16 ms·

The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

128 points by akashtndn 11y ago

puppetmaster3 11y ago
I know if I say 'conspiracy' I'd get down-voted. Oh well progressives, I know it's you.
sarciszewski 11y ago
The title needs a (2013), as this was published nearly three years ago. I didn't realize this until I saw the words "two years ago" in reference to his arrest.
roymathew 11y ago
why its 2013 on 2015 is needed
Aloha 11y ago
What a tortured soul.
mirimir 11y ago
> It is clear that he did not anticipate the astonishing severity of the legal response [to scraping JSTOR]. This is a key lesson. The transition from protected academic life to "The Real World" (as we used to style it) can be alarmingly abrupt. It's best to plan for the worst.
- Joof 11y ago
  We often call things 'The Real World' when we see how harsh and unethical the current reality often is, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for a more ideal one. We have to work within those real rules, but it would be a shame if those rules define us.
  - mirimir 11y ago
    Yes, he deserved slack. MIT dropped the ball, for sure. However, my point is that it's very dangerous to count on slack. Consider the theft of that cannon from Fleming House. Sure, it was a prank. And Caltech didn't press charges. All in good fun. But interstate theft is a federal crime.
    - Joof 11y ago
      The whole thing seems politically motivated from an outside source. Precedents at MIT effectively encourage this behavior (the law isn't a moral absolute; you've broken the law at least once; I wouldn't be surprised if I've unknowingly committed a few felonies). If the expectation was otherwise he wouldn't have behavied as he did. His mistake was likely that he had become somebody important; something of a political figure. That's when people start about caring what you do (by definition). Remember that bastard that hiked up the price of life saving drugs who got slapped with an old felony? Nobody would have bothered to find it if he wasn't the most hated man in America.
- rasz_pl 11y ago
  protected academic life? MIT is known for going after its students and shooting them in the back without second thought (Star Simpson)
  - mirimir 11y ago
    I rather agree with MIT about that. Wearing an LED vest at Boston airport was rather reckless, no?
    - icebraining 11y ago
      Saying privately "that was reckless, you could've been shot" is fine. Publicly accusing her of recklessness for "causing alarm" is not, as she put no one else in danger. MIT should just have kept quiet if they didn't want to support her.
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      The more idiocy we expect and tolerate from public servants, the more we'll get. LEDs are not dangerous in any sense, and are no more likely to accompany dangerous materials than any other type of object one might encounter. Ms. Simpson's difficulties are better explained by a pathological doubling-down on the part of Boston-area LEOs to their previous ATHF fuck-up than by any rationally defensible risk assessment.
- gaadd33 11y ago
  Was Aaron an academic at MIT? I was under the impression he was unknown to the administration.
  - mirimir 11y ago
    I don't know the specifics. But it's clear that he acted as if he were part of the MIT academic community.
    - dtornabene 11y ago
      No, its not at all clear that he acted that way.
obrero 11y ago
The US taxpayer and government funds public research, and the results are given as private profit to publishers. Swartz downloads papers en masse, something he may have had a murky right to do as an MIT fellow. This results in MIT, JStor, and the US government persecuting him. The New Yorker and Larissa Macfarquhar don't look for the darker side of all of this in the government persecutions and taxpayer money for public research privatized by corporations, but in Swartz himself. Conde Nast is just another big corporation (watch the nth generation heir of it in a piece more illuminating than this one - "Born Rich") coming to the defense of another big corporation in the slimy way someone like Larissa Macfarquhar specializes in, although its the New Yorker it's middle-brown, and in a slimy quote subtle unquote way. No articles on the darker side of other big publisher corporations for sure.
- apsec112 11y ago
  How does the article "come to the defense of another big corporation"? Which corporation is it coming to the defense of? JSTOR is owned by Ithaka Harbors, a non-profit organization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaka_Harbors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaka_Harbors), and MIT is a non-profit educational institution. In any case, the article didn't seem very sympathetic to them.
  - krick 11y ago
    I wouldn't word it like that, but I think obrero definitely has a point. I mean, all this storytelling is pretty disgusting. Enjoy the read, look how pompous, how grandiloquent this is! Look at all this tragedy! And I mean not only the writer herself — the quote of the girlfriend, which serves as an epigraph is already too much. And it's not just that I'm not a big fan of newyorker's style (even though I'm not), the whole read is composed in a very specific way. It isn't biographical, not documentary, it's more of an essay, purpose of which is not to tell Aaron's story as such, but the writer's story, with it's own premise and morale. So what is this story all about? The suicide. And the whole Aaron's life is shown as a prelude to it. The suicide is the point, and the whole life is "an explanation" for it: story, which, we are given to understand, was likely to end with a suicide sooner or later. As the writer eloquently calls it — "the darker side". It's easy to convey that, because it's a social norm to view a suicide as a tragedy, regardless of circumstances. But let us be cynical just for a minute and look at what happened: some guy was fighting for his ideals; the party he was fighting against was something way bigger than him, a mere mortal; he lost; he died. Suicide never was a big deal, apparently not for Aaron, anyway. What was a big deal for him: his war for the social justice. And, let's face it, there're plenty of other guys who end their lives with suicide, newyorker doesn't write about them. So, as a matter of fact, the suicide isn't a big deal for a newyorker as well, even though MacFarquhar won't admit it, maybe even to herself. Yet it's made to look as if it is precisely what is the big deal and it's socially acceptable to display it that way. What the story really was about — the fight, and those on the other side of it — that we won't be thinking of, we won't discuss it, we won't remember it. Instead, it will be all about "a darker side" and a tragedy. Regardless of whether what Aaron did or was doing was right or wrong, regardless of if he was a hero or just a fool — I think it's a pity. To take the most insignificant part of the story, and to make it The Story, because it's so easy to do that.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- johnchristopher 11y ago
