skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For what it's worth, if you're looking for another place to put your money, Aaron appreciated the work that Givewell (givewell.org) is doing. It's worth investigating how you can support them and the charities they endorse.
How do you return something that was downloaded?
First off, the connection between forcing a political firing and committing an act of mass murder is unclear. Why did you pick McVeigh as the metaphor? Why not Osama, or Jared Loghner, or Russia?

Second, that you think calling the poster a "loser" is important is telling. What do you think that will accomplish? Has insulting people ever won them over to your position, in your experience? Or were you banking on everyone's agreement, effectively forcing an internet shaming?
Underground Railroad: people risking their lives to help slaves fleeing slavery, rape, beatings, murder, and the wholesale destruction of their families.

Aaron Swartz: releasing academic articles that are already available for free or a low cost simply by visiting your local university and acquiring a guest access card.

Not even remotely comparable.
> "We will continue to work to distribute the content under our care as widely as possible"

Hint: put the content on static HTTP server without an authentication system.
Not everyone wants to solicit support to fight their battles. I can see why Aaron chose suicide. I wish he had fled to one of the few places in the world where American depravity couldn't effectively kill him, but I can see why he didn't.
I don't think he had a chance to distribute them, because the high volume of downloading was noticed and they tracked the computer down and then caught him. The plan was certainly to distribute them of he had not been caught, AFAIK.
I guess (and hope) Alex and the rest are incredibly heartbroken right now, and want to keep their pain private.

It's actually better to shut up than unashamedly try to ride Aaron's coattails -- like Jeff Jarvis is doing at the moment.
Good for you. Shaming, ostracizing, removal of support are all effective. Even better is that you remind others to do the same.
Recent change, after the downvote wars this past fall in which Microsoft articles would get unceremoniously downvoted to oblivion the instant they hit the front page.

The idea is that articles should rise to the top on their own merits, but not be pushed to the bottom simply by people disagreeing with their content.
So you're an up and coming prosecutor and handed the punk kid that took all those federal court documents and gave your colleagues a big middle finger when they tried to stop him.

Then JSTOR tells you to knock it off, but you proceed anyway.

And all this happens without Ortiz having any idea? Come on.

No one is saying Obama would know about this, but a bureaucrat on Ortiz's level does because its her job.
It's always and forever the same reason: money, and the power that buys.
He's being hyperbolic; MIT is still a very friendly hacker school. Aaron DID break the law, and I would not expect ANY school to stand behind him when he blatantly violated the law. It's pretty simple: don't break the law, much less using MIT resources to do so.

That said, they could have handled it with a lot more finesse, especially when it is such horrible publicity for them. I suspect this has more to do with eager lawyers than it does MIT's culture.

Keep in mind that MIT is an academic organization and is committed to, well, academics, not politics; e.g. Stallman did not belong there anyway.
The Obama Administration is the one needing a pardon -- not Swartz.

They shouldn't be placed in the position of having the opportunity to "excuse" his activity.

Rather, they should have to explain their own.
Bezier Curve Based Easing Functions
Awesome!, I want to do the same thing. but can no-ip.org work for a computer behind a subnet?
You're a right-wing nut and/or a racist. Period. You're getting called out because you're following the same lineage that all conspiracy nuts do. Conspiracy is just another religion. You talk of how everyone doesn't "get it", get information from the likes of Alex Jones or Glenn Beck (sites literally drowning in banner ads), but deny so many counter points. And yet, Bush, who ACTUALLY violated the law and should have been impeached? Meh, who cares about him! He's on our side! Please.
JSTOR does not have the power to direct what others do. If the publisher chooses to restrict a document, JSTOR has no say in that decision--JSTOR is merely a repository. JSTOR has access to essentially every academic article in existence precisely because it does not attempt to enforce any political goal on contributors.

If you want to change what publishers do with articles which should be in the public domain, get the law changed. But don't hold JSTOR responsible for something outside of their control.
I think you meant -> "we SHOULDN'T" stop with the prosecutor.
Ortiz not only knew about it, but was rather zealously in favor of prosecuting Aaron (see the NYT article for more details).

She's at least as guilty as the actual prosecutors on the case.
I very seriously considered MIT for my undergrad work, including doing the requisite alumni interview. I eventually decided the nation's 16th ranked computer science program was good enough, especially since they wanted to pay for me.

This whole time, I've had a piece of me that wished I'd done it (a very small piece, since 1/2 of my kids were born in that timeframe). Today is the first day when I can honestly say I'm glad I'm in no way associated with MIT.
"she did not do anything wrong"

That's a pretty arrogant statement in light of the general opinion regarding this case. It's also arrogant to think that someone, somewhere, will not find some means to destroy her career when at least tens of thousands will try.

