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Erik Uden πŸ‘

Today, on January 11th, we have to remember who died #OTD in 2013: Aaron Swartz :AaronSwartz:

You may know him from his contribution to or creation of:

:blank: β€’ Markdown
:blank: β€’ The Creative Commons License :CreativeCommons:
:blank: β€’ RSS :rss: :blobcat_rss:
:blank: β€’ Reddit

We must never forget him and his contributions to our world forever - especially due to circumstances of injustice and the cause he became a martyr for.

27 comments
Zealous
@ErikUden even more so when places like Reddit try to memory hole and deny him as a co-founder
Nume MacAroon β“‹

@crash_override @ErikUden

I watched this a month ago with my wife @Ellie who previously hadn't known about Aaron.

The documentary was absolutely captivating and worth watching.

Too bad he's not around to be followed on Mastodon. Would've been a great presence here.

Spongefile

@ErikUden Another thing, small but beautifully straightforward and impressive:
Jottit, a wiki that required no account to use or create

Tom O'Brien

@ErikUden
I remember hearing the news of his death, driven to suicide by draconian laws and a vindictive US government that intended to imprison him for the rest of his life. Rest in power, Aaron.

deny

@ErikUden
thanks for the remind.
I often think about how important sharing the knowledge is, and how this strong willingness caused his death.
There's so many people interested in locking up the knowledge and just let the garbage flow, calling it ' information '.
It's positive that Sorbonne university recently chose to work towards an open, participative idea of science:
sorbonne-universite.fr/en/news

Juanjo Salvador

@mvsde @ErikUden Usually the story talks about Reddit and RSS, but not MD. This is cool.

Gentleman Programmer

@jsalvador @ErikUden

I was also wondering about that.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown
> In 2002 Aaron Swartz created atx and referred to it as "the true structured text format". Gruber created the Markdown language in 2004, with Swartz acting as beta tester

hazelnot :yell:

@squeakypancakes @ErikUden He didn't actually create Reddit, he begrudgingly accepted the title of co-founder cause the Reddit guys wanted the website to be associated with him

PKPs Powerfromspace1

@Npars01 @ErikUden this here lets us never forget what the state did to him ☝️

Nikhil

@ErikUden

Two of my favourite quotes are from him. Forever remembered!

unsungnovelty.org/now/

aradian

@ErikUden You can help preserve access to scientific research by seeding one of the scimag torrents for libgen: phillm.net/libgen-seeds-needed

DaywalkingRedhead 😷

@ErikUden Looking at the world right now, the state of disrespect and disregard science is held in, as a field, a reasonable person would be advocating for exactly what Aaron was doing to be not just legal but the norm.

The fact that science is seen as an impenetrable white tower, inaccessible and contradictory has directly contributed to over 33 million dead, many millions more disabled, and the current 2nd highest surge after Omicron - and some places have surpassed Omicron.

Aaron Swartz’s death should have been a wake up call to scientists and institutions to openly publish and make accessible their work. COVID should be the death knell for any gatekeeping of knowledge.

Imagine how different the past four years would have gone if actual science was the first dozens of returns in a search, and not behind paywalls. Instead, actual science is restricted and disinformation and garbage is what searches render.

The culture of white tower academia in restricting knowledge and information helped get us here. It needs to be burned to the ground.

@ErikUden Looking at the world right now, the state of disrespect and disregard science is held in, as a field, a reasonable person would be advocating for exactly what Aaron was doing to be not just legal but the norm.

The fact that science is seen as an impenetrable white tower, inaccessible and contradictory has directly contributed to over 33 million dead, many millions more disabled, and the current 2nd highest surge after Omicron - and some places have surpassed Omicron.

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