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The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

newyorker.com

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Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#131

Post by exreddit »

xibalba wrote: post #28
cryptica wrote: post #26

It's sad how the system punishes smart altruists. If you're smart, you'd better be evil or the system will destroy you.

I don't agree that "the system" punished a smart altruist. As this article makes clear, Swartz did something he knew to be illegal. This was not his first brush with mass copyright violation. He was then prosecuted for his crimes. IMO, the charges were vastly disproportionate, but you expose yourself to prosecutorial overreach when you (knowingly) commit crimes. This appears to have been a trend with Swartz. He seems…

No post body was provided.

Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#132

Post by peakaboo »

HumanReadable wrote: post #107
borski wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I relate to this so much. The very odd “aggrandizing” that is so often necessary for starting and running a company, coupled with my massive impostor syndrome that is just never going to go away at this point, is a very very hard cognitive dissonance to manage. I’ve done it, and will do it again, but it makes me squirm on the inside.

Do you have any advice or wise words on how you manage this? I find myself in a leadership position, but I feel immensely uncomfortable when directing others. In my head there's always a nagging voice that replies 'who are you to tell us what to do?'

Good leaders don't "tell people what to do" exactly. It's more of a "this is something we as a group must focus on because of reason x".

I'm a new leader of sorts myself and all I do is looking at a Roadmap to see what is important, figure out what my team needs to do and ask people which parts they would like to work on (although some people are better suited for certain tasks, and that's your job to know that by knowing your team).

I don't put myself on any kind of high horse. I'm still hands on myself too, doing work just like everyone else.

If your ego starts to tell you that you are somehow better than any people, you will not be a good leader.

Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#133

Post by mcguire »

ModernMech wrote: post #53
senko wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he was facing 13 felony charges and up to 50 years in prison[0] Pretty hard slap, that. [0] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/why-did-...

The article says they offered a 6 month jail time plea bargain though. It sounds like from his own writing that he was cognizant of the fact he broke the law, but didn’t agree the law should have been a law in the first place. It also sounds like he didn’t really expect there would be any consequences whatsoever. Look at this from the prosecutors point of view. They have hard evidence of a crime. They have evidence o…

Note also that 6 months was the prosecutor's first offer.

Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#134

Post by fsckboy »

GhettoComputers wrote: post #58
photochemsyn wrote: post #18

This article carefully avoids any analysis of the reasons why MIT chose to persecute Aaron Swartz. Here's a quick take on the actual situation, off the top of my head: "The Darker Side of MIT and the Academic Publishing Industry" While the Internet has been hailed from its inception as a tool that would open up access to information for the whole world, the reality has not matched that expectation. Much of the most i…

Hasn’t it always been corporate interests in academia? Stanford was a joke when it was founded, MIT was being petitioned into becoming a tech school. Patrons of sciences have always been funded by private interests, there isn’t any corruption. > This 'public-private' partnership situation has corrupted American academics, placing the profitability of research well ahead of the accuracy and reliability of research. Pr…

> MIT was being petitioned into becoming a tech school

MIT was called Boston Tech when it was founded in 1861 to bring to life William Barton Rogers's vision for a “new polytechnic institute”

Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#135

Post by TameAntelope »

dpark wrote: post #122
TameAntelope wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Why are you engaging in the comments for an article about Aaron Swartz then?

Just trying to help provide some perspective, but you’re right I usually steer clear.

Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#136

Post by mcguire »

skinnymuch wrote: post #57
ModernMech wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says they offered a 6 month jail time plea bargain though. It sounds like from his own writing that he was cognizant of the fact he broke the law, but didn’t agree the law should have been a law in the first place. It also sounds like he didn’t really expect there would be any consequences whatsoever. Look at this from the prosecutors point of view. They have hard evidence of a crime. They have evidence o…

The statement is made by the prosecutor though. They could be saying the truth. It is a very biased person’s word to go off though.

"The prosecutor, Stephen Heymann, told Swartz’s lawyer, Elliot Peters, that if Swartz pleaded guilty to all counts he would spend six months in jail; if he lost at trial, it would be much worse."

The prosecutor made the offer of a 6-month plea deal to Swartz's lawyer. Who presumably discussed it with Swartz, who seems to have decided not to accept it. Possibly, if you accept the analysis above, on the advice of his lawyer.

Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#137

Post by caslon »

jedberg wrote: post #86
borski wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not diagnosing, obviously, but a lot of this, including the phobia of fruit and non-white and yellow vegetables seems… on the spectrum, at the very least. I wonder if Aaron had undiagnosed autism of some sort.

He was a super taster. When he stayed with me he insisted on the plainest of food and told me it's because he's a super taster. Although thinking back now, maybe that was just an excuse to cover for something else.

