skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I gave some more technical details in another reply. It's one of those things I thought for a long time, and I didn't think was very controversial, but I suppose it is.

Really, what I meant was the metaprogramming associated with homoiconicity can't be done in a useful and referentially transparent way. That's because "eval"-like things are not referentially transparent.

However, there are other uses for homoiconicity aside from executing the code in an eval-like way. For instance, a text editor might use that property to inspect and transform the code being edited more easily. Also, I'm sure there are plenty of times it just makes things easier.

I think metaprogramming is also at odds with static analysis (e.g. a good type system), simply because the code itself is not static enough to analyze.
The equivalent petition for Steve Heymann:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-...
Unfortunately, that was the case for noncommercial infringement, but public sentiment went the other way and the law was amended in the wrong direction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NET_Act

In Swartz's case, though, it seems he wasn't being prosecuted for copyright infringement: he never actually released the JSTOR documents. Instead he was being charged with unauthorized access to a computer system, and miscellaneous other related things.
Of course, Dorsey, Jobs, and the founders of AirBnB have produced products that millions of people use voluntarily and find useful. Ortiz and Heymann by contrast decided to threaten a kid with 35 years in jail for downloading pdfs, bankrupting him and driving him to suicide. The repeated claims that there is no such thing as "prosecutorial discretion" (!) and that they were just doing their "job" (!!) are just ludicrously false and Kafkaesque. The US Attorneys in this "prestigious office" knew well what they were doing. They chose to bring this case -- they could well have chosen to dismiss it and focus on one of the many serious violent crimes that happen in MA every year -- and they must be dismissed if there is to be any justice.

Somehow one is supposed to be outraged about someone renting out their spare bedroom to make ends meet, but not disturbed by an unelected official railroading and bankrupting Swartz? Indeed, to even defend this lack of accountability while attacking or derailing any measures to hold them accountable? This worldview is absolutely topsy-turvy and incomprehensible; insofar as it has any consistency, it seems to be pure apologia for untrammeled state power, obedience to authority, and rule by lawyers.
Unlike Jobs, Aaron was actually one of us.
Jennifer Granick is an awesome attorney and person. I remember meeting her at DefCon III when she was getting into this world of digital defense.
A Guide to Developing Python in Windows with Sublime Text 2
Stallman stopped taking a salary from MIT so that MIT would have no claim of ownership of GNU. He continued (continues?) to keep on office on the campus, referring to himself as a "squatter".
I see the Internet lynch mob in full effect today with this. I would love to know the percentage of people signing this who only have read a couple HN articles for the first time today about this person and have no more than a passing knowledge of Ortizs' career than a Wikipedia summary.
I think one thing that users of HN are picking up on during this crisis is the sense that in some ways, "hackers" are alike--whether a relatively egregious case as in this article, a very mild to innocuous case such as Swartz's, or a truly innocuous case like reverse-engineering open source software--in that we are all curious and we are all sometimes foolish. What the justice department and the masses among us forget is that even very successful people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were and are hackers, and that in the case of the former's hacking (Jobs' blue-boxing days), it could have gotten him in really, really big trouble.

So I think a big part of this is that we know that people make mistakes and that justice is absurdly harsh and out-of-proportion, not to mention the fact that as hackers, we definitely have the ability to do really insanely great things with our lives.

But one thing to remember is that the justice system in this country is absurdly harsh to a lot of people. It's absurdly harsh to minorities and to drug users for example, too. The fact is, the way that justice is executed in this country needs to be re-thought for everyone.

Edit: I just wanted to add to this. The key to a better outcome is greater kindness. Kindness to others and kindness to ourselves. There will always be foolish people like Swartz's prosecutor or the people at MIT. But in this technological age, in first-world countries, our immediate needs are usually taken care of. The things that make a true difference is kindness. The kindness of mentors, the kindness of friends and lovers, the kindness of strangers. Swartz's prosecutor could have been more kind. Even Swartz, I think it could be said, could have been kinder to himself, loving himself and taking more caution for himself instead of placing himself in such peril. We all need to be kind to others and ourselves as much as we can, without putting ourselves in danger. Sometimes a little danger is what it takes to change things, true. But kindness is what we all need more of in this age and what, I think, we truly desire. RIP Aaron.
Relevant, journalist David Gregory blatantly violated Washington, DC firearms law, on air. He won't face charges:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/01/12/nbc_s_davi...

I hate to say it but if these trends continue we'll be well on our way to a new sort of feudalism, where laws are selectively enforced and the little guys who hold political views or who are part of minorities that are despised by the powers that be get hit hard while the people who are rich or politically connected get a break. We've seen it with drug laws (where even cocaine possession translates to much different charges when the accused is white and affluent vs black and poor), with prescription drug abuse, with tax laws, with gun laws, with computer crime (where a corporation can install rootkits on people's computers with few legal ramifications), etc.
So, what your are saying, is that I shouldn't be penalized if I don't lock my door at home, but I have no basis to complain if someone comes into my house, snoops around, looks in drawers, and then leaves without damaging anything.