  I don't mean to outbid you in the horror but some who commit suicide also decide to take their closest parents with them because they believe the pain of the situation affects them and they want to free them from that.
  - seunosewa 11y ago
    I guess you are right but Aaron didn't do that. What we already knew about him (his suicide) was pretty dark and nothing in this article is darker than that. The title suggested that it would be a hit piece like Jobs biography, but thankfully, it wasn't. I was afraid that we would learn that he abused his girlfriend, or something like that.
petke 11y ago
I don't think this obsession with Aaron and his death is any good. It feels like a morbid soap opera. He is more talked about in death than in life. I think its better to focus on the living. There is plenty of interesting tech entrepreneurs and activists out there.
- sarciszewski 11y ago
  Somewhat agreed. I wish technologists would focus less on Aaron and his death. I wish the Department of Justice would focus more on Aaron and his death. I also wish the CFAA would die in a fire along with its authors, but that's not likely to happen. :(
  - newjersey 11y ago
    Can we try to rally for discarding cfaa? Who benefits from it?
    - fthssht 11y ago
      There ought to be a check against a DA pursuing a vastly unpopular prosecution or pursuing a case with highly disproportionate threats. The incentives are messed up. A DA spends public money going after a case that might be good for their career but is totally out of line with what the public wants. I'm sure many people would be happy to see him face some consequences for what he did to JSTOR but I bet they would be overwhelmingly opposed to threats of the magnitude he faced. The problems aren't limited to the CFAA many federal laws are very broad and anyone can become a target. The situation is almost as if we have bills of attainder. If your name appears in the newspaper a prosecutor can find something to pin on you and make threats that force a settlement and or cost you a fortune in legal fees.
- mercer 11y ago
  Usually I'd agree, but this article did a good job focusing on stuff that I found valuable, because Aaron wasn't just an activist to me, but also a person with whom I identified, strongly at times. The little bits of new information, but mostly just the reminder of him and his life, which prompt me to read his writings again, and they often help me get out of some funk I might be in and pursue things I find worth pursuing. His suicide is not the main point of the article for me. As such, this article is, for me, probably the most useful link on HN today, if not the week.
nostrademons 11y ago
I'm reminded of this Ribbonfarm essay whenever news about Aaron comes up: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/09/17/how-to-be-a-precious-snowflake/ http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/09/17/how-to-be-a-precious-sn... I think Aaron Swartz's life & death continues to fascinate us because many of us see something in him that we wish we could protect in ourselves. He's the ur-snowflake to all of us clods. It would be nice to live in a world of free access to information, universal compassion, freedom from power hierarchies, and everything that he stood for. It's just not very practical, when content creators need to eat and people have differing desires that are often at odds and reality needs to choose between multiple competing desires.
- JanneVee 11y ago
  < It would be nice to live in a world of free access to information, universal compassion, freedom from power hierarchies, and everything that he stood for. It's just not very practical, when content creators need to eat and people have differing desires that are often at odds and reality needs to choose between multiple competing desires. What? The activism was directed at giving free access to that should be free! The research that is being hoarded behind paywalls by gatekeepers who didn't create it and don't pay the ones who created it. The creators of the text are people paid by us through our taxes and other contributions and then locked away so only a select few can see it. This knowledge locked away that could save lives, be new areas of business or just simply improve the human condition. And here you are and talking about this like he was trying to distribute movies for free.
- georgiev 11y ago
  Thanks for sharing the ribbonfarm blog. I found the essay on clods and snowflakes quite interesting.
known 11y ago
Victim of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
kumarski 11y ago
Didn't know he had ulcerative colitis. For anyone else suffering, there's been new studies on fodmap free diets which have been reportedly effective. http://bit.ly/fodmapfree http://bit.ly/fodmapfree
- junto 11y ago
  I have UC. I'm lucky that I have access to medication that hold it in check. Thank you for the link. I'd love to get to the point where I no longer need to take this medication on a daily basis.
  - kumarski 11y ago
    I used to take lialda. I've had it for 12 years. I've spent the last 2 years learning everything I can about web, building 2 saas ventures, and now trying to attack this problem: http://trials.humandataproject.org http://trials.humandataproject.org I'd love to chat with you and learn more about what you've tried. Keep in mind Tibetans have a 80% incidence rate of IBD. Feel free to reach out to me if you think I can be a resource.
