skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
1. What concrete steps can people take to prevent cases like Aaron's from happening again? What enduring commitments can be made, and to what causes or organizations?

2. Who should we be listening to and supporting who is of like mind with Aaron, and has been neglected so far? Who is doing good work out of the public eye, like Aaron was?

I join you in commiseration. I'm going to look for a local organization to join in support of online freedom. Perhaps find a club to mentor promising youth in tech. I hope the Americans here will take every feasible step in correcting overzealous prosecutors (and nonetheless calling for justice where it hasn't been meted out). Aaron's passing must not be in vain.
Even people who follow a sensible password policy could fall victim if a site that they trust is compromised and their personal information is used against them in part of a bigger scam.

The problem with providing Infosec education is that the threats change faster than we could reasonably hope to keep people up to date with them and even programmers struggle to truly understand it all.
Such a strange post on a lot of levels. First off, if you go to a company of any size and say, "I want to use my time with you to learn x", then that company will say, "Thank you. We'll call you if there's such an opportunity." You will, of course, never hear from them again.

Second, you clearly do not know how "the game" is played as a front end developer. You've done with the least with the least here by posting these few paragraphs. If you want to get someone to pay attention to your front end skills, then you need to show them your work. Period. And preferably over a long period you will show a history of excellence. People will see that and viola - you will get a call/email.

Third, your post comes across as either 'This guy is very humble' or 'This guy is a complete newbie'. The problem is that I can't tell which. That's a big problem for you. No one is going to take the time to ask you, "Hey, which is it - are you a guru or a noob?" thus you'll receive no contacts from such ambigiousness.
Even if you rewrite them from scratch, you probably would still have (new) bugs, and some minor corner cases incompatibilities that would break the old user code.

Things You Should Never Do, Part I: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
Well there already seems to be the Galaxy Nexus. Will certainly try it on mine.
You're right. The bug described in the article is just of the "may fail under load / with multiple users / in real-life scenarios" variety.

In the zoology of bugs, that makes it a common Mandelbug (1), but not a rare Heisenbug (2). For an even more exotic species, see Schroedinbug (3).

(1) http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/M/mandelbug.html

(2) http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/heisenbug.html

(3) http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/S/schroedinbug.html
Interesting, but I certainly hope that the primary thing that is tackled in his name is reform of federal prosecution practice.
What would reform look like?
You Are Not Alone, Again
Clearly "talent" in programming has a tie-in to things like IQ and memory. While I appreciate the musical instrument analogy, it breaks down on these two elements specifically. I know guys who are "not smart" yet they are amazing jazz musicians - true leaders of the world in that regard. These are guys with probably a sub-85 IQ. Could be they programmers? No, not a chance. They don't have the mental capacity.

So "talented programmers" and "talented musicians" have a different type of talent. Both are simply luck of the draw at birth - if you were born smart and with a high IQ, you can accomplish both (music and programming by practice). If you were born with a sub-85 IQ, I don't think you have the option to become a "programmer" unless there is some other element at work (amazing memory, ability to focus, or something else).
>Do you want them shut down or something? They can't legally do that

Why not? And more importantly, why couldn't "putting themselves out of business" be their goal?

Most of us have no problem if on-line solutions disrupt private sector business. But we get all gooey and stupid when it's a not-for-profit, like they get a pass because they're supposedly doing good.

Frankly, if you can't service the needs of society, then you deserve to be made irrelevant. JSTOR should be able to process and index academic journals without six-figure salaries and Manhattan offices.
Yes. I know a few dozen criminal barristers in the UK.

They measure their success purely in terms of won cases, unsurprisingly - if you go to certain bars around the temples in London, you will overhear conversations along the lines of "got this guy sent down for 20 years today, don't know if he did it, but who gives a shit, and I'll be a QC in 5 years! Crack open the champagne!". They're not even in it for the money, as the CPS pays abysmally. They'd rather defend, as that pays - and again, on that side of the table, they have absolutely no interest in the innocence or guilt of their client, just in avoiding a conviction.

