skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A git mirror of aaronsw.com
If violation of TOS'en was a crime (thankfully, courts so far have ruled it's not), we'd all pretty much be screwed.

the fact that someone did something dumb does not make it illegal.

If i buy so many lottery tickets that the state thinks it's fraudulent, and shuts down the lottery for a day, that doesn't make me guilty of anything.

(As I said, TOS violations are simply not crimes. No court has ever held otherwise)
> unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the ire of a district court judge

Can someone explain this statement? Can a person not raise a defense fund from the public?
The New Yorker iPhone app does a fantastic job by combining the best of both worlds.

Most articles are "paginated", but you "scroll" up/down between pages. So you get the same nice physical sensation of vertical scrolling, but also the nice physical sensation of pages. (Plus, they get to lay out photos nicely, etc., knowing how it will fit exactly with the text.)
Is the computer revolution already over?
Wow, this is terribly, terribly sad news. :-(

Wish there was more that could be said, but I guess the only
appropriate thing is:

R.I.P. aaronsw, you will be missed.
If you want folks like JSTOR to go away:
Stop reviewing papers for their journals.
They don't get nothing; they get millions of dollars.
The problem I have with the justice system in cases like this is that there are curious people, they will have, probe, poke, tickle, whatever systems are available. The justice system, as mentioned, only sees those making these "intrusions" in black and white terms -- criminals.

In the case linked, "NASA had to shut it's systems down for 3 weeks at the cost of $41000 to check and fix it's systems"...This is bullshit. First off, you should have sufficient redundancy in your internal systems, especially for life critical code, that an intrusion affects the front line, not things like your source repository. Further, you should have regular backups and checkpoints -- checksums, etc. to be able to compare and identify anything compromised.

Laws to guard against lazy employees should not be allowed.

A bogus case.
And imagine the world if Jobs and Wozniak had been hounded by federal prosecutors...
This could not be more true. Forever, i said the same shit. I have amazing ideas but I know nothing about programming. I started learning html and css and love it. Cant wait to master it before moving on to another language. It truly is rewarding and I certainly look at websites differently.
Seems he would have preferred you give to givewell or an endorsed organization.

Cut flowers just die in a week.
I was about to quote the same, so I'll pick up the next paragraph from the same interview: "Blogs, TV, newspapers, and magazines barely do a good job helping us understand the news of the day, let alone the larger issues of the world. TV, newspapers, and magazines are largely advertising driven; so stories that offend advertisers get killed. And blogs can be a little better, but it’s a difficult format for expressing big, new ideas and mostly people just read blogs about old ones."

That interview had been done in May 2007. Has he said anything similar after that?
There are a few posts. Reddit had a broader topic and voting base that HN though.
> I cannot think of one positive thing in this day and age about JSTOR

Without JSTOR: there would be no online access at all to many journals, and there would be many with online access between individual paywalls at the individual journal.

With JSTOR: online access is available to many journals it would not otherwise be available for; online access is greatly more convenient for many for-pay journals than it otherwise would be.

How can you not see positives in this? They are strictly making things MORE accessible than they otherwise would be.

Would it be better if these things were even more accessible? Sure--but these are things JSTOR does NOT own the rights to.
That's not what the Constitution says. The presidential pardon power isn't limited by this situation. The President is the only one who can decide who get's pardoned and under what circumstances (except for cases of impeachment).

From the source:
[the President] shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii#section2

It's fair to argue that there is no precedent, but that just means it hasn't happened before, not that it cannot happen.
They're not really statistical algorithms -- you certainly wouldn't learn them in a statistics class.

I actually looked online for some references on streaming algorithms ... but somewhat surprisingly, I couldn't find anything really. I realized a lot of this knowledge has been hard-earned, I guess that is good :) But there really should be a reference.

Definitely look up "reservoir sampling", which gives you a fixed size sample of an infinite length stream. This algorithm has come up over and over for me, and I've implemented it in multiple contexts. There is a way to do it in MapReduce which is very useful.

You know probably the most condensed version I can think of is quite hidden: see the open source Sawzall code:

http://code.google.com/p/szl/source/browse/#svn%2Ftrunk%2Fsr...

All those functions aggregate some property of a stream. Someone (maybe me if I finish the 30 projects I've started...) really should write up some real documentation about all those algorithms, because they're not only fun, but useful.