You simultaneously claim that attempts to make an example of her will fail, and that such attempts should not even be made. Pfft. Something something before a fall.
I completely agree that we should make every legitimate effort to have this prosecutor removed from her position, along with anyone who uses similar tactics. You have to start somewhere.

My point is simply that this is a systemic problem. We can't have one prosecutor removed and then stop. We have to make this entire model of prosecution illegitimate. It's going to take a sustained, organized movement to make real change.

Which isn't to say it can't be done. It damn well has to be done. But it isn't going to be easy.
You blew it up, Adobe. You blew it up.
No I do not watch AJ or Beck. I get information from websites and do my own research. I am not a racist, have I brought up race at all? You are a fucking racist. Race has nothing to do with this.

And Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, every one of these fuckers should be indicted for treason. Unfortunately they are not in command anymore - Obama is. So he needs to be held accountable.

Thanks for the right-left and nutter comments again. You say people who believe in conspiracies are like religious fanatics? How about people who adamantly shun every single conspiracy without giving any research at all.
Nixon was pardoned against future charges. The dead can have no future criminal charges. A pardon would be the same as the government just issuing a formal apology.
He used his prodigious skills as a programmer and technologist not to enrich himself but to make the Internet and the world a fairer, better place.

Here's hoping his memory inspires more folk both here and elsewhere in the world to do the same.
Key words: "legally" and "properly". In other words, the opposite of what Anon or 4chan could be expected to do.

Identifying the tactics used to effectively strip people of their rights to open trials is the object here. Juries exist specifically to guard against abuses like this. If the DOJ has found a way to make getting in front of one exceedingly risky and certainly ruinous, then they should be called to account for what is a clear subversion of basic Constitutional protections.

We can't get Aaron back. But we can make sure that everyone understands why he found himself in such a desperate situation in spite of having done nothing to warrant the insane penalties he was facing.
I don't think that I've ever seen anything like this (the sheer number of submissions related to one event) on HN before. I, like most others, follow the tussle between those who desire a world where the barrier to access information is lower and those who want to copyright, lock up and monetize all the information that we generate.

Most of the time I feel that it is like a high tech soap opera but this events brings it home to me that alarmingly the stakes can be very high and that the weight of the collective system can crush any one individual. Is this naive of me but would it be possible to set up some kind of fund or foundation that could provide real monetary support to help those that are a braver than the rest of us when they confront the system and as a result get overwhelmed.

Apologies if this is inappropriate in any way.
So in a best case scenario, let me repeat that - best case scenario, here we're going to take a delicate genius and put him into jail where there's a 7% chance of being sexually assaulted for about 5-10 years?

Look, you can judge him how you please, but don't tell me about about how horribly Turing was oppressed if you won't accept guys like Swartz got the same treatment.

Can you imagine working on a startup, clearing a couple mil, spending your life fighting for your ideals to only have EVERYTHING taken away by some overzealous prosecutor? Can you imagine watching your 2 million dollar nest egg go to lawyers who tell you that you probably will need to serve time? Can you imagine waking up and knowing that in 6 months you'll be telling everyone you know that you will be going away for 10 years? That all you've done will be taken from you? Or how utterly demoralizing it must be to realize that Ortiz cannot be stopped because of how powerful the federal government is? The level of defeat here and the stakes involved? That your reputation and the reputation of everyone and everything you touched will be destroyed the day you take the plea bargain? Knowing the coming storm will hit you soon and there's nothing you can do to stop it?

If there's any justfiable reason for suicide in this crazy world its being railroaded by a government with infinite resources and knowing that by the time you get out of prison you'll be 10 years older, never allowed to touch a computer, be seen as a horrible felon on par with Charles Manson, and come out deeply in debt and completely dead inside.
I hear you complaining but I don't hear your solution.
PostLocation: You control your location data
It is good to know there are others with my thoughts. Sometimes I feel like it's only others that keep me going. Nothing about myself.
I want to know who specifically at MIT was involved in this. It seems antithetical to the MIT IT people I know (Jeff Schiller, etc.).

There's no hope, really, of replacing the US Attorney Ortiz. MIT, however, actually has some indirect accountability to the tech community.
US Federal prosecutors are pretty much Judge Dredd. The law gives them broad discretion and wide political independence; so much so that the broad and vague on-paper criminal law is irrelevant in practice. 95% of cases end in a plea bargain and federal juries have a conviction rate in the 80s.

