
James Dolan, co-creator of SecureDrop, has died - uptown
https://freedom.press/news/tribute-james-dolan-co-creator-securedrop-who-has-tragically-passed-away-age-36/
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metafour
Does anyone know if James had taken a short hiatus between jobs to travel by
motorcycle for a while in Southern California? I ran it someone one day at The
Rock Store that had worked with Aaron Swartz and a friend and I had a great
conversation with him and I’m now wondering whether it was James.

~~~
conorsch
Yes, indeed he did! After leaving FPF, he unplugged for a while, taking a road
trip on his bike. He spent a lot of time working on that bike.

The road trip was a great excuse to unwind after a lot of stressful security
work. He ended up rejoining the industry—good luck stopping that guy from
anything—and continued for many years helping other projects.

So, yes, it does sound like you were fortunate enough to cross paths with a
terribly interesting individual. Cheers, in his honor.

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stuffedBelly
Just when I clicked [https://securedrop.org/](https://securedrop.org/), my
company's corporate firewall blocked it. I can't start to imagine how much
adversity the world has imposed onto these brave warriors.

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DoreenMichele
Very nice tribute.

There was another piece* posted to HN today about how psychologically
traumatic and life altering it can be to kill someone _accidentally_ under
circumstances where you couldn't have predicted it nor prevented it. Veterans
are often deeply scarred by their wartime experiences and may not share them
in order to protect other people from the horrors of war.

My father fought in both WW2 and Vietnam. He died in his late 80s. Only after
his death did it occur to me that he told humorous stories about Vietnam, but
never spoke of WW2. I infer that if Vietnam was joke worthy in his eyes, WW2
was _unspeakable._

I wish we had a better track record for helping veterans with the mental
health issues that so often grow out of serving their country.

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16105745](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16105745)

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varisa
Is there any more information about this? I can't even find an article which
says where he lived.

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zymhan
Good lord this is chilling. It makes me terribly sad to think about the mental
torture some people go through that leads them to such an act.

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zouhair
Now we have two suicides of people working in this facet of human right
activism. At what number should we start thinking about foul play? There are
ways to push people to such extreme acts.

~~~
dang
> _foul play_

I'm sure you didn't mean it that way, but this is bottom of the barrel stuff:
off topic, disrespectful, and way below the quality line. Please don't bring
it in here.

~~~
t3soro
dang, nobody understands what you are talking about.

~~~
DanBC
I understood perfectly what he's talking about, and I agree with him.

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beebmam
I'm really not familiar with SecureDrop or James Dolan's activism. Does anyone
familiar with him want to summarize for me/us?

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mynameisvlad
The article itself is a good summary of his work on SecureDrop.

~~~
beebmam
Okay, I thought there was something more that I didn't know about! Thank you

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walterbell
In Memorian:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Programmers_who_commi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Programmers_who_committed_suicide)

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jaydestro
really horrible, sorry to hear. awful loss for us all.

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ShabbosGoy
It’s terrible that he served our country and was thrown away. He is a true
American and patriot.

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maxcan
Can any of the HN Admins set the title bar to black? IIRC, thats the custom
for a "death in the family".

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rsre
First Aaron Swartz, now James Dolan. Sad to see good people like them leave
us. Hope they inspire some other wonderful people to follow their steps.

EDIT: Well, obviously not _all_ their steps.

~~~
oliv__
Well... maybe not _all_ the steps.

~~~
cantrip
Anything can be funny given the right person saying it at the appropriate time
in the right context

Seeing a suicide joke from a person I don't know in the Hacker News thread
about the death an individual I respect an hour after it's been released is
not my idea of funny.

~~~
hkmurakami
I see it as a word of caution for the bright eyed. Fighting for your ideals
wears on you, and some are more resilient to its demands than others.

~~~
davrosthedalek
I wonder if the personal trait to see problems and act is because the problems
seem bigger or because the "activation threshold" of that person is lower. If
the former, I could see that the same trait also makes it more likely that the
problems feel overwhelming.

Ignorance is bliss.

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myaso
Heroes die young.

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chrisseldo
Why is the date of the post "Tomorrow"?

~~~
andrewstuart2
Probably a buggy publishing system that rounds date/time, or something
similar. It says "Today" for me.

Or a major conspiracy. My money's with Occam's razor, though.

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neosavvy
I had to research a bit as I recall an identical story about JStor and a
computer programmer from a few years ago.

[http://business.time.com/2013/01/14/mit-orders-review-of-
aar...](http://business.time.com/2013/01/14/mit-orders-review-of-aaron-swartz-
suicide-as-soul-searching-begins/)

Seems incredibly similar to this situation and on both accounts this is
terribly sad to see.

~~~
rcr
Yes, Aaron Swartz is mentioned 6 times in the article above.

~~~
neosavvy
Yeah I guess I just couldn't believe what I was reading that two people so
closely related to each other could have the same outcome. It's just
staggering news and quite hard to comprehend.

