Bangalore has 12M residents and only 385 Covid-19 cases - <AUTHOR> https://www.thequint.com/news/india/coronavirus-for-a-population-of-12-crore-why-bengaluru-has-only-300-covid-cases <comment><USER3> What has become clear is levels of testing and how deaths are recorded vary greatly. So somebody in the UK who tested or even suspected of COVID-19 dieing from a heart attack - that is recorded as covid-19 death, in somewhere like Germany - that would be recorded as a heart attack, even if it is clear that the illness caused the issue.

But one thing that has struck me as worrying, is the faily recorded cases - looking at WHO data, always a spike on a friday! Why is that, backlog, testing pattern or rush to get to the weekend - dunno, but a very clear trend until recently and now seeing spike more common than that 7 day trend. IMHO, all the signs of a second wave and a\ll the actions to enable it. Governments be damned if they don't ease lockdown and damned if people still die.

But I do wished there was some better universal defined way deaths are recorded as currently it is a fallacy to compare countries due to the nuances of how deaths are recorded.

One thing I do know and been a concern of mine for months, once things ease - how many poor postman and postwoman are going to be asked to record buildup of mail at address - a solid indication that somebody died inside. Those deaths are the ones which we are still to realise and they are out there awaiting to be found.

[https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...](https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6) You can view the stats for daily cases there bottom right, expand that and hit the daily cases tab - you can see the week trend most prominent and also the changes to that recently that are not a good sign IMHO.

<comment><USER4> Friday is probably a reporting deadline. You see similar spikes on Mondays after the weekend. You would want to take a weekly average basically.. or some do a 3 day rolling average.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the UK non white ethnic groups and especially Bangladeshis have had the highest mortality rate from Covid 19 and yet the countries they come from are faring better than the UK is against the disease. The explanation for this when it's found will be interesting, one factor might be climate and possible vitamin D deficiency among these groups in Britain.

<comment><USER6> The vitamin d connection might partially also explain why Sweden has a higher mortality rate than its neighboring countries, because Sweden has accepted more immigrants

<comment><USER7> It is quite obvious that the reasons Sweden has > 3000 deaths and Norway has less than 300 is because of much less severe restrictions. Sweden has twice the population, but quite similar demographics.

<comment><USER8> Sweden has much more of an immigrant / foreign-born parent population. About 25%-30% vs. 13-15%.

 _As of 2017, Statistics Sweden reported that around 2,439,007 or 24.1% of the inhabitants of Sweden were from a foreign background: that is, each such person either had been born abroad or had been born in Sweden to two parents who themselves had both been born abroad.[22] Also taking into account people with only one parent born abroad, this number increases to almost a third in 2017._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden#Migrati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden#Migration)

Immigrants constituted 13% of the population at the start of 2015, and an additional 2.6% were born in Norway by immigrant parents[12] (up from 8,3% and 1,5% in 2006[13]). The same year, 19% of births in Norway were to immigrant parents.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Norway#Ethnici...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Norway#Ethnicity)

<comment><USER9> GP isn't denying they have more immigrants, they are saying it makes more sense to point to their reaction to the pandemic than to point at their number of immigrants. This explanation is both more simple and it doesn't have strange racist undertones.

<comment><USER6> Pointing out an observation in relation biology and vitamin d production, even if totally incorrect, does not mean it's racist. If anything, if someone with darker skin living in Sweden would get their vitamin d levels checked and correct it because the comment above, it would help them.

<comment><USER9> > Sweden has much more of an immigrant / foreign-born parent population.

This was said in response to the statement that Sweden has 10x more deaths than Norway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Vietnam at 0 deaths.

Singapore at 24 deaths (despite a relatively high number of cases).

There's a thread on the front page right now re Sweden's handling. A lot of the comments seem to be trying to rate the performance of various European countries against each other. I guess I'm missing something, because I'd just categorize most of it as a disaster.

<comment><USER8> It seems more likely to me that the COVID reporting is shoddy, rather than the implementation of some genius plan. Hundreds of thousands of people die every year in Vietnam [1] and you're telling me there's a _zero_ percent chance that some of them were miscategorized? Seems unlikely to me.

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/1101034/vietnam- number-o...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1101034/vietnam-number-of- deaths/)

<comment><USER11> You can look at extra deaths and miscategorization is not a a giant problem.

<comment><USER8> The extra deaths thing also seems sketchy to me, this early after the outbreak. If someone was within ±12 months of dying and the coronavirus got them, then the death rates of the past month would be higher while the death rates of the next year would still be the same. We are too early to make any statements of fact about it.

<comment><USER11> You can wait a bit more and average things, but anyway this last point is not part of miss-categorization point I was replying to.

<comment><USER8> > this last point is not part of miss-categorization point I was replying to

Yes, you're right, and I realized that just as I made the post. But I still don't think that _normal rates of death_ automatically equal _coronavirus didn 't kill anyone._

<comment><USER11> You will have a margin of error , my main point is that even if some politicians will push too miss=categorize the deaths, if the numbers are sufficiently large things can't be hidden that way.

Do you have any statistics that show that if I die of COVID then this imply that my probability to live 1 more year was very slim without COVID? This kind of number as less then 1 year seems very non-scientific and more something you would use to push your opinion, like yes 400K people died but 99% of them would ahve been dead anyway in a few months

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In general, India has dealt unexpectedly well with this health crisis, given it's lack of resources for health care (compared to other large economies).

Bengaluru, in particular, is better off because of relatively lesser number of ghettos compared to other major cities in the country.

Considering it's a hub significantly driven by ITES money, what would be more interesting to watch is how does it come out of it, now that it's quite evident that IT processionals can quite capably work from home.

Would bengaluru still hold the crown of the IT of india or this will finally incentivize the breaking down of budding metro cities?

<comment><USER13> >> _In general, India has dealt unexpectedly well with this health crisis, given it 's lack of resources for health care (compared to other large economies)._

Resources are overrated in these cases. Instead of modern police batons, bamboo or simply wooden ones will work as well. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wNQ_V- Ol78](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wNQ_V-Ol78) Let's how India does when they have no option but to open up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Bangalorean here. What I saw was everyone followed the lockdown guidelines very well when it was put in.

A bit worried now as it has relaxed, and the numbers are growing. Not sure if the rate is lower or higher than similar cities. Anyone have data?

<comment><USER15> According to data collected by Johns Hopkins, India has not yet had any effect on controlling the geometric growth of Corona virus:

[https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...](https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6)

They do not have data broken down by region. Does India not report that?

<comment><USER16> You can find regionwise data here.

[https://www.covid19india.org/](https://www.covid19india.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I note the continued comments that are unable to believe that this virus can be contained. While I am highly skeptical that India will be able to keep cases down. Other wealthier countries certainly can.

Since I live in Australia, and hence in a country that has effectively eliminated community spread. I would like to confirm that _we did actually stop the virus_ and the government numbers are absolutely real. Lockdown is basically over, people can socialise again, people are hiring, within-state (but not inter-state) travel is now allowed almost everywhere. People are no longer scared.

<comment><USER18> What did Australia do? I can't help it but feel that my country is doing everything absolutely wrong.

"As of 12:00 am June 3, 2020, Chile has 113,628 confirmed cases of COVID-19 within its borders. Chile remains in Phase 4 of the outbreak, i.e., uncontrolled and widespread community transmission."

<comment><USER19> > I can't help it but feel that my country is doing everything absolutely > wrong.

Last year Australia suffer a horrendous year of nation wide bushfires (wildfires) and the current government handled that response very badly.

For that disaster they where very slow to act and appeared to have very little in the way of a plan.

I think they learnt a lot from that earlier mistake, because their handling of the COVID-19 crisis has been almost perfect.

> What did Australia do?

The first response was to limit travel form overseas and to also require anyone coming in from overseas to spend 14 days in quarantine.

The general public also went in lock down.

That meant you could only go outside to buy food, go to the doctor, go to the chemist or go to work and you were also allowed 1 hour of limited exercise every day.

Non essential business where force to close (pub, clubs gyms, restaurants, etc).

Public spaces where people could congregate (i.e. beaches parks etc) where also closed.

Businesses where encouraged to let their workers work from home where possible.

All interstate travel basically came end as many states imposed border closures.

Police would enforce these rules and they would also enforce social distancing rules in public spaces.

For example if you where found to be outside of your local area you would get a fine.

Also if you where found to be loitering in a public space you would get warned and repeat offender fined.

Because of the forced business closures many people became instantly unemployed.

To help with this disruption the government also introduced big changes to the social welfare system to help people with this disruption.

It also introduce anti-eviction laws for renters.

These are just some of the changes made and they all helped the country get on top of the virus.

Now after several months of these restrictions we are seeing the light at the end of what has be a very dark tunnel.

<comment><USER17> This fits my own experience as an Australian. Nice clear write-up.

One thing I would add is that Australia had a plan ready to go before the pandemic even hit [0]. Complete with already passed legislation.

0\. [https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Cont...](https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/ohp- ahmppi.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Reporting and testing across different countries is not equal by any means. I'm always amazed by these headlines that mean literally nothing. Statistics 101? The conclusions you can actually derive by the deviation in deaths YoY [https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#z-scores-by- country](https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#z-scores-by-country) are that the least densely populated countries are the ones faring better. Germany being the outlier. Taiwan did great because @n95s for every citizen.