I'm actually ambivalent about this, but I'm always intrigued as to whether people's sense of "Protect yourself on the internet or you deserve what you get" translates to "Protect yourself at home, or you deserve to be burgled".

Indeed - one could take it so far as, "Protect yourself with a weapon late at night/in your home, or you deserve to be beaten/mugged/etc..." - but, in general, we recognize the black and white line somewhere between "ssh server" and "put in hospital with contusions" - I think the "snooping around my house with unlocked door" is the gray area.
I like the perspective of comparing Aaron to older "hacker/visionaries" of decades gone by. I wasn't aware of some of those brushes with the law.
And the hyperbole is back. He hadn't been convicted and would never have served anything close to 35 years even if he was.
Anyone knowing basic Mathematics can. And anyone can learn Mathematics.
Guthrie seems to be a friend. Presumably he is working as a proxy.

> I've registered rememberaaronsw.com on behalf of Aaron's family, with whom we're in touch. Please do not be alarmed.

https://twitter.com/bguthrie/status/290220755642359808
One Click Photo Download from 500px
3) HIRE A LAWYER. Winning a case against him in civil court for passing a bad check is pretty much guaranteed to spawn a criminal case because you'll have handed the prosecutors their case; they won't have to redirect many resources away from serious crimes.

1. Guaranteed? Man already has multiple suits and judgements against him in civil court in past few years in addition to having servdd time years ago for a similar crime. He even has a warrant out in another state AFAIK. No criminal charges in NY(where I am based) or California(where he and many of his victims are).

2. It's very hard collecting money from him even after you win the judgement, from my conversations with those who have. In the end, I risk taking an even bigger hit especially if he countersues(even the odd lawyer willing to work on contingency warns me that he will almost certainly countersue for which I will need to pay out of pocket)

My best option in light of these realizations was to build this site which seems to have at least made a dent in his ability to scam. For example, the guy has been playing with the spelling of his name, at least partially I'm guessing so my site does not pull up when his next victim googles.
Just like this is, actually.

No, so not like this, actually.

How many software engineers or their professional peers have been nudged, pushed or shoved into committing suicide because of a broken build? No, really?

When a person in position of authority is maliciously responsible for driving people to the brink of suicide and then some, they need to be held to a higher standard because of the very position they hold.

This episode is not an excuse for a witch-hunt of those in power, but the people who precipitated this episode need to be excised from their position precisely because of the irresponsible witch-hunt they carried out.
1/13 noon at MIT: Protest wrongful prosecution of Aaron Swartz
Via https://twitter.com/yarnivore/status/290289294835318784
Maybe you should suggest that to the prosecutor.
And your lack of ability to understand what was written is even more breathtaking.

The man's point was that it is not suitable for a technical institution like that to be managed and administered by non-technical people. There are a number of reasons for that but the main one is that they lack the expertise needed to run such a place and can't fully appreciate the culture of hacking that many such institutes were built upon.

Same goes for companies. The most successful software companies out there are those run by engineers. Think Google. When "business people" take over, things often have a way of turning for worse. I've seen it time and again.
> How many software engineers or their professional peers have been nudged, pushed or shoved into committing suicide because of a broken build?

It wasn't my shitty analogy to begin with. You're missing the point: getting one prosecutor fired won't change anything, because everyone above and below that prosecutor will continue operating the exact same way.
Citeseer is an open indexer, collecting files from the web and making them openly available. Many of those PDF links you mention are the sources for its index.

It is nothing like Springer, Elsevier, ScienceDirect, Thompson, ... websites. Please don't lump them together.

JSTOR sits somewhere in between.
I was a colleague of Aaron's at ThoughtWorks (he joined early last year), and, I hope, a friend. We're devastated by his loss. For a history of the work he was doing over the last year, check https://github.com/victorykit/victorykit.

We're in close contact with Aaron's family and partner Taren. You can take my word for it or not, I guess, but the site and the statement are official.
Not to mention the comparison of the Pentagon Papers to the Manning cables leak.
It's rather presumptuous for you to speak on behalf of everybody. I would consider them both "one of us", though I prefer to leave "us" vs. "them" labels to religious, political, and sports nuts.
When people die, their friends (or in this case, never-met Internet supporters) share their fond memories of the dead, go through old photos, etc. Posting old things from Aaron's web site is a natural extension of this.
Yeah, I remember she was winding down her drunk driving practice when I first talked to her. I kind of miss the 90s -- fighting ITAR was a whole lot less depressing than fighting hollywood-funded congresspeople.
Looking for a learning opportunity
I have been doing front end web development(mostly HTML/CSS) for about 8 months and I want to improve my JavaScript and more importantly, my design skills.

