Overturning O'Connor v Donaldson would be a start.
how so?
Why can't we stop homelessness? why there's no end in sight
31–37 of 37 posts
Re: Why can't we stop homelessness? why there's no end in sight
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
You sure do seem anxious to make "hard decisions" for people used to them. How about some "hard decisions" for people who aren't, e.g. people who can, all by themselves, afford thousands of private homes forever?
What are you even implying? That nobody deserves to own a home? Or people with homes are the real problem? I don't see any reasonable way to interpret this comment
I am implying that the real problem (or close to it) is the unlimited acquisition of wealth - I mean individuals who can afford thousands of homes.
But speaking of reason - it certainly has its limits. If reason is ignored, it may well eventually succumb to anger.
Re: Why can't we stop homelessness? why there's no end in sight
#33This is an important topic, but why post it here on HN? More and more posts are general news now. There are so many places for these discussions other than a technology oriented message board.
HN is explicitly not just about technology - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
It is, however, very much against too much repetition of the same few topics, and this is probably one of those.
Re: Why can't we stop homelessness? why there's no end in sight
#34This is an important topic, but why post it here on HN? More and more posts are general news now. There are so many places for these discussions other than a technology oriented message board.
For what it's worth, I've been looking at HN front-page activity since 2007. I've recently classified the most frequently-appearing sites to give a breakdown of what type of content appears on the front page (as typified by site). Taking two arbitrary years, 2009 (after HN got reasonably established) and 2022 (most recent full year data), what's notable is that general news sites are less prevalent, and that programming content (mostly links to specific languages and/or source repos) more prevalent in the more recent period.
2009
Posts: 10950 Sites: 1129 Submitters: 1440
Class Stories Votes (mean) Comments (mean)
UNCLASSIFIED: 3741 3741 1.00 3741 1.00
blog: 1930 1930 1.00 1930 1.00
n/a: 1734 43045 24.82 45495 26.24
tech news: 1118 1118 1.00 1118 1.00
general news: 878 878 1.00 878 1.00
corporate comm.: 450 450 1.00 450 1.00
business news: 407 407 1.00 407 1.00
academic / science: 337 337 1.00 337 1.00
programming: 316 316 1.00 316 1.00
general interest: 124 124 1.00 124 1.00
software: 90 90 1.00 90 1.00
Posts: 10950 Sites: 1158 Submitters: 1398
Class Stories Votes (mean) Comments (mean)
UNCLASSIFIED: 4844 4844 1.00 4844 1.00
programming: 1146 1146 1.00 1146 1.00
blog: 1123 1123 1.00 1123 1.00
n/a: 864 167707 194.11 125736 145.53
academic / science: 567 567 1.00 567 1.00
general news: 444 444 1.00 444 1.00
corporate comm.: 406 406 1.00 406 1.00
tech news: 400 400 1.00 400 1.00
social media: 252 252 1.00 252 1.00
general interest: 222 222 1.00 222 1.00
- The "(mean)" columns have bad data, I need to fix my code. The others should be reasonable.
- "UNCLASSIFIED" are sites I've not manually classified. They tend to follow roughly the same overall distribution, though more blogs and fewer news sources.
- "n/a" are posts without a site, typically an "Ask", "Tell", "Who's Hiring", or similar post.
Keep in mind that even "general news" is often about science, technology, or tech-adjacent business, legislation, court decisions, etc.
Re: Why can't we stop homelessness? why there's no end in sight
#35This is an important topic, but why post it here on HN? More and more posts are general news now. There are so many places for these discussions other than a technology oriented message board.
For what it's worth, I've been looking at HN front-page activity since 2007. I've recently classified the most frequently-appearing sites to give a breakdown of what type of content appears on the front page (as typified by site). Taking two arbitrary years, 2009 (after HN got reasonably established) and 2022 (most recent full year data), what's notable is that general news sites are less prevalent, and that programm…
Update on the votes/comments/mean values: turns out that the votes and comments counters were also bad, given my accumulator code (I'd thought this was a reporting issue). The story counts are legit however.
(I was counting "stories" as both "votes" and "comments", which is obvious on eyeballing the values. The difference between "++" and "+= votes / += comments". Sigh.)
Actual / corrected data:
2009
Posts: 10,950 Sites: 1,129 Submitters: 1,440
Class Stories Votes (mean) Comments (mean)
UNCLASSIFIED: 3741 208521 55.74 90426 24.17
blog: 1930 121329 62.86 53561 27.75
n/a: 1734 84356 48.65 89256 51.47
tech news: 1118 58870 52.66 29115 26.04
general news: 878 41661 47.45 25054 28.54
corporate comm.: 450 30740 68.31 13541 30.09
business news: 407 20064 49.30 11748 28.86
academic / science: 337 16806 49.87 6951 20.63
programming: 316 19170 60.66 7820 24.75
general interest: 124 7081 57.10 3370 27.18
Posts: 10,950 Sites: 1,158 Submitters: 1,398
Class Stories Votes (mean) Comments (mean)
UNCLASSIFIED: 4844 1440894 297.46 767619 158.47
programming: 1146 308222 268.95 117139 102.22
blog: 1123 322989 287.61 202251 180.10
n/a: 864 334550 387.21 250608 290.06
academic / science: 567 130608 230.35 73908 130.35
general news: 444 158965 358.03 154772 348.59
corporate comm.: 406 144991 357.12 85870 211.50
tech news: 400 122049 305.12 92895 232.24
social media: 252 124105 492.48 87830 348.53
general interest: 222 53305 240.11 47007 211.74Re: Why can't we stop homelessness? why there's no end in sight
#36This is an important topic, but why post it here on HN? More and more posts are general news now. There are so many places for these discussions other than a technology oriented message board.
HN is explicitly not just about technology - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . It is, however, very much against too much repetition of the same few topics, and this is probably one of those.
I've been reading for 10+ years and it seems to come in waves. Usually it clears up after a few posters push back. I rarely complain about it, but the past few months seemed to be especially high volume. I posted a few comments to signal that awareness. To me, that's participating in my community.
I've read the guidelines many times. The second paragraph seems to indicate this post would be off-topic.
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
Re: Why can't we stop homelessness? why there's no end in sight
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN is explicitly not just about technology - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . It is, however, very much against too much repetition of the same few topics, and this is probably one of those.
I've been reading for 10+ years and it seems to come in waves. Usually it clears up after a few posters push back. I rarely complain about it, but the past few months seemed to be especially high volume. I posted a few comments to signal that awareness. To me, that's participating in my community. I've read the guidelines many times. The second paragraph seems to indicate this post would be off-topic. "Off-Topic: Mos…
I appreciate your caring about the quality of HN! With users who care, we can hopefully survive.
There's a fat but fuzzy area in the Venn diagram where these things overlap - for example some stories are both intellectually interesting and have a political dimension. Those stories, or at least some of them, can still be on topic for HN. Opinions inevitably differ about which ones belong vs. which ones should be excluded.
Lots of past explanation about how we think about this, if you or anyone is interested, can be found here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
The feeling that HN has changed significantly in recent months or even recent years is often due to random (or maybe seasonal) fluctuations. It usually reverts back. For example, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.