</comment><comment><USER21> > The inability to control clusters like Dharavi in Mumbai, Koyambedu market > in Chennai and the Tablighi Jamaat conference in Delhi, led to these > respective city administrations losing control over COVID-19

Being a bit unfair to Chennai there, which was bombarded with both Tablighi Jamaat cluster and Koyambedu (one of Asia's largest vegetable markets)

Also Chennai is testing highest in both units and per capita amongst Indian cities, and death rate is at 0.8% compated to 2.3% for Bangalore which is not mentioned.

<comment><USER22> Mumbai and Delhi are also massive hubs for international travel, they were going to be the gateways for the virus.

Not sure how to translate that list of cities.

<comment><USER21> I was frankly surprised that Bangalore has been low given how much tech travel within and outside India happens there. Hopefully things remain manageable as lockdown eases more

<comment><USER22> True! Bangalore has definitely gotten it right, making it a bright spot in the news coming out of India.

I do remember one thing the Kerala Chief minister said to the Maharashtra CM about the differences between their states and in particular Mumbai - <USER2> has slums.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >"For a population of approximately 1.2 crores, Bengaluru city has had just 385 reported cases of COVID-19(...)"

TIL! [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/crore](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/crore)

</comment><comment> happy-go-lucky During the lockdown, normally busy areas of the city have been largely deserted.

Of course, there are concerns that the city likely is under-reporting the incidence of infection, but as for fatality data you cannot hide mass deaths.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's because they don't test as much and they are not eager to mark deaths as covid-19.

<comment><USER25> None of the countries who tried to hide it really succeeded, like Iran or China. There is no reason to believe governments of India or Bangladesh are more competent in this coverup business than those experts.

I'm a Bangladeshi and I don't trust my government a singe bit. Still, I believe that while these numbers may not be exact, they are not wildly off the mark either.

<comment><USER24> It's not a coverup, they just don't care that much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> India's official numbers are exploding [1]. They were under lockdown, which does not seem to have had any effect and which is now being relaxed. It does not strike me as outstanding management.

I really don't know to make of official numbers in many countries, especially when comparing among countries. They seem to go all over the place and it's hard to make sense of them. Part of it, I think, is that we don't fully understand the virus and I suspect a lot of natural causes will be found to explain some of the differences.

[1] [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/)

</comment><comment><USER27> > Apart from contact tracing, testing the right people helped the state keep a > check on the spread.

I see this sentence a little problematic

</comment><comment><USER28> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Namibia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Namibia) with 27 million population did even better. Just 23 cases and no deaths;

1st case was detected on 14th March; Same day Namibia suspended Air travel;

</comment><comment><USER29> 385 _reported_ cases. How many people have they tested?

<comment><USER30> It's right there in the article, if you could figure how to click on a link.

<comment><USER29> A well written article would have it in the first paragraph.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I saw the title and i said to myself

"......For now"

This will be a supremely important question to settle in 2 months once moonson season is in full swing

It could completely upend the COVID status quo

</comment><comment><USER32> The warm climate probably helps the R numbers. That said, I don't think the number is that low given the population density etc..

</comment><comment><USER33> Ask any India or Vietnam people if they believe the number... don't be so naive those countries have every things to lose as well

<comment><USER34> Vietnamese here, we totally trust the number because:

      - Every cases are documented and published on the medias (yes, I know that's not a good thing for privacy) to make contact tracing easier.
      - Vietnam is an authoritarian country with extensive public security apparatus so tracing and quarantining is easy. There have been cases that someone got quarantined because her friend who lives in other country tested positive, and that's after she returned to Vietnam.
      - Also the Communist Party of Vietnam has everything to lose if they can't handle this, so they are serious at containing covid 19. They even used cyber attacks on China to gain intel on how serious Ncov is back in December last year.
      - Most importantly, wartime like mass mobilization helped a lot. Every people did their part, the military set up quarantine camps and check points, disinfecting hotspot. The people cooperated with the guideline: avoiding going out, wearing mask or stay in quarantine if their areas has positive cases (the government will provided food and other necessities).
      - They do everything to keep the number of deaths at zero: The worst case, patient 91, was recently detached from ECMO after 2 months, his lung recovered from 10% to 40% capacity and he has woken up from coma. The cost for his treatment is $200k and counting, and he isn't even a Vietnam national!

<comment><USER33> Somehow I thought Vietnam was a democratic country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> ...that we know of

</comment><comment><USER36> Is this credible?

</comment><comment><USER37> Why were Jammu and Kashmir included in their chart? I thought that's not part of India but a part their Hindu party is trying to forcibly take over.

<comment><USER38> Parts of the region are disputed between India, Pakistan and China. The state of Jammu and Kashmir is a part of India, with regular elections and a functioning assembly, although from time to time the central government keeps intruding in state's affairs and has recently redefined certain parts as a union territory. Citizens of J&K are citizens of India, but have certain special rights. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jammu_and_Kashmir_(union_terri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jammu_and_Kashmir_\(union_territory\))</comment></comment>


How We Moved From Microsoft ASP.NET to Rails and NoSQL - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/articles/architecting-tekpub Tekpub.com was originally written using ASP.NET MVC, Microsoft's newest framework - which the founders new really well. However they recently moved to Rails and NoSQL. <comment><USER2> As an MS developer this really is devastating.

Rob Conery is one of the names that any fan of ASP.NET MVC knew. He was involved in the project when he worked there (I'd call him the most high profile MS employee aside from Scott Guthrie). To have him come out and say he couldn't make a startup work with Microsoft technology really tells you all you need to know about that.

I still need to use .Net at work but I think this combines with a bunch of other factors to push me away from Microsoft on anything else I do.

<comment><AUTHOR> It has nothing to do with the technology - it's good stuff and we could have made it work fine. The issue is we want to stay small and not take on the associated cost.

I can see how it might come off like I'm damning the platform - that was hardly my intention. Rails has had 3+ years of Open Source contribution to build out the platform and make it do amazing things - ASP.NET MVC will (hopefully) grow in some of the same ways - but there's a somewhat stunted element to the .NET OSS ecosystem. Hopefully that will change.

<comment><USER2> My point really was only part technical though. To give an example you had to switch from Silverlight for a completely nontechnical reason. It wasn't even expense related.

But you still had to switch and it still cost you time and money you wouldn't need to spend had you just gone with Flash in the first place. So the point to me is still "don't use Microsoft technology because you'll end up needing to switch"

<comment><AUTHOR> Can't argue with that. Outside the corporate walls money is king - it's a hard truth and one I was not about to pay for personally :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have learned Ruby on Rails and I am amazed that after three weeks with RoR I am more productive than after 10 years with .net

I reported my own experience moving from Asp.net to Ruby on Rails in my blog a few days ago:

"How an experienced developer multiplied his productivity tenfold" [http://aymeric.gaurat.net/index.php/2010/how-an- experienced-...](http://aymeric.gaurat.net/index.php/2010/how-an-experienced- aspnet-developer-multiplied-his-productivity-ten-fold/)

<comment><USER4> Did you happen to try out other frameworks before deciding on RoR? I'm thinking about testing the waters outside of MS land and I'd like to know why you chose RoR versus, say, Django or even Struts.

<comment><USER5> I find it hard to imagine that there is any web framework still around that could be more screwed up than Struts. After having had some major exposure to the various members of the Struts family and Rails, I would say that the experience of using Struts 2 is slightly worse than using Rails while being flogged by an expert torturer. :-)

If you want to test the world beyond MS I would recommend (apart from Rails or Django) looking into the Scala/Lift (my preferred toolset), Clojure/Compojure or JavaScript/Node.js combos (depending upon you language preferences).

I would be careful with Rails, when you plan to do some heavy data processing and/or if you need your application processes to run for a long time without being restarted.

For small, straightforward applications or prototyping the Ruby/Sinatra/MongoDB combo is also really really nice.

<comment><USER6> _I would be careful with Rails, when you plan to do some heavy data processing and/or if you need your application processes to run for a long time without being restarted._

Heavy data processing yes, but the long running process is bogus. The major memory leaks in Rails were patched up _years_ ago. The tooling is a lot better today on the off chance that you _do_ need to debug a memory leak, and the new breed of ruby runtimes such as Rubinius will keep memory in even tighter control.

<comment><USER5> Being somewhat problematic for long running process is not only a function of memory leaks.

Even with the better runtimes now available, suggesting that they come close to the stability (and performance and long term memory consumption and profiling + debugging capabilities) you'll find on the big JVMs is not really helpful (JRuby being the obvious exception but even here I am sceptic).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you're an ASP.NET MVC programmer looking to learn Ruby on Rails, check out my book _Ruby on Rails Tutorial_ at

<http://www.railstutorial.org/>

I don't know ASP.NET MVC at all, so I haven't tailored the presentation to Microsoft developers, and I'd be curious to hear if you find my approach accessible. You can leave me feedback at <http://www.railstutorial.org/feedback>.

N.B. Although NoSQL is outside the scope of an introductory tutorial, I'm hoping to do some follow-on articles on such specialized topics once the core tutorial is finished. (I'm currently writing the final chapter.)

</comment><comment><USER8> I've got a small webapp targeting ASP.NET MVC 2.0 (built with Visual Studio 2010) running on Linux with Mono 2.6 and served with nginx (using the fastcgi interface to mono) so if you put the time in, it's possible to deploy on an open source stack.

I saw a commenter talk about Linq-to-SQL and yes this is possible too. I use a PostgreSQL server and use Linq-to-SQL with it. It works but as expected, the documentation is poor.

