skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>It's far better to have a government of laws and not a government of men

Who do you think decided to tell JSTOR to shove it and prosecute him anyway under a federal computer crimes act? All prosecution is political and white collar crimes doubly so. Men decide to be vindictive, men decide which laws, and the men who prosecute knowing it takes millions of dollars to successful defend from a false accusation from the federal government.

We don't live under laws. We live under men. There's no politically neutral AI calling the shots. Its people trying to get promotions and making names for themselves and who knows what other motivations. The selfless prosecutor exists only in movies and TV.
It takes work. It's about listening to your pain and guiding your life away from it. I can't emphasize that enough - pain is a profound teacher. It tells you when you need to fix something. It takes work to understand pain, and then to pursue its solution.
HN, what are you doing.
This is HN front page at 22:20 GMT, 12.01.2013 : http://i.imgur.com/hM1Lp.png

There is a single (underlined) submission not related to Aaron Swartz. Multiple news site links informing us of his death. Blog posts on the topic. Even worse, old blog posts by him.

The topic is worthy of discussion, but 29 of them? Why?
ertwertwertwert
Well, Boston isn't in the ninth circuit. I'm also curious how you would summarize the Nosal ruling.
Your journey sounds somewhat like mine. Reading too much of Albert Camus and HP Lovecraft didn't help in looking to the bright side of things. Two key findings for me: 1-I am here to help making a better next batch 2-I am one of the myriad of consciences that the universes uses to watch itself and understand. So it is pretty much normal that there are tons of weird unknowns and unsettling things going on. No need to commit suicide just because I see no meaning in all of that. Note: It was close for me to just go away from my own hand, I was hit twice by a car, and about died from peritonitis.
Of all the great stories and memories on Aaron that have been shared all day today, I believe this story is the one that the general public should really read. Until yesterday, most Aaron vs USA stories had a negative angle on Aaron, and this one really shines a light on the ridiculous witch-hunt lead by the US Attorney.
> Or, you know, you could just call your local Congressperson and complain.

Isn't that part-and-parcel of naming-and-shaming?

Most of the commenters seem to think that name-and-shame means "write about it on your blog" or "retweet something", I guess. A tweet doesn't get someone fired; calling your local congressperson is definitely the thing to do.
You should provide a good reason for visitor to become a user. never block everything for guests(like many websites out there), you should provide a great demo or any strong reason for people to become a user.
That's clear nobody will fill forms and do activation process for just a sentence that you wrote on your home page.
"Find Friends" - Signup
"Live Chat" - Signup
What happens if you're in a grey area? You spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars defending yourself, and you might be found innocent of the more serious charges, but there's a good chance you'll be convicted on one or two minor charges. You're still out the money you payed to your lawyers, and the prosecutor gets to say, "We didn't get the outcome we wanted, but the evildoer was still held to account for his crimes."
> Except that the access fees paid by any single large university would be enough to completely fund an open digital archive.

Exactly. Just imagine what archive.org could do if all those universities were donating all of that money to them instead.
Actually, I believe web.py is related to Aaron Swartz, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
Internal server error
Aaron has had a very expensive federal court battle. It may be that he still had leftover money from the sale of reddit, but Lessig's blog on the subject suggested financial troubles.
Lets remain silent on this topic at the moment, unless this turns out not to be the case.
Would you mind giving a quick summary of the types of screening you suggest?
So... you're responding to an attack against the character of a single individual, with an attack against the character of all Americans. Smooth.

This is a tragedy, and how people view this will vary widely, there is no need kneejerk hate-filled ignorance, even if it does make you feel better.
Your Car, Your Data, Your API
Sure, but I don't know if it would move the copyright reform question along. Copyright is very broken in a number of ways but there is broad consensus in people I've talked to that it is especially broken with regards to public records and science research. In the best of all possible worlds Aaron would have been acquitted with a landmark decision that said "this use of copyright in rent seeking behavior on documents of public discourse is unconstitutional."[1] Aaron was doing perhaps more than he knew to push this conversation along, had I known he was in such dire straits in his defense fund I would have helped in any way I could have. Clearly others would as well.