I am looking for an opportunity to join a startup in the Silicon Valley(part-time) as a front-end developer where I can learn a lot from others. I have found working with others is a great way to learn.

I am open to all kinds of suggestions and I appreciate the help.

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The need for a digital probate policy seems very important.

He based this his from esr, and the link to esr is now broken.
Is there a central clearinghouse for thes documents? A digitally signed will should be far harder to forge and could be legally binding. To see ones digital wishes be fulfilled from the afterlife should set some tormented spirits to rest.
Update: Four hours later, the article's back. And if someone wanted to try again, they'd have to do a lot better than claim non-notability or lack of sources as below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion...
Yeah, in reality they probably don't have any. They referred a minor crime to an overzealous federal agency who had it in for the guy. To Godwin this thread, they would have reported Anne Frank for trespassing to the Nazis. Perfectly legal, but if they had full knowledge of what would result, perfectly immoral as well.

They will never see another dime or kind word from me, though.
We're actively working to replace the Tumblr site with something a bit more fitting.
The Secret Service did hire Albert Gonzalez, the guy Jonathan James was accused of conspiring with. The story, including Jonathan James' involvement is well told by the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/magazine/14Hacker-t.html?p...
I think there is also an argument that the internet is different, both because pretty good security is reasonably within reach for the typical server operator (unlike the cost of e.g. vault-quality doors and walls in a home), and because your government can't protect you from the wider internet because most of it is outside of its jurisdiction.

In that situation having a bunch of mostly harmless curious kids banging around creating antibodies in the system is probably a net positive, so that you find out your security is broken when some kid (who isn't trying to avoid detection and steal your trade secrets) is the one who opens your eyes to the vulnerability instead of the eye opener being a Chinese company selling your secret formula for near-cost on the world market.
> It's entirely possible his (great) IP law firm could have gotten him off, or at least ended up with a brief or suspended sentence.

That is possible. But what life would he have then, with $1.5 million of debt? If not for my kids I'd probably jump off a cliff myself than work a lifetime paying that off.
I have hope. The generations born since the early to mid 80s have been raised in a world where change has become at least constant if not accelerated. These generations, as they age and take over the roles of the higher echelons of business and government, may prove more adaptable to an ever changing world.

But this may just be a dream
It absolutely was sincere. I'm not sure why you think they are "diametrically opposed". In both cases it is victim blaming.
I think it's safe to say that Woz would've been in prison long before he could've joined Apple were things as unrelaxed as they are nowadays...the ticking bomb prank comes to mind.

And the selling of the blue boxes seems as wrong as what Swartz was accused of...and less altruistic too.
One problem is that the elderly are living longer than ever, and continuing to vote. At the same time, the birth rate is not too high.

However, the internet has proven to be a very effective way of getting people to go to the polls, and you can target your campaigns much more specifically, so as to include young people and exclude the elderly (who don't use the internet much anyway).

This is an important thing to keep in mind in a country like America, which has relatively low voter turnout. Election engineering can make all the difference in the results, as we saw with the success of Obama's reelection campaign machine.
By "one of us" I mean a part of our community (Hacker news in particular, and the internet hacker/programmer community at large), and I am referring to his involvement in Y Combinator.
Punishment is unfortunately needed for deterrence.
But 20 years? Does anybody here have any grasp about how long 20 years are in prison?

Where I'm from the maximum sentence is 15 years in prison.
You might have better luck if you posted some of your work.
How ironic that this did not happen when it could have made a difference.
What specific actions have you taken in order to discover the purpose of life since you decided you set yourself up to do it?
Thanks for clarifying; that makes sense now.
"Think about Aaron Swartz, and now realize the balls and execution it took for Larry and Sergey to do Google Books."

This thread is about Aaron. But please do not tie the two cases together; at best Google (making $10 Billion a year in profit) scanned the books so they could wrap their content with ads. At worst....

Why didn't Google open source the scans if they wanted to "spread knowledge"?
That falls to Occam's Razor. Prosecution is the way to conviction, so just publicly choosing not to prosecute would be a strong message.=, ad much lower cost.

Also, federal cases usually get settled in pleas, so there's less actual precedent. Going all the way to court would have been painful for him AND would have increased the odds of conviction.
I think the correct reaction to depression is simply out of the question for too many people: drop everything, get the fuck out. Move somewhere you've always wanted to go. Find an interesting job. New friends. Trouble with a family member? Don't talk to them.

It's a clear step to break your environment from you that I highly recommend. It requires money, time, and the ability to realize just how destructive relationships can be. Most people can't/won't do it.
Good on you. It baffles me that so many people seem simply unwilling to learn how to do the things they want to do.
> I am not right or left wing.

