It's the best option if your alternative is mailing to a PO Box. Also I like this company August which makes a similar product. I'd rather just let the delivery person in remotely each time. I read August is also making a robot to deliver your groceries to your refrigerator.
And I know Snap has been trying to do Snap2Store. Their head hardware guy made the Ring doorbell hardware. He also made some thermal imaging system. I'd probably give Snap a key to my house with Snapdrones surveilling. (Automonous social ephemerality to highlight my life?)
Yet with some high profile defendants, the government gives immense discretion to them by communicating with their lawyers ahead of time and arranging an amicable surrender.
The problem with your post is the problem with the federal government. They exploit technicalities to punish innocent people and they game the system for their own extraneous reasons.
Disclaimer: I've had several interactions with the FBI, federal prosecutors and senior executives at Homeland Security, that have demonstrated to me that they can be malicious, incompetent and oh so human. There's a two tier system of justice in the US, one that has access to former government officials who work in the private sector, who will do near anything necessary to protect a wealthy and privilege class of people.
The 1st Amendment is only an acknowledgment that the government can't infringe on a natural right that pre-existed. If a company wants to proclaim an open platform but selectively enforce speech restrictions, then in a sense it is diminishing natural rights.
If it's an online platform dedicated to bake sales, then it's fine to limit it to that. But things like Youtube aren't -- they are a dominant platform and it's at least immoral or an affront to Enlightenment ideals to selectively limit from speech they disagree with based on political views.
thats the nature of the free market - if you don't like patreon, start your own more nazi-friendly site and see how it goes (hint: poorly). the state is unique in that it has a monopoly on regulating speech - a state should have very very little power in regulating what can be said, because you can't avoid the state. you can always find an internet community that will allow you to say something truly vile.
The charges seem exaggerated. If he's responsible or directly involved in the Mt. Gox theft, then they should prosecute him for that. The referencing of Internet usernames as evidence of crimes indicates they have a weak case or they're using it as public relations campaign against bitcoin.
The price of Litecoin was usually higher on btc-e I think solely because people would deposit btc and buy ltc as a way to hide the source of their coins. It was widely considered shady but trustworthy by its longevity.
Libraries are amazing and should be more celebrated and funded to expand their core mission.
But cities like LA utilize libraries as refugees for homeless people which completely destroys the purpose. It should be a refuge for people working hard and trying to excel in life, not a place for people who have given up on life. I'm happy that the homeless have a place to go but as a society, it seems like we're doing everything wrong trying to fix the problem.
What is your proposed solution? How does one limit a free, public resource to only people with homes? A literal smell test?
How do people without homes "completely destroy the purpose"? Are they stealing books? Breaking computers? Barricading the doors?
Do you really believe that all people without homes have "given up on life"? Not a single one is "working hard and trying to excel in life"? Have you heard of working people without homes? Particularly in LA, SF, et al. where the cost of a home vastly exceeds the income of many people?
Do you think education could be a productive method for reducing the number of people without homes?
> What is your proposed solution? How does one limit a free, public resource to only people with homes?
We already limit library use to those who live within the library's community. Just require a library card to get in, too. Morals aside, the logistics would be simple.
> How do people without homes "completely destroy the purpose"? Are they stealing books? Breaking computers? Barricading the doors?
Shooting up heroin in the bathroom? Using the water fountains to wash up. Talking angrily to their schizophrenic delusions? Stinking to high heaven? Saying "completely destroy the purpose" is a bit of an exaggeration - but the mission of the library is hampered a bit if you make them defacto daytime homeless shelters.
> Do you really believe that all people without homes have "given up on life"?
He was exaggerating, but yes - many homeless have no reasonable expectation of improving their circumstances.
> Do you think education could be a productive method for reducing the number of people without homes?
Those who aren't mentally ill or completely socially maladjusted, sure. Of course, there's a difference between "education" and "just putting them in a building full of information and crossing your fingers".
I don't say that all of your criticisms were wrong - but you went off the rails in the opposite extreme of the person you replied to. Any solution we come up with should acknowledge that libraries are vulnerable to the tragedy of the commons, and a great percentage of the homeless are not going to improve themselves without the aid of services that the library has no business providing.
> We already limit library use to those who live within the library's community.
"You have to be in the same physical location to use a building" is one of the softest restrictions in history.
