skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Possibly inconsequential but you have one right here. I've called a suicide hotline more times than I can remember. They don't tell you something resulting in some great epiphany. What they do is talk to you. Simply talk to you, hear what you have to say, keep you on the line and make you feel heard. That's all I needed to calm down. Maybe that's what most people need. No suicide line has ever sent me a form asking if they've done a good job. I imagine they are constantly swamped.
I agree it varies, but what I've read (not mainly from the media, but from government and academic reports) still doesn't paint a particularly pretty picture overall. For example, here is the Bureau of Justice Statistics on prison rape: http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1149

And here is the Government Accountability Office on overcrowding in the federal prison system: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-743
It serves no one to make a single prosecutor the scapegoat for a whole system and a whole set of bad laws that need to be changed. There are a thousand prosecutors who are no better just waiting to take that job.

We're going after Ortiz because we think it will satisfy our outrage and grief. That is exactly what I am worried about. I understand wanting to put a face on a tragedy like this, but we should be smarter than this.
It's interesting to hear how young programmers come to grips with issues that are fundamentally social. Programming has often been characterized as a solitary or deeply individual discipline (even PG's Hackers & Painters nods to that, after all, most painters aren't known for their group efforts :P ).

That said, I think this is an unfortunate frame of reference both for programmers and for the world at large to understand the sorts of creative works with which we wrestle.

By and large, software is utilitarian and designed to help someone, somewhere, do something. Consequently all of the things we do as programmers are at their core, social (even if the act of programming may not always be).

And there are sciences and arts related to how we as humans relate to each other, communicate, and negotiate our varying wants and needs.

So, yes, you're right that we need to be more humane to each other, but i wish that there were a better awareness of what that actually entails, and how we can do a better job.

I'm amazed at how sadly inconclusive the "You are not your code" discussion has gone, as an example. Likewise, I appreciate the sentiment you are expressing, although i agree with others that you are generalizing unfairly (i certainly don't fit into the characterization you describe)
You can have a rational conversation about anything as long as you don't use irrational arguments.

Solipsism proposes that the world is just a creation of the mind.
However the only way to define the mind is in the context of the world outside of it.
So no, the world isn't just imagination, and the imagination isn't just an artefact of the world. You can only define each one of them in function of the other.
Just like you can't define good without bad.

No one I know has been able to define a rational purpose for their life. You can't have purpose to yourself, just to others. Either way it's an infinite purpose chain.
Thanks for posting this. That phrase is the conclusion I came to in the parent comment of this chain. I have not heard that phrase elsewhere though. I wonder if he means it in the same way as I do? I'll have to check out his book.
That's civil court. How much does the crown pay for criminal defense?
Isn't Google digitizing all printed works they can get their hands on?
This is bullshit.

Coming from academia, I can say that the only people who benefit from this system are the publishers and the institutions. Everyone else is under the wheel.
No. Prosecutors pay attention to pardons. It's a bit of slap in the face. That's what these prosecutors deserve. A clear sign that they overreached.

Prosecutors also often run for office later in their career (see Elliot Spitzer). They use their conviction history to show how badass they are. These prosecutors need to have the privilege of adding "convicted high-profile hackers" to their resume revoked.

If pardoning isn't appropriate in this case, a simple statement from the president or Department of Justice would be welcome.
She has demonstrated either horrible incompetence or maliciousness.

Looking at the way the prosecution built its case, the hyperbole, misdirection, inaccuracies dealing with the technical aspects at least, I cannot but attribute at least one of the above attributes to them.
If there's any blogpost or the like that comes out of this, be sure to share! I just started using workflowy because of all the positive opinions on HN - but can't dig out some of the functionality you mention in your post yet.
I don't know, but for one, the prosecutor tried to portray the action as solely having a profit motive - which is ludicrous.
> When you are going into a wiring closet wearing a mask over your face to hide your identity, you pretty much know you are "doing something wrong."

I disagree. You know you're doing something that isn't allowed and will get you into trouble, but you might feel that it's morally right to do so.
There are ten thousand gears coming out of law school every year. It won't make a difference.
I'm currently going through CBT and on multiple meds. None seem to be working and my uni life suffers, as does my work life. Having no social life and no friends doesn't help. Yet I keep at it. Life is full of so many possibilities, so many variables that I have yet to consider. I hope when next it comes time for me to contemplate my existence, I can hold on to that hope for an unseen, unspeculative future.

I'd also like to add one more thing Depression robs you of: Self worth.
Actually if they drained his accounts and froze his assets and promised to shove in him a prison with hardened criminals for up to 50 years, where he could face assaults, rape and abuse (more so probably than the average hardened street criminal) killing himself didn't seem like such an irrational choice.
"Aaron's act was undoubtedly political activism, and taking such an act in the physical world would, at most, have a meant he faced light penalties akin to trespassing as part of a political protest. Because he used a computer, he instead faced long-term incarceration. This is a disparity that EFF has fought against for years."