Then stop parroting nonsense parroted exclusively by far right wingnuts, and maybe you'll stop being tarred with the same brush.

What the hell are you even doing here?
GitHub exists, go contribute to something you feel passionate about. There's plenty of front end projects.
Kill THAT prosecutor !
what is the story behind the creation of this repository? It doesn't appear to be 100% current. For example, there is no 2002/memeBirth/kerberos.cgi in the git repo even though one is present on the live site.
I am a non-native speaker. 95% of my contact with English is via a computer.

There's the google effect: I press Ctrl+T, type tr(anslate.google.com) -> enter and type the word to get an instant translation. In the old times I had very restricted access to the Internet. I used a paper dictionary and bothered to write the word down so I won't forget. I can express myself without a dictionary, but often I _know_ there is a better word and instead of attempting to recall it for a minute I can get it within seconds. My skills worsen as this lookup became a habit. It is a muscle reflex, with paper dictionaries I had to decide to spend the time to research.

I should counteract this, but the world is busy and I keep finding other things to do. In the older times, workers were forced to use their muscles. Now they have robots and physical strength became less important. The same thing happens with foreign languages, basic arithmetic etc. On the one hand, I can focus on high-level tasks; on the other, with no low-level practice I am effectively becoming disabled. Simultaneously and bit ironically, I am a programmer and I love when a task can be done without human intervention.
Aaron's email to the FOAF list offering his help (2000)
I agree, but don't think JSTOR in particular can do a lot about it. Rewritten to be more accurate, what "entrusted to us by the owners and creators of that content" means is "licensed to us by the copyright holders". In most cases the copyright holder is a journal publisher, and they control what terms JSTOR is allowed to make their files available under. The only major exception are public domain works, and they have been moving in the right direction on that: http://about.jstor.org/service/early-journal-content

I do think JSTOR could institutionally be run in a more progressive manner. They can't fix the problem, but they could put a bit more pressure in the right direction. I'm hopeful that moves like Early Journal Content are showing some signs of that, though I could just be overly optimistic. But in either case, ultimately they aren't the ones who can make the decision to do anything about the post-1923 content. For past content, the journals who hold the copyrights are going to have to be convinced to open it up, and for future content, academics are going to have to start publishing in open-access venues in the first place.
> Many laws are also broad so it's just a matter of them wanting to "get you."

Exactly. I have seen many people have hangups with the "three felonies a day" concept because they misunderstand the purpose. They think the accusation is that these laws are being constructed so that everyone can be arrested. Since it is obvious that everyone is not being arrested, they concluded that the concerned are just being alarmist.

The purpose isn't to allow the arrest of everybody though. It is to allow the arrest of anybody.

Only an unlucky few are going to be 'called on' their daily felonies. Well, that and the baseline background noise of enough arrests to keep the whole system busy and well greased...
His point still rings true - even if Aaron was in it for the free exchange of information and Google was in it for the ad revenue, it's a foregone fact in the USA that the justice you receive is proportional to nothing but your cash reserves.
Because they were already being sued by the authors of the books and couldn't push it any further? Google Books offers many out-of-print books and is very much in the spirit of what Aaron was doing.
I think he had some assets from Reddit, as well as some of the work being pro bono, and contributions.

Killing yourself over $1.5mm in debt is not rational. You can default on it and go bankrupt and be back to normal in 7-10 years. You can get most of it written off. You can do consulting for 5-10 years and live slightly frugally and probably pay enough of it off to have the rest written off. You can start 1/1000th of a kind-of-shitty photo sharing site. You can flee to China, start over, and no one will pursue you.

They basically don't expect you to put 100% of your income toward fines, back taxes, etc. even if it's to the Government (and hence can't be discharged in bankruptcy). In that case, you just live on 25-50k post-tax and either hide a bunch of cash income while making small payments, or find benefactors who cover most of your costs and work on free software or something.

We essentially ended debtors prisons a long time ago.

35 years in federal prison might actually be a case for killing yourself (although I'd just read a lot of books and be the hacker Mumia Abu-Jamal, and hopefully get out on appeal).
Perhaps the real culprit is egalitarianism. Those with expansive vocabularies are often castigated by their more boorish friends, often attacked for being arrogant or snooty. It's not fair or right, but it happens. The simple truth is that good, old-fashioned intellectual elitism keeps (or kept, rather) 'obscure' vocabulary alive in a healthy climate of peers.

And, btw, it's good not to think of Aaron for a moment.
You couldn't a week ago. This isn't some accident. Their openness comes hard won with threats of their reputation.

Their digitization is largely done by a for-profit company. It's not competitively bid. There are many parties who would digitize these works at no cost— archive.org and google for example, and could afford to do it without pay walling the results.
As an MIT undergraduate, I will be there