In order to borrow something, sure, you have to live nearby, but a library is more than a book loan service. For example, I was crossing the US and booking the hotel for the next night every morning. If the motel I was at didn't have working internet, I'd find a library and use theirs to make the booking. I was never blocked on account on not living nearby.
That isn't even true in California, any resident of California can use any Californian library, and receive a library card to it. Which leads to an ongoing feuds between neighboring cities when one chooses not to have public libraries (see Piedmont, California)
> In order to borrow something, sure, you have to live nearby,
The question was asked, how can we logistically enforce no homeless people. The answer is (new, non-existing policy here): restrict access to those who can borrow books. That's how we could do it, logistically.
I go to the SF library frequently and it is a gorgeous library, but it is absolutely full of homeless. I have seen needles on multiple occasions, almost always you will people hear screaming obscenities or just gibberish, and you guaranteed will at least smell some pretty nasty stuff on any trip in there.
A couple days ago one of them threw themselves from the 5th story and landed in the atrium. He could very easily have killed someone in addition to himself. I have trouble rationalizing this romantic view of the homeless as these poor downtrodden, down on their luck people who just need a hand up, with the realities I see everyday of mentally ill, dangerous, and completely uncontrollable people. They definitely are not there to read. A few have developed the skill set necessary to direct the free access computers to porn sites.
That being said I agree that homeless is not effective as a blanket term to describe anyone without a home, huge difference between someone living out of their car and showering at the gym, and a schizophrenic who hasn't bathed in 6 months.
> I have trouble rationalizing this romantic view of the homeless as these poor downtrodden, down on their luck people who just need a hand up, with the realities I see everyday of mentally ill, dangerous, and completely uncontrollable people.
That is because this "romantic view" is a straw man you came up with so that you can rationalize writing a comment attacking the homeless and the mentally ill, instead of doing something constructive. Do you participate in the San Francisco Tenants Union? Are you doing anything to help SB562 (single-payer in California)? When was the last time you gave a homeless person change?
You can whine about homeless people all you want on HN but that says more about your inadequacies as a person than about the homeless. Until the lack of affordable access to housing and mental health services is resolved the homeless population in California will keep growing.
Affordable housing will do absolutely nothing for the type of homeless people OP is talking about (drug addicts and the mentally ill). They are homeless because they have no stability in their life and would not be able to hold a job to pay rent regardless of the cost.
The class of homeless you are referring to is people pushed out of their homes due to rising prices and their limited income. These people (in my experience) are not the ones going around screaming at people an not bathing for months. You would most likely not even know they are homeless.
You are not talking about the same groups of people so you are talking past each other and nothing productive will come of your exchange.
Having affordable housing only creates stability if they actually pay the rent.
From what I've observed, the problematic homeless people primarily need health care or to be put in a mental institution (for the really unstable ones). Affordable housing would certainly be nice, but having that isn't going to do anything for the ones that piss on the floor or jump off the balcony of a public library because they wouldn't be able to pay (or want to pay) any price for housing.
But what's the point of the distinction here? Are we really going to argue that the best thing we can do with mentally unstable people who are unable to hold a job is throw them on the streets?
I don't think anyone is arguing that. "Throwing them on the streets" and "discouraging them from hanging out in the library unless they are actually using it" are two different things entirely.
No,I don't want homeless kids from being discouraged from hanging out in the library just because they stink and make rich people uncomfortable. Just because some folks don't acknowledge the dark side of the USA, where is little/no support for your fellow citizens who fall off the train, doesn't mean you can grind them down even more.
"Not fair, not just? Who said life was fair? Where is there any justice" - Well, if life isn't fair and justice is just a joke, I suppose you would also be fine for those poor, homeless people you snigger and mock at to take violence as a route and murder and rob rich people ? Life is not fair right ? After all you are talking about putting them into labour camps - they can also decide that enough is enough and start a revolution. You might want to realise that you are heavily outnumbered and wouldn't be able to go to work for fear of being murdered.
Who did I mock, now? A revolution would be to actually address homelessness for what it is: a crime! The crime is allowing it to continue, as it is inhumane.
But to address it, you have to take control.
Oh, the outrage. More like oh, the apathy! You're outraged that my call to action makes sense.
Perhaps it "makes sense" but the problem is it's monstrous. Similarly, summarily executing the homeless would probably reduce the number of homeless people on the street, but I do not support it because it is obviously morally bankrupt.
Let's just see how consistent you are, how monstrous you are by your tacit acceptance of the current state.
