
Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline - 0xferruccio
Growing up Aaron Swartz&#x27;s blog post series Raw Nerve was one of the most influential readings for me, the website that hosted them is now down:
http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aaronsw.com&#x2F;weblog&#x2F;rawnerve<p>Here is the archived version of it: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;8uu5x or http:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.fo&#x2F;8uu5x
======
joshuakelly
Knowing that this would happen eventually, I created an archival copy on
GitHub soon after his death:
[https://github.com/jdjkelly/www.aaronsw.com](https://github.com/jdjkelly/www.aaronsw.com)

I can hardly believe this was six years ago.

~~~
qwerty456127
Cool. Nevertheless I feel like this should be upgraded to the 100%-offline-
readable level (i.e. at least qblog.aaronsw.com should be mirrored too, so
should be Twitter and Pinboard accounts preferably), converted to the epub
format and distributed among commercial (for free or for charity), free and
pirate ebook libraries. I'm actually surprised nobody has done this yet.

~~~
corbold
I made an epub out of his blog 2 years ago.

It is not sorted or edited in any way though.

[https://github.com/C0rby/aaronsw-
weblogToEpub](https://github.com/C0rby/aaronsw-weblogToEpub)

~~~
defn
Thanks for this!

------
soneca
His post _" I hate the news"_(0) was(is) very influential for me personally.

It was seminal in what become a rather significant change in my habits and
view of the world. I am now very conscious that news are entertainment, purely
and simply. With the goods and bads of any other entertainment form.

From time to time, while explaining my position to others (often seen as kind
of radical), I refer this post. I hope it continues to be available.

[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews)

~~~
the_clarence
What is a good source of information? By that I mean:

\- not about daily information (which are usually as fast as possible and
don’t take the time to really understand the situation)

\- not biased

\- not about juicy news, but world topics that are ~objectively important

I feel like there should be a subreddit for that.

~~~
jwr
Every source of information will be biased, and you have to take that into
account by being critical.

I found that the best source for me is The Economist: once per week, written
by smart people, with good summaries of anything that is important. Delivered
digitally (with an excellent audio version, too).

It is "biased" in the sense that the editors hold a set of opinions and you
have to be aware of it. I do not agree with all of their opinions, but I am
aware of them. The news useful even if you disagree with their interpretation
or recommendations.

Surprisingly, it is the _only_ intelligent and non-sensational news source
that I have found.

~~~
f055
I went from The Economist to Foreign Affairs few years ago when Eco became
unbearably filled with an agenda. You might want to check FA out.

~~~
sixo
Can you describe their agenda, or point to a description of it?

It's conspicuously centrist and pro-global-capitalism (see: articles
essentially saying "human lives on earth has definitely gotten better under
capitalism" (and not explicitly saying "world-average QoL is the correct
metric by which to measure progress", nor addressing counterfactual
hypotheses), + anti-trump + pretty skeptical of brexit. These are sort of
acceptable, manageable biases to my eye: is there more I'm missing?

~~~
dolessdrugs
Everyone has a different level of "acceptable, manageable biases"

------
bensw
I’ll try to figure this out today

~~~
bensw
It seems to be back up, but I didn't do anything. I'm still going to find out
what happened and make sure it doesn't happen again.

Thanks for posting this. I probably wouldn't have noticed until January.

Edit: it turned out to be a problem with the server. Thanks again for the
heads up and for everyone’s kind words.

~~~
hkmurakami
When Aaron died, I cried. First and only time I’ve cried for anyone’s passing.

The world lost a great one that day. Thanks for helping us remember him.

------
StavrosK
Here you go, an IPFS copy:

[https://ipfs.eternum.io/ipfs/QmbABUy4jr8432sfAV97Vicyzu9kmpt...](https://ipfs.eternum.io/ipfs/QmbABUy4jr8432sfAV97Vicyzu9kmptJ5pDGyLkefP1FXq/)

Now it's permanent (please pin the hash to help).

------
jacquesm
Thanks for posting this, I have passed a message to a friend of Aaron's dad.

~~~
0xferruccio
Awesome :) Hope this gets solved soon as I think it's important to keep
Aaron's thoughts alive

~~~
jacquesm
Np, he would have noticed this thread sooner or later anyway, maybe this makes
it happen a bit sooner.

------
mindcrash
Correction: His weblog is (back) online.

And I think his friends and family take great care in making sure his legacy
stays online and make sure everyone still alive can keep reading some of the
most provocative posts from one of the brightest minds of our generation
published on the internet.

~~~
abhiminator
Thanks for the update, I was about to post this myself. Glad to see it's back
online!

------
dpau
I’m interested to know how others are preserving websites. Due to incomplete
snapshots, broken links and spam companies taking over expired domains, it’s
often difficult to browse or get a complete image of a website using the
Wayback machine. So lately I’ve been using tools like Wayback Machine
Downloader to grab as much as I can, then fix up the archive (using relative
links, removing unnecessary Javascript, etc.) and finally republish everything
as a Github repo using gh-pages. There must be a better way?

~~~
hopler
Making a better archiving tool would be a great open source project.