This is free to use, but from my experience some of the costs can be very frustrating time spent trying to figure out why things are not working as they should, or barrier to entry with poor documentation.

As one commenter pointed out, mono behaves strangely when changing part of your codebase while it's running. Modifying a file can cause 500s or timeouts to be thrown. Killing and restarting the fastcgi process is needed.

A major positive is the developers who work on these parts of mono are very responsive to issues and code is improving all the time.

</comment><comment><USER9> My first question after reading the title was "Why?"

From the article:

"JA: All the problems we had (licensing, testing, deployments) could have been overcome. We could have used workarounds, written our own deployment framework, etc. What is comes down to is that we both really enjoy working with Rails and we enjoy the Rails community and the tools and libraries available. One of the best parts about running the show is that we get to do what makes us happy."

<comment><USER10> Nope. FTA: RB: If the platform was holding up fine, what prompted the change of architecture?

RC: Money.

<comment><USER11> Rob (RC) and I (JA) tend to disagree on things all the time. For me it wasn't as much about the money as the pleasure of using Rails, and I know Rob also loves using Rails. The money was basically what made the decision easy, here were our choices:

1) Continue to use a platform that costs more and isn't as much fun.

or

2) Use a platform we both love using and works out to be cheaper.

Pretty simple decision really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Actually, from Rails, to ASP.NET MVC, to ASP.NET MVC again ("because it was getting too complicated"), then to Rails.

I'd also be very hesitant to use MongoDB as a main datastore as it has no durability model - the 'D' in ACID. I hope they've at least changed the setting, or don't mind losing their last 60 seconds of writes when their EC2 instance goes down.

[http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Durability+and+Repair#Du...](http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Durability+and+Repair#DurabilityandRepair- ThoughtsonDurability)

Note that Mongo compares itself to MyISAM, but that is infrequently used now because of its lack of durability amongst other things - no transaction support, etc (most apps use InnoDB).

<comment><USER11> We actually use MySQL as a transaction log for things like orders/views to balance that out, MongoDB stores everything else though.

<comment><USER12> Gotcha, that works, and was mentioned in passing. Mongo still makes me nervous, but otherwise looks very promising.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our writes to Mongo are few and far between - otherwise I'd be nervous too :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not an expert with the Microsoft stack, but aren't there ways to mitigate the costs? I've heard Mono supports (most of?) ASP.NET and you don't have to use SQL server either. What other costs are there specific to the Microsoft stack?

<comment><USER14> I would've loved to see a rough breakdown of how they got the the "5 figures" cost...

<comment><AUTHOR> SQL Server license: $7171 per processor - we have a single quad machine... which we'll likely need to split into two machines, incurring extra licensing fees. Our servers _were_ hosted at MaximumASP and they gave us a bandwidth quote with additional servers that was 4 figures (remember, this is 3 years out).

Visual Studio is $1200 a pop - this is for two people.

I'm already at 5 figures and I didn't include Expression/Media Encoder and so on.

<http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/pricing.aspx> <http://www.microsoftstore.com/s/visualstudio>

<comment><USER14> So then why not just replace the database and keep the rest? Were you using Linq to SQL and hence tied to SQL Server? As far as VS I'm sure it would not have been a problem for you to get free versions. However, I suppose if you were to change the database portion, probably a sizable chunk of the application, you may as well replace the whole thing...

<comment><AUTHOR> But _why_? My cost right now (aside from hardware, which is net even) is 0 - without the hoops. Also - the testing story is much better.

<comment><USER14> Was the cost of rewriting that small? In my view it would only make sense if the cost of rewriting the app is insignificant. If you can do it in a week or two, sure... any more than that and I would start to question if it's worth it. I mean, you gotta make sure it brings in money first, right? :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Overall about 2 weeks total. I took my time and wrote it first in Sinatra, then scrapped and went to Rails - 2 weeks :)

<comment><USER15> I'd like to hear more about why you switched from Sinatra to Rails. I'm primarily an Asp.net MVC dev who plays with Python/Ruby on the side, but Sinatra really interests me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice article! I really enjoy hearing about other people's experiences.

I have nothing per se against Microsoft's hosting except for the expense. I believe that it is much more expensive than AppEngine or AWS. Question: the lock-in factor is likely not that big of an issue since apps could be run on Mono and a leased server, right?

Really, software, writing and deploying web apps is a business and there are two large costs involved: labor costs for writing and maintaining software, and hardware+admin costs for deployment. The question is what is least expensive and fastest to deployment. For me, that is Ruby on Rails for the front end, and as needed, back end processing in Java, or Clojure, or Common Lisp - whatever makes sense for a project.</comment>


TAPIR: Building Consistent Transactions with Inconsistent Replication (2015) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://drkp.net/papers/tapir-sosp15.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> This is one of the best CS papers I've read this year.

<comment><USER2> What other CS papers would you recommend?

<comment><AUTHOR> I found _Geometric Algebra for Computer Science (Revised Edition): An Object- Oriented Approach to Geometry_ to be eye-opening.

[https://www.amazon.com/Geometric-Algebra-Computer-Science- Re...](https://www.amazon.com/Geometric-Algebra-Computer-Science- Revised/dp/0123749425)

<comment><USER2> Thank you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


JP Morgan: Apple's iPad 2 could cause 'bubble burst' for rival tablets  - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/03/09/jp_morgan_apples_ipad_2_could_cause_bubble_burst_for_rival_tablets.html <comment><USER2> If the iPad competition really overproduces as much as this report expects them to, then there's going to be some massively discounted Android tablets come Christmas-time. Even I'd pick up a $99 Xoom.

<comment><USER3> Do you really think that Android tablet makers can continuously produce at that price point though?

Let's be honest here: as many benefits as the android -> hardware developer model has, there are some glaring weaknesses.

<comment><USER4> No, they can't, but that doesn't mean the cheap end of year push that will happen due to oversupply couldn't change the developer landscape</comment></comment></comment>


How fighting for a prize knocks down its value - <AUTHOR> http://timharford.com/2016/01/how-fighting-for-a-prize-knocks-down-its-value/ <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting given the recent article on h/n on microwave towers in the UK for high frequency trading.</comment>


Your portfolio is a dick pic - <AUTHOR> http://letsworkshop.com/dick-pic

<comment><USER2> I am usually pretty insensitive to dick humor, but the mix of here is just weird.</comment>


What Happens When Judges Pull the Plug on Rural America - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/when-judges-pull-the-plug-on-rural-america-304533928fd#.rq6xtbons <comment><USER2> "What U.S. president will make sure we make a national upgrade to competitive, last-mile-fiber-plus-advanced-wireless connections?"

Al Gore. :-(</comment>


Researchers Have Thoroughly Shown That Gluten Sensitivity Doesn't Exist - chris-at http://www.businessinsider.com.au/gluten-sensitivity-and-study-replication-2014-5 <comment><AUTHOR> This is an incredibly misleading title on two studies that has been repeatedly misreported as confirming the absence of gluten sensitivity. In fact, if you get away from the junk science journalism, these studies suggest scientifically sound reasons for non-celiac enteropathy in the absence of an immune-moderated response towards gluten.

That's not even getting into how terribly flawed the selection process was in these studies, and how the selection criteria was designed to exclude those who had been diagnosed with celiac or gluten-sensitive enteropathy in the first place. Or how the first study was so small as to be statistically insignificant. Or how the control also produced gastrointestinal symptoms similar to the experiments.

Also: dude, why don't you worry more about your own diet and less about those of perfect strangers? Who gives a shit why people eat gluten-free? It's their fucking body; quit trying to police their diets because you read some junk science on a blog.

</comment><comment><USER2> I don't buy this "rigorous" experiment. So from 37 self identified gluten sensitive patients most of them have nocebo effect? Great. It clearly doesn't prove that gluten sensitivity doesn't exist, it proves that if you pick people from the self identified group than most of them are pretending (also can't actual sensitives have nocebo effects?). Surprise, surprise, it's already predicted that only 1% of the local population is gluten sensitive yet 18% buys gluten free products, probably many of them self identified gluten sensitives.</comment>


Interview with an Auschwitz Guard: 'I Do Not Feel Like a Criminal' - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/spiegel-interview-with-a-91-year-old-former-auschwitz-guard-a-988127.html <comment><USER2> This reminds me of (the somewhat controversial) Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt. She was the one who coined the phrase the "banality of evil". The coldness and lack of emotion present is not unlike how Arendt was describing Eichmann.

It seems she was criticized for not showing enough sympathy and or seemingly dismissing the evilness of Eichmann. But in a way the opposite even more scary. That he was not mentally ill, and rabidly antisemitic, but rather stupid and ordinary. Not unlike many authoritarian followers plugged into a large bureaucratic system. He would have ascended just as successfully up the ladder in Stalin's bureaucratic machine or Pol Pot's.

<comment><USER3> Leonard Cohen's 1971 poem made the point much more succinctly:

 _All There is to Know About Adolph Eichmann

EYES:……………………………………Medium

HAIR:……………………………………Medium

WEIGHT:………………………………Medium

HEIGHT:………………………………Medium

DISTINGUISHING FEATURES…None

NUMBER OF FINGERS:………..Ten

NUMBER OF TOES………………Ten

INTELLIGENCE…………………….Medium

What did you expect?

Talons?

Oversize incisors?

Green saliva?

Madness?_

<comment><USER4> Stunning. We want to portray evil as exceptional, different from us in obvious perceivable ways, but it is not.

