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This is a very sad occurence but I'd wish an article to read more as facts than as a sob story

foldr 11y ago
Aaron Swartz commits suicide after being prosecuted for a crime that he did commit, and he's a martyr. A working class latino guy in San Francisco gets shot by the police because some white dudes didn't like the look of him, and it's basically his fault. Hacker news values.
- ousta 11y ago
  yes. he obviously got killed because some white dude didnt like the look of him. the gun he was pointing at the cops is not related to his death.
  - foldr 11y ago
    He got killed largely because some white dude called 911 for no good reason. (I mean, we're talking about someone who's so clueless about what a city is that he thinks that anyone who's brown is likely to be "foreign".) We have no evidence that Nieto pointed the taser at the cops who shot him.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - zahmahkibo 11y ago
    1. Please prove he pointed a gun at them. 2. People literally called the cops TO his location in the first place because he was sitting on a park bench eating. What is wrong with this picture? 3. He was shot 40 times. What is wrong with this picture? 4. The cop immediately called his union rep before an ambulance. What is wrong with this picture?
    - ousta 11y ago
      You are right they must be lying, it seems more likely that some random cops heard on radio that a guy was sitting on a bench eating and they just thought "let's go kill some guy eating in a park today".
      - zahmahkibo 11y ago
        LMAO what a fucking strawman. At least try to not be disingenuous from the get go
- simon_ 11y ago
  One might as well say: "20K+ fatalities on the Boko Haram insurgency, and counting, but you're up in arms about one maybe-murder in the most privileged city in the world." Not every community needs to be about every thing.
  - lbebber 11y ago
    If this murder was ignored by HN then fine, but the point is that the community is commenting about this case and, by doing that, showing its values.
- cgriswald 11y ago
  "Hacker News" is not made up of a single homogenous group of people who all think the same things. That should be obvious by the commentary in this post. There is much debate and discussion. But even if the majority of posters find Swartz to be a martyr and Nieto to be "basically [at] fault", it does not necessarily mean the same groups of individuals feel both these ways, much less that racism is the reason, as you imply. You've boiled two cases down to a single factor: race. You've ignored the fact that Swartz was charged with non-violent crimes and that some of the charges were disputed and seen as prosecutorial overreach. Even the B&E charges may have been nonsense, because they were linked to an attempted felony. And you ignore the fact that Swartz was doing what he thought was right. You've also heavily mischaracterized the Nieto case. 911 was called because a man was seen pointing a taser at people and a dog. Whether the actual caller saw the weapon is irrelevant. The fact of it is not in dispute. The only disputed fact is whether Nieto pointed the taser at police. Given his previous behavior, and the fact that his weapon was found on the ground (i.e., not holstered), it seems at least plausible that he pointed at the police, or at the least, that he was drawing it or had drawn it. So it seems like, yes, it was largely in his control whether police would show up and how they would respond to him.
  - foldr 11y ago
    The point that the hacker news community is not homogenous is too obvious to be worth making. It doesn't imply that it's not possible to make generalizations about how it reacts to certain events. Your second paragraph illustrates my point. In the case of Nieto, you're coming up with excuses for the police; in the case of Swartz, you're coming up with excuses for Swartz. There is no objective reason for excusing the authorities in the one case and the victim in the other. We know for sure that Swartz did a bunch of stupid things which had the entirely predictable consequence that he got in trouble with the law. Nieto may also have acted stupidly in this instance -- we don't know for sure whether he did or to what extent. But in the case of Swartz, we make excuses, whereas in the case of Nieto, we say "conceivably there's something he might have done differently to avoid being shot, therefore it's his fault he was shot". Apply the same logic to the Swartz case and you'd have to say that he also deserved what he got.
    - 11y ago

foldr 11y ago

Aaron Swartz commits suicide after being prosecuted for a crime that he did commit, and he's a martyr. A working class latino guy in San Francisco gets shot by the police because some white dudes didn't like the look of him, and it's basically his fault. Hacker news values.

ousta 11y ago
yes. he obviously got killed because some white dude didnt like the look of him. the gun he was pointing at the cops is not related to his death.
- foldr 11y ago
  He got killed largely because some white dude called 911 for no good reason. (I mean, we're talking about someone who's so clueless about what a city is that he thinks that anyone who's brown is likely to be "foreign".) We have no evidence that Nieto pointed the taser at the cops who shot him.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- zahmahkibo 11y ago
  1. Please prove he pointed a gun at them. 2. People literally called the cops TO his location in the first place because he was sitting on a park bench eating. What is wrong with this picture? 3. He was shot 40 times. What is wrong with this picture? 4. The cop immediately called his union rep before an ambulance. What is wrong with this picture?
  - ousta 11y ago
    You are right they must be lying, it seems more likely that some random cops heard on radio that a guy was sitting on a bench eating and they just thought "let's go kill some guy eating in a park today".
    - zahmahkibo 11y ago
      LMAO what a fucking strawman. At least try to not be disingenuous from the get go
simon_ 11y ago
One might as well say: "20K+ fatalities on the Boko Haram insurgency, and counting, but you're up in arms about one maybe-murder in the most privileged city in the world." Not every community needs to be about every thing.
- lbebber 11y ago
  If this murder was ignored by HN then fine, but the point is that the community is commenting about this case and, by doing that, showing its values.
cgriswald 11y ago
"Hacker News" is not made up of a single homogenous group of people who all think the same things. That should be obvious by the commentary in this post. There is much debate and discussion. But even if the majority of posters find Swartz to be a martyr and Nieto to be "basically [at] fault", it does not necessarily mean the same groups of individuals feel both these ways, much less that racism is the reason, as you imply. You've boiled two cases down to a single factor: race. You've ignored the fact that Swartz was charged with non-violent crimes and that some of the charges were disputed and seen as prosecutorial overreach. Even the B&E charges may have been nonsense, because they were linked to an attempted felony. And you ignore the fact that Swartz was doing what he thought was right. You've also heavily mischaracterized the Nieto case. 911 was called because a man was seen pointing a taser at people and a dog. Whether the actual caller saw the weapon is irrelevant. The fact of it is not in dispute. The only disputed fact is whether Nieto pointed the taser at police. Given his previous behavior, and the fact that his weapon was found on the ground (i.e., not holstered), it seems at least plausible that he pointed at the police, or at the least, that he was drawing it or had drawn it. So it seems like, yes, it was largely in his control whether police would show up and how they would respond to him.
- foldr 11y ago
  The point that the hacker news community is not homogenous is too obvious to be worth making. It doesn't imply that it's not possible to make generalizations about how it reacts to certain events. Your second paragraph illustrates my point. In the case of Nieto, you're coming up with excuses for the police; in the case of Swartz, you're coming up with excuses for Swartz. There is no objective reason for excusing the authorities in the one case and the victim in the other. We know for sure that Swartz did a bunch of stupid things which had the entirely predictable consequence that he got in trouble with the law. Nieto may also have acted stupidly in this instance -- we don't know for sure whether he did or to what extent. But in the case of Swartz, we make excuses, whereas in the case of Nieto, we say "conceivably there's something he might have done differently to avoid being shot, therefore it's his fault he was shot". Apply the same logic to the Swartz case and you'd have to say that he also deserved what he got.
  - 11y ago