Very sad, and very unexpected. He had so many interesting things going on.
Aaron Swartz commits suicide
51–60 of 583 posts
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#52A tragedy that this caring young man has taken his own life. My heart goes out to his family. This feels a bit inappropriate but at the moment I hope that some members of the US Attorney's Office are wracked by guilt.
You're being a bit unfair. It's equally inappropriate for me to speculate about his motives, but I recall there being an undercurrent of melancholia in Aaron's writings even pre-indictment.
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#53A tragedy that this caring young man has taken his own life. My heart goes out to his family. This feels a bit inappropriate but at the moment I hope that some members of the US Attorney's Office are wracked by guilt.
Wouldn't they just perceive this as some sort of admission of guilt?
Disgustingly, that would not surprise me.
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#54A tragedy that this caring young man has taken his own life. My heart goes out to his family. This feels a bit inappropriate but at the moment I hope that some members of the US Attorney's Office are wracked by guilt.
Wouldn't they just perceive this as some sort of admission of guilt?
Probably.
To be honest if I had to imagine the people at the attorney's office who decided to prosecute this I'd imagine vaguely malevolent bureaucratic dullards who derive validation from enforcing the rules in a heavy handed fashion.
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#55RIP Aaron.
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#56Better eulogies will follow, to be sure, but in the mean time, much of what can be said about him is captured in a touching talk he gave called "How to Get a Job Like Mine" [1]. What I think is especially touching about this is how he gently deconstructs his success, demystifying his own legend by pulling back the curtain on what would have otherwise appeared to be a string of miraculous accomplishments. In the proce…
'I thought of suicide.'
I winced when I got to that. It's sad to think this isn't the first time he's had these thoughts and how long he must have had them. Rest in peace.
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#57A tragedy that this caring young man has taken his own life. My heart goes out to his family. This feels a bit inappropriate but at the moment I hope that some members of the US Attorney's Office are wracked by guilt.
You're being a bit unfair. It's equally inappropriate for me to speculate about his motives, but I recall there being an undercurrent of melancholia in Aaron's writings even pre-indictment.
He posted what appeared to be a suicide note on his blog five years ago, and the police were called.
It's still there, but he edited it to change the name to "Alex".
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#58I didn't know Aaron, but I've been using web.py for years, so I kind of felt like I knew him from hanging around the online community. I really don't know what to say - he was incredibly intelligent, and made great contributions - the 'net gets a little lonelier every time we lose someone like this. :( RIP.
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#59For some reason this is a shock to me. It shouldn't be, I didn't know the guy. But I was just playing with web.py framework. It is so strange, I thought just today, I wonder if Aaron would accept a pull request, I could see a few things to improve. Looking back at his activity on github he was pulling in commits less than a week ago: https://github.com/aaronsw?tab=activity I don't know details about the "JSTOR" case…
I also never met him, but this really upsets me too.
It was a bummer when I saw the headline, but I'm really, really upset now that I was reminded of his legal troubles.
Suicide is complex, so I don't want to speculate on whether or not he committed suicide to avoid a trial and probably incarceration. Regardless, it had to be a factor and it certainly fucked up his life somewhere between a little bit and a lot a bit.
When I realized just how many spiders I've written... When I think about that spider with a $240B+ market cap... When I think "This could have been me or one of my friends"... I started to cry :-(
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#60Terrible terrible news. What troubles me the most is that this could happen to any one of us. RIP Aaron.