<comment><USER5> Wow, that Leonard Cohen poem. It's true for the Nazi leadership too; explaining Hitler as a madman diminishes the horror of his actions. Point is, he was a sane man. It's only by admitting that he was one of us that helps us not repeat history.

<comment><USER6> Plus, he had a huge following who shared the same beliefs. Not just in German population, but also in the ruiling and upper classes of Europe, the US and Latin America.

And, of course, it's not like his actions were that different than things like the slavery of African Americans, the colonization and enslavement of 2/3 of the world by the European colonial powers (with tens of millions of dead, and heinous acts of torture and mass murder), etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "I never did harm to any Jew," says a former _guard at Auschwitz_.

The guy sleeps well at night. He invited his wife and neighbor, who have all heard it before, to listen to the interview. He stood in front of a permanent bonfire of people, with a gun, and imagines himself as a victim. The power of rationalization is terrifying. And the smarter you are, the better you are at it.

<comment><USER8> Would you have had the courage to desert under threat of getting shot? I'm not sure I would.

I feel quite certain that I couldn't possibly be brainwashed to do a thing like that willingly. But under threat of pain and death I'm not sure I would be capable of standing up to that kind of force. I honestly don't know what I would do.

On the other hand, my conscience would most certainly _not_ be clear in the aftermath.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Its remarkable how you can apply engineering / industrial methods to a mass killing facility so almost nobody feels guilty. Certainly the construction workers can't be blamed that they built the crematoria, railways can't be blamed for transporting people to death camp, chemists for inventing the Zyklon-B gas or guards for making sure nobody escapes. Everyone just did their job pretending that it's OK if you don't hurt anybody personally. I dont want to judge them, evil sometimes happens just because it's allowed to happen.

<comment><USER10> It was prisoners in camps who build crematoria and operated infrastructure. Soldiers were drafted (involuntary) and would get shot for not following orders. Some guards in camp were even Jewish. Nobody pretended anything, they just wanted to live a bit longer.

Just compare it with US prisons or Gaza, everyone is fine with those today.

<comment><USER6> > _It was prisoners in camps who build crematoria and operated infrastructure. > Soldiers were drafted (involuntary) and would get shot for not following > orders._

If only it was that clear cut.

Actually higher personel, as well as guards and soldiers were known to be extremely sadistic, from using women as sex slaves (the "joy divisions"), to cruel games with killing, maiming prisoners for fun, and everything in between.

It wasn't just "following orders". There was sadistic enjoyment, and sense of a higher race getting rid of unwanted parasites in lots of these people.

That some prisones built crematoria and operated infrastructure (under threat of death) is just a technical detail.

<comment><USER11> Also, the camps themselves were built by businessmen. Hitler had strong ties to German business. He gave many handouts to business over the years, including labor conscription.

<comment><USER6> Another perhaps little known to some fact is that tons of people, especially businessmen and politicians, viewed Hitler favorably in the US, until they entered the war. Including his views on Jews etc.

He was a kind of their mascot against "the reds" and against unruly workers and working classes in the US.

Also, contrary to some belief, before and even during the war, the US mostly could not care less about the plight of Jews at the time, even when it was known what was happening to them. E.g

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_antisemitism_in_the_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_antisemitism_in_the_United_States#The_Holocaust)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting point. If you have a gun to your head, and disobedience has virtually no effect except suicide, then you have virtually no responsibility.

Compare to those of us who are complicit (even if tacitly) in all sorts of crimes, from war to global climate destruction to mass incarceration. Much more responsible than this Auschwitz guard, since we have more freedom to act effectively.

(Assuming he's truthful, and couldn't frag his Nazi commanders nor organize his peers.)

<comment><USER13> There is nothing in this comment I agree with at all. That doesn't mean I think it's bad; it's just startling to me how different someone else's worldview could be.

<comment><USER14> I am responding here just for context, it is not directed at you. The parent comment is evidently not popular. It has already been pointed out in comments that many did actually martyr themselves rather than follow the orders or be a cog in the system. However what really annoys me is the insincerity of the "holier than thou" position adopted by many here. Yes, some of those who are commenting here would, I think, martyr themselves in such situations, but I doubt if the majority would. I seriously doubt, if even 50% of those commenting here from that patronizing position would do any different, and I am being generous. Its not about just those who have left such comments, I wonder how many among our own peers would take a moral stand in light of the consequences, particularly when I see people grumble and moan self righteously about even petty inconveniences. Again, I know some would, I know one or two people among my peers of whom I have absolutely no doubt that they would sacrifice themselves, and it fills me with a sense of respect for these people that I cannot even begin to describe. I would like to think that even if I dont sacrifice myself I would find a way to squirm out, but that is perhaps wishful thinking, unless you are put in that situation you never know yourself well enough.

Many people were in the same position as Kiriakou, Snowden, Manning, many were fully aware of the wrongs that were going on, how many put up a resistance at a cost to themselves ?

Do I consider John Yoo to have committed worse acts than this guy, well, absolutely, assuming his account is truthful.

A nonignorable artifact is that we turned out to be on the winning side. Had the winners and the world order been different, Wolfowitz and their ilk would have been the new Eichmann's in the then popular narrative.

@tptacek Just to be clear I am not making a case for a moral equivalence, far from it. The only connection is that many people were in a position where they could have mitigated wanton civilian casualties and gross miscarriage of justice, if they chose to adopt certain personal inconveniences. However very few actually did. A sizeable portion of US were dead against the Iraq war, but among them many still continued to fund some of it with taxes, why ? because among other things, not paying taxes would cause considerable inconvenience.

And again this not by any means directed at you. I am not an US citizen but had I been one, I would have paid the taxes anyway and rationalized it away that taxes does good and very little of that is funding the war.

<comment><USER15> > Yes, some of those who are commenting here would, I

> think, martyr themselves in such situations, but I doubt

> if the majority would.

This.

I thought about it yesterday, and I believe the most important difference between people living "in the situation" and commentators today is this: we know the Nazis lost the war big time.

1\. I truly believe that quite a few people would try to act if they knew the war was coming to an end, their action would be seen as heroic, and therefore they either live as heroes or at least be remembered as such. Conversely, it's not tempting to act if you're going to be vilified when the Nazis win and rule the world.

2\. Wasn't it clear by 1944 (or whenever) that the Nazis would lose? In a way yes, but if you want to argue that, think about Syria. A year ago it was clear that Assad was finished, he would certainly lose his power and quite possibly his life. Today he's not only in power (over a smaller Syria), but some in the West are actually wondering if we shouldn't include him in a coalition against IS. Now that he gave up his chemical weapons, we're clearly fine with whatever he's doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting how his pension is being docked. It's surprising that he hasn't been sentenced yet this can happen.

</comment><comment><USER17> The big mystery is, that even total "normal" people can become "beasts".

The problem is, that we are so far away from all that, that we think, we are immune to such things ... but we are not. Because humans are essentially the same today as yesterday. The only thing we could/should do is, remember what happened in the past. But we do the opposite: We make unnatural beasts of those people, that existed in the past -- some fairy-tale like creatures, that existed only in a nightmare of humanity.

But it was no nightmare and it can come back to us very quickly. Look into the nearer past -- what happened even in the "peaceful" Europe (e.g. Yugoslavia) -- humans can easily be beasts again and much easier, when we think, that it all was a fairy-tale.

<comment><USER18> It's not a mystery, it is a science: Flags, uniforms, medals, oaths, "unit cohesion," etc. are all designed to make a killer out of you or me if there is a need for it.

There are psychologists living and working in the US who designed torture programs.

<comment><USER17> Totally correct. By mystery, I wanted to say something different: Most people will not believe, how little is needed to make a beast out of "normal people".

Apropos science: the EU decided, that in the future, costs of the military will now be accounted for in the same category as investments into science, universities or infrastructure. Thus, countries of the EU can put more money into weapons without missing the EU targets for investments into the future. Sometimes politics can just be a totally dirty business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> people can evaluate their behavior either by relative yardsticks - law and morals of the group/society they belong too - or by absolute yardsticks of good and evil, like don't kill, etc... Using the relative ones is easier and gets you comfortably to the advanced age. Thus evolutionary the relative ones prevail inside given group/society. There is though some kind of correctional feedback at work that when the relative yardsticks of a given group/society drift too far from the absolute ones, the whole group/society is eliminated (or some kind of catastrophically adjusted) from the race.

<comment><USER7> This is the silliest kind of evolutionary psychology. People had kids in their teens and twenties. Who exactly was being purged for a belief in absolute good and evil before they could reproduce?

Sometimes morality isn't about biology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Of course not. Being "criminal" is relative to the society one inhabits.

That being said, he ought to feel badly about what was being done and his part in it. Conscience is higher than, and apart from, being criminal.

I feel badly about some of the things my society is doing right now. I regret my part in it, but short of drastic (and probably technically "criminal") measures, there is little I feel I can do. Just small things, and these don't seem to matter much. So I'm just doing the less bad that I reasonably can. But I still feel bad about some of the things we do.

<comment><USER17> The sad thing is, when societies, that helped to defend against the dark sides of humanity, erode so much. ;(

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Try Claude Lanzmann's "Shoah". It's a very unusual documentary without any material from historical film archives. He talked to jewish survivors, to their neighbours and also to Nazis, that were discovered by him. He filmed many locations as they were in the 70's (when the documentary was finished) and much much more. The documentary is about 10 hours long, and it took him several years to create. Lanzmann participated in the french résistance.

