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Aaron Swartz commits suicide
31–40 of 583 posts
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#32Every single person employed by the US Attorney Office involved in this tragedy should be sued to hell by the family. Have some goddamn responsibility for once.
This is utterly disgraceful, I feel for his family.
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#33This is terrible news.
Depression is treatable. If you find that you are thinking about suicide, even speculatively, seek help immediately.
You are not alone and it will get better.
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#34Better 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 process, he reveals himself to be a sensitive, seemingly grateful, and thoughtful person.
May he be remembered well; he seems to deserve it.
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#35Shocking and saddening. I've been working with Python lately and feel a particular loss because of web.py and all the other good work he did. My prayers go out to his family.
I wonder why some people here are assuming this tragedy is because of the JSTOR incident. It seems to me that everyone should just meditate on what's been lost, and defer judgement about why he would do this until there is evidence.
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#36Fuck this country. EDIT: The guy was facing 13 felony counts for downloading academic articles.
Why are you assuming he did it because of his legal problems?
Because he was a brilliant and loved computer programmer who was facing 35 years in prison. Can you imagine the US Attorneys office treating you in the same manner they treat rapists because you wrote a downloader script? I'd say it's a very reasonable assumption.
RIP Aaron
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#37OMG, the shock of it ...
He was such a terrific writer, easy to see why he could code so well
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#38As someone who has read pg's writings and watched YC grew, the reddit story is very close to my heart. I always felt I knew Aaron, Steve and Alexis well even though I never met or interacted with them. This is such a shock. RIP.
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#39For 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 or about what he did at Reddit but I can see in his code that he cared and wanted to make something better, smaller and elegant. I respect that and it is a loss to have him gone forever.
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are you assuming he did it because of his legal problems?
Because he was a brilliant and loved computer programmer who was facing 35 years in prison. Can you imagine the US Attorneys office treating you in the same manner they treat rapists because you wrote a downloader script? I'd say it's a very reasonable assumption. RIP Aaron
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