skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You mean his death? To say that it bugs me would be an extreme understatement. Like many, I immediately felt devastated, even though I'd never met him.

If you are referring to other stuff: What else happened in the last 3 days that bugs you?
I think I remember that thread, and I remember thinking of typing "criminal defenses, guilty or innocent, are extremely expensive, and this is by no means a good thing" but I guess I didn't pull the trigger and say it.

In retrospect, I wish I'd made it, and I also wish I'd said "even though I consider Aaron in the wrong, I'm still donating $5 so he knows that other people know he's alive, and I encourage those who are on his side to donate as well." Lots of donations, even if small in amount, would have at least helped him not feel alone. Depression sucks.
Why Robots Might Boost Industry While Killing Jobs
Thanks!

Now I have to figure out how to create the file hierarchy and get my css files included.
Do you know anything about the legislative and constitutional history of this? Why them and not the FBI or something? Seems very odd, but maybe just one of those weird government quirks.
I don't understand this sentiment at all. What's wrong with simply not commenting? HN isn't a semi-private coffee shop; this whole post illustrates quite nicely that what is said here is public and long-lasting.

Let's try this on for a little more discomfort: what do you think the odds are that Aaron himself read the comments of a few threads posted here about his case?

Your entire argument here seems predicated upon people absolutely needing to comment on things that they have no special knowledge of. I don't think that's very defensible.
The only CSS performance issues I've seen are images causing scrolling not to be smooth.
If Congress, the grand jury, and the judge don't see something as an injustice, how is it the prosecutor's place to second guess them?
I don't think the writer was blaming edw519, you or any of the other commenters on that thread. The writer was basically pointing out that the community as a whole was pretty dismissive and even a bit dickish. And that's a true assessment.

One reason I don't enjoy HN as much as I did several years ago is that the default behavior seems to be to attack civil libertarians, free software enthusiasts, file sharers, builders who place idealism over profit... basically everyone but the sellers.

Don't get me wrong, I see value in business. But choking all of the less buttoned-down, more rebellious voices is a pretty sure path towards killing the creative spirits that made a lot of today's profits possible. Every time I see a front page full of self-promotional blog posts, people pushing their info products or yet more tips on how to optimize the value one extracts rather than creates or worse yet, comments defending the TSA, MPAA etc... it makes me miss the Reddit of old.

EDIT: This was a response to tptacek's (now deleted) comment which scolded the article.
What Mac Users Need to Know About the Java Security Update
Gooo - The anti-magic Go lang web framework
> Can we please stop the mobbing? Thanks.

Can we just say it's a good a lesson to us all?

I understand what the OP must be going through now; it'd make anybody feel miserable.
If multiple people rearrange the white space at the same time as adding variables (e.g., because the new variables are of types whose names are different widths, both wider than the old gap), you are more likely to get a conflict than if they just leave the spacing alone. Many version control systems seem to tend to do their automated merges line by line, and this sort of edit seems to give them less to work with. [8c99a51796e06219f472f78a5c081dd664da83dc]

Then the wrath comes when you get latest (pull, update, fetch, rebase, call it what you will) and have an inconvenient merge forced on you! I've always personally found the fact that it's just adding or removing white space especially galling :) - but tastes may differ.
I'm sure they do actually, but likely with slightly different language like "stop crying"; same thing. Just because a statement isn't gender neutral doesn't make it sexist.
Maybe it outlines a issue of karma whoring? Just sayin'.
See, here's the problem. In one sentence you're arguing that he should "accept the consequences", and in literally the very next sentence, you're describing how bad the consequences ended up being.

That is what is wrong with saying, "just accept the consequences", when you have no damn idea what the consequences are.
Competitive video-gaming: Mouse sports
>Is this, why their exhaust is so clean?

The Space Shuttle Main Engines used LOX and LH2, which creates water when burned.

>How much more efficient is this engine compared to the Merlin?