</comment><comment><USER22> I happen to live in a country where Nazism is on the rise and everyone might have to eventually _pick sides_. I hope not, but Greece right now looks very much Germany in 1930 and if things do not change drastically in the next 5 years, I'm not sure how we're gonna void a Nazi regime.

The fact that this guy doesn't feel guilty, makes me sad. To me he is a racist, killer. There are situations in life, where you have to pick-sides. You can't play Switzerland when the whole world around you goes in ruins. At least to me, is not acceptable and says a lot about your character.

<comment><USER23> It's easy to say that behind a computer screen. It's much harder to choose to die for your beliefs, especially if doing so doesn't even help your cause. Realistically a single guard would not have been able to do much.

To say it say it "says a lot about your character" is ridiculous. The vast majority of people didn't resist.

<comment><USER22> To me this case is extreme, so my judgment and measures are extreme. Of course it's easier said than done, but that doesn't change anything.

The vast majority of which population? Are you referring to Europeans or Germans alone?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I always wonder: shoot the man giving orders ?

<comment><USER25> It sounds so simple, and yet it has happened so rarely.

<comment><USER4> Curiously, at least a few cases of killing your own officer are recorded when it's in your own immediate interest.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragging](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragging)

I suppose the soldiers asked to do bad things (like this man) rationalize it away.

<comment><USER23> Well fragging was common on the front lines because it had plausible deniability of the enemy throwing a grenade back. In a prison camp far away from the front, it's more difficult to explain, and harder to get away with.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Layers – A simple WordPress site builder - <AUTHOR> http://www.layerswp.com <comment><USER2> There are tons of WordPress site builders out there. WPMUDEV released one yesterday, calling it 'the future of WordPress'.

Everyone is hell bent on turning WP from a CMS to an app platform. This is what results in 5mb sites and gives WP a bad reputation for being slow and clunky.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it's what prompted the creation of Ghost.

I sometimes see people doing more in WordPress than I have yet to get Django to do.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I know a startup which 'ingeniously' used Wordpress as their platform, turning it into a 'two sided commerce marketplace'.

I'm not sure if it was brilliance or stupidity.

<comment><USER5> Question is, how is their business model performing? Has WP hurt or helped that? In that end, that is really what matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The site says " _Layers is built into the WordPress core.._ " That means any site built with Layers could potentially break horribly when you update Wordpress. Doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

<comment><USER7> Hey Onion, I think we need to tweak that copy. Quite the opposite will happen. We haven't touched the actual core of WP but instead made sure to use what WordPress already offers and work to improve the UX around it. If WP released an update tomorrow Layers + WP would still work as promised. Dave

<comment><USER8> Yes, agree. Love the look of Layers WP - but the people that you're trying to attract (people that actually know what the WP core means) are the ones who want exactly the opposite of something built into the WP core.

<comment><USER7> Thanks Joseph. What we are trying to communicate is that we haven't built a clunky piece of tech on top of WordPress - which is common amongst most site builders. Going to chat to my team about refining that line as we believe it's an important point. Thanks for the comment :)

<comment><USER9> > What we are trying to communicate is that we haven't built a clunky piece of > tech on top of WordPress

Now I'm confused. Didn't you just say that your tech is built in top of WordPress (below)?

> We haven't touched the actual core of WP but instead made sure to use what > WordPress already offers and work to improve the UX around it.

<comment><USER7> We didn't want to fork WordPress and turn it into a Frankenstein. The actual core of WP is untouched however if you look at our code and the interface, we've tried to stick as close to what WP recommends as possible.

Many existing WP page builders out there look nothing like WordPress at all. Their interfaces are totally different and their code is not to WP's high standards. We wanted to avoid that with Layers. We wanted you to still use WP as is without feeling like you'd just installed something that takes over the normal experience.

<comment><USER5> Further commentary, you could also instead say "Built with a look and feel that would make you think it is built into WordPress core." But not "Built into WordPress core."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The demo [http://sites.layerswp.com/coffee/](http://sites.layerswp.com/coffee/) is down.

Also, what am I downloading? A plugin to wordpress?

<comment><USER11> It's a theme. "Layers is activated as a WordPress theme and works directly with the built-in WordPress Customizer."

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is it only for static page sites? I'm not seeing any demo pages for articles/blog posts

I guess the underlying question is - can I have articles that similar feel to a Medium post (Large featured image with overlaying title, scroll for article - [https://medium.com/help- center/images-652ee60abea6](https://medium.com/help- center/images-652ee60abea6) )

<comment><USER13> Currently it's just for pages, we are working on ways to bring the builder into any post type so which will help users make beautiful posts as well as pages.

We are trying as much as possible to take inspiration from Squarespace in that our main focus is the User Experience.

Anything decision we take with Layers has to meet our UX expectations before being added, which I think is something lacking from the WordPress industry at the moment, features are added but are not usable, which sucks for the end user.

We want to fix that as much as we can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This looks nice. I particularly like the fact that it comes with example layouts. I recently had a look at Scribe from WPMU that uses Upfront. It seemed pretty powerful, but for a non designer I need something to get started with, similar to the layouts that come with Bootstrap.

I'll give this a go tonight.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm disappointed that I can't find two pieces of information that are essential for me on this website:

* the identity of the author(s) * a link a repository hosting the source code

<comment><USER13> Our company is called Obox, you can get the git repo here:

[http://GitHub.com/Obox/Layerswp](http://GitHub.com/Obox/Layerswp)

Enjoy :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's good-looking. The discussion here alerted me to Layers and to give it a test drive. I'm working in the trial on a tablet. The layout's cutting off a lot -- can't even h scroll to it. [http://m.imgur.com/RggaJgr](http://m.imgur.com/RggaJgr)

Site building on an ipad's an edge case, but updates from one will not be.

</comment><comment><USER17> How do I download the demo themes? I was hoping to download the [http://sites.layerswp.com/acquire/](http://sites.layerswp.com/acquire/) business theme, but can't seem to figure out how to do that through your docs.

</comment><comment><USER18> "Free Forever" scares me.

<comment><USER7> There is a business model behind it but Layers itself will always be free and we'll be here to support it! We've been in the WP game since '09 and have zero intention of going anywhere anytime soon :)

<comment><USER19> Care to elaborate on the business model? Honestly interested.

<comment><USER7> Paid for extensions, themes and a marketplace for designers and developers which we hope to launch in 30-60 days time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems to lack the ability for adding a widget into a content column. Beneath my slider I display three columns, and each column contains a widget. Is it possible to add widgets into one of the columns within a Layers content widget?

<comment><AUTHOR> Each widget occupies one whole row by itself. The bundled Content widget can generate columns and can't accept other widgets into one of its columns. Might be a future feature tho...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I maintained a wordpress site for a client and found it to be a security nightmare.

<comment><USER5> You were either hosting it on the wrong place or using sketchy themes and/or plugins. WordPress core itself is very secure.

<comment><USER21> I suspect it was the hosting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I want to see how it evolves in the future. Cool project indeed.

</comment><comment><USER23> What's the catch?

</comment><comment><USER24> Why would this be free forever? Seems like something you could charge at least a small, one-time fee for.

</comment><comment><USER25> It looks great, I will surely give it a try on of my parent-in-law's restaurant website.

</comment><comment><USER26> Just had a look at the landing page. Did you guys/gals forget some meta tags? SEO.

<comment><USER27> What META tags would you suggest are critical to SEO performance (aside from 'DESCRIPTION')?

<comment><USER26> Here's a good article on Moz for the basics. [http://moz.com/blog/meta-data- templates-123](http://moz.com/blog/meta-data-templates-123)

If you have an iOS app, you'll need smart app banner tags [https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/AppleA...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/PromotingAppswithAppBanners/PromotingAppswithAppBanners.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> So this isn't a plugin or a theme but a Wordpress clone with a custom spin on it?

<comment><USER7> Hi Vidyesh, it's a theme for WordPress as opposed to a custom spin. Our main focus was building the best user experience we could for a WordPress product.

<comment><USER29> Why not go the Plugin route and let the user use Layers on any theme ?

<comment><USER30> Lack of consistency in wp plugin design. You would have to have others buy into what your are doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't want to download, just use.

</comment><comment><USER32> 'Designed for Mobile ' Never mind then.

<comment><USER33> Care to explain?

I'd gather that with the constantly growing mobile percentage of a general site's audience it makes sense to build things future-proof, that is mobile- first. It wouldn't bother me if desktops were an afterthought, would it you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Anyone notice how crazy similar that is to Digital Ocean's site? [https://www.digitalocean.com/](https://www.digitalocean.com/)

I know it's Wordpress and all but come on.

<comment><USER35> There are far more differences than similarities. I would analyze them more before making an accusation (didn't sound like you were just trying to harmlessly point out the similarities).

<comment><USER34> I wasn't taking an action. I didn't know if it was a completely custom layout as seeing it was Wordpress layout.</comment></comment></comment>


StopBadware - <AUTHOR> https://www.stopbadware.org/ <comment><USER2> this is great. I've been well shielded from badware thanks to using FOSS since 96, but Android/Windows are a cesspit of apps that have 0 value (e.g. CMSecurity, Tune-up utilities et al) and are constantly reporting about non- problems ("risk detected" or "junk found"), with sole purpose of displaying an ad. Android (and Windows) security apps not only suck but condition you into an OC behavior for a reward (now your phone is clean).

