartz - a freedom fighter's death
I think "EFF and the students involved handled it well, and MIT didn't do anything egregiously wrong." MIT didn't provide any legal assistance; that was all EFF.
great slides; I read the whole thing. This is a very interesting project, too. I left perl around the time of Moose because I was desperate for a sane OO system. I'd love to see this succeed.
No, it's like firing a US district attorney for deciding to put Martin Luther King in jail. And you can do more than one action.
Gosh, who hasn't hid a machine on MIT's network to get access to academic journals? (mine was a Sparc IPX in a drop ceiling for IEEE articles.)
Ortiz is a generic, replaceable cog in the prosecution-prison complex. She was not "inappropriate", she was doing her job exactly like the American public wanted her to. You could no more end her career over this than you could keep Obama from being reelected. Killing her wouldn't even have any effect—another cog would be slotted into the case before her body was even in the ground. Even blowing up the entire Federal building where she works would be useless, they would just fly in replacements from the hundreds of other offices.

That's the lesson of Timothy McVeigh: if blowing up an entire building full of your opponents has no effect, then writing a stern letter to your Congressman is laughable.

As far as bin Laden being a good role model, he won didn't he? He got inside Washinton, D.C.'s decision loop and systematically turned it against its own interests. Trillions wasted on war, distracted from fixing economic problems, Turkey handed to the mullahs on a silver platter, occupation of ungovernable territories, etc.
"However I have a hard time believing that someone smart enought to make it through law school and pass the bar is not be able to learn enough about technology and motivations behind the actions in this case."

Much of law is a very technologically backwards field. Up until recently, some law schools (and not backwater ones, but major top-tier ones) only accepted hard-copy, type-written (as in, on a physical typewriter) applications. Harvard's student library had several typewriters specifically for this purpose.
> Life has no purpose. It's just applied randomness, like everything else.

What makes you so sure of yourself? Smarter people than you have both believed and not believed in a greater purpose or in God. It's something that's been debated since man has existed, yet you seem unusually... certain... that you are correct.

> This is difficult for the non-religious to swallow, that's why religion exists.

If every human's behaviors and motivations were so simple as to be summarily condensed into one sentence like this, things like depression and suicide would also be easily assessable.

EDIT: In what strange circumstances is a post that says "Life has no purpose" upvoted, and mine -- that says "How can you be so sure of yourself?" -- downvoted?
I can prove you have no purpose to yourself.
If you say you have purpose to yourself, you then ask: but then what's the purpose of myself? You enter infinite recursion.

You can only have purpose to others.
Life can only have purpose to something else other than life.
Does that other thing matter?
Are we talking about the same US that tried to extradite Richard O'Dwyer over some copyright bs or nutcase Gary McKinnon? Both of them are not even US citizens, it only gets worse when you "belong" to the country that wants to put you on trial.

There are few countries that are not in bed with the US. Usually they don't feel like getting into even more diplomatic difficulties unless there is some gain for them.

Assange, for example, could've made a deal with the Kremlin - in exchange for keeping silent about Russia and friends... But he's a different category.
There was a big shift in the 70s and 80s to a bigger administration and to administrators who were "professional university administrators" (BU/random liberal arts alumni with a mssters in admin), vs. students/alumni/faculty.

This was a product of a greater "in loco parentis" and services available for students, as well as bigger government grants (requiring more admins on that side)

It correlated with the downfall of MIT as an amazing place, outside bio/biotech. It would not be my first choice of CS school today (Stanford by a mile, then CMU, then maybe a few others including Waterloo), or science (Caltech). For computer security, I'd probably say Cambridge (UK), maybe Stanford, maybe Technion, and a few others.
Aaron was accomplished, but Turing far overshadowed. Turing was forced or compelled to take synthetic estrogen because he was gay as well as being convicted and stripped of his security clearance. The hormone replacement could be seen as rather more directly responsible for his suicide than the still relevant stresses of overzealous prosecution.
Like Aaron said, shouting at the gears isn't going to fix the machine.

But excising the broken, unfit, insidiously malicious gear from the machine will make said machine one gear short of harming the innocent-until-proven-guilty.
You don't think individual prosecutors don't already ignore the law? Selective prosecution happens all the time.
I'm glad you took a few minutes to think about it. Even if you are not wealthy it helps focus on what is valuable.

Regarding your bad experience it sounds like you weren't able to make the best out of your time and maybe your school failed in some respect. I find universities valuable because they are basically reincarnated every 4 or 5 years. They exist and function as an expression of the values of the students and to a lesser extent the faculty hired in that time. I simply cannot fathom how the Institute in any incarnation that I have been involved with would set out to destroy a productive community member for something so inane. Perhaps handle it internally but to ask for a formal prosecution? Something is really broken and I hope it is brought to light before the institution fails its students further.
Secret Service was involved prior to MIT knowing who was web-scraping JSTOR. Does MIT normally call the Secret Service when they find Laptops w/Hard Drives in wiring closets, particularly unlocked wiring closets that Homeless people were known to store their stuff in? This is all very strange.

From: http://chronicle.com/article/Rogue-Downloaders-Arrest/128439...

"On January 4, MIT police officers were notified that a member of the university's technical-security staff had discovered a laptop in the wiring closet. That morning, a team including a Secret Service agent and police officers from Cambridge and Boston visited the site and installed a Webcam....JSTOR never contacted any law-enforcement authorities about the matter. The decision to pursue criminal charges, she says, was not JSTOR's."
Some folks do this because they want independent 'tastes' and queues.
Despite the occasional high value link, the reddit ban on tumblr makes reddit better.
I don't have time to go over the several dozen Aaron-related posts or HN threads from today until tomorrow to provide cites, but many of Aaron's posts linked to on HN (including, especially the Batman post) display many signs of severe clinical depression. I'm not a doctor, so I'm not saying that he did kill himself as a result of a medical illness with any degree of certainty. But I am saying, based on my past experience representing defendants with mental illness, that it probably played a role in his suicide.

Also, the family does not say anything that disagrees with what I said. They state merely that the criminal case "contributed to" Aaron's death. That is an actual quote from [1].
Don't know why you were downvoted, so I voted you back up. It would be nice if HN users used the downvote button to indicate useless or offensive posts rather than something they personally disagree with (particularly on topics with a wide spectrum of opinions where one's opinion is closely tied to his identity).
great simplistic php testing framework:
https://github.com/parf/spartan-test
Seriously. Ping archive.org if that is too challenging, I'm sure they would gleefully do it all for free.