The specific impulse is the metric to look at, and ballooney already talked about it.
What was the inspiration for the name?
I assume it wasn't The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, better known as The Empire of Japan in World War II, since you wouldn't want to pick a name associated with massive human rights abuses.
> the fact is that suicide is simply a symptom of mental illness, and nothing else.

This is simplistic and wrong.

Mental illness is a factor in some attempted or completed suicides.

But is mental ill health the only factor? No. There are many things that contribute to someone attempting suicide. Significant factors include debt, relationship breakdown, recent release from a MH hospital, previous attempts at suicide, a relative who completed suicide, etc.

Many people have mental ill health, and not all of them kill themselves. The difference between the people who try suicide and those who don't is not severity of illness, but severity of other pressures.
If anyone does try playing the game, be sure to kill everyone you can in the school before going to the library. Otherwise you will be underlevelled when you get to hell.
> Can we just say it's a good a lesson to us all?

I'm pretty sure that it is.
Swartz was not the co-founder of Reddit.
not a limitation of OpenID or OAuth, it's just that twitter doesn't give your email address to 3rd parties (facebook does)
There is always an other side. In general, I think you want fuzzy laws, as there are fairly universally agreed 'bad' things, though not a single person has a good definition of 'bad'. A computer 'crime' or 'fraud' can easily be understood by an informed jury, judge and prosecutor and be just beyond the very letter of the law. So long as our system is adversarial in nature, I don't think an occasional push against the fuzzy line is in poor form, as long as there is commensurate push back. And in general, in the long run, this is a more equitable and just system than one of algorithmic rules where technicalities truly do trump intent.
I up-voted his original comment I would do so again.

Aaron knew what he was doing. There are many charities more deserving than his legal defense fund -- that isn't changed just because he was apparently mentally ill enough to take his own life.

There should be a high burden you have to overcome to successfully find crowd-funding for anything including a legal defense.
The short of it is, USSS was, as "the Treasury police", responsible for counterfeiting investigations, and so inherited wire fraud. In the '80s, authority over wire fraud became authority over computer crime; as you can see, even in 2012, computer crime charges are often connected to wire fraud charges.
"The United States Secret Service is responsible for maintaining the integrity of the nation's financial infrastructure and payment systems. As a part of this mission, the Secret Service constantly implements and evaluates prevention and response measures to guard against electronic crimes as well as other computer related fraud. The Secret Service derives its authority to investigate specified criminal violations from Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 3056."

The scope of this is enormous, the SS webpage gives the following examples:

"Criminal investigations can be international in scope. These investigations include: counterfeiting of U.S. currency (to include coins); counterfeiting of foreign currency (occurring domestically); identity crimes such as access device fraud, identity theft, false identification fraud, bank fraud and check fraud; telemarketing fraud; telecommunications fraud (cellular and hard wire); computer fraud; fraud targeting automated payment systems and teller machines; direct deposit fraud; investigations of forgery, uttering, alterations, false impersonations or false claims involving U.S. Treasury Checks, U.S. Saving Bonds, U.S. Treasury Notes, Bonds and Bills; electronic funds transfer (EFT) including Treasury disbursements and fraud within the Treasury payment systems; Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation investigations; Farm Credit Administration violations; and fictitious or fraudulent commercial instruments and foreign securities. "

From: http://www.secretservice.gov/criminal.shtml
For me, Stripe has without a doubt the best customer service I have ever experienced. I've been able to just hop in their chat channel multiple times and sort through pretty technical issues right away directly with the developers, it was phenomenal compared to a lot of other services out there.

Sorry things didn't work out for you, but just wanted to put that out there.
Ah, your comment was refuting my statement (US has a 2 party system that excludes views of small groups). Thanks, great example.
I'm not sure it's nice to have someone's full name in a discussion like this.
This is raging hindsight bias all over the place. "Next time you feel like making a 'meh' post, just say nothing at all?" Please.
Thank you for this post.