http://law.wlu.edu/deptimages/Law%20Review/67-4Podgor.pdf
Realistically, he could have just gone ~anywhere outside the US and probably wouldn't have been pursued too aggressively.
Whether or not she totally understood the situation, she's just as liable. Either way, she'd be doing a horrible thing. You don't wield such power so haphazardly or harshly and still be a good person.
Ask HN: Who are the other tech luminaries in the civic sphere?
I don't mean to imply that those who work in the industry or are entrepreneurs aren't civic-minded...I think nearly every innovator believes what they're working on is for the betterment of society and humankind. But Aaron Swartz seemed especially and explicitly devoted to activism and public affairs, even before the JSTOR fight, and one of the few builders-of-tech who could spur both non-techies and techies into action against things such as SOPA.
Is the decline of Voo Doo related to that? I remember them complaining, but everybody knows the good old days were always better, everywhere.
AIML 2.0 Working Draft
The landscape of data analysis
Remember that some of those donations go to scholarships/etc so that there may be a reason for reciprocity. (That being said-it doesn't really seem to exist in Australia. I've never been contacted by my old university (a Gof8) and asked for donations.
What I Would Do, If Facing 35 Years For BS Crimes.
I am not a US citizen, I am a Mexican (living in Mexico). Although most of the countries in the world, will pull down their pants and bend over for the USA, there are still a few nations with backbone (Russia, Venezuela, Ecuador, China, Iran, Cuba, NKorea). It is certainly possible that you could get political asylum in any of this countries. Even if you think you couldn't get out of the USA, when there is a will there is a way. Drug smugglers have it harder than ever, to cross goods and people over to the USA but they still manage, if there is a way in there is a way out. If political asylum is not granted you could still hide and have several years of freedom, despite all the technology, money, power & bought governments the USA has. Seriously if you are going to die you might as well die fighting, if your own country is going to turn its back on you, do the same.
Bill Gates of course, though I was thinking of more the ones who can build at the grassroots level (Gates's time is far better spent at decisionmaking level given the wealth he manages). Adrian Holovaty comes to mind.
Online activist, programmer Swartz dies in NY
Accused of a crime thought so horrific it warrants 30 years in prison, I doubt that. The US has grabbed people on the other side of the world for lesser charges.
Thanks all! So basically it should be in the contract how it should be handled in case of an acquisition.
Are we still talking China here? Many Macbooks were running Windows 5 years ago, and now they have mostly transitioned to OS X (its rare to see a Macbook running Windows now). I don't think there are so many Macbooks in schools though, its mostly a thing in the young professional crowd.
You hand over the physical medium it is stored on and keep no copies.
He was way over the level of intelligence of an average criminal, he had connections all over the world, he could most likely borrow few thousand $$ just based on his word from a lot of people and I am sure he was not considered a flight risk. I do not know I think he had a damn good chance. But again I am not suicidal either
Very good question. And I agree with you. There are people all around us, crushed every day.
Thank you for the feedback! :D Is the size better now? http://random-dancing.appspot.com/ I agree tiling is annoying, but I thought it would be better than white screen, so I decided to keep it. As for the music, are you using firefox as your browser? For some reason my app doesn't work on firefox. Also, since I'm pulling the videos from youtube, some of them won't show even on chrome and safari.
"She is no stranger to being part of a disenfranchised group"

Got it. Being a member of a "disenfranchised group" and "fighting corporations" excuses anything.
For what it's worth, they seem to have handled MBTA v Anderson well in 2008 (http://tech.mit.edu/V128/N31/subway.html)
Jeff Leek is an assistant professor in the Biostatistics Department of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His work focuses on statistical methods for high-dimensional data and genomics.

In this video, he explains the landscape of data analysis. It is a very informative video that can help any person who is interested in learning about data analysis.
I think that the central assumption of your post is that I'm making the assumption that there was a systematic conspiracy to bring him to ruin. I am not alleging that. Neither am I stating anything towards the question whether or not his actions ran afoul of the spirit of the law. (indeed as this man asserts, there is reason to question that as well) I am simply stating an observation based upon the following;

a) the prosecutor's office has limited, finite resources to pursue cases

b) The prosecutor has discretion over the choice of cases

c) The office is judged by its record when it comes to the number of convictions and the quality of the cases pursued

d) It is reasonable to assume that the prosecutor acts as an agent, pursuing their own agenda versus the spirit of their duties. (the principal agent problem)

e) The legalities in Aaron's case are complicated and understood by a few.

f) It is also reasonable to assume that the case is inherently more risky than an open and shut guilty conviction, due to various factors such as, 1) the desire of MIT, JSTOR not to prosecute themselves, 2) expert witnesses such as the author of the article willing to provide testimony against the case, 3) the lack of a direct victim, and 4) questions over the inherent legality of the action itself.

g) In the above context it is reasonable to assert that the prosecutor without their well established tricks may have indeed lost this one if Aaron had the resources to have his day in court.

h) Aaron has a demonstrated previous track record of acting against the interests of the US govt. and the individuals it consists of.

i) Those individuals within the government have a social network

j) The said individuals are capable of and are willing to influence one another through this network

k) The prosecutor is a part of such a network by her very position within the government.