It's purely mercenary, and their stance is that it's just business as usual and impartiality - but it's a business that can cost innocent people their lives, and let the guilty walk free.

I believe your prosecutors in the US are rather better paid, which sets the incentives for conviction roughly on a par with acquittal.
Bostonian of the Year: Carmen Ortiz
Not really. Compare their operating budget with Project Gutenberg.
I only new Aaron from what I occasionally read online, however his death saddens me and the reason of his death makes my blood boil. This is a wake up call for us all to act, this is the least we can do. I am a member of a few secluded communities and I will personally see to bringing as many signatures as I can to this petition and the one to Posthumously Pardon Aaron Swartz.
In general, url shorteners seem bad for the web. Something so critical to the structure of the web as links should not have a single point of failure like this.
Wow. You inferred an intent that's far too insidious and specific. Literally, the first sentence of the post provided the context. People were asking me what happened with RSS. Some reporters take their jobs seriously, and before they write a story, want to -- you know -- find out what actually happened.

So they ask me. I don't do interviews. But I will, if asked, write a blog post. Which is what I did.

What I wrote in 2003 was all I knew about the origins of RSS at the time. I pointed to the mail list that did the work on RSS 1.0. I was not, myself, an active participant in that process. So I didn't know all the ins and outs, esp since the initial work was done in private. My guess is the originators of the format didn't know Aaron until he showed up on the mail list. But that's just a guess.

I don't think it all matters very much. But I did have information that the reporters wanted, so I provided it.

Why that is poor taste is beyond my ability to understand. Maybe you should write a more detailed post explaining.
i was using bit.ly as key val storage ugh.
Just for Aaron? Oh man, what about every one else? US law is insane, hurting too many people to list. Mostly, Americans, but also world citizens who don't even get to vote in the US. You need to deal with law its self, not this one single individual. Not just the law, but I suspect your entire value system.

I had sympathy yesterday, but this is turning in to hero martyr worship. Its getting ridiculous. Step back and think. Form a proper long term strategy. Think about Kim Dotcom, Bradley, the British bloke you chaps tried to get, copyright stuff, patent stuff, hell, think about damn drone strikes which I assume will begin to happen in the US eventually. Look at the lot of it in this blokes name, not just one tiny insignificant part of it. Most of all think about the relationship between government and ...... YOU. Its supposed to be YOUR government.

I get the grief, but if all you can think of is this one single case, then expect the world to be a better place you are deluding your selves. Those Wall Street protests amounted to nothing what so ever, which means you have to do much better than them. Think about it.

As say this because I want American people, the intelligent, considered, sensitive people I read here to win their country back.

When it costs $1.5m to prove your innocence you no longer have any right to the word "democracy", less right to point fingers at other countries.

Come on America, be the people the rest of us hope you really are.
if you don't have the resources, delivering subpar products using the tools you wrote here (and unfortunately at this day - they're vastly inferior to native) won't help you secure the resources, if anything, it'll only prolong the time it'll take you to deliver your industry-standard product, I'm speaking this from experience after taking on html5 cross-platform projects and porting those, as the customers kept stating that the html5 on mobile isn't decent enough to show as a product, it might be a few years until that changes, and for the meanwhile - don't bet on it.
Ask HN: Are desktop apps dead?
Following HN and other sources on Internet, it has started giving me feeling that I should not thinking of an app that is downloadable on Desktop PCs after paying a certain amount of money. Am I right? Why most of the companies keep going for SAAS model despite of we know that it always ask us to remain connected on Internet.
Ha. Yeah. That's definitely going to happen.
If we're bringing Scala into it, I'd like to see a Scala compiler in Brainfuck. That might keep the esolang people quiet for a bit :)
Yes. If you get burgled and you insurance company discovers you didn't lock you home up, yeah, you will get a penalty.
The Top 20 Worldwide Grossing Movies of 2012 - Movie Podium
A lot of geeks on HN bought JetBrains' Desktop IDEs during their End-of-World Promo (going by the responses to that thread).