I've also been wondering about the depth of my emotion on this event. I have looked up to Aaron Swartz mildly in the past, but the turn of events and subsequent reactions have occupied my attention greatly since.

I too wish to be more like Aaron Swartz in many ways, and I too am strangely moved by his story and his passing. Reading my thoughts in someone else's blog is appreciated.
In a comment below you state NOBODY KNEW THESE DETAILS AT THE TIME

That is exactly why judgement should have been deferred. In the face of uncertainty, given the situation, withholding comment or querying neutrally would have been optimal. That is clear with foresight, not just obvious from hindsight. I did not see that thread the first time but it is the tone and not the words that would be so damaging.

Man up. Very likely he had already internalized the blame for his current state. Such statements would be seen only as confirmations of his weakness and foolishness. Criticisms would be isolating and over-weighted . For someone so prodigious it would have been especially difficult.

The risk from destabilizing a person genuinely going through very difficult external and or internal moments, even if they proportion fewer, far outcosts the risk of building a careless individual's misplaced ego by giving them attention in the form of neutral to supportive questions. Yes it will take a bit more effort to not follow all "I made a mistake" with "man up and learn from it" but I think we would all be better from it. Especially those at the extreme end where manning up requires prefixing with super.

I dare say I envy those whose paths through life is such that a phrase like that enters an initial treatment of someone facing any adversity. That they have never sensed helplessness so vast, it opens a vortex to the place of lost souls, washing away the vivid colors the manned-up paint with while slowly dimming any ability to answer the on appearance hopeless question of What now? Nothing of course.. ?
Carl Malamud's emails w/ Aaron Swartz
All of Carl's emails w/ Aaron are available on public.resource.org. It's a trove.
http://thehumanist.org/july-august-2012/you%E2%80%99re-addic...

This is probably worth your read. Even if you disagree, your "addiction" is being shoehorned into the disease model and the unhealthy patterns don't necessarily meet the same standard.
Pollo Chilindron (Chilindron Chicken from Aragon)
I am a woman. I go around telling women to "woman up". I try to do so in an empowering way and not be an asshole.

Fuck sexism though.
Simple Dependency Injection for Decoupling Legacy Systems
Also remember that the top comment position often goes to a 'contra' position with regard to the story. The reasons for this are many: the supporters have already upvoted the headline; those drawn into any comment thread are disproportionately those with some qualifying/contentious point to make; commenters in general may skew to skeptical/negative viewpoints compared to all community readers.

Relative ranking of comments are not opinion polls and should not be construed as such. 'The HN community' is rarely of one measurable mind about anything. Finally, caring much about what the net-total click-voting is on any particular item may be a sign of misplaced priorities or insecurities. What's right and what's good is not dependent on anyone's polling.
I couldn't help read this as "KGB uses mouthpiece organization to announce its own information warfare tools have been as advanced as Flame for years, have been targeting intelligence agencies (hello friends) and were not discovered by anyone until intentionally leaked".

I have no supporting evidence but it would make an excellent footnote in history of The Electronic War.
+1 for Food By People
"Porn addiction is not about orgasms its about porn. The viewing, searching, clicking from tab to tab on tube sites. Starting in early adolescence, training ones brain to need a certain level of stimulation. For some - hours a day."

This is more obsessive-compulsive behavior than porn-specific.
> what do you think the odds are that Aaron himself read the comments of a few threads posted here about his case?

About 100% or so. That's the bit that hurts the most.

The simple solution is this: If you're going to say something positive, absent information feel free to do so.

On the other hand, if you're going to say something negative you'd better make damn sure you know what it is that you're talking about. If you don't those words might take on a life of their own at some unspecified point in the future.
He made a judgement based on the information provided to him. It wasn't conveyed in a nice tone, sure, and that's unfortunate. I'd prefer if everyone was nice, but sometimes things just come out really, really nasty.

