skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I really feel for his family, but I just can't blame his death on the Government. Did they handle this poorly and overreach greatly? Yes. Did they kill him? No. He was offered a plea deal for 6 months in prison. Nobody in their right mind kills themselves over 6 months in jail or the prospect of being a felon.

Obviously being labeled a felon and 6 months in jail sucks, but it's not like he couldn't get a job because of it. Based on the front page of HN for the last several days it's clear he was a well respected and loved individual in our community. He would have been just fine.
The TV show Fringe is a pretty solid celebration of hacker culture.

Hacker culture is a mindset, not just diddling with computers, as I would have thought everyone on this site was aware. But perhaps not.
Civil disobedience is illegal by definition. DDoS attacks are illegal. Marching down the middle of the street is illegal. But are these acts immoral?
> Sure Aaron built things but he also threatened to destroy JSTOR's business model.

Yeah.. but not really. The non-public domain documents would still be copyrighted so nobody without a license to them would be creating a JSTOR competitor anytime soon.

Furthermore, torrent of PDFs would never replace a subscription to JSTOR for any university. Universities that currently subscribe to JSTOR would still be subscribing to JSTOR, the only difference is that unaffiliated individuals would have other options. How much of JSTOR's operating budget is coming from selling individual articles to people not in universities?
Thanks for the tips, I'm actually currently redesigning the whole thing so I'll make sure to keep this in mind. Much obliged.
When Russian authorities jailed Pussyriot for dancing on a church altar under the charges of "hooliganism and inciting religious hatred", it is clear that the authoritarian streak had gone too far.

Many people have thought Swartz's crime was to download documents. But actually, JSTOR has stated they had settled with Swartz and it was not a problem and not to press charges.

What the government actually did is to charge Swartz for WIRE FRAUD. This is for plugging his computer into the MIT LAN. WIRE FRAUD is reserved for people with criminal intent. Aaron's actions were as criminal as Pussyriot's dancing in miniskirts to draw attention to Putin's hand on the Russian government.

The US government will continue to spin this as "hacker" and "document download". Do not get drawn into this. The correct framework to think about this is when Gandhi and his supporters got clobbered by the British police for breaking a salt-making monopoly. To Gandhi, the premise was simple: salt comes from the sea and no one owns it. A law that grants monopolistic rights to limited organisations for something as universal as the sea has no justification.

It is important to note that Aaron was not talking about giving away MP3s etc. He pointed out that scientific papers that were already in the public domain were starting to get locked up behind pay walls. There is nothing right about this. When he started to figuratively walk to the ocean to make his own salt, he was charged with criminal trespass.

As a footnote, after the Salt March - where hundreds of non-violent protesters were beaten up by the police - the British was shown up to be bankrupt of moral authority. This, is the threat the DOJ faces today.
"No glaring factual inaccuracies" is a high standard indeed. :)

I think NPR erred when they repeatedly quoted a man who has about as much connection to the case as you or I do. I also think they erred in repeatedly describing what Swartz did as "hacking." They even dropped the obligatory "alleged" after the first mention.

Someone reading this article would come away thinking that Swartz "hacked into" the MIT network and "stole" millions of documents. That he was prosecuted for this crime, and that his "friends" feel that the punishment was too harsh.
http://www.transparency.org/cpi2012/results

United States ranked 19th. Mexico ranked 105th. That's how much worse.
And how did that work out for him by the way? I head they've dropped their lawsuit?

Also, if DDoS is "destructive" then copying a file is stealing.
More likely he was suggesting a mental health facility where Swartz could receive a psychological/psychiatric evaluation and, if appropriate, treatment.
You are not the first to make the mistake of comparing I.P. with physical property.
They are not the same physically, in theory, in practice or in law.
It’s undoubtedly the best documentary I’ve seen, weaving together all sorts of clever tricks to enlighten and entertain.

This is sadly ironic; since Chomsky is one of the most manipulative and dishonest writers I've had the displeasure of reading. I'm not going to engage in an exhaustive deconstruction of any of his work here, since I don't keep any of his books on my shelf. I'll just say that I think his mischaracterization of the source material that he refers to in the endless footnotes is beyond biased and falls into being outright dishonesty. There is no question but that he is smart enough to know better; as an academic linguist he would never accept such shoddy arguments if they were submitted to him for peer review.

He's the left wing's Ayn Rand, and I don't mean that as a compliment.
You must not have read the part about Aaron not actually being an MIT student at all - hence the trespass charges.
That would be more like selling crapware removal apps, which is already a common scam.

Ninite is more like pasteurization.
Agreed 100%, your reasoning is sound. I think this is a fair assessment of the situation, and that if more people could hold this opinion, more reform against the laws that so many disagree with would actually happen.
Scouseland channel
I have no idea how you think you can get away with describing what "the U.S." believes as though it supports your point. Your entire argument here seems to depend on this absurdly shallow fiction of universities as being nothing more than aspects of corporate and military development. I already disputed this, and you doubled down on it without saying anything new.

