Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bob Lee, former CTO of Square, has died after being stabbed in San Francisco

sfgate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

701–710 of 1001 posts

Re: Bob Lee, former CTO of Square, has died after being stabbed in San Francisco

#701

Post by badcppdev »

vanilla_nut wrote: post #559
badcppdev wrote: post #360

I've never been to SF. Never met Bob and have barely any personal experience with crime at all. And I'm fairly high on the bleeding heart liberal scale but my opinion looking at the crime stats for the US (and other western countries) is that you get the society that you are willing to pay for. When teachers, social workers, doctors, police, justice systems and prisons cannot teach, help, cure, protect, judge, punish…

Agreed that we're not using our tax dollars effectively to help people in SF. But SF (and CA in general) have some of the highest tax burdens per citizen in the entire nation -- very similar to many European nations. We should emphasize that taxes provide more than enough money to make a functional city, but some combination of internal corruption or mismanagement is preventing those dollars from effectively helping…

Well you've made an assertion that the there is more than enough money but not provided evidence. My understanding is that a lot of the homeless people in SF come from elsewhere so if that's true then a straight comparison of taxation might not be valid. But this is a very very big topic so I'll just point out that actually society is not taking care of the people who need it anywhere in the US or the western world. This is a choice that people make.

Re: Bob Lee, former CTO of Square, has died after being stabbed in San Francisco

#702

Post by dehrmann »

PM_me_your_math wrote: post #571
cheeseblubber wrote: post #529

Here are some statistics that might help the discussion: "With a crime rate of 54 per one thousand residents, San Francisco has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes - from the smallest towns to the very largest cities. One's chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 18." https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime#des... A…

Speaking from experience, if you go walking the Bronx Concourse at 2am, you are getting robbed at gun point.

That's not a fair comparison. This murder was FiDi-adjacent. Pre-pandemic, I wouldn't have been worried in that neighborhood. No idea these days.

Re: Bob Lee, former CTO of Square, has died after being stabbed in San Francisco

#703

Post by ChancyChance »

arzanr wrote: post #581

Everyone commenting on here about how bad things are in SF has likely rarely or never stepped into the core parts of Protrero Hill, Noe Valley, Richmond, Sunset, Glenn Park, Forest Hill etc. SF is a tale of two cities divided by natural barriers. There is a side to the city where you see almost no drugs, or homelessness. This is not a dismissal of the real issues facing the city but an acknowledgement that it is stil…

Literally every generation of suburbanites and ruralites think cities are big scary places with violence and drugs on every corner. It's just being amplified in this thread because that's what social media does.

Re: Bob Lee, former CTO of Square, has died after being stabbed in San Francisco

#704

Post by cvhashim04 »

galleywest200 wrote: post #418
kenneth wrote: post #151

I find it shocking that anyone still chooses to live in this broken city. I left >4 years ago and am never coming back. It's unfixable. Let's move the tech industry somewhere that isn't rotten to the core.

Pacific Northwest has loads of tech giants, move up here to the woods. No reason to live in Seattle, the big kids are over in the forest in Redmond (Microsoft, Valve, etc).

The weather is terribly depressing

Re: Bob Lee, former CTO of Square, has died after being stabbed in San Francisco

#705

Post by rideontime »

rasengan wrote: post #649

This caught my eye just because I remember reading an article about this company being engaged in alleged mischievous activity very recently [1]. Thanks for sharing! [1] https://hindenburgresearch.com/block/

> “I paid them hitters through Cash App”— Block paid to promote a video for a song called “Cash App” which described paying contract killers through the app. The song’s artist was later arrested for attempted murder.

Oh, the irony!

Re: Bob Lee, former CTO of Square, has died after being stabbed in San Francisco

#706

Post by dehrmann »

fernandotakai wrote: post #211
kenneth wrote: post #151

I find it shocking that anyone still chooses to live in this broken city. I left >4 years ago and am never coming back. It's unfixable. Let's move the tech industry somewhere that isn't rotten to the core.

it makes me super sad to see SF like this. it's by far my favorite US city -- the weather is great, people are quite welcoming, the food scene is out of this world. but the last time i went there, just before the pandemic, it was just... horrible. within 1h of leaving my hotel, i saw a guy breaking into a car. a block later, two homeless people were arguing and then started beating each other to a pulp. and no police…

> within 1h of leaving my hotel

Union Square is uncomfortably close to the TL.

Re: Bob Lee, former CTO of Square, has died after being stabbed in San Francisco

#707

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

gsibble wrote: post #695

Bob was a good friend, tried to hire me numerous tries at Square, and was my next door neighbor for 3 years. I knew him well and spent a lot of time with him. He will be dearly missed. I have been told from very well placed sources in the US Intelligence community this is probably a hit. That being said, I left San Francisco in 2018 because I was worried I would eventually become the random murder that would finally…

My condolences for your loss.

Simultaneously, I don't understand your post. The second paragraph states "I have been told from very well placed sources in the US Intelligence community this is probably a hit." But then the rest of your post rails against the SF crime problem in general, finishing with "And now a good friend is fucking dead." Starting off by saying it was likely a hit would appear to indicate that SF's general crime problems (as bad as they may be) are largely irrelevant to this particular case.

Re: Bob Lee, former CTO of Square, has died after being stabbed in San Francisco

#708

Post by subsubzero »

Its a real bummer with SF, but the problems are totally self inflicted. If the politics were of a different breed I could see it being one of the best cities to live in the US, let alone the world. Having worked there for close to a decade the stuff I have seen was really depressing. I visited my cousin who works at Ouster nearby for lunch one day and was wondering what all these white casings were littering the ground, he said they were from junkie's needles. While on our walk a man was screaming inside a car with all the windows smashed in, and there were huge piles of shit due to junkies "unloading" on the sidewalk.

I went to the local walgreens in SF and was trying to buy a tube of toothpaste, apparently the theft is so bad I had to have a person who works there open the case, and while I was waiting in line to buy it a homeless person ran out with merchandise.

There are thousands and thousands of similar stories from others but until residents in SF start voting different I see things getting even worse than they are now. I know that may be hard to believe but we have been experiencing a boom economy, once that changes and things go south expect crime to surge to levels unimaginable.

Re: Bob Lee, former CTO of Square, has died after being stabbed in San Francisco

#709

Post by hindsightbias »

cheeseblubber wrote: post #529

Here are some statistics that might help the discussion: "With a crime rate of 54 per one thousand residents, San Francisco has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes - from the smallest towns to the very largest cities. One's chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 18." https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime#des... A…

[flagged]

Re: Bob Lee, former CTO of Square, has died after being stabbed in San Francisco

#710

Post by nemo44x »

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #648
cheeseblubber wrote: post #529

Here are some statistics that might help the discussion: "With a crime rate of 54 per one thousand residents, San Francisco has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes - from the smallest towns to the very largest cities. One's chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 18." https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime#des... A…

All this is seems so alien, compared to european cities, even the acceptance standards to which citizens have been negotiated down too. https://www.numbeo.com/crime/in/Munich

[flagged]
Post reply on HN