- leemac 11y ago
  That was surprising to me as well. Having had it since I was 4-5 years old (28 now), it did alter my schooling/friendships. I suppose depression did set in for a while. Some of the medicine's would cause my face to swell up which made me a target for name calling (Prednisone). College was different though with most people being much more mature. My diet has changed and I'm on a light dose of medication that's kept it at bay for almost 10 years. My last flare-up in 2008 was a killer because I also had the flu at the time, double whammy!
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
sarciszewski 11y ago
Fuck Steve Jobs' legacy and every member of the fruitarian hipster consumer culture that continues to use Apple products. Among other reasons, Steve Jobs' death overshadowed the loss of Dennis Ritchie.
- akashtndn 11y ago
  One was a billionaire business honcho who created one of the most identifiable brands in the world. Another was one of the greatest Computer Scientists who ever lived. As great as Ritchie was, he never stood a chance. There are a number of relevant reasons to bash Jobs but to say that he overshadowed Ritchie's death is one of the more stupid ones. Dennis Ritchie was mourned by those who respected and adored him regardless. His death would have only received a minuscule amount of increased attention than it did probably had it not coincided with Jobs' death. Moreover, his death probably received even greater attention due to the increased effort people have put in since to highlight him.
  - sarciszewski 11y ago
    Good point. To be fair, I also just hate Apple and wish they would go out of business and leave all their consumers with a tough choice: Windows, *BSD, or GNU/Linux. Serves 'em right for using an Apple product.
    - rockyleal 11y ago
      I share your contempt towards Jobs and everything his work and Apple represent, but man your arguments are weird lol.
    - goodJobWalrus 11y ago
      Wow, you seem really angry. How is me using a mac hurting you so much?
      - thatcat 11y ago
        He probably works at foxconn
ajeet_dhaliwal 11y ago
This passage was interesting to me: “He was freed of all the disciplining experiences of life,” Lawrence Lessig says. “His parents got him out of school early, which was great because it allowed him to become somebody who wasn’t the product of puberty in a public school. But it was bad in the sense that it gave him a confidence about his own judgment, which is dangerous.” I hated school and still hate work mostly due to the discipline aspect and the bureaucracy but I endured it. Before now I thought was bad but perhaps this discipline does make me stronger to deal with general bullshit that exists in our world, I deal with it fine for the most part. As a parent now I was thinking I should allow my son to do whatever he wants to avoid the nonsense I sometimes had to put up with but now I don't known if that hurts him too, it's difficult striking that balance.
- thatcat 11y ago
  "no child shall get ahead" Lol, an integration movement for intellectuals who goto college instead of highschool. Musn't let any intellectuals escape unmocked or unbullied, lest we end up with people questioning everything because then we'll have to bully them with our legal system and they might not be able to take that since they've never felt the full weight of american anti-intelectualism that you can only get from public schools.
- akashtndn 11y ago
  I am pretty sure that a lot of people must have took an interest in the passage. For anyone who has serious issues with the BS that the academic life has to offer, it offers a rather interesting take on the matter.
libeclipse 11y ago
For me, all that Aaron Swartz's story is for me, is a reminder if how broken and corrupted the judicial system is. I couldn't really care less about what he did when he was alive, just about the horrific things that others did along the way.
- Esau 11y ago
  Don't act like Swartz was an innocent lamb.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    He's not. You can accept Schwartz broke the law in downloading a bunch of case law that probably would have cost a maximum of $10,000, if that. You don't have to forgive Carmen Ortiz or Stephen Heyman for prosecutorial overreach, or the complete and utter misuse of public resources in prosecuting a crime the supposed victim, JSTOR, had resolved was no longer an issue.
    - oldmanjay 11y ago
      The real problem is accepting that he broke into MIT property and tampered with their network as if he had some sort of moral high ground that granted him a right to do so. Private property does not belong to the hacking class simply because they can get to it, and that aspect of the lionization of Aaron Swartz is distasteful at best. This was not just "Robin Hood" freeing research for the poor, it was a man violating the rights of others based on strong desires. Hardly noble. Hardly heroic. That he couldn't face the consequences of the actions once he realized that desire did not translate into a right just cuts down the last tree in that forest, to me. My heroes aren't cowardly.
      - chris_wot 11y ago
        Really? I'm curious here, who was injured? Seriously, tell me the exact person who was harmed by him hooking up his laptop into the MIT network.
chris_wot 11y ago
As much as I love what Aaron Schwartz stood for and did (hell, the more I read about him the more amazing he seems), he does seem to be a victim of his own hubris. For example, he concludes it would be easy to take over Australia. Possibly, but unlikely - given he was almost running a guerilla campaign against things like SOPA, surely he would see things aren't that easy? Or that the smaller party often punches above their weight, given he was indeed the smaller party? Strangely, none of this detracts from this extraordinary individual. Oh, but I wish he hadn't committed suicide! It's not like I don't understand it, I am a person at risk of this myself. I just wish he didn't leave his devastated loved ones behind like that.