What you're saying about MIT's network policies doesn't even help your point, it helps mine, unless you actually believe that e.g. running BitTorrent on MIT's network should justify really stiff penalties just because of some DoD involvement in other parts of MIT's network.

By the way, one of our clients has been on-and-off-again funded by the DoD, and we are directly responsible for their network, and we were audited by representatives of the army not too long ago. So, I do have some notion of the expectations for network security in such an environment, and I can tell you that everyone that matters there -- including the Army -- would think I was insane if I suggested that the unauthorized use of the network there to download paywall'd scientific journals should be a felony offense, or one that should result in any jail time at all.

Whether or not MIT's status as a defense contractor "colors" other people's decisions or not is irrelevant. What has been under discussion is whether or not those decisions were reasonable and proportionate to the crime committed, and you are doing absolutely nothing to argue that point.

Your profile claims that you are both a lawyer and an engineer, but bewilderingly, you don't seem to be accounting at all for what Swartz was actually doing. You seem to be making an argument that, because there were sensitive portions of MIT's network, even though it was established that Swartz was not accessing or attempting to access those portions, it's somehow justifiable to punish him as though he were. If that is your argument, I think you ought to reconsider that condescending tone on your last line.

If your point is that any unauthorized access, either of facilities or network closets, at MIT should be prosecuted more heavily merely because of MIT's DoD involvement, then let me again circle back to my point, which is that such policies are completely at odds with the ideals that made MIT an attractive talent pool for the DoD in the first place.
That's a very good technique! I did not even know about the event loop lag until now...
It feels good to get a daily education from Hacker News!
Same here, previous sign up link lets you sign up now. Albeit, I have to wait to make sure I have the minimal $200 to transfer.
Cacheable overhead in Spring is more than a hardcoded manual method
By what right to they have to "take over" MIT and "never let administration back"?

It's not their property, and no amount of "cause celebre" or "protest du jour" should make it such.
Well trolled.

I am not associated with MIT. However I consider Abelson's forthcoming report as being more representative of the organization, than whatever random administrator was dealing with the prosecutor. Abelson was undoubtably there before the administrator in question, will be there after, and is far more widely known than the currently faceless administrator.

Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Abelson then get back to me on whether that is a reputation that a student should be proud of or rejecting.
I had some stuff in self-storage when I once went away for several months. Spending some time there made me want to get rid of all my stuff. It's a very strange and sad place. One could write a novel about it. It's a place of transitions, and I got the impression that most of the transitions were not for the better.

Ever watch that show where they get people to bid on abandoned self storage lockers? It's so weird that people pay money to store a bunch of junk. Not that the people are weird, just that humans are wired in such a way that we'd pay $150 a month to store a comparable dollar amount of stuff, because of the way it makes us feel. Maybe it's to avoid the way it makes us feel to get rid of it. That's what people are paying for. So they're basically being held ransom by their stuff I guess.
MIT didn't kill Aaron. But their decision to be the roadblock to a plea deal because it didn't include time in prison is shameful, and there is definitely some heavy responsibility on the heads of those at MIT who rejected that deal.
The Attention Economy on the Net
Interesting, but ironic given that Reddit is and was a powerful engine of disinformation. Aaron can't be faulted for that, though.
The air was sultry.
He was depressed, and because of the case he was considered by his lawyer at suicide risk but I'm not aware of any reported attempt of suicide by Aaron.

Again, if some people can't go to work because of a strike, even if it seemingly hurting teachers, student or general population it is in fact benefiting them and the right price for democracy.
Democracy can only be with awareness and without it is just a different kind of manipulated monarchy.

And the rest of your 'additions' seems very ugly.
He was part of a joint-venture or similar between companies where they all called each other cofunder, not co creator.
And check at what age he did work on RSS, if that's not an accomplishment I don't know what is.
Not an angry mob, nobody is being physically hurt, just slightly interrupted from what they were doing just as it happens when there's a strike or a big manifestation.
Aaron Swartz's Lawyer: MIT Refused Plea Deal Without Jail Time
But I think more people are starting to incorporate the idea of love without the baggage that might come with a religion.
Should you always plead guilty to crimes the Government accuses you of?
Religion is man-made and you can see it in many ways. There are two kind of things in this world: the one you know and the one you don't. Religion tries to give an answer to the one you don't but it's pure speculation. It's funny how now we look down to polytheist religions as something "barbaric" when in fact there's no difference between these beliefs and the currently popular ones.

With regards to Christianity then there's just to much distance between the core beliefs and the huge set of things built on top of them by the Catholic Church, which incidentally, doesn't even practice what they preach.