If you look at Carmen's career you will find that she has actually done a lot of good, in getting bad folks put behind bars. She, or her staff, blew it on this one. I wish I knew why. I doubt we'll get the actual story there.

So to what end would ending her career advance Aaron's goal of getting copyright on public records overturned? Making people "afraid" to prosecute it is the wrong answer, making it "not a crime" is the answer. There are only two ways to do that, one is to repeal the statute that makes it a crime in the first place, the second is to litigate the statute and find that the statute is invalid.

Firing Carmen doesn't help, although I completely understand the emotional appeal of doing so.

[1] I know that would not have happened it is illustrative.
This is almost as good as Japan's very controversial 99%+ conviction rate, which is widely seen as abusive, with a high rate of innocent people forced to confess, for varied reasons.

This is a decades old paper, but still quite relevant for the reasons why the conviction rate is so high in Japan.

http://www.rasmusen.org/published/Rasmusen-01.JLS.jpncon.pdf
Also, it's really nice to have a bad memory. Conveniently, bad memory, scared, defensive/arrogant, and combative is pretty much how I'd feel in front of a federal court anyway, so it wouldn't be "playing".
What did you do to promote your site on the launch day?
Every single post on HN (HP) is about Aaron Swartz 
HN is mourning Aaron

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151410201562095&set=a.490487667094.301195.506482094&type=1&theater
Eh, I said should, not will. We live in an imperfect world.
This is fantastic advice for someone who wants to contribute to the open source community for the first time (I am fresh out of college and have zero contributions; most of my work, a long internship and school stuff, are all closed source). I have few ideas and I will try this method on them.
That's a damn fine elegy.
Government's Planned Flat-rate Pensions Revealed
I'll tell you why he was special to me, even though I have no personal relationship to him.

I am only a year older than him, also a python user, also interested in the same things he was interested in. I followed his progress, read his essays, used his open source software, and am a user of the sites he worked on (e.g. reddit, infogami, jottit). I admire his work a lot and look up to him.

I think his life, ideals, and work resonate with a lot of people here on HN, moreso than Steve Jobs. He's the quintessential hacker. A lot of people identify with that, and are upset over the injustice done to him in the JSTOR case, FBI investigation, etc. That's why you see this kind of reaction over his death.
I don't know a lot about his personal life - does he have a family or anything?

I'd happily donate them some money to help with things - I know that it's not easy tying up someone's personal life - funeral costs, lawyers, etc.
"the Fibrox needs to be sharpened somewhat often."

That's exactly why people say the Fibrox is cheap. Spend $100 on a good knife, and you won't have to sharpen it more than a couple of times a year, if that.

It's really worth spending about $100 on a knife. Beyond that, you're paying for fancy handles and/or damascus steel. Too much below that, and you're getting an inferior product.
On paying it forward
Yes, that means 30/30
Why not? Please think twice before giving the govt 101 separation of powers answer. I hope we all know that the President isn't a monarch.
Thank you for your candidness. I hope you discover your true purpose one day. I suspect it is the net result of digging for it for decades, and that it is one of the most important aspects of our life. All the shit (I rarely curse, but it is apropos here) people obsess about - money, power, fame - is but a pale shadow next to the feeling of working toward one's purpose.

I have only a faint idea of mine, and it involves helping people and probably making things.
This is the number two story on Google New's "Top Stories" for me right now so it seems like this has a far chance of getting a lot of coverage is people are loud enough for long enough.
How much worse is a situation like this when you are literally faced with the threat of decades in prison?

"I have a chance to end it now that I may not have in a few months"
One Gas Pump Key Lets Thieves Steal Your ID
Converting Video: x9S0hY0ULUA Free MP3 Download
The odd thing is I was on reddit today and didn't even hear of his passing until leaving and visiting another site.

