

Aaron Swartz - hoag
http://www.economist.com/news/obituary/21569674-aaron-swartz-computer-programmer-and-activist-committed-suicide-january-11th-aged-26-aaron?frsc=dg%7Ca

======
neumann_alfred
_If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to
break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and
afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break
it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave
impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but
there will be no special hurry._ \-- Ernest Hemingway

:(

~~~
dmix
Some of the great minds in history have accepted this fact and viewed death as
a very real possibility by adopting views deemed radical by society.

But they saw a strong enough morality in what they were doing to perceiver.

This dates as far back in human history lore such as in the bible. And
probably well before that.

Human societies always seems to be well structured to suppress radical
thought. I'm curious if the internet is changing that.

~~~
thelonius_monk
A very radical thought in our context would be suggesting that Aaron Swartz is
not actually dead, but instead staged his suicide. I realize for a man who
_is_ probably dead, that is a _very_ terrible thought to think. But given the
fact that the last words on Aaron's last blog post are "STAGED SUICIDE" don't
we owe it to somebody like Aaron to think outside the box?

Other stupid points include: 0\. Footer "I'm not dead yet!" on
<http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/continuity> not updated as per instructions 1\.
Batman last blog post also seems out of place in anonymous warhead video
(tribute by anon to Swartz?) 2\. Supreme court justices always a point of
fascination for Swartz ("warhead names"). (tribute?) 3\. Aarons ArkAngel name
of poster of the youtube anonymous warhead video (tribute?) 4\. Friend says
discussed w/ swartz what public reaction to his suicide might be (bizarre!) at
first eulogy 5\. Weird green times font on black bg in ussc.gov hack uniquely
reminiscent of style of Swartz's blog and possibly due to his near
sightedness. 6\. "A 24 Puzzle" blog post by Aaron very closely describes the
situation he is in now having to send out sensitive documents to reliable
sites while under pressure (but way back in March 4, 2009) 7\. Takes about 6
months to a year to prepare and execute the hack of ussc.gov and related
sites, why did preparation coincide with suicide? (random chance?) 8\. Anon
message on ussc.gov has very similar cadences to swartz's extremely unique
writing style "succinct".

So I took the liberty while procrastinating of running stylometric software:
[http://www.philocomp.net/?pageref=humanities&page=signat...](http://www.philocomp.net/?pageref=humanities&page=signature)
on a downloaded corpora of Aaron Swartz's and Paul Graham's Blog posts and the
ussc.gov anon message:
[https://mega.co.nz/#!9gc13bhK!DtetrAmSyTrEChK7vViMNnBbS-
doTH...](https://mega.co.nz/#!9gc13bhK!DtetrAmSyTrEChK7vViMNnBbS-
doTHWPywI24tA64Vc) As you can see it easily distinguishes between randomly
chosen books by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and it also tells who wrote
the 54th federalist paper (Madison not Hamilton):
[http://imageshack.us/a/img838/927/austenvsdickensfederali.pn...](http://imageshack.us/a/img838/927/austenvsdickensfederali.png)

The results show that Aaron Swartz is more likely to have written the ussc.gov
message than Paul Graham:
[http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/843/swartzvsgrahamresults...](http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/843/swartzvsgrahamresults.png)

I don't have time to review how the statistics work or how "keywords work". So
it is _very_ likely I'm doing this all wrong. Here is the seminal paper by
Mosteller and Wallace on their identification of the author of the federalist
papers (Ironically from JSTOR):
[http://www.scribd.com/doc/122904915/INFERENCE-IN-AN-
AUTHORSH...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/122904915/INFERENCE-IN-AN-AUTHORSHIP-
PROBLEM)

Presumably now you need to download corpora online from other authors like
Kevin Poulsen and see if Aaron is always a likelier candidate than all of
them, but I don't have anymore time right now and I'm only doing this half
heartedly. Maybe someone else who's bored can try it?

~~~
jacquesm
Could you please stop this?

You do realize he was found dead by his uncle?

Are you seriously suggesting his uncle and the NYC medical examiner are part
of some conspiracy?

There is enough madness in this world to intentionally add to it.

------
genwin
Please sign the petition to oust Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Heymann at
[https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-
us-...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-attorney-
steve-heymann/RJKSY2nb). It needs 14K more signatures by Feb. 11, so share it.

Regardless what you may think of the petition's wording, no one should be
allowed to continue to do what's obviously wrong with impunity. Ortiz
(Heymann's boss) has indicated that she has no intention of stopping extorting
plea bargains from defendants with threats of imprisonment and fines grossly
disproportionate to the actual crime.

