EDIT: updated as tptacek appears to have deleted all his contributions to this thread. Agreed (with tptacek's deleted comment that people should lay off Weissm

EDIT: updated as tptacek appears to have deleted all his contributions to this thread. Agreed (with tptacek's deleted comment that people should lay off Weissman). Imagine if we all entered discussions assuming the other party was in an extremely fragile state. No skepticism, speculation, conjecture, kid gloves, boring. Anyone who's cultivated an online persona has dealt with a variety of debating opponents. I can't imagine Aaron would have been moved either way because one HN commentator questioned the rightness of his fundraising effort. The pitchforking of Weissman by anyone angered by the prosecutorial pitchforking of Swartz is rather absurd. However what I found more interesting in that thread [0] was additional examples of tptacek's strident establishment stance and how it really irks some HN commentators. I'd already gathered from his vocal opposition to Wikileaks, and lukewarm opposition to SOPA et al that he's not a CCC-type hacker (a more generous characterization would be that he refuses to drink hacker kool-aid). I think part of that irked me in an irrational way, because really, if you're running a security consultancy in the US then adopting any philosophical position similar to Swartz or Assange would be a complete commercial non-starter.[1] Perhaps some here expect that any notable hackers should all be Swartzs', sharing a similar social and political outlook, which is a little unrealistic to say the least. [0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484 [1] I'm also not implying you hold contrary public and private positions. Your advocacy of a more government / corporate friendly position goes well beyond devil's advocacy.