51–60 of 64 posts
People are reading way too much into the Waymo incident. It was Chinese new year. There was a bunch of drunk people in the street. Somebody messed with the car, and then somebody else did, and so on. Until somebody threw a firework in there out of memetic one upmanship and it caught the thing on fire. You can see this in the videos. This was not ideological, it was just mob revelry gone awry.
People are reading way too much into the Waymo incident. It was Chinese new year. There was a bunch of drunk people in the street. Somebody messed with the car, and then somebody else did, and so on. Until somebody threw a firework in there out of memetic one upmanship and it caught the thing on fire. You can see this in the videos. This was not ideological, it was just mob revelry gone awry.
Just don’t want anyone to get the wrong sinophobic impression
The whole article reads like what I don't like is immoral and what is immoral justifies my action (to a certain degree, at least). So, I really don't understand: why do techies still even go to the city? Just leave it alone and come back to the south bay.
I guess it depends what you're into. I work in south bay, and go out there, and try to find fun stuff there, but in general I find it a boring place. I take a company bus back to SF where I live. I get a lot of work done on my laptop, at the big bus desks that I usually get all to myself. Something about being trapped in one place for an hour is essential to me being productive.
On Saturday, I started getting phone notifications from friends who heard the booms in Chinatown and wandered over. We all have ~40+ mile range ebikes/scooters/electric unicycles that go 40+ mph, so the city is our playground. Citizen app sent me an alert as well. Tons of illegal fireworks were going off, massive mortar style ones in Portsmouth square, loud M80 style ones on Grant street. It took me ~10 minutes to cross the city on Van Ness's bus lane and thru the broadway tunnel on an electric unicycle. It was basically the 4th of July down there. The Waymo was sitting there trapped for a long time, as was every driver who turned onto the wrong street from Stockton. Two drunk guys, who has already been yelled at by the crowd for throwing firecrackers into crowds of people, smashed it up with skateboards after noticing it was totall unoccupied, a mortar was thrown in, and the rest is history. Obviously they face arrest and are jackasses for it. But it certainly didn't make me say "I hate the city, I wish I lived in south bay". I had fun, my friends had fun, and there's often fun to be had on any given day. It's not like housing is any cheaper in south bay. My friends live in every part of the bay, and SF is always the epicenter everyone travels to to hang out. The media camps in the tenderloin's hellholes, but if you know someone who lives in SF please have them show you a good time, the city is gorgeous if you're with the right people.
Maybe Google will identify the people and delete their Google accounts for a TOS violation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're reciting a meme, informed by a moderate crime wave in and slightly after the pandemic, and amplified by partisan media and echo chambers like the one here on HN. In fact SF crime rates in virtually all categories are at 12+ year lows: https://sfgov.org/scorecards/public-safety/violent-crime-rat...
Data point: after being physically attacked in the street by a (presumably) homeless man, the SF cops refused to take my report unless I went down to the station. I'd regard these statistics as, very generously, aspirational.
(Also: I guess I don't understand your demand here? A police report is testimony. The officer needs to verify your identity, record what you said, and do so in a standard and traceable way. It's not like "there's an app for that", if you want to deal with law enforcement you have to do it in person.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Data point: after being physically attacked in the street by a (presumably) homeless man, the SF cops refused to take my report unless I went down to the station. I'd regard these statistics as, very generously, aspirational.
The point is obviously that crime has dropped sharply over the past two years, not that it doesn't exist. Were they taking reports over the phone in 2021, before the recent sharp drop? (Also: I guess I don't understand your demand here? A police report is testimony. The officer needs to verify your identity, record what you said, and do so in a standard and traceable way. It's not like "there's an app for that", if y…
It makes sense to have a reasonable set of barriers if you're talking about making sure evidence would stand up in trial. That same set of barriers, however, makes the statistics understate the true crime level. "The officer needs to verify your identity, record what you said, and do so in a standard and traceable way" makes sense for trial, but at the same time it would cause an understatement in crime. Particularly for marginalized groups (of which I'm not part, at least for the sake of this discussion) e.g. undocumented immigrants, rape victims, people who don't have time to go through the process because they have to spend every waking hour trying to survive.
I have no opinion on whether underreporting is higher or lower than it was five years ago. It's genuinely impossible to say, without a secondary, more reliable measure (beyond anecdotes). Someone stole my laundry in 2015, and SFPD also weren't interested in me reporting that.
Mentioned: Instagram, Hewlett Packard
Notably not mentioned: Apple, Microsoft.
If Apple had been listed as "big tech", I'd write this article off as yet another Microsoft submarine PR hit. As it stands, I'm not sure.