<comment><USER3> Badware has existed for *NIX (FOSS or not). The first internet worm, back in 1988, targeted Sendmail [1]. OSes, including FOSS ones (except OpenBSD), used to have all kind of services enabled by default in the '90s. Remotely exploitable vulnerability existed in IPv6 in the Linux kernel around 2005/2006\. We had shellshock as well. Just recently in 2018, there was Meltdown and Spectre bug which was remotely exploitable via JavaScript. Also, Android is arguably FOSS. Symbian is as well, nowadays.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm)

<comment> jfc-ox There's a difference between unintentional bugs, which it seems a bit harsh to call "badware", and actual malware or very sloppily written, low-value commercial software that recklessly behaves almost like malware.

Also, Android, as running on most commercially available phones, is not FOSS because it contains Google's proprietary extensions and probably hardware drivers/firmware as well.

<comment><USER3> > There's a difference between unintentional bugs, which it seems a bit harsh > to call "badware", and actual malware or very sloppily written, low-value > commercial software that recklessly behaves almost like malware.

There's not much difference between the latter and all these smartphones, smart TVs, and other IoT devices which receive software updates for 2 or 3 years after release _if_ you're lucky.

> Also, Android, as running on most commercially available phones, is not FOSS > because it contains Google's proprietary extensions and probably hardware > drivers/firmware as well.

True, its a mix. I can recommend LineageOS + microG [1]

[1] [https://lineage.microg.org/](https://lineage.microg.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Kind of a simplistic concept, no? Feels almost monosyllabic, like simple English wikipedia.

[https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)

Maybe some people need this sort of thing?

I feel like the idea for what "badware" is, according to this site, is put forward to assist non-english speakers, in negotiating software choices in a world where the dominant locale option is English.

Beyond a certain level of awareness and computer literacy, this site is only collecting obvious facts and offering a new name for them. I don't foresee anyone fluent in English, above middle school age, finding a great deal of utility here.

</comment><comment><USER5> This site is very good and informative.

But I find it kind of ironic that a site that warns about malware wants JavaScript, just to display static content.

On the positive side, the JS code seems to be used only for loading custom fonts, and the website looks perfectly well without JavaScript using the standard system fonts.

<comment><USER6> Why would someone need JS to load a font? You can use them just fine with a link in the header and CSS.

<comment><USER5> I don't get it, either. Indeed, they do include their fonts with plain <link> elements:

        <link href='//fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=PT+Sans|Signika:400,600' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>
        <link href='//fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Signika:300,700' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>

But effectively, those fonts are only used when JS is enabled.

Moreover, they load a bunch of other JS libraries whose added value is practically non-existent (except maybe for their "email protection"):

        <script type="text/rocketscript" data-rocketsrc="https://www.stopbadware.org/misc/jquery.once.js?v=1.2"></script>
        <script type="text/rocketscript" data-rocketsrc="https://www.stopbadware.org/misc/drupal.js?ooq842"></script>
        <script type="text/rocketscript" data-rocketsrc="https://www.stopbadware.org/sites/all/modules/jquery_update/replace/ui/external/jquery.cookie.js?v=67fb34f6a866c40d0570"></script>
        ...
        <script type="text/rocketscript" data-rocketsrc="https://www.stopbadware.org/sites/all/libraries/superfish/sftouchscreen.js?ooq842"></script>
        ...

(Note the that "superfish" here is about menus, i.e. not the well-known badware distributed by Lenovo.)

<comment><USER7> > <link href='//fonts.googleapis.com/...

Your code example reminds me of what I just read on the StopBadware website:

> Some badware may not have malicious intentions, but still fails to put the > user in control. Consider, for example, a browser toolbar that helps you > shop online more effectively but does not mention that it will send a list > of everything you buy online to the company that provides the toolbar.

Using hosted fonts so that they may be cached and CDN-served might not be bad, but the use of these has the effect of sharing everything you do online with Google.

<comment><USER8> It's also quite trivial to serve them locally (even fonts that you got from Google Fonts), and http/2 greatly reduces the impact of serving them (as long as they are reasonably sized). And font-display: fallback or font-display: optional in your css will also reduce the impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The CSS on this site is not done very well. There's a noticeable white flash while the page loads 73 CSS files. Kind of surprising because the site looks quite professional apart from that.

<comment><USER10> It doesn't remotely fit the screen on mobile and I cannot zoom out. Was unable to figure out what the site's purpose is and closed it with slight annoyance.</comment></comment>


Cupertino Two Step - <AUTHOR> http://www.cringely.com/2011/08/cupertino-two-step/

<comment><USER2> Jobs has said that Microsoft won the PC wars, and Apple should work on the _next great thing._

The logical, disruptive evolution of the iPad is for it to improve until it meets the needs of PC users - and then replace it. Production reports of the next iPad (iPad 3) indicate it uses the retina display (a logical progression), with a resolution of 2048x1536 - putting it a step beyond the mainstream desktop. A quad-core A6 CPU is also a logical increment, putting it on par with a mainstream PC. [http://www.macvideo.tv/distribution/news/index.cfm?newsId=32...](http://www.macvideo.tv/distribution/news/index.cfm?newsId=3298497&pagType=samechandate)

This would complete Jobs' journey from creating the PC, to losing the PC, to replacing the PC. A great end of a career; a great time for a biography. And something you would really love to see happen in your lifetime.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find it less likely that this move was a matter of appeasing the board and that Steve will still be CEO without the CEO title. Seems more likely (as has been discussed elsewhere) that this is an attempt to soften the blow to the stock price.

If Steve suddenly disappeared, and would no longer be at Apple in any capacity, I'm sure the stock price would dive.

I find a simpler (and more probably correct) explanation to be that Jobs' health is deteriorating, which has prompted both the rush on the publication of the book and the resignation from the CEO position.

The idea that Steve is going to pull out a "...and one more thing" in his final hour (or on his death bed) seems like Cringly has been watching too many movies.

<comment><USER4> Also call me cynical but I figured the leaked news of Apple's board talking to potential CEO's had more to do with softening the blow to the market when Jobs did inevitably step down than a real split between Jobs and the board.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Where is Apple going? What's the grand plan? We know there is such a plan — there has to be, Apple's moves have been too deliberate, if inscrutable, to be some executive random walk."

I'm not sure I see that. Apple sees gaps in the market, and makes high quality products to fill them. I'm not sure there has to be some grand, overarching theme to the whole thing. They make stuff when they know they can make it well and sell it well.

<comment><USER6> The iPhone originally started development as the iPad, then they deduced the product would make more impact as a phone. The AppleTV uses the same internals as the iPhone/iPad line, just waiting to have AppStore access turned on. Much more deliberate than say, HP who bailed on the market 48 days after launch, or Windows and the Zune/PlaysForSure fiascos, not to mention the long delayed Windows Phone strategy (vs 6.5, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Honestly, I don't think Cringely has said a single astute or accurate thing about Apple in a long while. His track record is terrible--just a stream of semi-coherent link-bait. Someone should put a garbage disposal over Cringely's mouth; at least that way his garbage would be easier to digest.

</comment><comment><USER8> There is no one who can truly replace Steve. Tim Cook will remain as CEO until he is proven otherwise.

<comment><USER9> Replacing Tim Cook with somebody from the outside would be yet another John Sculley moment.

The problem with some company boards is that they want to be seen as doing something, and choosing the obvious candidate seems like doing nothing. So they choose to do something they shouldn't have done...</comment></comment>


Show HN: Light up the toes at your next party - <AUTHOR> http://toeglo.com <comment><USER2> This would only work in a sparse dance-floor. I thought this project somehow magically solved the problem that I immediately thought of upon seeing it, but no. It's literally just blasting a laser across the floor. Step into the beam, and it's blocked to everything behind you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Also be useful to see if your floor is properly flat. Might be lighting up some ankles or the floor if not. <grin></comment>


Being an Entrepreneur When You're Not Extroverted - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/05/being_an_entrepreneur_when_youre_not.html

<comment><USER2> Ambivert? That's a new one. Honestly it just sounds like an attempt to relabel introversion as something more likeable.

But the article has some good points, I think.</comment>


Show HN: API for free deep learning models - <AUTHOR> http://openapi.keplr.io <comment><USER2> > Are there limits to API calls? Yes. Don't be an asshole.

I can get behind this. But really, this looks cool and I'll definitely be trying it out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's a cURL request to send a binary image to be classified:

      curl -i --data-binary @/pictures/bunny.jpg http://newton.keplr.io/inceptionv3/predict

<comment><USER4> bunny.jpg?

I think not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this Open Source ? Almost all proprietary DL API by tiers are dying.

</comment><comment><USER6> I viewed this on my phone and it was annoying and difficult to read due to the typing effect in the header which caused the content below to move up and down.

<comment><USER7> Good catch! Updated.</comment></comment>


Aaron, 5 years later - <AUTHOR> https://www.bensw.com/blog/Aaron-5-Years-Later/ <comment><USER2> A touching note from Zephyr Teachout:

"I miss Aaron Swartz. He died 5 years ago today. He was a friend and a rare, huge, soul, and oh did he ever believe in freedom and the possibilities of the future. Wish you were still on call for late night IM strategy sessions, or philosophy, dear friend. I think of you." [https://twitter.com/ZephyrTeachout/status/951538523076792320](https://twitter.com/ZephyrTeachout/status/951538523076792320)

I also appreciate this thought from a fellow HN poster: "'They say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.' That was not even close to the ending of Aaron Swartz." [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11719398](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11719398)

<comment><USER3> The quote about death seems very similar to David Eagleman's book "Forty Tales from the Afterlives".