It's thought experiment time: take all the homeless in the country, but make them all 5 years old. Do we leave them on the street to fend for themselves? No, and what must we do with them? Why? And then keep questioning why to each of your answers to get to the root of your thoughts.
Do the same experiment, but make the age 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, and 19. How do your answers change, and if they do, answer truthfully why? How utterly heartless you are.
Your obvious inconsistencies stem from the fact that your notion of truth and what is just is completely arbitrary, planted in you by someone very manipulative and cruel. What you think is so banal as to disgust me.
If you want to talk about being disgusted, I'm disgusted by your suggestion that we create a concentration camp for the homeless. If that makes me "banal" then so be it.
There's no conviction in your words here. I must have surprised you, and maybe got you to think which is good.
Who, other than you, said anything about concentration camps? Your argument rests on essentially name calling.
You haven't pressed me on details, you haven't torn me to shreds based on argument because, apparently, you don't need to present any argument other than name calling outrage.
I'd say when your position continues to fail to do anything meaningful other than expand the homeless population, you have some serious defending to do.
Again, what I think should be done is simply giving homeless people housing. A forced labor camp is a concentration camp so there is really no misrepresentation of your argument to use the term.
And if the inmates did work but their experience was neither forced nor concentration or gulag, then you'd be all for my idea? I seriously doubt it; there's an agenda at work with you that has little to do with actually helping people.
"Simply giving homeless people housing" does nothing but brush off the real problem. That sounds like "do more of what I know hasn't worked" to me.
Let me guess what your deep fear is. How about this: you believe if we don't placate the downtrodden masses with wealth transfer programs then we'll eventually have an uprising and they'll take all my stuff and kill me and my family or something like that.
You know what causes anger and uprisings? Not simply poverty. If that was the case, you'd have 3rd world countries constantly in revolution. The jealousy and violence and revolts stem from relative wealth inequality. Rich people living and flaunting their wealth in proximity to relatively poor people. Well, we've effectively segregated ourselves in the states by class - we no longer mix classes here. So, have no fear, you're not going to get mugged by your impoverished neighbors unless you're one of those chaos-loving hipsters that is in the process of gentrifying a poor neighborhood (a.k.a. displacing the poor people.)
Now that I have allayed your fear, let me propose that your wealth transfer concepts can't "fix" the poverty problem because it allows people to stay stuck in their mental/cultural situation. If you don't fix the culture first, you're throwing good money after bad. I want measurable improvement in the homeless situation and we're clearly trending the wrong way in big cities right now. Of course there needs to be more public housing, but the culture problem needs to be addressed first.
I'm not sure how great the revival of the Victorian workhouse would be, but yes, the involuntary imprisonment and forced labor aspect of your plan is far and away the most objectionable.
It is not ok to call someone inadequate as a person for wanting usable and pleasant public spaces. We are not morally obligated to enthusiastically embrace the reallocation of every public space for use as a homeless shelter.
Cities need to get homeless services right. They also need to get libraries, parks, and transit right.
It's totally OK to call someone out for talking about people with mental illness like they were rats or cockroaches. I don't care what happens to sewer rats. I just want them out of my sight and mind. But when I see people who are sick or suffering, my first concern is with there well-being. I recognize that my own inconvenience or displeasure pales in significance to the human suffering I am witnessing.
Letting public space rot like that is a deeply regressive policy.
You and I have access to private-sector alternatives. The working-class kid who wants a quiet place to do his homework, the guy on the edge of homeless desperately applying for jobs on the public computer, someone depending on the librarian to help them navigate the welfare bureaucracy... they don't.
You may not realize it, but a great many people on the low end of the socioeconomic ladder depend on libraries as quiet sanctuaries and as a window of access to the modern, networked, intellectual world. Shouted obscenities and excrement vapor in the air ruin it for them too.
You're right, we should be deeply concerned by such dramatic scenes of intense suffering and inhumanity. But if you're even slightly concerned, the last thing you want to do is let the environment deteriorate and fester undisturbed. The guy who might consider defecating on the floor deserves a peaceful and pleasant library, too. He's not going to get it if we let such things become normal there. The characteristics of the spaces we inhabit shape our moods and behaviors, and a library which could be mistaken for a skid row alleyway serves no one.
> poor downtrodden, down on their luck people who just need a hand up... mentally ill, dangerous, and completely uncontrollable
These aren't actually incompatible with each other. I would consider mental illness to be "down on one's luck", wouldn't you?