Bertrand Russell very well put that to be a Christian you have to at least believe that Jesus Christ was the best of men when history gives us plenty of examples of people that were without doubt proven to exist and that were just as good, if not better than Jesus, such as Socrates or Gandhi.
The Apple IIc Plus had an accelerator running the 6502 at 4 MHz.
"Interpretation against the party that supplied the term

Where, after the interpretation of a contract term that has been supplied by one party, doubts remain as to the meaning of that term, an interpretation against that party is to be preferred ("contra proferentem")."

[0] http://www.trans-lex.org/926000
Or perhaps the government considers him radical enough (without advocating violence) to not be a threat.
> And people that attach computers to the public internet absolutely do need to be treated as responsible for the information that those computers transmit. If they want to claim that they intend to limit access to the information, they need to take meaningful steps to actually put limits in place.

That goes entirely against the principles on which activists claim the Web is based on. Instead of a democratic network where anyone with an IP address can fire up an httpd and be (in theory) just as equal as any other DNS entry, you're saying there needs to be technical measures put in place to enforce an "honor code". What's next, DRM on mp3 files?

But either way, they and MIT both took many "meaningful steps" against aaronsw, and he sidestepped every one.

> I don't mean to say that there should be no recourse in situations where intended access is exceeded, I mean that the bar for a 30 year felony needs to be a little higher than "we didn't intend for our system to be accessed in that manner".

Luckily, 30 years wasn't the sentence in question, even with the heavy-handed prosecution in place, and what transpired was more than "our system was accessed once in an unintended fashion". So the bar probably does need to be moved, but it's not as if he simply wandered near the wrong Wifi hotspot and accidentally mirrored a website...
Perhaps easier targets. Perhaps because the people behind the ddos want actual students and teachers of the MIT to revolt against those that decided to continue the case against Aaron.
Who said nobody is attacking the persecutor's office and why is it either and not both ?
This cause is trying to change the access across the world for scientific articles and you're complaining for a short period

"A few class websites are inaccessible, a few friends' blogs are down, and web development is a bit annoying"

That's the most selfish thing I've seen today.

No argument why this form of protest won't work just it interrupts your current lifestyle.

And IMO it will help, it keep momentum and adds publicity to the other means also going on.
Bazinga! But below the belt, given the circumstances. I'd like to encourage engineers like Zafir to make themselves available to us (outside of google groups) more often.
I have a hard time getting past the "poor people have more stuff" idea in the beginning. This is akin to thinking that rich people are cleaner. My observation is just that rich people have help. I'd be highly curious to know if there are good numbers into these claims.
The trespassing charges were dropped. He was indicted for wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and recklessly damaging a protected computer.
you are right, in fact I'm going to delete this submission, not worth it
Disqus Discovery Disgust
meh, he didn't say pointless but seems like he meant it by saying " low hanging fruit"
My last ASUS laptop fell apart on me. The Zenbook Prime is sexy, though.
Oh, an "Israelite" is he? There's a weighted term for the partial concealment of an evil prejudice, I think.
I think the answer is obviously 'no'.

But I also believe that your question is exactly what is bad about the situation. It is a total red herring to the issue at hand. Let me expand:

He should have pleaded guilty to the crimes, because it is in my opinion, that he did infact break current laws, and that 6 months + felony, is not life ending sentence, far from it.

Consider this:

I also believe the laws in which he broke shouldn't exist in the capacity as they do.

You can hold both the above beliefs, and when you do, it gives you power to make reform in an appropriate capacity.
(I don't think they're good reasons, just reasons)

1. Unlike print layout, the dimensions of a webpage can change, and so we slowly invented an evolving layout framework for something without fixed dimensions. I've done typesetting since it was exacto knives and hot wax, and if you told me then to imagine a stretchable paper for news I would have cried in the corner.

2. The layout framework was independently built by a bunch of separate companies, who by nature of competition weren't going to agree on everything (see every browser).

3. The agreements that WERE made were done by committee, including the reluctant inputs of competing companies. This method of design will guarantee that they end up with something weird.

4. Make it backwards compatible with all the previous ghosts of architects past.

Imagine if Ford, GM and Chrysler had to build a joint car every few years.

Also, try designing a page in Flash and using (or just reading about) their graphics/layout/text frameworks. Some things are much harder than HTML/CSS, some are much easier, but it offers a great comparison on a completely different way of solving layout. I've implemented a spec like CSS for customizing Flash app appearances, and compared to what existed before, it made everything better.
Ha, I do the the same thing. Only once the message is spell-checked and read over, do I fill in the recipient address.
I can't either, and that was before I had read anything about a six month plea deal, but searched for it thanks to your comment.

According to Aaron's own lead defense attorney, they both wanted to reject it so that they could fight the charges in court [1].