Here's an excerpt that you might find interesting: [http://www.eagleman.com/sum/excerpt](http://www.eagleman.com/sum/excerpt)

<comment><USER4> It is also a way of thinking about death prevalent in Jewish culture.

<comment><USER5> Indeed! It's why many Jews choose to name children after deceased relatives to honor and remember them.

Also a similar quote by Irving Yalom:

"Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That's when I will be truly dead - when I exist in no one's memory. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. When that person dies, the whole cluster dies, too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?"

[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/153699-some-day-soon- perhap...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/153699-some-day-soon-perhaps-in- forty-years-there-will-be)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations." \- Aaron

I think about his quote quite a bit lately. I wonder what he would have thought about modern facebook, google, and the extreme consolidation of american corporations.

<comment><USER7> I think Aaron would've been happy with the developments in the field of scientific publishing over the last half decade, had he been able to see them. I've specifically got Sci-Hub in mind here. Sure, it's not exactly legal, but everyone uses it regardless.

<comment><USER8> It's too bad Aaron and Alexandra Elbakyan never met. They might have made a good team.

<comment><USER9> She's currently in hiding after Elsevier won an injunction. There's one company I'll be very happy to see the last of.

<comment><USER10> I still don't see why all the scientific paper publishing stuff is allowed to work in the way that it does. I mean, don't a large % of the people doing that research use funding from government grants? If public money was used to produce the research, then the public should have free and available access to it -- we already paid for it.

<comment><USER9> Ostensibly you are not paying Elsevier to access the research, you are paying them because they obtained the right to _copy_ the paper.

That's the loophole that many of the writers use to publish pre-prints from their own homepages. That did not stop the publishers from suing them:

[http://www.wired.co.uk/article/elsevier-versus-open- access](http://www.wired.co.uk/article/elsevier-versus-open-access)

<comment><USER11> Is the right to copy the paper an agreement between universities and the publisher? If so, can't the universities just give a middle finger to the publisher, cancel those rights and allow the research to be publicized for free, in the interest of furthering research, or is money that they get from the publisher that significant?

<comment><USER12> I'm not an expert in this area, but I'm pretty sure they get no money at all from the publishers. Other way around in fact: their libraries spend large fraction of budget subscribing to the journals.

<comment><USER13> Plus a one-time fee for every paper they publish. Whith the option to pay more and make it open access. And _then_ the library of the same university will still pay to access this article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I didn't know Aaron, I don't remember being that aware of him while he was alive, but I did see the SOPA campaign of course, even in the UK. One day I watched the 'Internets own boy' documentary and was profoundly moved. All of a sudden open source, access to information, freedom from surveillance etc really started to matter to me. In fact that is how I found HN!

When the snoopers charter came in to the UK it was Aarons story (and what I read afterwards) that made me recognise the danger in such legislation. I wrote to my MP for the first time.

Aaron in lots of ways changed my life in that way. Ben I really appreciate your post.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hard to respond to this. Hard to believe it has already been five years.

Thank you for writing that, not a week goes by that I don't see your brothers hand in something I'm using or that I read about. The whole open access movement and what has been achieved in those five years would have made Aaron both very happy and would have probably had him bouncing off the walls because 'it goes so slow'.

Very few people appear to me to be all good but your brother was one of those. Cherish his memory and be proud, like any brother would be, and I'm pretty sure he'd be just as proud of you.

<comment><USER15> We should also celebrate people's flaws. There's no such thing as an entirely good person.

Aaron had mental issues. But those same issues were what gave him strength, because they were a part of him. If you took them away, Aaron wouldn't be Aaron.

If we celebrate people's flaws, maybe people won't feel like they're not allowed to have flaws. And maybe that might help people who feel like ending it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16089930](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16089930)

The response to that was overwhelmingly positive. Over 20 people reached out.

It feels time to help people who are concealing problems. The internet gives us recourse. I don't know Aaron's motivations toward the end, but it feels true that if he had just kept talking, things might have turned out differently.

<comment><USER9> Mental issues are flaws but they don't make a person bad in my book.

<comment><USER15> Mm, yes and no. It's one of those things where if you reveal you have them, you feel like less of a person. People look at you differently.

Be honest: If you were in a position of authority, would you place someone with known suicidal tendencies in a position of power? What if things went very badly? How about someone with outbursts of anger, or serious sleep issues that prevent them from showing up to work on time?

When people feel pressure to conceal their problems, the pressure builds.

Aaron had some political aspirations, and a felony conviction would've precluded him from running for certain offices. Maybe that, combined with his internal issues, may have made him feel like less of a person. I don't know. I just want people to feel okay with themselves, however they are.

Once people realize that it's genuinely ok to have issues, hopefully society will relax a bit.

Or maybe there is no solution, and people will eventually take their own lives for one reason or another. And that's ok too. We can remind them that it's not the only option, and give them some space to unwind.

That seems like the crux of it: People are so hung up on doing well or being a good person or accomplishing their careers, that their whole self-worth is tied up in it. When it goes badly, it's easy to take it out on yourself. But there's no reason to. The chips fall wherever they fall.

<comment><USER9> > Aaron had some political aspirations, and a felony conviction would've > precluded him from running for certain offices. Maybe that, combined with > his internal issues, may have made him feel like less of a person. I don't > know.

If you don't know then don't speculate.

<comment><USER16> I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _Ortiz continued to pursue the case, comparing Swartz's transgression to that of a common thief. The lead prosecutor on the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann, compared Swartz to a rapist who had "revictimized" MIT by not taking a plea bargain, according to a later MIT investigation. Heymann was also bothered that Swartz launched a "wild Internet campaign" in his own defense. (He had not done so.)_

[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/carmen-ortiz-us- attorne...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/carmen-ortiz-us-attorney- marty-walsh-prosecution_us_577a7ddce4b09b4c43c0e29a)

 _Swartz's attorney Elliot Peters accused Massachusetts assistant U.S. attorney Stephen Heymann of pursuing federal charges against Swartz to gain publicity.

Heymann was looking for "some juicy looking computer crime cases and Aaron's case, sadly for Aaron, fit the bill," Peters said. Heymann, Peters believes, thought the Swartz case "was going to receive press and he was going to be a tough guy and read his name in the newspaper."

Heymann, the deputy chief of the criminal division in the Boston-based U.S. Attorney's office, also headed the computer crimes task force there, a position Peters said "doesn't carry much prestige and respect unless you have computer crimes cases."_

[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz- steph...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-stephen- heymann_n_2473278.html)

 _MIT's behavior throughout the case was reprehensible, and this report is quite frankly a whitewash.

Here are the facts: This report claims that MIT was "neutral" – but MIT's lawyers gave prosecutors total access to witnesses and evidence, while refusing access to Aaron's lawyers to the exact same witnesses and evidence. That's not neutral. The fact is that all MIT had to do was say publicly, "We don't want this prosecution to go forward" – and Steve Heymann and Carmen Ortiz would have had no case. We have an institution to contrast MIT with – JSTOR, who came out immediately and publicly against the prosecution. Aaron would be alive today if MIT had acted as JSTOR did. MIT had a moral imperative to do so._

[http://tarensk.tumblr.com/post/56881327662/mit-report-is- a-w...](http://tarensk.tumblr.com/post/56881327662/mit-report-is-a-whitewash- my-statement-in)

<comment><USER18> I hope Carmen Ortiz will one day be held responsible for her actions.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Ortiz#Prosecution_of_Aa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Ortiz#Prosecution_of_Aaron_Swartz)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you haven't watched "The Internet's Own Boy", [1] I'd recommend that you do. If you think about freedom, privacy, surveillance, abuse of power and related things, this will make you both sad and angry. We cannot truly have a better world without fighting for these and keep the struggles alive, because the powerful ones are good at retaining their power and at finding ways to keep people's memories brief.

I'm glad that Sci-Hub exists. Though I'm not in research as such, it's a painful exercise to find relevant information that's useful and goes into some detail. I struggle with getting full papers from PubMed sometimes.

[1]: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internet%27s_Own_Boy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internet%27s_Own_Boy)

</comment><comment><USER20> I have nothing constructive to say except for that I was really touched by "The Internet's Own Boy". It made me feel related to something I did not experience.

I think memories about unnecessary sad events like Aaron's death help us think about the significance of more profound, thoughtful analysis of problems at hand, that have direct impact on human beings.

</comment><comment><USER21> "I convinced Google to allow me to give their USENET archives to the Internet Archive."

Thank you.

<comment><USER22> I also thought this was interesting, but I don't see what this is referring to. Google has bought the DejaNews archive [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Groups](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Groups) and I haven't find any reference of the fact that they would have given it to Internet Archive, neither on the wikipedia article nor on places where it could have been mentioned like [https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php/Usenet](https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php/Usenet) or [https://archive.org/details/usenet](https://archive.org/details/usenet). Does anyone know what this implies?

<comment><USER21> [https://archive.is/PUk3](https://archive.is/PUk3) <\--- This posting describes the different collections that Google acquired or received. Is there irony in that one needs archive.is (archive.today) to access it? Maybe someone can find the original still accessible?

[http://web.archive.org/web/20110110080509/http://www.skrenta...](http://web.archive.org/web/20110110080509/http://www.skrenta.com:80/rt/utzoo- usenet/) <\--- This is the collection I am most interested in. 1981-1991. Thankfully, one does not need Google to get it.

<comment><USER23> UT Zoo is indexed on my usenet site: [http://www.dejadejadeja.com/](http://www.dejadejadeja.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A very moving story. To pick up your life and start living again is not easy.