Not Everything Yet.
Unfortunately, Aaron himself was the best-placed person to accomplish that.

This is what really twists me about his death. Even in the worst case, activists who go to jail for a few years against significant public protest come out stronger and better-positioned to reach their goals.
I have a theory about how we got this way in America. I think that it is an odd side effect of our ethos as risk takers and individualists. In many other countries, it appears that there are some things that people won't do simply because they would be ashamed to, or ostracized. There's no need to pass a law with outrageous fines or sentences in an attempt to prevent things from happening.

In the US, we tend to side with the rebel. Or, at least we did back in the 60s and 70s. What we are seeing today is a legal clamping down in order to compensate fused with post 9/11 paranoia.

Related: I believe that the reason why we Americans don't engage in irony in conversation as much as, say, the British is that there is nothing that you can say or do that someone somewhere in the US won't believe or do earnestly. It's an aspect of our culture, and sort of a generalized case of Poe's Law.
Case Study – 31.54% More Conversions by Tweaking the Copy on a Sign-Up Form
Optimizing sign-up forms isn’t just about removing fields. The form copy itself has direct and measurable effect on your conversion rate, and even small tweaks can have significant impact on the decisions and actions of your potential customers.
This case study illustrates how a few simple form copy tweaks increased conversions on a betting forum by 31.54%.
>academic articles that are already available for free or a low cost simply by visiting your local university and acquiring a guest access card.

Haha, try that outside of the US. Also, be aware that your local university pays unbelievably high fees for this access, money that could be better used, by funding scientists for example.
Yes, but spread the net wider. Manning isnt the only one.
Looks good. Hope they get rid of the terrible unity experience found on their desktop OS. Atleast, an improvised version wih better user-experience should help. It is so important that they get this right because of the fact that, for stuff like these (new platforms, phones) the first impression will remain the best impression amongst the consumers' minds.
The "copyright owners" don't get the copyright through legitimate means. Basically, academics are forced to hand them the copyright to publish in prestigious journals they control. Then the publishers exploit this copyright by putting publicly funded research behind paywalls, and doesn't give a dime to the original author.
Yes, indeed. Also, what about status pages that need javascript to work?
Possibly. I was deeply religious for most of my life, but that unraveled about seven years ago.

I would love going back to that life. My father is a pastor, and he and the Christianity and Christians I grew up with were the 'good' kind. If I were gay, he'd be one of the first to know, for example.

The problem is that being a Christian without actually believing any of it is 1) difficult, if not impossible to keep up, and 2) less effective, perhaps almost ineffective.

And I can't just 'will' myself to believe it, unfortunately...
Cheap smartphones global market grows
The Wall Street Protests failed, because among other things, they had too many vague, overarching goals with no end plan. And so now with Swartz's death, people have a human face to put on the failures of our justice system...and you want to berate them for not being strategic enough?
"I had sympathy yesterday, but this is turning in to hero martyr worship."

Isn't that how causes start? I feel like I can think of far more effective, mainstream causes that centered around the cult of a person (or a small group of people) than around agreement on an idea.

Like most of HN, I didn't know Aaron personally, but when I express outrage over these kinds of things I can now say, "Like Aaron Swatrz."
If the biggest URL shortener can't figure out how to stay afloat, none of them can.

Definitely roll your own, if you need to. I just need to figure out how to do it for static websites, since they don't have IDs that can be mapped to a shorturl.
one at a time....
Setting up SQL Server Database Mail with gmail
Judging by the amount of comments in this thread, I might venture to answer "no?"