> They definitely are not there to read. A few have developed the skill set necessary to direct the free access computers to porn sites.
I don't know if this is what you intend, but language like this makes it sounds like you're discussing some sort of monkeys, not people. Of course they can use computers. Most homeless people weren't born homeless.
San Francisco's main library had to install industrial strength sewage grinders because "patrons" were flushing all sorts of things that don't belong and were clogging the pipes.
Not to change the subject, but you know what really grinds my gears? The other day I took my wife out to dinner. We were enjoying a rare care-free night out, and then they sat this family at an adjacent table. The kids were well-behaved, but the youngest child--ugh. She had no hair, a hospital bracelet on her wrist, and bandages on her arms. We couldn't finish our dinner. Our evening was ruined. How are we supposed to enjoy ourselves while this child's pain is flaunted in front of our faces. I was so pissed off. I told the manager if they don't stop allowing these walking TV fundraiser trophies into their establishment I'll find somewhere else to spend my hard-earned money. I shouldn't have to cure cancer to enjoy my Friday night!
> I have trouble rationalizing this romantic view of the homeless as these poor downtrodden, down on their luck people who just need a hand up, with the realities I see everyday of mentally ill, dangerous, and completely uncontrollable people.
Maybe you should see the demographic as being a little more complex rather than just throwing them all into the one bucket. Rather than 'find another term' to split the demographic itself ('homeless' is a pretty accurate description of 'doesn't have a home'), perhaps you should find a different term for the groups you want to specify.
Rules. No sleeping. No drug use. No bathing in the restrooms. No shitting on anything. No violent or threatening behavior. Period.
Then enforce those rules. One violation, and you're out. Two, and you're out for good.
Librarians know who the troublemakers are. They just have no power to do anything about them. It's not illegal to be homeless, but that doesn't mean you should be allowed to do violent, illegal or disgusting things without consequence.
Exactly. Coordinate with police and enforce the rules. Public spaces are created and maintained by enforcing liberal rules of access, not no rules of access.
They have these rules, but they are rarely actually enforced. Point someone to a homeless person shooting up in public or bathing in the bathroom, and see what happens.
If anything, there's a shrug and a sigh and some rent-a-cop is sent to harass. Almost never is the infraction met with punishment of any consequence.
Start actually arresting or forcibly evicting people who behave this way. They'll stop coming around. San Francisco is particularly feckless in this regard.
> "Start actually arresting or forcibly evicting people who behave this way."
This is one of those easy solutions that sounds practical on paper, but in reality doesn't hold up.
Let's say SFPD go ahead and do what you suggest. What does that achieve? If they arrest people for shooting up, are you sending them to jail? For how long? Is that going to help them get clean when smack is probably easily attainable in prison anyway? When they're released, now not only are they homeless they've got a criminal record, good luck in the job market with that hanging over you. If they go down the other route and forcibly evict them, where do they get evicted to? All it does is shift the problem to another part of the country, who are probably just as resistant to dealing with it as SF.
You have to treat the root causes of involuntary homelessness as if it's a societal disease. The threat of arresting people isn't a strong enough deterrent to break people out of their addictions, which should be clear by now, otherwise the war on drugs would already have been 'won'.
Are we to overlook all criminal behavior because enforcement might make people less employable, or just selectively ignore some laws that you don't agree with?
Perspective! If someone is shooting up in the library, their future employability is of (at best) tertiary concern to me. The pressing matter is making sure they don't continue the behavior. We can't just stop enforcing laws because it might make lawbreakers break more laws.
The city of SF actually did adopt a policy of forcing addicts into treatment by giving them an ultimatum of jail time for accumulated minor offenses. It worked, but was stopped when some bleeding-heart sued the city. I'm a liberal, but I consider that a tragedy. You can't cure addiction by arresting people, but you sure as hell can stop enabling it on a societal scale.
And also, when I say "evict", I mean "evict them from the library". I don't care where they go to shoot up; watch porn; shit in the sink; sleep or harass people, but they can't do it in the library.
> "Are we to overlook all criminal behavior because enforcement might make people less employable, or just selectively ignore some laws that you don't agree with?"
I'm suggesting we have to look at the problems holistically. Let's say someone breaks the law. The main aim of throwing someone in jail is to stop them committing more crime, correct? If jail time is going to be effective in doing so, that's fine, but if incarceration only leads to an increase in crime after the person has been released, was it worth it? Perhaps there are other ways of reducing the problem that we should consider instead.