The usual consequence is to take your downvotes/criticisms and move on...not to become the center of some impromptu witch hunt.
Ah, Occam's razor.
It makes it difficult to have const locals if you get some sort of dependency chain based on other locals interspersed with other computation. For example, if you're a const nazi you can't have code like this:

const int x = foo();
// ...
const int y = bar(x);

and also have your variables all declared at the top.

In C++ I'm a const nazi and declare where used to facilitate it, but if I'm writing C that targets the MSVC compiler (C89) where all variables have to be collected at the top of the inner scope I'll relax this as much as I have to.
I can see that. Do interviewers really fall for the "I'm a workaholic" line, though?
The feds going after a 20-something idealistic activist, who we all knew was completely harmless, and hadn't committed a real crime? That can't be anything other than a severe and cruel abuse of power. I'm sorry but enough information was known at the time to conclude what was going on.
You should be very cautious with this kind of self diagnostics.

- What if you get a negative result (i.e. you're ok)? Are you just gonna live happily ever after, ignoring any symptoms of sleep deprivation since you have already ruled out apnea?

- What if you get a positive result? You'll still have to go through the same kind of studies again, no doctor would give you much credit for your home study.

So, if you suspect you have sleep apnea you should go talk to your doctor. Your notes on sleep apnea are good though... it's a serious and a very commonly undiagnosed/untreated condition... even thought the cure is in most cases relatively noninvasive and cheap(CPAP). People above average weight should be particularly alert to typical symptoms (sleepyness, lack of energy).
I think it's a great idea. I signed up because I think the marketing value is worth a lot more than the $8000.

I'm tempted to make a similar counter-offer as a developer. Do some customer development, prove the market, and I'll fund your product development and build it for you.
It is rather unfair to single one person out too - the sentiment of the initial thread was in line with edw519's comments.
Tptacek, I always know exactly which threads you will post your combative, confrontational, annoying posts before I click on them. You are the drama queen of hackernews.
There is no dialogue with sociopaths, nothing constructive but to figure out how to waste less time and energy on them in the future.

Every minute spent trying to get anything back is a minute you will never have back.
I don't think he missed the point. He gave a different perspective on how the attitude expressed in the manifesto can help someone grow in skill impressively.
That discussion seems much more favorable to Aaron. The top comment's supportive, and even his detractors, like 'bstar77, are measured in their criticism:

> I sincerely hope that he gets the punishment he deserves which should be a firm slap on the wrist. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of him getting any jail time

I'm starting to suspect that HN discussions have a pretty strong snowball effect where it begins to seem like everyone agrees with the early comments near the top.

It sucks that people were so harsh in the first thread. One big takeaway from Aaron's story for me, is that whenever someone is facing federal prosecution, consider that a huge risk factor for stress and mental breakdown, and err on the side of sympathy. This also reaffirms my principle of siding with individual humans (Aaron) over institutions (JSTOR, MIT, DOJ). I'm not out to get anyone if they're the former inflicting a minor institutional flesh wound on the latter.
The documentation is a bit terse. Might be interesting.
A story and the reality are always different. The story as presented to people at the time was Aaron had done something (legally) wrong and was in trouble for doing it, some people believed what he did was for a just cause (education material should be free) and others didn't.

If the people reading the story at the time were expected to act on the situation by donating, why is it wrong for them to act in the form of a comment? How can it be fair to say people should have donated based on their understanding of the situation but not be able to comment on the situation?

Every single person in that comment thread is just as guilty of wrong doing if edw519 is guilty of any, because they all formed an opinion around something they knew very little of. It just so happens that the opinion edw519 expressed is unfortunately one that is at odds with the reality of the situation.
This is a very difficult question to answer for the "generic person" - you cant assume they have any one skill or advantage and you also cant assume they have any certain risk profile or goal besides hopefully increasing their money by X dollars over Y years.