In seriousness, I doubt very many people need much more than a simple document viewer when they're on the go. I can't imagine many people have done more than correct a typo on their phone...
The MIT bureaucrats who let this terrible machinery get out of hand will have to do some soul searching and stand public scrutiny, but until it can be shown that their raisin d'être is to exterminate people, I think we should refrain from comparing them to the Nazis.
isn't what Mme. Ortiz did (over-reaching prosecution) a form of stealing also...?

What do you call a supposed "good guy" who breaks the law?
IDE is quite a different thing. IMO web based IDEs are not as mature yet as Desktop IDEs.
Don't worry. I have the support from doctors, family, friends. And the afterlife keeps this life interesting.
Another example of a rogue prosecutor ignoring the rights of Victims to further their own careers.

THIS MUST STOP!
Something wrong in Libya?
"There is an actual neurological basis to what I am talking about...You can make a pretty good evolutionary argument that this was how we were designed to absorb information at about 5km an hour (3mph)"

For me walking is more conducive to careful thinking than any other activity, and taking a walk has frequently proven to be the best way to work on my hardest problems, deepest mysteries, and most stressful situations. Do others walk to think?

Having worked with several startups over the past 16 years, I'll make the observation that I've been in a tiny minority on this count, and I find myself wondering what kind of situational & cultural biases in the startup world work against walking as a way of thinking. Keyboards, cars, commutes, an obsession with faster-is-better, craving novelty, fear of "missing the window." What else?
As a general idea of routing all traffic through one point, yes. However, as a marketing tool to track traffic, they are quite valuable. Sadly, optimal network routes and other considerations take a bake seat to making money.
Project Gutenburg has two part-time employees.
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Project_Gutenberg_Li...
"Wouldn't they give up a significant part of the attract of Windows and of their vendor lock-in by doing so ?"

Yeah, but they could control it. They could always make the iOS experience poorer than Windows so people associate i0S=BAD, surface=GOOD.

On the other hand you have the millions of people that are using the Ipad. Without Office, they need an alternative, and they will find one. Then when they get used to it they will discover they don't really need Office at all.

MS Office was not always the best Office suite out there.
“As always, all your existing bitly links will continue to work.”
Mac's not a threat to Microsoft. iPad is.
Somehow I don't think staging a rally for bradely manning, holocaust victims, abused animals, and everyone who has ever been disenfranchised is the answer.

I get your sentiment, but if you start trying to lump too many issues together, your message gets muddled, people get confused or won't be interested.

Using any case to try to enact change is a good thing, and perhaps it will work to help people that would be hurt in similar ways in the future.
well, functions close over scope no matter what you call them.
It's worth noting that existing bit.ly links still work.

Check out http://bit.ly/, the water is awesome!
iOS runs on tablets too, I could see office being very useful. QuickOffice is popular, the market certainly exists.
i've also run into this, usually through double event binding
I agree.

In dealing with anti-spam techniques, URL shorteners are used to obfuscate bad links all the time.

There are only 2 use cases:

- Used to actually shorten links, say in emails. To me, this isn't a valid use case. I always dump the whole URL.

- Tracking and analysis. For example, Twitter injects t.co links into every Tweet with links for tracking purposes. In the case of Bit.ly, click analytics is their business model (http://www.enterprise.bitly.com).
Maybe you have things cached in your browser? No links work for me.
Depends on what you're making. With OS X, I don't think desktop apps are out of the scene just as yet. I see a lot of great apps on the Mac AppStore which are throttling sales. Coda, iA Writer, and Mindnode, just to name a few.
Yeah, about that "higher development" thing - that's not the way evolution works (every organism on the planet is the result of the same 4.5 billion years of adaptation), but it is the way racism works. Let's keep this kind of sentiment away from HNN, OK?
It’s better to burn out than to fade away.

Or, which would be worse? To live as a monster, or to die as a good man?