There are tons of stories about it posted there but none of them are on the overall front page nor on the front pages of any of my usual subreddits (proggit has a link to his "hit by a truck" post at the top but I had already read it and didn't understand why it was reposted until after).
It's even lower than what I expected. I remember having read one time there was allegedly a copied cookie involved (which already wasn't what I would call a hack), but it seems that's not even the case. I'm astonished how such a small offense could bring such huge charges.
Life has no purpose. It's just applied randomness, like everything else. This is difficult for the non-religious to swallow, that's why religion exists.

HN isn't a support network but I fully understand and appreciate your post.
I don't know how everyone else feels, but tracking like this always creeps me out. I mean okay, there are good reasons to know what page someone is on and what they click to next, but having to track their mouse as well...that's going a bit far.

I add sites that use things like this to my "do not return ever" list.
The other stories were sad, but this one is disgusting. I hope that Aaron's death actually changes things.
Don't complain. Find something worthy of HN to submit.
Will Oculus Rift Be The "Coolest Gadget Ever?"
Well, the problem is that I don't have anything to be proud of. All things I've really worked hard with I do without progression. I've tried to learn programming, failed. I've tried to get abs, failed. I've tried to get girlfriend, failed. And I still trying but now after years and years I feel so worthless...
Your argument holds true for any dollar amount above zero, and it's hard to imagine how we could get the average cost to zero. If you want to keep the average low, you will need to find some way to prevent a mafia boss from spending millions of dollars. Make every defendant use only a state provided attorney?
Yeah, I hear you but its what the members want to do. On top of that, stuff gets voted up. So, they doubly want to do this. Fair enough, IMHO. Im assuming that for some reason you and I don't know, there is a particular connection or kinship of some sort. Probably a sort of latent thing. It has certainly struck a chord.

Anyway, like most things, everyone will move on. And as shit and crass as this sounds, forget. All this talk of petitions and what not, will amount to nothing, and people will drone back to normal life, condoning those who really don't have their best interests at heart. Oh look, great bloke death. Cry, cry. Then back to: where's the next dollar? Business as usual. That's for me is the worse bit. The insincerity of it all.

Pissed? Hope so.

Now, any one reading this, if you down vote me, be damned sure I am wrong. Be really sure.

Look, if every down vote, or up vote, is a person with an new or slightly more focused desire to put their country right in this guy's memory, then good. Prove this arrogant mouth wrong. Please, prove me wrong.

Just thinking about it, look at all the tributes. Even from the UK I recognise many of the names. Cant you all get together on this? Looks like a powerful or influential group to me.
I agree with the sentiment. I understand the anger and powerlessness. However, we should all take a moment before posting poorly-written petitions and signing them. Decisions made in anger rarely accomplish much.

This person made errors in judgement. Maybe they came from her poor understanding of technology, maybe not. But what's clear is that the petition author has equally limited understanding of legal matters. Don't do what she did. Be the better person.

Go about this the proper way. If you truly feel that she did something wrong, then consult with a lawyer and decide what can be done. Maybe legal action can be taken to have her sanctioned. Maybe she can be educated. I don't know. And neither do you. So instead of -- essentially -- calling for her to be hanged, go about this the proper way.
MHealth, telehealth and Attorneys General fighting for HIPAA
Smart, done. Thanks so much, John. (Now I'm dreading the skull and crossbones watermark that's going to appear when he derails on his public goal -- especially for how that will look to people not familiar with Beeminder. Maybe I'll suppress that too.)
I don't think I ever was in a depression, but my understanding is that it is akin to a mental illness. You simply cannot understand what it feels like unless you were there yourself. Would you tell a schizophrenic person to simply get over it and ignore his hallucinations.
Overzealous prosecutors hurt people accused of every kind of crime, making them accountable is a pretty far reaching cause.
Cory, a sad and wonderful tribute to Aaron. Thank you.
In the movie, it was actually Florence.