> "The city of SF actually did adopt a policy of forcing addicts into treatment by giving them an ultimatum of jail time for accumulated minor offenses. It worked"
Do you have a link to an article showing the effectiveness of this approach in SF?
As for your other points, if someone is shitting in the sink, is the main problem that they're mentally deranged, or is the main problem that you have to witness it?
> "What if by doing that people would become willing to invest in the programs that treat these kinds of problems?"
If that's the case, great, but the impression I'm getting from many people here is that it's 'not my problem'. I don't see much of the sympathy that would drive people to act on the behalf of others.
Proposed solution: give the homeless a (publicly-funded) place to be that fits their needs even better than a library does.
In chemistry, when you have a both a product and a side-product dissolved in a liquid (say, water) and you want to purify the solution to have only the product, you don't try to take the side-product away directly; instead, you pour in another fluid with different viscosity that the side-product will prefer to its original solute, and then shake things up. After everything settles, the product is in one layer, the side-product is in the other, and you can now drain the layers into separate flasks and wash/evaporate/crystallize out your product.
People, like chemicals, can't just be told what to do; you need to give them a place they prefer to be if you want any hope of them moving there.
Look, instead of turning us into strawmen, try and understand.
I love libraries. If someone is reading a book or a magazine or even surfing Facebook on a computer I don't care what they look like, smell like, or whether or not they go back to an apartment at the end of the day.
My city has a beautiful library. They also have very liberal policies, afaik people aren't turned away.
But those tables you'd like to read a magazine at? Full of people camped out, possessions spread around them, talking, dealing.
Those isles of books? Now they are also beds.
It's really an asshole move to assume that if anyone at any point doesn't want their library turned into a shelter, then they are heartless people who hate the poor and mentally ill.
I want better health care in this country. I want better support for ensuring that everyone had a roof over their head. I also want to read a book in the library without being hassled or smelling excrement.
Libraries should be open to everyone to use as libraries.
> "I want better health care in this country. I want better support for ensuring that everyone had a roof over their head. I also want to read a book in the library without being hassled or smelling excrement."
The first two should be seen as prerequisites for the third. The first one especially.
Is it fair that libraries have inadvertently taken on the role of social care of the homeless? No, it's not. Should, as you put it, libraries be open to everyone to use as libraries? Yes, they should. However, the answer is not to shut the homeless out of yet another place, the answer is to push for cheaper, more comprehensive healthcare (i.e. single payer) so that we can address the problem head on.
I heard a great name for this line of argument recently: "but first, the revolution!"
I empathize, but this is destructive. Deciding we can't have [basic service that worked fine not long ago] until we have [complete change of heart about philosophical and policy questions at the core of people's political identities] will only run civilization into the ground.
The idea is to take a stand now. If you further marginalise those that already have almost nothing, where do you think that leads to? Are you ready to step over corpses on your way to work?
Societies are a bit like networks, they're only as strong as their weakest link.
> How does one limit a free, public resource to only people with homes? A literal smell test?
By offering something that is even more attractive than a library to people who want the roof but not the books.
One might even argue that it is undemocratic when funds for one public service (with a lot of popular support) were reappropriated for another, maybe less popular, one. Imagine (in Lennon's voice) the USAF going rogue to set up an NHS clone with money they were supposed to spend on new jets: laudable in a way yet unquestionably out of line. Not their decision to make.
> How does one limit a free, public resource to only people with homes?
By only making it free for students.
> How do people without homes "completely destroy the purpose"?
I wouldn't say it destroys the purpose, but it changes the atmosphere and environment of the place. I don't think people want to spend time with homeless and weird people around them. It sounds harsh but that's the truth.
More repulsive than "homeless and weird people" is heartless disgust for less fortunate neighbors absent any apparent concern for their well-being.
I don't want to live in a society that solves the stench of poverty and untreated mental illness by corralling people into ghettos and homeless shelters. The only humane solution to the stench of human suffering in public libraries or anywhere else is to minister to the unmet needs. Give them medical treatment, showers, food and a bed.
I have no problems with homeless and weird people.
I do have a problem with them using the space in a way that actively prevents people from being patrons. I have more of a problem with the tacit assumption that this is some kind of stopgap "shelter" and that the unilateral non democratic appropriation of public spaces to provide a poor substitite is defensible.
Planned communities that allow people to live with less effort and don't put arbitrary restrictions on them.