I love the DEATH .
I saw that same quote, and thought about my walk a few years back, across the breadth of the UK (Wales to London). I do feel like I have a better intuitive grasp of the size of it now -- much better than you get from driving or taking the train.
When you have too many laws, you have no laws.

I hate to post something so pithy on HN -- we usually do longer comments here.

The fact is, compexity in the legal system only creates a system where those in power can do whatever they want while those out of power (the middle class and poor, mostly), are at the mercy of chance. That's not meant as an indictment of the American political system, that's meant as an indictment of the idea that a complex society requires complex rules to operate. If we could kill that idea, a lot of this other stuff would clear itself up. But I'm not taking any bets.
when bit.ly is down, you start to know there are so many short urls are actually using bit.ly even they look different, e.g. btl.st/ZWP3Rv
No. Desktop Apps are not dead. Desktops (with a full-fledged keyboard, plenty of screen real-estate and proper multi-tasking are alive and kicking for content creation

For content consumption, tablets and phones are much more convenient, especially since they are used with well-optimized GUI. This will not change until there are new and better ways of inputting (and working with) large amounts of text, audio and video on portable/touch devices.
You can't "return" copied data. How do I return that recent Hollywood blockbuster I torrented via PirateBay? Should I courier the bits back to them? I'm sure the MPAA would be just fine and dandy with that. If JSTOR mean that they were assured that Aaron deleted what he copied, why not say that?

I recognise that it may seem that I'm being overly pedantic but to me it seems that they are treating information like stuff when information does not act like stuff at all. I'm not one of these techno-utopian "information wants to be free" people, but at the same time we can't treat information the same way we treat stuff.

JSTOR should get that the rules have changed, if Wikipedia can build a competitor to Britannica then JSTOR can figure out how to provide (relatively) inexpensive access to the information that they are hoarding. Given that this is the very information that is meant to help us collectively build a better world for ourselves this needs to be done asap.

I don't doubt they sincerely regret what has happened - perhaps it will cause some much-needed introspection.
Every cause needs a symbol. It's facile to then scoff at those using the symbol to say that they're ignoring everything else.

One step at a time.

Also, in reference to your final point, and it's well taken: some of us try to be.
This is why online video piracy happens
Ask HN: Is the inevitable future of social networking software distributed?
I see little advantage of a centralized repository of social information (a la facebook) over a distributed model. A step in the distributed direction took place with federated models popping up (a la Diaspora), but now that everyone carries computers with them and we have DHT and encryption technologies widely available, I kinda expected to see a big push in the completely distributed direction.

Will centralized/federated social networking applications inevitably be replaced by distributed ones? Is Facebook doomed?
Concentrate Mostly On One Company
A 30 year sentence would not be the end of his life, he would have went to a low level prison and probably have been release early on parole, it didnt have to end like this but he was too troubled, very sad
>For example , someone has a great idea for a site, picks up a basic PHP book, reads all of the "advice" on PHP.net and hacks it all together with a few copy and pastes from various coding forums.

You mean exactly what happened with CDBaby, the site the author of TFA created, which became a highly successful business?

Is that a bad thing?

As for the lax security thing, we have seen this too many times in supposedly big and respected web services to be particularly fearful of a newcomer. (Not to mention that the same risks to users that happen by accident by some newb programmer, can also happen by intent, by malicious companies putting up fake businesses and such. People should be vigilant in any case).

There are a couple of answers I can give here:

1) When the company grows large enough, it will hire people and fix this. If it's small, it cannot do damage to many people anyway.

2) The most important services (credit cards and such) are in most cases delegated to third parties anyway (Paypal, Stripe, etc).
>What if the depressed person is estranged from his family and friends? Or what if he has none? What if he feels he can't talk to either?

Then those are symptoms of a larger personal/societal wrong, and talking to a therapist is just a band-aid applied ad-hoc.
"Update: bitly links are working again, but we are continuing to work through getting http://bitly.com back up."

https://twitter.com/bitly/status/290459711881502722