128 points by akashtndn 11y ago

I know if I say 'conspiracy' I'd get down-voted. Oh well progressives, I know it's you.

The title needs a (2013), as this was published nearly three years ago. I didn't realize this until I saw the words "two years ago" in reference to his arrest.

roymathew 11y ago

why its 2013 on 2015 is needed

Aloha 11y ago

What a tortured soul.

mirimir 11y ago

> It is clear that he did not anticipate the astonishing severity of the legal response [to scraping JSTOR]. This is a key lesson. The transition from protected academic life to "The Real World" (as we used to style it) can be alarmingly abrupt. It's best to plan for the worst.

Joof 11y ago
We often call things 'The Real World' when we see how harsh and unethical the current reality often is, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for a more ideal one. We have to work within those real rules, but it would be a shame if those rules define us.
- mirimir 11y ago
  Yes, he deserved slack. MIT dropped the ball, for sure. However, my point is that it's very dangerous to count on slack. Consider the theft of that cannon from Fleming House. Sure, it was a prank. And Caltech didn't press charges. All in good fun. But interstate theft is a federal crime.
  - Joof 11y ago
    The whole thing seems politically motivated from an outside source. Precedents at MIT effectively encourage this behavior (the law isn't a moral absolute; you've broken the law at least once; I wouldn't be surprised if I've unknowingly committed a few felonies). If the expectation was otherwise he wouldn't have behavied as he did. His mistake was likely that he had become somebody important; something of a political figure. That's when people start about caring what you do (by definition). Remember that bastard that hiked up the price of life saving drugs who got slapped with an old felony? Nobody would have bothered to find it if he wasn't the most hated man in America.
rasz_pl 11y ago
protected academic life? MIT is known for going after its students and shooting them in the back without second thought (Star Simpson)
- mirimir 11y ago
  I rather agree with MIT about that. Wearing an LED vest at Boston airport was rather reckless, no?
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Saying privately "that was reckless, you could've been shot" is fine. Publicly accusing her of recklessness for "causing alarm" is not, as she put no one else in danger. MIT should just have kept quiet if they didn't want to support her.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    The more idiocy we expect and tolerate from public servants, the more we'll get. LEDs are not dangerous in any sense, and are no more likely to accompany dangerous materials than any other type of object one might encounter. Ms. Simpson's difficulties are better explained by a pathological doubling-down on the part of Boston-area LEOs to their previous ATHF fuck-up than by any rationally defensible risk assessment.
gaadd33 11y ago
Was Aaron an academic at MIT? I was under the impression he was unknown to the administration.
- mirimir 11y ago
  I don't know the specifics. But it's clear that he acted as if he were part of the MIT academic community.
  - dtornabene 11y ago
    No, its not at all clear that he acted that way.

