Aaron Swartz, deceased reddit developer.
Aaron Swartz, deceased reddit developer.
From reddit:
Aaron Swartz was a man who was a part of a whoooole lot of really cool things. He helped to make a thing called "RSS" which helps people learn all the stuff they want to without going to all the different websites that that takes. It's like if you want to make a sandwich, but normally you'd have to go to a bread store, a meat store, a cheese store, and a vegetable store. RSS makes it so you can get that all at once (and enjoy your sandwich much more easily).
Aaron also was part of a group of guys who helped give out information from "PACER", which is a big system full of information about what happened at courts. But, even though all of this information should have been free, they charged people for it. Imagine if each time you asked your teacher a question you had to pay a quarter. Even though that's their job, and it should be free, they made you pay. Well that sure did make some law-people mad. They started to investigate Aaron, but eventually stopped when they realized Aaron was right.
Aaron did some more stuff, too. You know this website you're on? Aaron was a big part of it at the very beginning. A lot of people call him one of the founders, but that's not entirely true. What is true is that Aaron helped to shape and mold and make this website what it is today. It's like when mommy buys you Play-Doh. She actually started it, but you're the one that made the amazing sculpture out of it (with help from your friends, of course).
Aaron also did something that made some people pretty mad. You see Aaron thought that information should be very free. He though that people like you, and me, and everyone else should be able to read as much information as we could on stuff. He thought that the work that scientists did at colleges should be seen by everyone! So he went to MIT to access JSTOR, basically a virtual library of science, and went "out of bounds" according to MIT. He went somewhere he wasn't supposed to go, and went there to try to get all this information and science from JSTOR, which he was actually allowed to do. The problem was like this though. Imagine Aaron went to the library. He can check out as many books as he wants, right? What Aaron wanted to do was check out every book, and make sure that everyone around the world had the same chance to read them that he did. But in order to check out those books, he had to go behind the desk, which was a no-no.
So what happened is that Aaron got in trouble with JSTOR, the library, and with MIT, who is pretty much the librarian. Eventually, JSTOR decided they didn't think Aaron did anything wrong, and didn't want to try anymore. MIT was a little slower though, and didn't say much. Then the US Attorney's office came in. They're like the cops that might come to the library. The owners of the library didn't think that you did anything wrong, and wanted the cops to leave. The librarian didn't answer as quickly though, so the cops stuck around and kept asking Aaron questions and checking through his pockets for stuff.
This whole thing was very scary for Aaron. Aaron didn't have a whole lot of money, and if he got in as much trouble as the cops wanted to put him in, he would have to give it all up, and go to prison for a long time. This scared Aaron a lot. This was especially tough for Aaron because he had been really sad for quite some time. It was a special kind of sad that doesn't go away with a tight hug from mom, so it was especially hard to deal with.
(again not my words but I thought it was interesting enough to re-share)
Hey so a bit off topic but I'm keen for some opinions from the community on whether this is the kind of content we want in the /c/NewZealand community.
The reason I ask is:
- It's not NZ related (as far as I know)
- In this case the events all happened 10+ years ago
- There are lots of other communities on Lemmy, some of which may be more appropriate for posts like this
However, it may be of interest to people. Is this community for content of interest to NZers, or for content about NZ?
Does anyone have thoughts on this?
I don't mind the odd post like this, but if it were to become a lot of what is posted I don't really think it is that appropriate for our c/NZ - maybe if we had a separate community for random off-topic stuff it would be okay, but then, why not post it in lemmy.ml or wherever else is more relevant for this type of stuff.
Just my 2c.
I think you need a totally off-topic channel for all those posts about police sirens being heard somewhere, or someone asking what is this weird bug in my room. I actually found a weird bug in my room recently, but there are tools to photograph and search, so I didn't need to ask about it online. It turns out it was a fluffy wee carpet beetle.
My first thought was to wonder what it had to do with NZ, tbh. Maybe I'm just used to other places where NZ boards were restricted to NZ-related content but I think it would be a shame to dilute the kiwi-ness of this place when there are so many general discussions places that would welcome more generic posts.
Stick to just NZ-relevant stuff I reckon.
I think there should be a way to categorise this in another group. There are lots of things that happen that have nothing to do with NZ, but regardless of that, New Zealanders will discuss those things anyway (sometimes with other New Zealanders).
Since there are gamers and anime/manga fans here, there should be a science and technology channel which includes all of this. Scientific or technological news, but also posts about public figures who are respected for their work in programming & technology. Unless that belongs in another federated network.
Yes, I agree, we should have a way to have NZ-specific discussions about non-NZ things. I feel it doesn't make sense to have NZTechnology, NZScience,etc. Reddit was not big enough to support these, and we have no hope. Instead, I feel these should largely go in communities on other instances that have large /c/technology/ etc. communities.
However, in some cases we will want to discuss these things, and I think it probably makes sense to have somewhere to discuss them. Someone else has suggested creating an off-topic community for these sorts of things.
Throw my 2c in for having areas for content of interest to NZs, and not just having NZ content.
Done! [email protected]
I would say that I expect the content to be anything that is of interest to Kiwis. I don’t think there needs to be considerable resource wasted (imo) on policing content such that it must have a direct NZ connection. Also we have a simple way to self organise how “of interest “ certain content/topics are and that is of course the vote buttons.
I think you could argue that lemmy.nz could be any content of interest to kiwis, but if someone wanted to follow directly NZ related content then separating this in /c/newzealand by creating /c/offtopic this may help people see the content they are looking for.
This is the instance, lemmy.nz which I think of it as concerning the kiwi perspective. Contained within is the community c/newzealand. I think of that as the Aotearoa topic within the kiwi perspective.
As such, I would consider such a post to be suitable for lemmy.nz, as it is to be discussed in our context, but not c/newzealand since it is not about Aotearoa.
I'd certainly be in favour of a c/offtopic community here.