Importantly, to become relaxed and happy again without the feeling to have to become more and more productive or create legacy for ourselves or the ones we love is yet another even more difficult step.

There are very few self-help methods that do not have as Target to "improve yourself". Take your time and remember the good times of the past. These times are never wasted.

<comment><USER25> > Importantly, to become relaxed and happy again without the feeling to have > to become more and more productive or create legacy for ourselves or the > ones we love is yet another even more difficult step.

I still deal with this problem daily, I never feel that I'm good enough for my family to be happy for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ben, every point I've been lucky enough to witness you argue at Twitch has alway shone this Neutral Good seed behind it. Unjustified process, user- harmful acts, and any worsening of free speech cause you to interject, never to "wait and see" forever and never to disagree without speaking up.

I honestly have become better at this skill by being nearby when you exercise it. And I believe I have spread that to others in my life in turn. I absolutely would be a different person had our desks not happen to end up across from each other through three office shuffles. And I never met Aaron, but I believe by influencing those around you in this way you've done so much more to honor him than the two big ticket items you give yourself credit for.

</comment><comment><USER27> Thanks for everything you've done since, and everything he was proud of you for before. Aaron Swartz was a rolemodel for me when I was really starting to understand the internet and the value it provided beyond chatting with friends and playing games.

When I heard what happened I was angry more than anything, and it reminded me to not take progress for granted.

I hesitate to bring this up because it'll probably sound more like criticism than a heads up, and I definitely mean it just as a heads up:

It was very jarring to get to the end of the post and have it followed up by "You should follow me on Twitter." I checked another post and it looks like it's just the footer on the blog, but without that knowledge it jumps out at you.

</comment><comment><USER28> Don't let your loss or grief manifest itself as guilt, because you have nothing to feel guilty about. Feel the loss, but don't blame yourself, or the victim.

And don't feel like you have to live up to the image of someone else. Don't give yourself expectations on account of someone else. Set your own goals and expectations, from a place of self-compassion. And just like a good parent should never be hard on their child for failing to complete a project, neither should you be hard on yourself.

I'm sure none of that is helpful right now. But the next time you feel pressure or guilt rising up: Gently let it go. You don't owe anyone your peace of mind.

</comment><comment><USER29> I didn't personally know Aaron but I've read a lot of his blog posts and I was extremely sad to hear about his passing.

His blog posts are filled with a lot of information, insights, and thoughts that I usually don't get from other people. Whenever I go back and read his posts, they sound like a friend of mine talking to me.

</comment><comment><USER30> RIP. Glad to see at least Carmen Ortis [1] is out so she won't hurt anyone anymore with the long stretch of government arm she used as a overzealous prosecutor.

Fun fact: For a little while she wanted to run for Governor of Massachusetts (good grief!), but the past of butchered prosecution of Mr. Swartz hunted her and she changes her mind.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Ortiz#Prosecution_of_Aa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Ortiz#Prosecution_of_Aaron_Swartz)

</comment><comment><USER31> Sci-hub and Library Genesis take a decent amount of inspiration from Aaron Swartz mission.

</comment><comment><USER32> I lived in Highland Park when he committed suicide and attended the same high school he did(NSCDS). NSCDS talked a lot about Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. They also talked a lot also about Gandhi and other activists. It is a day school so they have an alternative form of teaching. I feel comfort saying this influenced his decisions for later in his life.

<comment><USER33> Good education is so important. Some high profile hackers such as Alan Kay have spent a lot of effort on tools for education and for children. We should all take a leaf out of his book and try to dedicate some resources to assist with free online public education and related technologies for the benefit of subsequent generations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> You're a good man, Ben. Always a privilege to share diner tables with you in Seattle. Happy to do it again if you're around.

</comment><comment><USER35> Sometimes it's the life in the years rather than the years in the life. Amazing impact although bright career cut short tragically.

</comment><comment><USER36> I hope the Massachusetts based AG who prosecuted him rots in hell.

</comment><comment><USER37> Just in case it ever comes to this, if I die, it was NOT a suicide.

RIP Aaron, I wish I knew you.

<comment><USER38> I don't consider Aaron's death a suicide, either. It was not exactly a Magnitsky-style beaten-in-prison death, but overly-zealous prosecutors trying to "make an example" of him had more to do with his death than mental illness.

Note what happened, in that context, when someone who was _not_ an American political activist did what criminal prosecutors were going after Aaron for:

[https://www.sciencealert.com/this-woman-has-illegally- upload...](https://www.sciencealert.com/this-woman-has-illegally-uploaded- millions-of-journal-articles-in-an-attempt-to-open-up-science)

<comment><USER39> The scihub woman isn't doing any of the thing Swartz was being prosecuted for. All she's doing is copyright infringement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I will always remember Aaron Swartz. I was a student when he leaves. His story really shocked me and taught me what is free, taught me what should I do with my knowledge. I didn't aware it has been five years since then. But now I gaze at the past five years, I'm glad that I'm on the right way which I expected five years ago.

</comment><comment><USER41> I first read this not knowing it was Aaron Swartz. When I read the comments and found out it was instantly heart dropping. I found Aaron to have fought very tough battles for humanity. I tried to get commission on doing an art installation on a side of an old university building. There was 5 wall sections where I want to place 5 inspirational famous people in B&W portrait format.

The 5 people were: Elon Musk Neil deGrasse Tyson / Brian Cox (couldn't decide!) Angelina Jolie Malala Yousafzai Aaron Schwartz

I made a proposal to my university (Dundee, Scotland), and really thought I had a chance since the building was derelict and that it was covered in shite graffiti. I was turned down because it was going to be torn down. People said I should have just done it, but I couldn't face the possibility of getting kicked out of uni because I graffitied the building.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'd like to wonder what Aaron would be doing right now with Net Neutrality. He'd be at the forefront of all of these things against the Trump administration. He's the hero we need, that we deserve, but have tragically lost. RIP

</comment><comment><USER43> Insight: [http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html](http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html)

<comment><USER44> That link leads to a page with only this on it:

> _certificate error_

> _A client certificate was invalid or not provided._

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The scariest thing to me is how fast people forget.

</comment><comment><USER46> Some days it's hard to believe he's really gone.

</comment><comment><USER47> i had no idea he was your brother. sorry for your loss.

</comment><comment><USER48> Just like everyone here Aaron has had a huge impact on my life. I don't have much to say here, just hope you're doing well.

</comment><comment><USER38> What did SOPA have to do with Net Neutrality?

<comment><USER49> Doesn't take too big of a stretch to see the connection.

No net neutrality: Big companies will be able to afford paying to ISPs to get into "fast lanes", smaller companies will not.

SOPA: Big companies will be able to afford scanning user generated content for piracy, smaller companies will not.

End result is pretty much the same.

<comment><USER50> I dont see that connection at all.

In fact, it is the 'benevolent' government that has abused surveillance, tried to corruptly enable large companies to censor the internet under the guise of 'anti-piracy' (SOPA), and pushed Aaron to suicide through prosecutorial overreach which Net Neutrality proponents want to grant more control over the ISPs over fear-mongering (like piracy) of prices/throttling. (despite the obvious failures of government-enabled regional monopolies)

<comment><USER51> So you think Aaron would be against net neutrality?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> RIP Aaron. You had a profound influence on my life, and I'm sad we never got to meet.

</comment><comment><USER53> To clarify for anybody who may not know, "Aaron" in this blog post is Aaron Swartz. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz)

</comment><comment><USER54> His crime was scraping a website. The accusers killed an innocent man for violating Terms of Service. Who's the real criminal here?

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/01/ninth-circuit- doubles-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/01/ninth-circuit-doubles-down- violating-websites-terms-service-not-crime)

<comment><USER55> The prosecutors were in the wrong, but they did not kill him.

<comment><USER56> They wanted to throw him in a federal prison for 50 years. How is that not robbing someone of their life?

<comment><USER39> It was around 7 years, and that only if it went to trail and basically everything at the trial when the prosecutor's way [1]. If the plea bargain had been accepted it would have been around 6 months.

Here's a good article on how those ridiculously long, completely unrealistic, sentence claims come about so often for Federal cases [2].

[1] [http://volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against- aa...](http://volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-aaron-swartz- part-2-prosecutorial-discretion/)

[2] [https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi- sentenc...](https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence- eleventy-million-years/)

<comment><USER57> >If the plea bargain had been accepted it would have been around 6 months.

I always love how people think the prision term is the only effect or punishment, 6 mos + a felony record for life which is not something that should be taken lightly.

Any felony conviction is a life sentence, you are a 2nd class citizen, you are denied everything from housing to employment, you are denied your rights as a citizen, can not vote, can not own a gun, can not do many things.

This moronic idea of "well it was really only 6mos" is bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> For those unfamiliar with him, feature length documentary [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vz06QO3UkQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vz06QO3UkQ)

</comment><comment><USER59> I really like this piece, but your font size is WAY too small, especially on mobile.

</comment><comment><USER16> Carmen Ortiz is still in office. Now that is a tragedy.

<comment><USER60> She apparently resigned after Trump won. That she wasn't run out of office is a tragedy.</comment></comment>


Co-owner of shuttered Polish cryptocurrency exchange Bitmarket found dead - <AUTHOR> https://decrypt.co/8086/bitmarket-exchange-tobias-nemiro-dead-poland <comment><USER2> Does sound more like suicide...</comment>