obrero 11y ago

The US taxpayer and government funds public research, and the results are given as private profit to publishers. Swartz downloads papers en masse, something he may have had a murky right to do as an MIT fellow. This results in MIT, JStor, and the US government persecuting him. The New Yorker and Larissa Macfarquhar don't look for the darker side of all of this in the government persecutions and taxpayer money for public research privatized by corporations, but in Swartz himself. Conde Nast is just another big corporation (watch the nth generation heir of it in a piece more illuminating than this one - "Born Rich") coming to the defense of another big corporation in the slimy way someone like Larissa Macfarquhar specializes in, although its the New Yorker it's middle-brown, and in a slimy quote subtle unquote way. No articles on the darker side of other big publisher corporations for sure.

apsec112 11y ago
How does the article "come to the defense of another big corporation"? Which corporation is it coming to the defense of? JSTOR is owned by Ithaka Harbors, a non-profit organization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaka_Harbors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaka_Harbors), and MIT is a non-profit educational institution. In any case, the article didn't seem very sympathetic to them.
- krick 11y ago
  I wouldn't word it like that, but I think obrero definitely has a point. I mean, all this storytelling is pretty disgusting. Enjoy the read, look how pompous, how grandiloquent this is! Look at all this tragedy! And I mean not only the writer herself — the quote of the girlfriend, which serves as an epigraph is already too much. And it's not just that I'm not a big fan of newyorker's style (even though I'm not), the whole read is composed in a very specific way. It isn't biographical, not documentary, it's more of an essay, purpose of which is not to tell Aaron's story as such, but the writer's story, with it's own premise and morale. So what is this story all about? The suicide. And the whole Aaron's life is shown as a prelude to it. The suicide is the point, and the whole life is "an explanation" for it: story, which, we are given to understand, was likely to end with a suicide sooner or later. As the writer eloquently calls it — "the darker side". It's easy to convey that, because it's a social norm to view a suicide as a tragedy, regardless of circumstances. But let us be cynical just for a minute and look at what happened: some guy was fighting for his ideals; the party he was fighting against was something way bigger than him, a mere mortal; he lost; he died. Suicide never was a big deal, apparently not for Aaron, anyway. What was a big deal for him: his war for the social justice. And, let's face it, there're plenty of other guys who end their lives with suicide, newyorker doesn't write about them. So, as a matter of fact, the suicide isn't a big deal for a newyorker as well, even though MacFarquhar won't admit it, maybe even to herself. Yet it's made to look as if it is precisely what is the big deal and it's socially acceptable to display it that way. What the story really was about — the fight, and those on the other side of it — that we won't be thinking of, we won't discuss it, we won't remember it. Instead, it will be all about "a darker side" and a tragedy. Regardless of whether what Aaron did or was doing was right or wrong, regardless of if he was a hero or just a fool — I think it's a pity. To take the most insignificant part of the story, and to make it The Story, because it's so easy to do that.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

johnchristopher 11y ago
I don't mean to outbid you in the horror but some who commit suicide also decide to take their closest parents with them because they believe the pain of the situation affects them and they want to free them from that.
- seunosewa 11y ago
  I guess you are right but Aaron didn't do that. What we already knew about him (his suicide) was pretty dark and nothing in this article is darker than that. The title suggested that it would be a hit piece like Jobs biography, but thankfully, it wasn't. I was afraid that we would learn that he abused his girlfriend, or something like that.

petke 11y ago

I don't think this obsession with Aaron and his death is any good. It feels like a morbid soap opera. He is more talked about in death than in life. I think its better to focus on the living. There is plenty of interesting tech entrepreneurs and activists out there.