It is therefore reasonable to assume from the above assertions that it is likely the prosecutor was influenced to pursue the case with more rigour than necessary.
The choice that Aaron faced was not a fight-or-die-trying. The persecution by the government was a contributing factor in addition to his existing depression. Many face harsher prosecutions (as you've noted) without committing suicide. And many commit suicide without facing any prosecutions. Simply escaping his judicial fight here would not have been the end to what Aaron was suffering on a personal level.
Sounds very wumao!
Prosecuting someone without understanding the crime in question is not "doing your job".
You need to understand that US Attorney is a stepping-stone job, especially if she is very vocal in her role. Ego-maniacs like Rudy Giuliani use it to bypass the normal political machinery to get a mayorship, congressional post or cabinet/justice appointment. Others use it as a path to the ultimate job -- lifetime prestige and employment as a Federal judge.

"Naming and shaming" gives her name recognition and boosts her credentials as "tough". Any publicity is good publicity for a politician.

Instead, you and your friends should be asking the Senators and Governor of Massachusetts (aka the gatekeepers to this person's career path) why someone who demonstrates such contempt for the concept of justice is representing the United States government. You should ask President Obama and the Attorney General why their administration tolerates that contempt.

If you want the law changed, you need to attack those who are perpetrating injustice.
Fix the machine, not the person by Aaron Swartz (posted 100 days ago)
This was already posted on HN about 100 days ago but I thought it would be worthwhile re-surfacing to maybe reflect on how A.S. would have reacted to the numerous posts especially the ones blaming the prosecutor for his own death.

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/nummi
"Is this naive of me but would it be possible to set up some kind of fund or foundation that could provide real monetary support to help those that are a braver than the rest of us when they confront the system and as a result get overwhelmed."

I think the EFF would be pretty close to this already.
"Getting rid of a single prosecutor isn't going to change a damn thing"

Pour encourager les autres.
What would cause an MIT IT executive (and this would have to be an executive decision) to bring in the Secret Service for someone running curl against academic journal website.

I have done precisely that type of thing dozens of times in the last 10 years, and it would have never occurred to me that I was doing anything wrong. And yes, I always had to login first through a browser, figure out how the hell the cookie was stored, export it into a format that curl liked, figure out the URLs for all the docs, etc, etc...

And yes - when I was younger and more energetic, sticking my laptop in unlocked cabinet with an open ethernet port is exactly the sort of thing I would have done, without for a second believing I was doing anything "criminal".

I have to believe that MIT has hundreds (thousands?) of these types of webscraping events occurring all the time.

What made this one different from their perspective?
I don't think you're getting the idea here. We have internets now. The prosecutor says Aaron was a bad man. Everyone who knows anything about him -- and that's tons of people -- says completely the opposite. The New York Times is writing largely sympathetic stories about him. This isn't 1950 anymore. You don't get to control the public discourse just because you have a suit and an office.

It doesn't matter what they say he did, it matters what we say he did. And we say he did good. Which we can get people to believe, because we're right, and there are millions of us.

This whole "tech people are irrelevant and no one listens to them" meme dates back to the 1990s before tech people were relevant and people started listening to them, and before there were millions of us instead of thousands.

There are a lot of us. We're generally pretty smart. We control a lot of important stuff. We can fix serious problems if we collectively set out to do it.

You can say "politics doesn't work that way" a hundred times, but politics works the way that people make it work. And we're people.
Assuming the address is findable would it be weird to leave flowers? I feel like this shouldn't stay bits on wires.
"Making people "afraid" to prosecute it is the wrong answer"

No, it isn't. Prosecutors need to be held responsible for their actions.
You have really taken my comment in entirely the wrong light, I'm not complaining that his death has been treat with respect and reverence but you are right in that I am now mentally filtering the articles with "!(^Aaron$)" - I read the first few to pop up at ridiculous O'clock, and a few more when I woke, then I read a few more after lunch, then a few more before my tea, now I just read another before posting this, I was simply saying what a few others are thinking, that there are simply too many articles related to him - the high quality ones and the truly heart felt ones are being over shadowed by the "I once met Aaron in a coffee shop and he paid with 3 $0.25 coins!!!" type articles.

If you were a friend, I apologize for your loss, but please think rationally and don't project your feelings on me.
And people are expected to pay when they make mistakes. Period.
>There must be enough of us fed up, skilled, and idealistic enough to disrupt this space, creating new, actually modern publishers and/or publishing platforms if necessary.

indeed, there are. How do you get them together though?
Yes, learn basic programming
> How do you return something that was downloaded?

There was a public gesture where his attorney physically handed over some hard drives. Then the US Secret Service allowed him to access it once in a while to build his defense.
This response is touching, sad, but somehow beautiful as well:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2013Jan/0022.htm...