Aaron is dead.
Wanderers in this crazy world,
we have lost a mentor, a wise elder.
Hackers for right, we are one down,
we have lost one of our own.
Nurturers, carers, listeners, feeders,
parents all,
we have lost a child.
Let us all weep.
timbl
(I'm heartbroken about Aaron Swartz. He had been helping Beeminder a lot and offered to be an advisor, to be formalized next time he was in Portland. He was a wonderful person.)
Well, /r/truereddit had something up with some decent commentary but it isn't a default reddit. /r/pics sadly is now the default for news like this and the signal to noise ratio there is as bad as you can imagine it to be. No Lessig, no nothing, just a bunch of guys calling him a criminal and a coward for suicide. Fuck you reddit. You are eternel september's child now. Lowest common denominator trash for the lowest common denominator.
On the upside, I do have faith that once his story gets out of the eternal september kiddie's paws, the facts and deep moral issues here will percolate to the surface, eventually. It'll just take some time.
one very big mistake reddit made was removing /r/reddit.com and leaving a vacuum for "default, catch-all subreddit" that people are now trying to shoehorn other defaults like /r/pics and /r/funny into
Which is still curious, because it's common knowledge at this point that the numbers are fudged. Why even display it at this point? It serves nothing but to cause confusion.
There was a 2.5K entry on Reddit, but that is not a requirement or affirmation the community wants. Nor is it what it needs as a matter of fact. I wish that time could be taken back all the way to the day when prosecutors decided to embark on this mission. And sadly, what we need is a change in the justice system. Change big enough, that felons, the type of capital F felons, are prosecuted for their part in melting down global economy. Not dining at the Whitehouse as the article put it.
Front page changes depending on your subs. I've seen multiple stories about it. Also keep in mind that stories can rise a lot faster on HN, so it's not necessarily indicative of disinterest.
You're going to have to give some evidence on that one. How do you know it's admins and not moderators? Admins rarely intervene in these sorts of matters, even if they are close to the story.
This is so incredibly sad. I did not know Aaron, but I will try to honour his memory. I've decided to stop hesitating and publish some of my research of the past couple years freely online. I hope others do too.