To be honest, I’ve always had a problematic relationship with food. I always liked plain things — the year before college I lived mostly off of eating plain, microwaved bagels. At oriental restaurants I would always just order steamed white rice. Wes Felter, noting I would apparently only eat white food joked, referencing a Science Fiction novel, that I would eat light bulbs, but “only the white ones”. This reached its extremes at a World Wide Web conference where all the food was white, even the plate it was on. Tim Berners-Lee later pulled my mother aside to share his concerns about this diet.

Finally, one day at an oriental restaurant by Stanford (years before I went to school there), we had the typical discussion except this time Cory Doctorow spoke up: ‘are you sure you’re not a supertaster?’ he asked. I had heard the They Might Be Giants song but never considered the possibility. I thought about it as the conversation continued and it seemed to make sense to me. [At this point I imagine a crane shot lifting up and up over the conversation at the restaurant. Fade to:] I did some research on the Internet and did the test (which formally consists of putting blue food coloring on your tongue, taking a piece of paper with a three-hole punch, placing it over the tongue and counting the number of taste buds in it) and indeed, I am a supertaster. This hasn’t eliminated the discussions about my eating habits, but it does shift the blame.

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/eatandcode

Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#138

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

tptacek wrote: post #94
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overcharging offenses, with the ranges of any possible punishments, is done precisely to pressure people into settling for an outcome the DA finds politically expedient. There is a TERRIBLE amount of uncertainty in EVERY STEP you've outlined, and we see examples EVERY DAY of judges who throw the book at people, especially when they are unknown loners who have offended powerful corporations. PLEASE don't suggest that…

I think you stopped reading before the last paragraph of my comment. Or, really, one of the first ones, because, again: the prosecutors are on the record with the sentence they were actually threatening Swartz with, and, as I said, and Swartz's attorney said, and this New Yorker article said: it was nothing resembling 50 years.

Whether it's 50, 20, or 6, the real number is beside the point. Potential "years" of prison will scare the crap out almost anybody, and our government ALWAYS uses this tactic to coerce people into whatever outcome looks good for their careers.

Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#139

Post by tiahura »

cowbellemoo wrote: post #80
ModernMech wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says they offered a 6 month jail time plea bargain though. It sounds like from his own writing that he was cognizant of the fact he broke the law, but didn’t agree the law should have been a law in the first place. It also sounds like he didn’t really expect there would be any consequences whatsoever. Look at this from the prosecutors point of view. They have hard evidence of a crime. They have evidence o…

> It’s a waste of everyone’s time and money. Isn't incarcerating a person who's not a danger to others and who's crime had no harmful outcomes a waste of everyone's time and money? > 6 months does not sound like the disproportionate punishment many make it out to be I encourage you to learn about the conditions in prisons. Imprisoned persons are frequently subject to physical and sexual violence at the hands of guard…

There’s a big difference between a maximum security prison and a minimum security camp. We probably share many opinions about the former, non-violent penny ante white boy offenders go to the latter.

“Bob’s Story: “I was in the minimum security camp at Fairton for about nine months. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected prison to be. The place was clean, the food wasn’t bad, and I didn’t feel any tension between the guys. If I wanted to avoid someone, I could stay to myself. “There were fewer than 100 guys serving sentences in the federal prison camp and I didn’t feel much in the way of harassment from anyone, staff or inmates. With the help of an orderly, I coordinated a prison job for myself in the library. It was just a small room with lots of books and I passed my days catching up on reading. I hadn’t read at all since I was in college because work kept me too busy. During the time I was at the camp I read about 30 great books and I lost 25 pounds. I’m back down to the same weight I was when I was in school and I feel better than ever. My wife loves the new look. She says the prison sentence probably gave me an extra ten years to live.”

https://www.whitecollaradvice.com/whats-it-like-in-the-priso...

Remember, maximum security is expensive.

Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#140

Post by themacguffinman »

pm90 wrote: post #67
hutzlibu wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As an example, the topic of immigration will bring out the nastiest takes and opinions (and straight up racism)." Well, I would argue, that hackers can also be nasty racists. I mean sure, by my definition the hacker spirit is open minded by definition. But people with a open mind, are also open for some very weird to disgusting ideas.

Interesting, is the point here that hackers are susceptible to any idea that’s not mainstream? However racism doesn’t fit that category does it? Racism is a mainstream idea and not a novel one.

Depends on where you live. It's not mainstream in the big tech cities. It's not mainstream on the American internet. "Racism" is also arguably not mainstream in most American cities, though there are plenty of accusations that certain areas are still indirectly or implicitly racist because it's a very subjective term.
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