Comment by yeukhon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yeukhon | Hacker News Reader

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There is no way to get this deal worked out. They have the evidence they need and this is a serious issue. he will definitely face academic discipline charge against him from Harvard, most likely expel from Harvard University. Furthermore, there is no use of him for the FBI; when you when a deal you want to get some information out of him, or to make the processing faster. In this case, they have the evidence and they don't have to wait.

If he really wanted the exam to be rescheduled, the dumbest thing he could do is either break his own arm or pull the fire alarm somehow, or throw some stink bombs everywhere in the classroom. Those along probably will only cause suspension and minor criminal charge at worst. Though he'd be very careful with fire alarm...Now he probably can't get back to Harvard, after several years of stressful preparation to get into Harvard...

And for most jobs out there grades do matter, especially if you plan to go to graduate school.

I got a C and two B- in college. Currently in grad school at Harvard. One or two bad grades shouldn't hold you back. Given the recent grade inflation scandal (http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/12/3/grade-inflation-...), it seems like even very poor work at Harvard is graded at C or better (this was certainly the case for my C; I probably deserved to fail).

Not correct; another reason the deals are made is to save the state the cost of a trial. And if they won't give you a deal, go to trial and get some expert witnesses to say it was impossible to tell that it was you. The government has to prove you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and get 12 random people on the street to agree. That's risky. Hence plea bargains.

"And for most jobs out there grades do matter"

Not even a little bit. What, you think a hiring manager is going to try to track down your college transcript?

Edit: here's now little grades matter as a developer: I have a GED and five college credits (two of which were archery) and I've been happily employed as a developer for the last six years.

> Not even a little bit. What, you think a hiring manager is going to try to track down your college transcript?

He said "most jobs out there" not "developer jobs." Pretty much every job outside software, as well as every grad school application, will ask you to submit your college transcript.

By most you must be excluding the print media, pharma, and financial industries, all sectors I've worked in (as something other than a developer), no transcript.

The financial industry, and consulting and accounting, all care very much about your college grades, for recent grads. Not many people with even mediocre GPAs in the analyst classes of Goldman Sachs or in among the entry level hires at BCG.

They ask you for your college transcript to verify that you have the degree not to check all your grades.

If that's all they really want then they ought to ask for an academic certification instead.

There may have been a way. We don't know what evidence the FBI had. It might just have been a list from Harvard of which network nodes appeared to have connected to Tor at certain times.

For all we know, they might have just talked to everyone that had used Tor that day. They might not have had any solid evidence about him until he confessed.

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