And homeless push out the people who could be expanding their minds and imagination, trying to improve themselves and society.
They sit there, charge their cell phones, watch youtube, sleep and shower.
No, I don't think education helps. Technology should reduce the cost of living. We need better systems and societies where paying rent shouldn't require 20+ hours of work a week.
Well, giving the homeless a better place to hang out would be one option. I don't think most of them are there to actually use the library as such (some might be, of course).
As I understand it, many shelters kick them out during the daytime, so they wind up in the library or riding public transportation to get out of the weather instead.
The city should have public showers, and yes the library should have a smell test, but before even these two things the real problem with homelessness is we do not take mental health care issues seriously, as a society.
Provide actual, sufficient, high-quality homeless shelters and services, rather than leaving every other public space (libraries, transit, parks, etc.) as a poor stand-in.
That sounds more like a mental health issue though. I just hope the US government puts in single payer healthcare so resources can be allocated to deal with it properly.
> That sounds more like a mental health issue though
Yes, absolutely, the primary causes of homelessness are drug addiction and mental health issues. There are other causes, and I'd never advocate being callous or dismissive toward the homeless- but this is the reason people find large concentrations of them off-putting.
I'll hopefully never fully understand what it feels like to have someone you're close to being threatened with a knife, but I can imagine it's horrible, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
What I am saying is that in order to cut down on that behaviour, we need to stop the problem at the source. To my knowledge, no country has ever managed to fully eradicate homelessness, but other places have had success in reducing drug addiction and mental health issues. If those issues are tackled, the issues surrounding homelessness should be greatly reduced, including a large reduction in violent and/or erratic behaviour.
Trust is hard to build once it's broken, and I'm not asking you to forgive anyone, but we have to look beyond our current hardships if we want a future that's worth looking forward to.
Everything there is factually true. But I hate the idea that we aren't allowed to do anything to improve quality of life of the non-homeless before homelessness as an issue is solved.
Another example: literally every single night, a homeless person sets up a tent with a bunch of trash in my building's fire escape. If there were a fire and we had to use it, it'd pretty much be inaccessible.
It's possible to call the city, but they don't fix it overnight, which is kind of the point. And installing a gate in the fire escape alcove is illegal, because the gate would apparently encroach onto public property.
So what's to be done? Should I just accept that I should just literally die in a fire, for the sake of a homeless person having a place to sleep? And of course it's easy to say, "well in an ideal world there'd be a bed for them!" Unfortunately the world we live in isn't ideal, but anytime anyone complains about quality of life issues, "homeless advocates" will demand that you solve a century old national problem before granting you have even the slightest right to complain.
You make it sound like solving homelessness would require a Manhattan Project-like effort. It's not a trivial problem, but the solution is within easy reach of our society if we had the will.
What should be done? Give the poor guy a freaking bed with a roof over his head! Why don't you just say we need to take care of that guy so he doesn't have to sleep on your fire escape?
You make it sound like you think that would be asking too much of society. Like it's obvious that would be too much. That guy's going to sleep outside, so the least society can do is make sure he's not doing it somewhere that you don't have to worry about tripping over in case of a fire.
No! There is no good reason anyone should have to sleep outside in this country. And as long as people do have to sleep outside, those of us who sleep comfortably in our homes should respond to their presence not with disgust but with action.
Do I have your position correctly, that scarmig is morally obligated to die in fire unless they can pay the rent on an apartment for this person?
What happens when a second person starts sleeping there? How many apartments must scarmig rent before they are allowed to evacuate in case of fire?
What if scarmig doesn't make a high enough multiple of the minimum viable rental price? Have you just decided they're obligated to die because they don't make enough money? That's kind of ironic.
>Why don't you just say we need to take care of that guy so he doesn't have to sleep on your fire escape?
Because if saying that conjured shelter beds into existence, we wouldn't have a homeless problem anymore.
>the solution is within easy reach of our society if we had the will.
I don't think the American people could message "fuck poor people" any louder or any clearer than they just did by electing Trump. The American electorate doesn't lack the will to help the downtrodden, it actively wills them to die. Are we obligated to fight the good fight? Sure. Are we obligated to die in fires unless we achieve a 100% reversal of the poiltical climate? No.
> not with disgust but with action.
There is no action you can take that will move the needle on homelessness anytime soon. At best, there are actions that a few hundred million people could take together that would achieve a marginal reduction in the problem in in a few decades.