This article reads weirdly though, in one quote the attorney says they 'both' rejected the plea deal, and in the next, he says he "didn't want to expose Aaron to the risk" of a jury trial.

[1] http://boston.com/metrodesk/2013/01/14/mit-hacking-case-lawy...
Well, I doubt they were. Especially since I signed up myself and like anything Metal/rock but got nothing but Beyonces and Timberlakes suggested for myself as well.

That's also what I took from the article; it doesn't take into account FB likes.
The public does in fact own the country's nuclear arsenal. The nuclear arsenal is purely defensive and to be used only in the direst of circumstances in the defense of the nation (i.e. the public). No one individual or group of people has the right to use our nuclear arsenal to enrich themselves. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make, but you're not making a lot of sense. Perhaps you could try to explain yourself without the hyperbole.
a: In a drive-by shooting, the driver is often charged along with the shooter; even when the driver insists that he didn't know what was going to happen.

b: The defense attorney claimed that he made Stephen Heymann aware of the suicide risk early in the case.

If Heymann was aware of the risk and pushed ahead anyway, is he a contributor in the same sense that the driver of the car is a contributor? Why or why not?
Java vulnerabilities
I think this has really interesting consequences in combination with the "pay money to send messages to people you aren't friends with" feature Facebook's been testing lately. That's the revenue potential I immediately saw in this product with the demo search for "people who like cycling in my hometown"--you can find them for free, but it will cost you to contact (or direct market to) them.
This is what I mean by a long lecture :(

"Jargon increases the accuracy and efficiency of communication between specialists."
I think this statement is too broad. This really depends if we're on the same page (i.e. think Java and Javascript). We could end up having a long conversation about something and end up with two ends if we're not careful.

If we've been doing the same thing and working together for many months on end, then I would say yes, jargon works as an efficient means of communication. If we've never met each other and you and me have 20 minutes (realistically 15) before the next interviewer takes me - then we're going to have a problem.
It sounds like at your first job you were an intern, and the bar is pretty low for interns, so just showing up every day and not breaking production is enough to impress. So you left for greener pastures, or so you thought, but you discovered that along with more money comes higher expectations (whether those expectations are reasonable I couldn't say).

Not completing enough work sounds like an unusual critique for a developer review, unless you are consistently missing deadlines/deliverables. Are they not properly managing your workload? If they gave you 6 weeks to update a meta tag, then that's their fault for not giving you enough, and your fault for not calling them on it. But I don't know the full story. How did they rate the quality of the work you did? Was your code clean and bug-free? If not, then that is the real problem.

Also, does anyone find it strange that a company would give a developer a review at 6 weeks? It hasn't happened to me ever and I've worked for big companies (Washington Post, ClearChannel) and small startups.
If you are motivated by hate and have money, you can pay people who are motivated by money to do your hating for you.
CSS is a square peg in a round hole. It was never meant to be used for the media heavy pages of today.

it would be nice if there was a modern update of CSS.
I'm a bit put off to notice that the default action they discuss for PQLs is "call the customer" to convert them.

If I'm interacting with your business in some way, and I hit a threshold that causes a salesperson to ring my phone number, I'm going to think really hard about whether I can drop your service completely.

My reactions are probably stronger than the average, but who out there feels that a phone call from a salesperson is a pleasant event?

I don't care how polite the person is; they're interrupting my life, asking that I stop whatever I was doing -- they can't know, of course -- and pay attention to them while they try to convince me I'm wrong about something (that is, not yet converting to a paying customer of their service).

Trigger an email from a real person, if you like, that I can read at my leisure (or simply delete, without feeling impolite like I would hanging up on someone).

But think carefully before you start triggering unsolicited sales calls to the people you want most to think favorably of you.
looks like twitter's bootstrap fw with scrollspy in action here. not certain though.
> He could only get the 6 month (rather than 35 years) prison sentence by waiving his right to a fair trial.

If he willingly engaged in a jury trial and somehow still got convicted, with a strict judge, and a jury that hates him, and an incompetent defense, he still wouldn't get anything approaching a 35-year sentence.

Is it really too much to ask to not use hyperbole for matters as serious as this? You could just as well be saying that the taxpayers are paying for Sandra Fluke to have sex.

Please, please, I'm begging you all: By setting up an echo chamber and inventing your own "facts" and then taking action based on that made-up dream world, you're just as wrong as "the other side".
No, but suicide is not the only alternative (you could try to flee the country or otherwise go into hiding). It is just horrible that somebody already battling with depression for so long got caught up in the twisted game that is the prosecution of federal crimes.

Good read, related to the cat-and-mouse game: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/14/jailhou...
If it wasn't a critical infrastructure company they should've moved him to HR and had him outsource all their coding ;D
DPHue, an Objective-C library for the Philips Hue