A lot of them are (necessarily) approximations. You don't learn that many approximate algorithms in a traditional CS class. None of this will be in any stats class for sure.
drzaiusapelord (great name, made me smile in spite of myself today) I think you have your heart in the right place. I'd ask you to hopefully see that at least some libertarians/Paul supporters are pretty different from your run of the mill corporatist Republicans, in the same way that the true left like Aaron Swartz or Alan Grayson is pretty different from run of the mill drone strike/drug war Democrats like Ortiz/Obama/Holder. I'm not saying there aren't legitimate differences here, but Rand Paul or Alan Grayson is a lot more likely to publicly condemn this travesty of justice than Obama or Boehner is. This is really authoritarians vs. civil libertarians, which is more cross-cutting than one might think.
Who cares? Only idiots.
Question for the legal experts: We've been reading potential jail time of 50 or 30 years, plus $millions+ in fines. Realistically, had he taken a plea bargain or gone to trial, what would he likely have wound up with?
How is this on the front page? This isn't recent or relevant to anything.
That was the first thing on my mind.
How to Create a Realtime Django App Using Node.js and Socket.IO
Frontline Interview with Jonathan James
> "who won a record 20-year sentence"

I know this is common verbiage, but it's frankly sickening. Do they view their targets as people, or are they merely a collection of scalps?
I read an article today which pointed out how Feynman went around cracking safes during the Manhattan Project. Something fundamental has changed in the society ... Imagine the present if people like Jobs/Woz would have been locked up for phone phreaking.
is that a joke?
The circumstances of Jonathan James's death are very similar to the death of Aaron Swartz...
Ideally, as history and society progress, there will always be bigger evils in the past than the present. This is a sign of progress. In that light, comparing the evils of the present to the evils of the past is not so tasteless, because there aren't as many evils of the present on the same scale.

Edit: I promise I wrote this without reading jlgreco's comment.
It certainly shouldn't attract a sentence considerably worse than violent crimes do.

There's a persuasive argument that no nonviolent crime should be punished by prison time at all.
I think it's fair to donate to JSTOR and seed that torrent. Production does not need to be tied to distribution.
How would he not have a chance in prison?
Has anyone actually gotten this working? I've tried installing on Mac OS X and Ubuntu, both with various problems. The precompiled binaries don't work, the qt build scripts fail, etc. etc.
the single most constructive thing JSTOR could do in reaction to this tragedy is loudly denounce the District Attorney for drawing them into the persecution of Aaron Swartz, for perpetuating the case after they - the victim of any wrong doing - asked the government to drop its case [0].

from this statement alone it isn't clear to me at all in what sense they "regretted being drawn into" the case.

if JSTOR is institutionally incapable of acknowledging that prosecutorial abuse played a significant role in this tragedy, of specifically acknowledging and denouncing abuse under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act [1], it can't be taken seriously as a "member of the internet community".

0. http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bull...

1. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/feds-go-overboard...
What crap.

The idea of dissent is practically everywhere and there is nothing inherently american about it. Neither is 'dissent' the first thing or the top 10 thing that comes to mind when you talk about americanism.

Breaking the law is breaking the law. How can one have humor about it? I would love to see the author share this 'humor' when someone plugs into his network and steal his digital stuff.
thanks for the tip! i will check it out.
>highly illegal

This is the problem. It should be "illegal" but not "highly illegal" -- the penalties should be along the lines of trespass, e.g. 30 days in jail or a $1000 fine, not 30 years in prison and a million dollar fine.

More than that, the crimes need to be defined with actual specificity. Read the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act sometime if you want to scare yourself. It's preposterously vague. How about we repeal that in its entirety and defer to the laws that prohibit the actual bad stuff, like fraud, identity theft, misappropriation of trade secrets, etc.

If all you do is get root on a server and then leave, the penalty should be a $5 fine and a stern warning, and the same penalty for the "victim" who put an insecure server on the internet.
Right right she was forced to do it.
> Yeah, what do academics have to say about law, government, management, or medicine, anyway? These important fields should be left to professionals, why are schools sticking their noses in?

You misunderstand me. Of course, you are correct, but it's not the role of the school to be political, but instead to inform their students on how to be political. When people choose a school to go to, it should be about their academics and should not be swayed by politics. (Of course, politics always creeps in, which is why I'm never going to give one of my alma maters and money.)
A video introduction to the excellent book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwsLAqjqnxo

Excerpts: http://www.scribd.com/doc/20864115/Champion-TFDexcerpt-Sept-... http://www.scribd.com/doc/34289636/ThreeFelonies-ZeheExcerpt...
It's not really a bogus case at all. The message that these submissions are supposed to be sending is not that any of these people did not in fact commit crimes but that the ruthless pursuit of these individuals is immoral given the intent. Besides, there's no way for you to know how much it would cost NASA in time or money to double and triple check the integrity of their systems. $41k doesn't even sound like a whole lot of money for such a chore.
At least 1 in 6 stars has an Earth size planet
Yes, he claimed that. It doesn't make it true.