The EuroPython conference took place in Florence in 2011 and 2012, and again will be there in 2013.

Aaron was a Python über-hacker.

I know it's incredibly unlikely, but it would be the stuff of legend.
38 Minimalist Layouts Utilizing Excellent Whitespace
Codewriter, favorite code editor for Windows 8 [Spanish]
These graphs make it hard to separate software consulting, the particular shape of a contractual business arrangement, vs "software consulting" used as a buzzword phrase to describe something else, e.g. outsourcing (I see large numbers of hits in India) - and buzzwords change over time, like fashions.
For some people it could be as simple as realizing that your brain is screwing you over, and therefore you can't merely intellectualize your way out of depression. Your grey matter is (mostly) fine, but it's swimming in a soup of self-perpetuating depression chemicals.

It's all but impossible to force yourself to be happy when your brain is chemically forcing you to be depressed.

It would be awesome if a magic pill existed, but for now the most effective way to reboot your brain chemistry might just be exercise. I joined my local gym, and made myself go regularly by promising myself that I'd only ever listen to my favourite podcasts while in that building.

I now consider myself fully cured.
The unsubscribe link is missing an href.
OpenProfiler launches beta; promises synchronization of various online profiles.
More info:

Aaron wasn’t so lucky with the JSTOR matter. The case was picked up by Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Heymann in Boston, the cybercrime prosecutor who won a record 20-year prison stretch for TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez. Heymann indicted Aaron on 13 counts of wire fraud, computer intrusion and reckless damage.

-- Wired, http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/01/aaron-swartz/

In the area of computer crime, Mr. Heymann:

- Jointly brought the first federal prosecution of a juvenile computer hacker, who had electronically disabled a critical computer servicing the control tower of a regional airport.

- Supervised the prosecution of the first software pirate to be charged with free distribution of copyrighted software over the Internet.

-- http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/digitaldiscovery/biosfc.htm

Not that much public info available on the guy.
This is fairly easily solved by coloring the background area of those clocks a different color when they are supposed to be in-office. All the clocks will be on the same time and the backgrounds will be rotated depending on the culture of the area. With a very quick glance and without comparing N clocks, you can immediately see if all clocks have the time in the colored background and then set the appointment/make call.
People over-reacting on the Internet. Who would've thought.
You guys are getting creepy with all the Aaron Swartz stuff.
Many people don't realize that programmers are far more sensitive than the average person. We ran away from people, and escaped into the wonderful world of computing because everything synchronizes, there is harmony and greatness in mathematics. And when we deal with the slightest form of human offence, it's as if the other person is our own mind, telling us that we are a burden to society, and it is our time to be killed, as simply as the body tells cells out-of-place to die.

Programmers need to disconnect and not let the external environment become part of us. Sometimes I let other people's minds become part of my mind. I think it's a profound glimpse into how programmers can use our motor neurons to actually "be" a compiler in software, and to anticipate how it works.

Unconsciously we do the same things with other humans, and there are ways that humans can take over that process and their disapproval of us is like our own mind finding disapproval for a system inside it that must be destroyed. With the proper scenarios, make programmers suicidal, when they can utter the proper dark magic incantation, we do a cost benefit analysis and decide that suicide does remove the defective systems. rm -rf /

I think the takeaway here is that some of the best programmers tend to have serious problems separating the directives of self from the directives of others. You have to learn that we are not computers, and the good of the many is not always preferable to the good of the few.
Yeah, the reality for the accused is that the system is rather black and white. Either you are not on their radar... or you are fucked. How fucked you are is really the only gradient here.
He can be pardoned without being convicted:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...

but I don't think he should be, it really solves nothing in this case.
Scala: The difference between val and var
Good 'ol internet myopia.
Think of it as a modern form of online memorial service - and treat it with the due respect. It will be gone by tomorrow. In the meantime, let those who wish to remember, remember. Let those who wish to talk, talk.
Honouring someone who deserves it.