~~~
dominotw
Do you know what happened to the petition signed to oust Ortiz . Has the
whitehouse responded to that?

~~~
hkmurakami
Demand Progress posted this [1] and sent it out to all its subscribers today,
to urge the government to stop stonewalling on the Ortiz issue.

[1]
[http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/wh_ortiz/?akid=1973.22538...](http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/wh_ortiz/?akid=1973.2253878.Q49nLK&rd=1&t=2)

~~~
dominotw
A petition for the petition.

------
tyang
Call your Congressperson and urge them to pass Aaron's Law.

Aaron’s Law is in the process of being introduced and debated by members of
Congress.

The bill would fix the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) to prevent the type
of prosecutorial abuse that led to the death of Aaron Swartz.

Aaron’s Law is being introduced by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren and is only two
pages long.

You can view a draft here: <http://1.usa.gov/13DlJj4>

Call your Congressperson and tell him or her to support Aaron’s Law now. Then
spread the word.

Here's one easy way to call:

<http://phonebank.org/aaronslaw>

Note: My good friend from the '08 Obama campaign started this site.

~~~
monochromatic
Actually, "Aaron's Law" would not have materially changed the prosecution in
this case.

Yet again, a law named after a person is a hastily constructed, poorly
thought-out, bad idea. Has there ever been a counterexample to that rule?

~~~
kragen
Taren endorsed Aaron's Law in her eulogy, or at least in the transcript I
read. I assume she'd read it first.

~~~
lizzard
In SF at the memorial she mentioned it as a good try but not good enough.

~~~
kragen
Aha, thanks for the update. The one at the Internet Archive? I watched her
speech last night (and her tearjerking poetry reading at the end) but I don't
remember anything about that.

------
erik757
Probably like a lot of people, I'm addicted to reading these articles now. I
had a lot of respect for Aaron when he was still here, and even though he's
gone now, it's encouraging that his actions continue to inspire so many people
to make change for the better. The Economist did a really good job on this.

And I have to imagine Aaron would have laughed too when he heard them call
Perl an "elegant langauge".

~~~
warmwaffles
I, too, chuckled at this.

------
hkmurakami
I read a bunch of Aaron Swartz obituary articles and blog posts, both
professional and amateur, yet this is the first time I've encountered the
actual name of the script he ran to download the JSTOR documents:
keepgrabbing.py

~~~
warmwaffles
Eh, it's details. Something that really wasn't important or big. But, I do
agree with you. It did stand out.

~~~
hkmurakami
Agreed. But since I wasn't expecting anything new in terms of information from
a standard news outlet, I was pleasantly surprised.

~~~
davidw
The Economist is anything but a "standard" or ordinary news outlet.

------
hoag
Leave it to the economist to write the best obituary. RIP.

~~~
kragen
Taren's made me cry, and Carl Malamud's fired me up. By comparison this one is
blah.

------
tehwalrus
"theft was theft, said the prosecution."

No, they said "stealing is stealing" - they didn't charge him with theft
because he didn't take anything physical.

duplicating data != depriving someone of their property.

EDIT: sorry, this sounds harsh. apart from this one sentence, the article is
great.

------
nikete
"using a small, elegant language called perl" - The Economist.

------
_dark_matter_
Is anyone else equally excited to see what's on his hard drive? Is that
already available?

~~~
gggggggg
I read the link and came here also to ask this question. I cant find it on
google anywhere where anyone has any info about this.

------
NIL8
Curious... Anyone have a link to the JSTOR data or PACER system that Aaron
uploaded to the Web?