His own father believed that he was involved.
MIT is amoral.
She shouldn't have been walking down that dark alley at that time anyway.
Life is what you make it. That doesn't mean it is a void, it means you have influence over how it turns out. If you find it scary, then I'd suggest you might want to look around you... there is a world that exists outside your head. Think about this conversation we're having, we've probably never met, yet I am more than just a thought that exists inside your head, I am a sentient being, and I am different to you yet I am your equal.

Whilst I cannot tell you what life means to you, I can reassure you there is more to life than nothingness. As Descartes put it "I think, therefore I am"... to me, in a funny way this is a precursor to duck typing, it doesn't really matter the form that life takes, if it resembles life then it is life.
Think about Aaron Swartz, and now realize the balls and execution it took for Larry and Sergey to do Google Books. They got big enough that Google's "only" risk was a civil lawsuit. Had they been smaller, they would have been risking some ambitious federal prosecutor charging Google with wire fraud. Indeed, it's kind of lucky that someone like Ortiz wasn't around to throw the book at Alta Vista and early search engines for scraping sites too aggressively or without permission (before robots.txt became mainstream as a distributed solution without as much need for a centralized regulator).

As it was, DOJ did get involved in the Google Books case, pushing for a harsher civil settlement against Google:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10357097-265.html
Perhaps someone could explain or confirm how anyone really knows that this is actually the "official" statement of the family and partners of Aaron. I understand that this was linked to in some major media, but I can find any way of determining that by the page itself or in any of the stories linking to it. There isn't any contact info and the domain name (which redirects there) was registered by this person:

Domain name: rememberaaronsw.com

Registrant Contact:

Brian Guthrie ()

179 Stockwell Dr
Mountain View, CA 94043
US

As I've mentioned in a comment elsewhere it seems odd to me that all these people got together and got this up so quickly after such a shocking event.

Here is one of the stories linked to it that doesn't verify the source:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2013/01/online-activi...
Call it what you like--this interpretation of the Fifth Amendment seems about as much in line with what the framers intended as the supposed right of every man, woman and child in our well regulated militia to own an AR15.
I assume "contents of his hard drive publicly available" was intended to mean essays or other work. Maybe not even personal email (since the counterparties are still alive). Almost certainly not passwords.

Now I'm sort of thinking of updating my "if I die" scripts (since I've added machines since I wrote them). Although I hope to never die, or at least to not die for ~60-80 years, there's always the truck/bus/gunfight/etc. risk.
And that's only 43% of the Kepler discoveries to date.

http://kepler.nasa.gov/news/nasakeplernews/index.cfm?FuseAct...
They sure are but I think the most significant part is the depression. Mental health is an unspoken issue in the industry.
> Unfortunately, it appears that the older generations' viewpoints are largely stagnant, so this change will probably have to occur one funeral at a time.

Well, that's nothing new.
Well, that's sort of my point. Some Japaneses don't seem to know or care about their history. We keep hearing how their government is systematically trying to avoid mentioning what really happened back then internally through their so-called 'history textbook reform' and externally by denying war crimes which even their past government had accepted as facts.
What is your alternative to libraries governed by boards and committees? Cowboy developers can do amazing things in some situations, but cowboy librarians? Given the extent to which a university depends on its library, handing autocratic control to an individual is dangerous to the institution as a whole. Or are you going to have a fractured set of competing, for-profit libraries on every campus and let the market decide?

I understand that entrenched ideology is a problem, but boards and committees are controls that exist for a reason. With what are you going to replace bureaucracy? The lone-wolf visionary with no regard for other people's needs is a proven model in technology start-ups (Jobs, Zuckerberg), but what makes you think that's an appropriate way to run a university library?
Thousands of new of laws are passed each year (how did we manage the year before without them?) so eventually everyone will be guilty of something. Many laws are also broad so it's just a matter of them wanting to "get you." How many people have a few million $ under their mattresses to prove their innocence?
She can probably kiss her governor ambitions goodbye now. The internet will destroy her campaign even before it begins.
Not to go too far off track here - but should I get a penalty for not locking my door at home?
As a disgruntled Packers fan I'm on the same losing boat as you are today. Though having watched the game I think Fox made the right calls to run the clock at the end of the game before punting and to take a knee.

Smith had two big plays which at the time accounted for half of their points. Champ Bailey won't keep getting beat all day by that, especially with some safety help. The catch at the end of the game by Jacoby Jones was just really bad defense, a fluke even. The Broncos are a team that has been relying on their defense for years. Think back to last year when they won some games with Tebow.