Its also difficult because firstly you have to look at all the possible investment opportunities and understand if your larger pools of 5k and potentially 2k buy you into any better opportunities. In other words you have to justify why you used the 5k for an investment instead of the 2k - without knowing specifics about the person its quite difficult.

With such a small amount of money comparatively to other investors in most environments Id say the person would be best off "investing in themselves" - apply all 3 buckets to learning 3 different potentially marketable skills that they hopefully can eventually leverage to create larger investment buckets. If the amounts were larger I might answer differently but with those amounts your best market is yourself.
> when you have no damn idea what the consequences are

Because this is unprecedented. People are still shocked at the excessive nature of the charges. No one expected it. To expect everything to be so severe would be paranoia.
...and then his Twitter is littered with Huffington, NPR, etc links.
You honestly don't think that Call of Duty desensitises us to war?
I'm sure that user is just fine with such abuses.
I agree. What an ugly turn of events after a tragedy already.
Not really, just pointing out the obvious. I was surprised to find it on the front page of HN. Even more surprised to find responses to this comment.
Wow. Did anyone read the article that this is parodying? Everyone is rushing to be a Windows white-knight but this article is just mind-blowingly stupid. I'm having a hard time even believing it was written in good faith: http://jonas.lophus.org/2013/1/on-the-state-of-linux-on-the-...

(This is no excuse for Evolution, but honestly, who uses Evolution? I wouldn't blame all of Windows for <insert crappy Windows app>).
Not merely mentally ill. Mental health in general should be taken more seriously. Many of our institutional systems (schools, prisons, etc.) are not conducive to habits that promote good mental health. Please be assured I am not dismissive of the importance of it.

Also, people can have lapses in their mental health and then recover.

There are also most certainly lots of factors that can push people to their limits. I do note that you were not successful in committing suicide, and in the name of discussion I might ask (if it weren't inappropriate to do so) why you were not successful in committing suicide. I have done a few thought experiments about suicide and it seems that some methods routinely fail while others never do.

Thanks for sharing your story, and I apologize if my comment came off as insensitive or as an attempt to washy my hands of the key issues. I'm strongly opposed to the kind of stuff that was being done to Aaron fwiw.
I guess I'm not willing to consider intrusion for the purpose of getting broadly-available content to be in the same category as theft of PII or theft of real secrets intended to remain secret, and none of these in the same category as modifications or destruction.
"While I don't see how you've refuted any of my claims specifically"

Your anecdotes don't require disproving. They are just your anecdotes about your particular personality and calling them "empirical" does not give them any more expandability to the whole.
Hyperbole. IIRC, the installer dialog said "3 billion". ;-)

I am happy for one thing. After having used the Control Panel feature introduced in 7u10 to allow disabling Java in all browsers via one checkbox, when I ran the 7u11 update and subsequently -- carefully! -- checked, I found that Java remained disabled in all the browsers on the system.

Hallelujah! Finally -- much too late, IMO -- one can apparently (I'd continue to manually verify, for the near if not foreseeable future) disable Java in the browser(s), and the setting sticks.

Prior to this, after each update, I'd have to go into all the browsers on the system and manually disable the Java plugins -- at least I had to until some, but not all, of the browser makers got smart and started ensuring that disabled Java plugins remained disabled, despite the Java installer's attempts.

And even disabling the browser plug-ins was apparently not sufficient, for IE:

http://krebsonsecurity.com/how-to-unplug-java-from-the-brows...

(see the section on Internet Explorer)
In formal language theory, '[formal] language' and '[formal] grammar' are well-defined mathematical terms, and it's indeed appropriate to say that a grammar defines language in that context.

Similarly, the 'language of languages' is also appropriate given that BNF is defined with a grammar, and is used to specify grammars.

Furthermore, formal grammars were originally invented for purposes of exploring natural languages.

Sorry if you didn't enjoy the article, but there's nothing wrong with it in the context of formal language theory :)