This is very related to the founding of the EFF, check out Bruce Sterling's "The Hacker Crackdown" for a great account of it and one of the early cases (Steve Jackson Games).
>It is irrelevant whether Aaron is bad or good; the law addresses only guilt and leaves morality to others. Legally, what matters is (1) whether he committed the alleged acts and (2) whether those acts (which are currently crimes) should be crimes.

We are not in a court of law. We are in the court of public opinion, where it is very relevant whether Aaron is bad or good.

>there's not a snowball's chance in hell that you will convince other people (i.e., the tecnically illerate supermajority of America) that what he did was "good" once they understand that what he did is considered hacking.

Half the point of this exercise is to make those people understand that "hacking" doesn't mean what they think it means. By these prosecutors' definitions, what they each do every morning by logging into a website using an ad blocker in violation of its terms of service or filling in a fake name to a web form is just as much considered "hacking" -- which is the problem. These laws are asinine. They make us all felons. Normal people can understand that without having to know what curl is.

>People in SV keep saying that, and then they churn out yet another social network or photo sharing app. At this point, I'll believe statements like that, even if made on HN, once they are backed by actual action and not just words.

I read your other post where you attributed the SOPA defeat to lobbying rather than activism. I don't agree with you. If you talk to Congressional aids, it was the volume of letters and the phone calls from real people who did it. It broke records.

If you don't agree with that, how about the Arab Spring? The activists themselves attribute their success to social media. Granted many of them are now learning that being citizens in a new democracy is harder than it looks, but you can't deny that there are actions there rather than just words.

What kind of actions are you looking for anyway? We are not going to have that sort of semi-violent revolution in the United States. That just isn't in the cards. But we can have political change without violence -- which is going to involve a lot more "words" than "actions" but is more than capable of getting results.

And what do you care? If we're willing bust our butts trying to change things, why do you have to shit on the attempt?

I want to fix things. Other like minded people want to fix the same things. We have ideas. We have resources. We are going to try. You can help if you want, but if you don't want to help then please go away and if you encounter anyone more helpful on your way out the door then kindly send them back this way.

And let me say this: If you're arguing that we haven't been living up to our potential, I agree with you. We don't need "another social network or photo sharing app." But we are capable of more than that. So don't tell us that we can't do it -- it helps nothing for you to convince anyone to believe you and have them go back to making more social networks and photo sharing apps. This is more important than that.
You transposed my text a bit. The "wrong" reference was to me webscraping journals via curl.

I realize that sneaking into Wiring Closets and plugging in a laptop to get onto a privileged vlan isn't something sanctioned by the school. If I was caught, I probably would expect to get my hand slapped if I'm a student, and if I'm not a member of the community maybe even charged with trespass (though, I understand at MIT they dropped those charges)

But if I was a student, I wouldn't (and didn't) consider that behavior to be "criminal."

But what I find astonishing about the MIT case is that they pulled the secret service into the case (A) Just because someone was webscraping from a laptop and (B) Before they knew that the person doing the webscraping wasn't a student.

If it were me in charge of IT - I would have probably just asked campus security to lock the closet moving forward, make sure there are locks on all the wiring closets, and replace the laptop with a sign explaining campus-security had confiscated the laptop, and please go have a conversation with them to pick it up - return of Laptop being subject to (A) Apology for slamming JSTOR, and (B) Return of all the JSTOR IP.
Another example of our "betters" knowing what's best for us. What a shame this brilliant young mans life is over because Carmen wants to be governor. Sickening.
I was responding to someone who thought that Aaron was doing this with absolutely no idea he wasn't allowed to.
No, it may be your takeaway but 'the internet' doesn't have one assigned, much less society at large.
I'm so sorry for your loss. RIP Aron
And if any educational institution used torrents instead of paying it would be unethical, but some day, and some day soon, restricting information will need to stop because it must. Armies of people would be perfectly willing to do the job of JSTOR pro bono publico only needing a bit of equipment easily enough donated.
Man! What a crime you describe! Do you think any of these scholars--very few of whom probably use JStor on a regular basis (even at a very good liberal arts school, Columbia, did I rarely use it)--would advocate a >$1.5*10^6 or jail time for their lost productivity (which, again, was likely negligible)?
maybe not in every language, but most people can find a language whose logic fits their own.
Taxpayers don't fund government, workers fund government (and it's expenditures in research). Government issues currency and draws upon the wealth of the nation for funding. Taxes drive demand for currency, they don't fund the government.
exacerbate
We Have Lost One of Our Own
Suicide reporting on the Internet
Perhaps it should be more cooperative.
oh yeah measures in recent years?

