Let's black bar HN
Even though he may not be as notable as some of the others, Aaron Swartz's legacy is a very big part of HN in every way.
In HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=aaronsw
Pinboard: https://pinboard.in/u:aaronsw
His last tweet was on Jan 9th, https://twitter.com/aaronsw
In reddit: https://aaronsw.jottit.com/reddit
Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PGTlB14AAAAJ
Writings: https://aaronsw.jottit.com/writings
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Things he has made
HN will miss your contributions. Rest in Peace. Love.
Black out your own web site. Mourning is a personal thing. If PG decides he wants to black bar HN, he will do it. If not, he won't. What's it to you?
As somebody else pointed out, PG is probably still asleep and will probably black the bar anyway. I don't think he needs a reminder. Also, I know nothing about his personal feelings towards Aaron.
2) HN is a community site, which exists and thrives largely because of the community. I can't see anything wrong with members of said community making suggestions on occasion, particularly on occasions like this.
3) People are far too quick to take offence these days, particularly on the internet. IMHO the world would be a better place if these people were instructed to get over it rather than pandered to.
4) Finally PG is free to say no and I for one will not judge him ill for it.
The encouragement to black out HN is an acknowledgement of a communal loss. This is not "everyone change their desktops to his face." This is "let's unobtrusively black out the top bar of a site frequented by people just like him." This is someone who made contributions to the software community and fought for open access to information. People of similar calibre fought and continue to fight to keep the internet free and open.
It is not just for him, but to demonstrate as a community that we're here for anyone else facing similar issues. It shouldn't be "offensive" as a group to recognize our like-minded allegiance to the ideas and vision he passionately pursued.
Also, there are more and more people who go through HN. Perhaps eventually the bar has to be black all the time because somebody always dies.
And yes, it is Hacker News against you now, as you victimize yourself below. I sure as shit think this comment is disgusting, I hate that you left it, and I'd certainly hope that people would call you out for it (or I'd lose faith in the community). It's comments like this that make Hacker News look terrible to people that don't contribute, and it's one of those comments that's better left thought in your head.
Aaron was involved in this community in multiple ways, God forbid people express themselves at your displeasure.
It's really sad because Aaron's death hit me pretty hard last night, and I wake up this morning and see this suggestion and think "boy, I bet someone's going to piss in the Cheerios in that thread," and it almost hurts that I'm right. What a terrible place this is becoming.
I feel sad about his death, too. I have nothing against black bars or mourning. Just against telling other people how to feel, which incidentally you do again with your post. You are sad, so you are entitled to hate me. You are welcome.
Think of all the things he likely would have done over the next 60 years if he slowed down even 50%.
> The rules said that while they could reject any requests to join from an individual, if an organization that was an official member of the W3C asked to put someone on the working group, they couldn't say no. So I looked down the list of W3C member organizations, found the one that seemed friendliest, and asked them to put me on the Working Group. They did.
I only raise the question because you say the opposite, and in such situations the absolutely worst thing the community can do is canonize someone, exaggerating their accomplishments and raising their words above actual merit (the front-page is full of his old entries now. Why?)
I suspect that Aaron's curse -- the thing that made a very privileged Western existence "too painful" as others have said -- is that he peaked so early. He did the right things at the right times with the right people, and while he was clearly a very bright individual, I think that ended up becoming baggage that dragged him down, every future effort unlikely to ever shine as bright.
Judgmental pop psychology? Hardly.
Yes, that and the impending worry of a 30+year federal prison sentence for carrying out an ideal that most of us respect, even if we disagree on whether the execution was right.
Aaron intentionally did something that would draw him a lot of attention to him, and then fanned the fires again and again. It exactly loops back to what I said.
When he was copying the JSTOR archive, he went through great trouble to conceal himself (not facing the camera, wearing a helmet, etc.) -- he was caught by the authorities for acting suspiciously. If he had not been caught, he more than likely would have released the archive anonymously.
HN -- whether it's PG or his minions, or just people abusing flag -- has a bizarrely defensive, insular, ignorant perspective about many things.
Which would be profoundly depressing. If you were already somewhat unstable, it could lead to a bad outcome.
It's probably more rare that someone at the top of his game kills himself suddenly and for no particular reason. I imagine if you talked to Steve Jobs between Apple and NeXT, he was probably a bit down compared to before or after. The thing is, it seems likely someone like Aaron who spent a decade doing interesting and awesome stuff would be likely to do more stuff like that in the future, particularly after a federal case was resolved, or he either got help with depression or figured out how to deal with it (early 20s is statistically the worst time; even with no other treatment, as lot of people are better off later in life).
So yes, I feel comfortable saying he was likely to have done a lot more awesome stuff over the rest of his life.
(Not a 100% sure if that's the real Paul Graham though..)
Like a wiki-style crowd sourced memorial site.
But I must admit, I never heard of this guy. Not once. I have never used reddit and skip over all the non-technical/startupy articles here on HN.
Also I'd like to know how many of you will think of his 'legacy' on a daily basis in 6 months time.
His legacy will live on as long as people use Reddit or RSS (or perhaps even anything derived from it), you don't necessarily need to "think" of him. I'm sure a lot of people will be using RSS and Reddit in 6 months.
Goddamnit, have some sensitivity, he only just died and many people on here know him personally.
If this is a troll then why don't you go reevaluate your priorities in life? Take some magic mushrooms and think about how your actions alter the world.
Have some bloody respect.
Every outpouring of empathy and hurt from a suicide's community might impact the actions of another contemplating the action.
The ill conceived and hasty suicides are the ones community should and can help to prevent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_inconsistency
Just because it was his own personal decision while depressed doesn't mean it was the right thing to happen. I don't believe in removing people's personal agency but don't dismiss something (the irreversible decisions made under vast psychological duress) that you don't understand as a given.
I'm not one for flaming people and calling them a dumbass, but I can't let this one go. Your attitude shows you don't know shit about what really goes on when people kill themselves.
It's most likely that Swartz killed himself because he was severely depressed. You can't really call a depression-induced-suicide a decision, because severe depression robs people of their ability to make decisions. It massively distorts perceptions, and literally shuts down the parts of the brain involved in decision making. If Swartz had survived and recovered, I'm pretty sure he'd have told you himself that he wasn't in his right mind at the time.
> And I'd like to know how many of you will think of his 'legacy' on a daily basis in 6 months time.
So what? We show our sorrow now because that is when we feel the loss the most keenly. This is the normal human response. Are you any different?