While the knee at the end of the game was surprising I think a lot of NFL head coaches would have gone in the same direction. An interception or a fumble at that end of the field would have been disastrous. Though I do see your point on the upside of going for it. Either way they had two chances on offense in overtime that they weren't able to convert on. This is what hurt them the most.

Fox has really turned the team around. You guys will be back in the playoffs next year.
I was talking about Sixth Amendment, which explicitly gives the defense the power to compel witnesses:

"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."

The subpoena ad testificandum, the process by which the prosecution may compel witnesses, is a feature of the English common law that was well familiar to the founders. Its use in the United States comes directly from English precedent.
I'm an American myself. Unlike you, I've been paying attention.
I agree that she's just as responsible, but I'm not ready to assume malice yet.
JSTOR may be a non-profit, but they earn a lot of money and they're not shy about spending it.

http://www.generalist.org.uk/blog/2011/jstor-where-does-your...

Of course earning money by itself isn't an evil thing. The bigger problem is that JSTOR is part of a system which many people have come to feel is unjust-- a system whereby the public finances research which is then put behind paywalls.

It isn't just wild-eyed hackers who feel this way. Even Donalth Knuth has commented about how little value the academic journals really provide, and how much they charge.

It is the public who pays for this system. We pay because our taxes and tuition money subsidize the research that we're not allowed to see. The government should require publicly funded research to be made available on a site like arxiv.org. It is those guys who are really in favor of open access, not JSTOR. Throwing us a bone-- some 80-year old manuscripts which are in the public domain anyway-- shouldn't obscure that.
I wonder, whenever that subject comes up, there are comments denying/obfuscating any Turkish responsibility. But directly when a Wikipedia link is posted, you hear nothing more...

Is there some Turkish "50 cent army" thing?
Whether or not he was a student has nothing to do with whether or not MIT could choose to handle it internally.

And yes, I do believe that being taken in by campus law enforcement and read the riot act, so to speak, would have been effective. That's much more serious than the previous attempts to tell him no.
This is apologism for untrammeled abuse of power. He was being threatened with 35 years in federal prison for downloading some PDFs! He would have been 61 when he got out. They would have taken away 40-50% of his life.

Sometimes it is better to live free or die. The people who need "counseling" are Ortiz, Heymann, and the inhumane who'd defend or excuse this travesty. Just following orders, blind legalism.
It doesn't matter what's true. It matters what's provable. Otherwise he's innocent until shown to be guilty...regardless of what his father or anybody else thinks.
OK, forget the fine then, we'll just go with the stern warning.

The point is that they should both get the proverbial slap on the wrist -- the person who breaks in should be chastised but hasn't caused any real harm and the person who allowed it to happen should endeavor to be more careful and not redirect responsibility for something trivially harmful that they could have themselves prevented if they deemed it worthy of the required effort.
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If "Perl is a dead end" (his words, not mine), then why not switch to another similar language like Python or Ruby?

I guess I don't understand why this guy wants to create yet another programming language. He spends his entire slide deck complaining about how bad Perl is, without ever discussing the obvious possibility of... just using another language. Is there anything good about Perl 5 that other languages haven't already copied? If there is, what is it? I am not trying to be facetious here-- just curious.
If you're interested in reading more about it, his shenanigans are told in further detail in "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!"

http://www.amazon.com/Surely-Feynman-Adventures-Curious-Char...
The author doesn't make the case all that strongly. Despite the quantity of words there isn't a lot of content backing them up. Mostly "fun" quotes an in-joke references I don't get, which he seems to bemoan early in the presentation but lapses into about halfway through.

Perl 5 never struck me as something one would set out to acquire from scratch. Perl 6 does, but there are fresher faces and I wouldn't predict it becoming a major force anytime soon.
Gonzalez stole real money, I'm sure causing many people a great deal of trouble and distress. He said in chat logs that he aimed to steal $15 million and retire. It's really not that much different from pickpocketing or bank robbery, except on a much larger scale, and I'm quite happy if pickpockets, bank robbers, insurance scammers, and other criminals get serious time.

This is quite different from Aaron Swartz who wrote a slightly more advanced recursive 'wget'/'curl' to download something he already had access to.
Thanks for expanding on that, this is very interesting stuff to me.
I have a Jekyll blog that I host on S3 and CloudFront, with DNS hosted on Route 53. Anything more than that is overkill (and possibly a waste of money). Heck, even the CloudFront bit is not necessary.
Great interview of Jonathan James with Frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/hackers/interv...
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I sincerely hope that you didn't post this analogy sincerely believing it, as the two are diametrically opposed.