-the first point is not even rolled out

-there is no such thing as a registered researcher. The institution needs to register

-the last point you mention got rolled out only 5 days ago.

JSTOR has more negative than positives. I cannot think of one positive thing in this day and age about JSTOR. It should be open. Period. There hand will be forced someday and the great part is, as usual, it will be too late and they will be a history.
This article is about tor2web and it was written in 2008.

I'm more interested in an easy way to create a hidden service.
Since this library requires PHP 5.4, I'm not sure why it bothers with this syntax:

Parody\Mime::create('Vendor\Class\Project')
-> onCall('method') -> expect('argument one') -> give('response one')
-> onCall('method') -> expect('argument two') -> give('response two')
-> resolve();

When one could just use anonymous functions to give the same result with less API-as-code.

Parody\Mime::create('Vendor\Class\Project')
-> onCall('method', function($param) {
if ($param == 'argument one') return 'response one';
if ($param == 'argument two') return 'response two';
) -> resolve();

This is more flexible, less code for the framework, and easier to learn.
I don't know what to say anymore. It really saddens me to see such a great person ending his life. I can imagine the amount of stress he was going through..RIP..
Thanks, this has actually sparked my interest in learning Angular. I was ready to start with Ember.js, but this has pushed down a different path. Appreciate you sharing the source code.
Please read the indictment. It wasn't like he walked in on Monday to do this and they called the police on Tuesday. They were repeatedly trying to keep him out, and he knew it, and he kept on trying to get back in anyway. This went on for months. When they finally had a piece of physical evidence they called the Secret Service because they could get the guy. And he fled when campus police approached him.
The Washington Post calls him an American Hero ... he was one, wasn't he? http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/12/a...
He didn't cause anyone to lose access.
"could that not explain her actions without malice?"
You should look up the definition of malice because that describes her actions nicely.

The intention or desire to do evil; ill will.
Wrongful intention, esp. as increasing the guilt of certain offenses.

Synonyms
spite - malevolence - rancour - rancor - malignity
There are several supposedly built-in safeguards to protect our country's citizens from abuse, inflicted by the government.

One is the law. The idea that representatives that people elect will end up creating just laws.

If that fucks up, then ...

Prosecutors who prosecute on behalf of the state (as in country here, US, not necessarily a specific state) can chose not to prosecute a case. If they have a teenager who smuggled a little pot from Mexico or they have a white collar embezzlement case of $10M, the hope is that they will go after the embezzlement case.

If this gets fucked up, (as did in this case), then...

It comes to the jury of peers. They jury can choose not to convict.

So it is not as mechanistic as "it is the law, the law was broken, therefore in every instance someone should be punished according to that law". And to fix something, the only way to do it is to overturn the law. There are actually multiple places to put the fix in.

> I do not place much blame on her for prosecuting according to an unjust law.

I do place the blame on her for choosing this case over another case. That is the real issue here. Forget perhaps that as techies many of us personally feel more connected to Aaron. Forget about that for a second. Look at it from the tax payer's point of view. We bank-roll the prosecution of these cases. Is picking this case from the pile and saying "Pedal to the metal with this one. We'll fucking bury this kid" make sense vs picking other cases.

But you see, this case was picked. And I want to know why. And I want to know why was the prosecution so keen and so fervent in this case. This kind of passion does _NOT_ come randomly and I also doubt they have a random-spin-the-wheel-next-case-picker. These decisions, ( I am guessing here) are heavily politically motivated. At least as a tax payer I am owed an explanation as to how the process works.
That's why developers should always lint their code. www.jslint.com
> The prosecutor was just doing her job.

If that is the case, then she is BAD at her job. You can't have it both ways. Either way, let everyone know that she is either bad at her job or overzealous.
It won't make a difference.

If engineers started getting sacked for breaking the build, you can be damned sure people would get very scrupulous about only committing working code, whether they're fresh out of school or greybeards.

No, it's not a perfect analogy, but I don't think it needs to be.
Aaron Swartz on "Legacy"
Perhaps the triangulation with dismissal rates here is informative -- cases the end in dismissal sound like they are a sizeable portion of those that don't get pled. I don't know the exact numbers in our world, but that number ought to be virtually insignificant in the 'great' world.
Few people are uncompromising in their ideals and have the talent to enact that vision, especially at a young age. I think it's because aaronsw represents something we all respect and for some, greatly admire. For the HN community, it's as if a key political figure died and we were the key community that knew her, knew of her, and knew her work. A good example may be a civil rights leader, dissident, or environmental leader. For me personally, Aaron was fighting the good fight.
The web responds to the death of Aaron Swartz
Oh, I'd greatly prefer that, but I imagine this is more politically practical.
I compare it to trying to learn a musical instrument:
- most people can learn to some degree
- hard work and dedication can compensate for a lack of ability
- for those of little talent, their end-point ability will always be very limited
- the truly talented can make mastery of their instrument look truly supernatural

As not all people should be musicians professionally, not all people should be programmers professionally. It's hard to put my finger on it, but in both cases some people just don't 'get it'.