sarciszewski 11y ago
Somewhat agreed. I wish technologists would focus less on Aaron and his death. I wish the Department of Justice would focus more on Aaron and his death. I also wish the CFAA would die in a fire along with its authors, but that's not likely to happen. :(
- newjersey 11y ago
  Can we try to rally for discarding cfaa? Who benefits from it?
  - fthssht 11y ago
    There ought to be a check against a DA pursuing a vastly unpopular prosecution or pursuing a case with highly disproportionate threats. The incentives are messed up. A DA spends public money going after a case that might be good for their career but is totally out of line with what the public wants. I'm sure many people would be happy to see him face some consequences for what he did to JSTOR but I bet they would be overwhelmingly opposed to threats of the magnitude he faced. The problems aren't limited to the CFAA many federal laws are very broad and anyone can become a target. The situation is almost as if we have bills of attainder. If your name appears in the newspaper a prosecutor can find something to pin on you and make threats that force a settlement and or cost you a fortune in legal fees.
mercer 11y ago
Usually I'd agree, but this article did a good job focusing on stuff that I found valuable, because Aaron wasn't just an activist to me, but also a person with whom I identified, strongly at times. The little bits of new information, but mostly just the reminder of him and his life, which prompt me to read his writings again, and they often help me get out of some funk I might be in and pursue things I find worth pursuing. His suicide is not the main point of the article for me. As such, this article is, for me, probably the most useful link on HN today, if not the week.

nostrademons 11y ago

I'm reminded of this Ribbonfarm essay whenever news about Aaron comes up: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/09/17/how-to-be-a-precious-snowflake/ http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/09/17/how-to-be-a-precious-sn... I think Aaron Swartz's life & death continues to fascinate us because many of us see something in him that we wish we could protect in ourselves. He's the ur-snowflake to all of us clods. It would be nice to live in a world of free access to information, universal compassion, freedom from power hierarchies, and everything that he stood for. It's just not very practical, when content creators need to eat and people have differing desires that are often at odds and reality needs to choose between multiple competing desires.

JanneVee 11y ago
< It would be nice to live in a world of free access to information, universal compassion, freedom from power hierarchies, and everything that he stood for. It's just not very practical, when content creators need to eat and people have differing desires that are often at odds and reality needs to choose between multiple competing desires. What? The activism was directed at giving free access to that should be free! The research that is being hoarded behind paywalls by gatekeepers who didn't create it and don't pay the ones who created it. The creators of the text are people paid by us through our taxes and other contributions and then locked away so only a select few can see it. This knowledge locked away that could save lives, be new areas of business or just simply improve the human condition. And here you are and talking about this like he was trying to distribute movies for free.
georgiev 11y ago
Thanks for sharing the ribbonfarm blog. I found the essay on clods and snowflakes quite interesting.

known 11y ago

Victim of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

kumarski 11y ago

Didn't know he had ulcerative colitis. For anyone else suffering, there's been new studies on fodmap free diets which have been reportedly effective. http://bit.ly/fodmapfree http://bit.ly/fodmapfree

junto 11y ago
I have UC. I'm lucky that I have access to medication that hold it in check. Thank you for the link. I'd love to get to the point where I no longer need to take this medication on a daily basis.
- kumarski 11y ago
  I used to take lialda. I've had it for 12 years. I've spent the last 2 years learning everything I can about web, building 2 saas ventures, and now trying to attack this problem: http://trials.humandataproject.org http://trials.humandataproject.org I'd love to chat with you and learn more about what you've tried. Keep in mind Tibetans have a 80% incidence rate of IBD. Feel free to reach out to me if you think I can be a resource.
leemac 11y ago
That was surprising to me as well. Having had it since I was 4-5 years old (28 now), it did alter my schooling/friendships. I suppose depression did set in for a while. Some of the medicine's would cause my face to swell up which made me a target for name calling (Prednisone). College was different though with most people being much more mature. My diet has changed and I'm on a light dose of medication that's kept it at bay for almost 10 years. My last flare-up in 2008 was a killer because I also had the flu at the time, double whammy!