Wayback machine's archiver appears to be open source:
[https://github.com/internetarchive/wayback](https://github.com/internetarchive/wayback)

------
perfmode
aaronsw.com ought to be declared a heritage site.

He is one of a kind.

------
toomuchtodo
Wayback:
[https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/...](https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rawnerve)

------
sli
As of 11:18AM EST I can access everything just fine. Seems to either be back
or it's an isolated problem.

------
tlrobinson
I noticed a Bitcoin address was added to his website, it looks like in 2016
[1]. It would be nice to know who controls it and what it's for.

1\.
[https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1AaronhQN1sfV24364mne...](https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1AaronhQN1sfV24364mneNmVYvyzrZrEPh)

~~~
ViViDboarder
Are those custom? Or is it a total coincidence it starts with 1Aaron?

~~~
tlrobinson
[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Vanitygen](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Vanitygen)

------
burtonator
I new Aaron well but didn't interact with him as much as I would like. I think
it's one of those things where you expect that there's always going to be time
...

I think I'm going to go back and read some of his blog posts since I haven't
read most of them.

Should bring back some good memories.

------
nikisweeting
I have several of his pages and posts saved in my personal Bookmark Archiver
archive as well:

[https://archive.sweeting.me/archive/1528683804/aaronsw.com/i...](https://archive.sweeting.me/archive/1528683804/aaronsw.com/index.html)

Including his list of saved articles on Pinboard:

[https://archive.sweeting.me/archive/1528683819/pinboard.in/u...](https://archive.sweeting.me/archive/1528683819/pinboard.in/u%3Aaaronsw.html)

------
arcticwombat
"Origin DNS Error" on the archive link.

~~~
ignoranceprior
Let me guess, you're using Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1)?

Archive.is blocks Cloudflare DNS. You should switch to another DNS server if
you want to use it.

~~~
oatmealsnap
Why?

~~~
buren
> [...] Nameservers responsible for archive.is (ben.archive.is,
> anna.archive.is) are returning answers tailored to the IP address of the
> requestor [...]

From this thread [https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-
error-1001/182...](https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-
error-1001/18227)

~~~
zamadatix
That's "how" not "why". Most major services tailor queries based on the source
IP, for some reason when archive.is does it to cloudflare queries it's either
broken or purposefully broken. At first I thought it might be something to do
with 1.1.1.1 in the archive.is network but then I noticed cloudflare queries
on behalf of clients don't even source from that IP.

~~~
topynate
See here:
[https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aarchiveis%20cloudflare&s...](https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aarchiveis%20cloudflare&src=typd&lang=en&lang=en)

Archive.is intentionally returns bad results to Cloudflare DNS, because
Cloudflare don't send them the EDNS Client Subnet Header. Archive.is haven't
said much about why, but what they have said appears to accord with this blog
post:
[https://www.sajalkayan.com/post/cloudflare-1dot1dot1dot1.htm...](https://www.sajalkayan.com/post/cloudflare-1dot1dot1dot1.html)

------
beefman
jottit.com (aaronsw project) is also down, because of an expired certificate

------
piracy1
It looks like his domain name expired and was squatted. Someone should try to
buy it back and rehost the original site. If someone trustworthy undertook
that project I'd contribute like $50

------
kragen
It seems to be back online now. Thanks for letting us know.

------
clishem
It's up again

------
joshuaunitus
I was able to see all pages except for "3\. Look at yourself objectively"

~~~
krtkush
You can read that post if you navigate to the main blog page and then scroll
down to that particular post.

~~~
joshuaunitus
Found it, thanks!

------
onetimemanytime
can someone find a key Aaron's family member and pay for 10 years of hosting
and domain renewals? That's nothing to thousands of his fans

~~~
widforss
His brother is literally in this thread.

------
buttscicles
Seems to be back online.

------
ziont
a young man was killed for web scraping a passworded site. Only in murica

~~~
whatshisface
He wasn't killed, they were ("only") going to imprison him.

------
crunchlibrarian
I doubt his kind of "dangerous" thinking will be allowed to be spread for much
longer in our corporate dystopian internet. It's just a matter of time before
speech daring to criticize the corporations will be considered a security
threat or whatever and immediately deleted.

~~~
jasonvorhe
Based on which precedent did you arrive at this conclusion?

~~~
coolbeanboiii3
Right now there is an addition to the next budget bill in the US senate that
is about to outlaw the ability for federal or local government agencies doing
business with any company or individual involved in the BDS movement.

If you are going to penalize my freedom to NOT buy products the originate from
a specific location, it is a slippery slope to see what other forms of protest
might be curtailed in order to alter markets.

Edit: Downvote me all you want, doesn't make it less true.

[0] [https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/30/rand-paul-
israel-m...](https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/30/rand-paul-israel-
military-aid-congress-senate-1036943)

~~~
craftyguy
>Edit: Downvote me all you want, doesn't make it less true.

I suspect you're being downvoted because you're off topic and not contributing
to the discussion in a constructive way. On the other hand, HN and reddit
users have a habit of downvoting comments they disagree with.