I'm not about to blog about it but his work and writing has been valuable to me personally and I'm thankful for it.
I'm surprised people haven't done this before but that leads to my main question for you: what's the business plan/how will this service support itself?
I think a lot of members of the community can relate to this. I know I can. I've been changing various things about my morning/evening routines, what I drink/eat, etc - and put some findings in place with fairly good results (over winter break, when many college students are unproductive).

On a good day, I find that I...

- Wake up and play a game of chess (I'm not very good)
- Immediately after, make my bed/clean my room and hop in the shower
- Read
- "Start" my normal day.

I don't mean to go off on the "lifehack" tangent but I've found that this works for me - meaning I'm far more productive (willing to work, code, progress on projects) after this routine. I've also tried cutting out reddit completely and replacing that time with reading.

Just my $.02
In the USA, the power of presidential pardon includes the power to offer amnesties. And amnesties certainly can be given to people who have never been convicted.
My work ethic sucks compared to Aaron.
My politics are the opposite as Aaron.
My views on God are the opposite as Aaron's.

But, damn it, I recognize the pain that Aaron has gone as the same pain that we all go though. There's a lesson here for each of us, somewhere, in Aaron's life and indeed his death.

Frankly, let people mourn the best they can, and even if you don't understand their grief, let them alone for a few days.
Changing the law is the aim, no doubt, but as with anything, progress is much easier when you're seen as having strength and being on the side of the angels. Having legally and properly dispensed with a conspicuously abusive US Attorney does a tremendous amount to discredit the opposition. And it puts other attorneys on notice that their preferred tactic—hitting people with a raft of charges the freezing or exhausting their assets before a trial—is on the public radar as a deeply illigitimate and almost certainly unconstitutional approach to handling what are, increasingly, political crimes.
I have some things in mind, but all that I am worrying about right now is seeing if people actually show interest in the site/idea.
Official Statement from the family and partner of Aaron Swartz
I do it all the time. If your pan is seasoned properly, tomatoes aren't acidic enough to react.

In any case, the result isn't bad for you -- it just tastes bad.
I've been working remotely on asset tracking software+hardware for a little over a year with an exclusively remote team. This is exactly what we do. A few of us are in Maine, we've all met in person, and configurations of us get together every so often, but we all work from home.

We try to refer to code exclusively by commit hash, and issues exclusively by ticket number. Commit messages often refer to tickets, and our ticketing system provides notes on dev progress and further commentary on (sets of) commits. We use email for archive-worthy discussion and Skype for instant messaging and calls. We have a weekly ~1 hour dev meeting. (And we're fully insulated from direct customer interaction, with wonderful management and (on-site/in-the-field) ops people, who enable us to concentrate on design, implementation, and process.)
> I take it a link pointing out that he's now death

Sadly, this isn't the Family Guy universe.
Aaron did impressive things, and it sucks that he killed himself. If talking about his suicide prevents others from doing the same thing, then that's a positive thing.

That doesn't make it a non-creepy thing to do for an entire community to trawl through his website and post everything he ever wrote.
Everything else is just stamp collecting ;-)
"There are factors you are completely dismissing, like overall happiness, contribution to the community and the nation as a whole, cultural value generated etc."

Which is not created by suburban sprawl, either. You seem to (without support) indicate that this is not possible with denser communities.
Captcha cracking without skill - minteye
There are a number of mock object libraries out there (mockery, shmock, phpunit's mock syntax, etc). This just looks like another builder syntax for making mocks / stubs with some fanciness around class extension - what's the benefit?

Also, how often is it useful to define a class at test time that is initialized by production code (from the section I Still Have Serious Dependency Issues!). This seems like an unlikely use case.
Ionic Foot Detoxification Cures Review