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

sarciszewski 11y ago

Fuck Steve Jobs' legacy and every member of the fruitarian hipster consumer culture that continues to use Apple products. Among other reasons, Steve Jobs' death overshadowed the loss of Dennis Ritchie.

akashtndn 11y ago
One was a billionaire business honcho who created one of the most identifiable brands in the world. Another was one of the greatest Computer Scientists who ever lived. As great as Ritchie was, he never stood a chance. There are a number of relevant reasons to bash Jobs but to say that he overshadowed Ritchie's death is one of the more stupid ones. Dennis Ritchie was mourned by those who respected and adored him regardless. His death would have only received a minuscule amount of increased attention than it did probably had it not coincided with Jobs' death. Moreover, his death probably received even greater attention due to the increased effort people have put in since to highlight him.
- sarciszewski 11y ago
  Good point. To be fair, I also just hate Apple and wish they would go out of business and leave all their consumers with a tough choice: Windows, *BSD, or GNU/Linux. Serves 'em right for using an Apple product.
  - rockyleal 11y ago
    I share your contempt towards Jobs and everything his work and Apple represent, but man your arguments are weird lol.
  - goodJobWalrus 11y ago
    Wow, you seem really angry. How is me using a mac hurting you so much?
    - thatcat 11y ago
      He probably works at foxconn

ajeet_dhaliwal 11y ago

This passage was interesting to me: “He was freed of all the disciplining experiences of life,” Lawrence Lessig says. “His parents got him out of school early, which was great because it allowed him to become somebody who wasn’t the product of puberty in a public school. But it was bad in the sense that it gave him a confidence about his own judgment, which is dangerous.” I hated school and still hate work mostly due to the discipline aspect and the bureaucracy but I endured it. Before now I thought was bad but perhaps this discipline does make me stronger to deal with general bullshit that exists in our world, I deal with it fine for the most part. As a parent now I was thinking I should allow my son to do whatever he wants to avoid the nonsense I sometimes had to put up with but now I don't known if that hurts him too, it's difficult striking that balance.

thatcat 11y ago
"no child shall get ahead" Lol, an integration movement for intellectuals who goto college instead of highschool. Musn't let any intellectuals escape unmocked or unbullied, lest we end up with people questioning everything because then we'll have to bully them with our legal system and they might not be able to take that since they've never felt the full weight of american anti-intelectualism that you can only get from public schools.
akashtndn 11y ago
I am pretty sure that a lot of people must have took an interest in the passage. For anyone who has serious issues with the BS that the academic life has to offer, it offers a rather interesting take on the matter.

libeclipse 11y ago

For me, all that Aaron Swartz's story is for me, is a reminder if how broken and corrupted the judicial system is. I couldn't really care less about what he did when he was alive, just about the horrific things that others did along the way.

Esau 11y ago
Don't act like Swartz was an innocent lamb.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  He's not. You can accept Schwartz broke the law in downloading a bunch of case law that probably would have cost a maximum of $10,000, if that. You don't have to forgive Carmen Ortiz or Stephen Heyman for prosecutorial overreach, or the complete and utter misuse of public resources in prosecuting a crime the supposed victim, JSTOR, had resolved was no longer an issue.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    The real problem is accepting that he broke into MIT property and tampered with their network as if he had some sort of moral high ground that granted him a right to do so. Private property does not belong to the hacking class simply because they can get to it, and that aspect of the lionization of Aaron Swartz is distasteful at best. This was not just "Robin Hood" freeing research for the poor, it was a man violating the rights of others based on strong desires. Hardly noble. Hardly heroic. That he couldn't face the consequences of the actions once he realized that desire did not translate into a right just cuts down the last tree in that forest, to me. My heroes aren't cowardly.
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      Really? I'm curious here, who was injured? Seriously, tell me the exact person who was harmed by him hooking up his laptop into the MIT network.

chris_wot 11y ago

As much as I love what Aaron Schwartz stood for and did (hell, the more I read about him the more amazing he seems), he does seem to be a victim of his own hubris. For example, he concludes it would be easy to take over Australia. Possibly, but unlikely - given he was almost running a guerilla campaign against things like SOPA, surely he would see things aren't that easy? Or that the smaller party often punches above their weight, given he was indeed the smaller party? Strangely, none of this detracts from this extraordinary individual. Oh, but I wish he hadn't committed suicide! It's not like I don't understand it, I am a person at risk of this myself. I just wish he didn't leave his devastated loved ones behind like that.