Of course, if you are talking about having fun on your own - writing apps or making music - or 'jamming' code or music with your friends - you can do whatever you like.
Nobody killed Aaron Swartz except Aaron Swartz. Not the prosecutor, nor the legal system, nor the copyright system. Completely useless as they all are.

It's absolutely horrible how this happened and that we lost such a light in the web community. But stop the myth making and pretending that you cared the whole time, when really nobody did.
Why wouldn't the replacement cog think twice about over zealous prosecution?
They made a choice to involve the feds. This could very easily have been handled internally, and the result would have been effective from their viewpoint. Catch him using the same methods and give him a stern talking to from campus police, then not press charges. Pretty much what happened to people bending and even openly breaking the rules on campuses around the world for decades, if not centuries.

But someone at MIT wanted to call in the feds. Make case hard and tough and send someone to prison for causing them inconvenience. This was a decision someone there made.
There are nearly 7 billion people in the world. I think between us we can manage to read more than 1.5 papers a week.
Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

If you get drunk, hop in your car, and accidentally kill some people, then guess what? It doesn't matter if it was an accident. If your "accident" is big enough, it becomes indistinguishable from malice and you get held accountable.
http://www.facebook.com/celebraterecovery/posts/101504738440...
Once there lived a king, he had em' ministers
and whole lot of them entertaining fucks.

One day, the Elvis of 17th Cent., comes
to impress the king.

He goes,

>A little less conversation, a little more action please
>All this aggravation aint satisfactioning me
>A little more bite and a little less bark
>A little less fight and a little more spark
>Close your mouth and open up your heart and baby satisfy me
>Satisfy me baby

But then, he JUST STOPS.

"My Dear King you are fucking NAKED."

The story ends abruptly and Elvis headless.

xxxxx

Now what Aron did was, he didn't even sing the intro.
He went all lulz on the King.

The story should have ended, with Aron going all Jesus.

But being philosophically considerate, I guess he went all Loki.

O' Aron I do wish you hadn't played this.

It is rather peevy of me, but I will take a look at your HardDisk if that Sean chap disseminates it online.
Jonathan James
Is it really that the average vocabulary of the world is decreasing or is it just more obvious to those that care that a large percentage of users do not share their vocabulary? The Internet makes things much more obvious to people than it used to before its mass adoption by the average human.
Threatened with 35 years of jail time...
I am pleased to see this is the top comment. It is very frustrating to see people who completely disregard the cost and effort associated with digitizing and managing records.
Hard to say: lots of great and popular newsletters use both the daily and weekly models. You could offer the choice on signup I suppose.
Isn't part of the game political? By shaming her, you are playing the game.
Interested in this headline, I clicked the link, and found the article very insightful and resonated strongly with me. I was going to email the author and thank him for his writing, but only then did I realize the author. Aaron, wherever you are, thank you for what you did to make our world better off than you found it.
The lawyers asked me “Why would someone download a huge body of academic journal articles?” (my response was “I would be guessing but my best guess would be that they wanted to experiment with some kind of text processing algorithm. [...])

Is it really so difficult to imagine for some people that perhaps he simply wanted to give the world free access to information?
Or http://www.jshint.com/ if they feel jslint is too harsh or arbitrary about some things.
s/JSTOR/Government
Google has ridiculous amounts of capitol. They aren't digitizing printed works out of some sort of sense of social service. Street View is much the same way. They aren't doing it to be nice, and they aren't giving you access for free out of the goodness of their hearts.

Everything they do that isn't funded by ad revenue or working towards greater ad revenue is a speculative exploration into future markets that will one day be monetized, but is not currently by virtue of their tremendously deep pockets.

I've been wondering recently- I think companies like Google have started warping expectations beyond the realistic, and I'm both curious and apprehensive where that will take us.
I don't know if you are still listening or reading this thread - I hope we did something right. I hope we did not fail you. I was reminded of this post from 2 weeks ago in light of Aaron Swartz's suicide. Please post something lawbeecher to let us know you are still living. We can't easily move the dark cloud that is hovering over you but please let us know if there is something we can do.

Aaron Swartz RIP.
In the case of USA vs. A Swartz, there were already over a 100 filings and the case had not even gone to trial yet ( http://ia700504.us.archive.org/29/items/gov.uscourts.mad.137... ). All that back and forth requires billable hours from a very pricey attorney, the money adds up very quickly. I do not know enough about the legal system to determine how the discovery/pre-trial motion process could be made more efficient and cheaper for the defendant.