Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz commits suicide in midst of controversial trial

11:26 AM Posted by Unknown

Aaron Swartz helped author the RSS specification when he was only in junior high at age 14. I use RSS every single day. I haven't cried when Steve Jobs died, but i did for Aaron. R.I.P

My friends are amazed by this; why is such a curious person so uncurious about the things so directly affecting his life?

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Mashable says.

Aaron Swartz, online activist and founder of Infogami, a service later merged with Reddit, committed suicide in New York City on Jan. 11, the Tech reports.
The news was revealed to the Tech by Swartz's uncle Michael Wolf and confirmed by Swartz’s attorney, Elliot R. Peters. “The tragic and heartbreaking information you received is, regrettably, true,” said Peters.
Born in 1986, Swartz co-authored the first specification of RSS when he was 14. He also started Infogami, a service funded by Y Combinator that was later merged with social networking site Reddit.
Swartz also co-founded Demand Progress, an advocacy group that rallies people "to take action on the news that affects them — by contacting Congress and other leaders, funding pressure tactics, and spreading the word in their own communities."
In July 2011, Swartz was arrested for allegedly harvesting 4 million academic papers from the JSTOR online journal archive. He appeared in court in Sept. 2012, pleading not guilty.
blog post from 2007 on Swartz's website reveals a possible cause for taking his own life: depression. In the post, Swartz describes his experiences with severe depression, as well as several other health issues, including migraines.

Rachel Botsman: The currency of the new economy is trust

4:16 AM Posted by Unknown