> "Do I have your position correctly, that scarmig is morally obligated to die in fire unless they can pay the rent on an apartment for this person?"
That's not what was said.
> "How many apartments must scarmig rent before they are allowed to evacuate in case of fire?"
Zero.
> "What if scarmig doesn't make a high enough multiple of the minimum viable rental price? Have you just decided they're obligated to die because they don't make enough money? That's kind of ironic."
Again, you're missing the point. The idea is to tackle the issues collectively.
> "Because if saying that conjured shelter beds into existence, we wouldn't have a homeless problem anymore."
The money already exists within the government to solve it. It's just a matter of priorities.
> "I don't think the American people could message "fuck poor people" any louder or any clearer than they just did by electing Trump."
Bollocks. You do realise that there were poor people who voted for Trump? What message do you think they were trying to send?
> "The American electorate doesn't lack the will to help the downtrodden, it actively wills them to die."
Are you an American?
> "Are we obligated to fight the good fight? Sure. Are we obligated to die in fires unless we achieve a 100% reversal of the poiltical climate? No."
Again, you're twisting words, that's not even close to what was said.
> "There is no action you can take that will move the needle on homelessness anytime soon. At best, there are actions that a few hundred million people could take together that would achieve a marginal reduction in the problem in in a few decades."
Indeed, this is the notion behind liberal politics, which have been soundly rejected by the public.
>It's just a matter of priorities.
The public couldn't be clearer that meeting basic needs for people who are unable to earn a living isn't a priority.
>What message do you think they were trying to send?
"Fuck the even poorer people who are changing my culture and taking my jobs."
>Are you an American?
Um, yes, the context of this thread is the San Francisco public library.
>What do you propose is done?
Make city life as attractive and cheap as possible to bring back the tax base from the suburbs; use the money to fund public housing and mental health services.
Continuing to degrade city life only drives away the resources that could be tapped for real solutions.
> "Everything there is factually true. But I hate the idea that we aren't allowed to do anything to improve quality of life of the non-homeless before homelessness as an issue is solved."
There are plenty of quality of life government programs for the non-homeless, and ignoring the issues of the homeless ('out of sight, out of mind') is not going to solve the problems, it's only going to make things worse. I'm sorry that the situation had to get as bad as it has for people to take notice, but now that recognition that something has to be done is there, I'd ask you to be pragmatic, look beyond the current issues and think of the practical steps necessary to stop the growth of the homeless.
> "Should I just accept that I should just literally die in a fire, for the sake of a homeless person having a place to sleep?"
No, you shouldn't accept that, you should take action to ensure it doesn't continue to be a problem. However, whatever action you choose to take, choose wisely. Is a person who can't even get a good night's sleep likely to be even more of a pain in the ass? I'd suggest you already know the answer.
> "anytime anyone complains about quality of life issues, "homeless advocates" will demand that you solve a century old national problem before granting you have even the slightest right to complain."
I'm not suggesting you have to solve 'a century old national problem' on your own. The reason I feel happy to recommend a push for single payer is that there's already growing momentum for single payer. Plus, it won't just help the homeless, it'll help everybody. There's really no reason not to join in the push for single payer (other than apathy, which clearly you don't have).
> What I am saying is that in order to cut down on that behaviour, we need to stop the problem at the source
Why not do both? Stop using libraries as de-facto daytime homeless shelters, AND attack the problem at the source? I am STRONGLY in favor of dealing with some of the root causes of homelessness, even if it increases my taxes. Non-paradoxically, I ALSO don't want to have to inspect the library bathrooms for loose needles or scary schizophrenics before letting my kid go in by themselves.
If you live in SF long enough, a knife will be pulled on you eventually. (Happened to me and a few of my friends.) The trick is to just run. To my astonishment this isn't the reaction of most people.
The first part of your comment is correct, that is very much true. I hope though that no one ever turns to expose their back to the assailant to make a run
This is a real problem, and one that is difficult to address. San Jose's MLK Library (also shared with San Jose State University) is the day time destination for much of the city's homeless population. Who can blame them -- it's a safe cool place to stay and sleep during the day.
Unfortunately, this limits the space that is available for people to work and study. There have also been two suicides in the past year (people jumping from the 7th floor balcony into the central atrium -- it's now being walled off to prevent this).
> But cities like LA utilize libraries as refugees for homeless people which completely destroys the purpose.
I defiantly see this happening in Pasadena. The main library has become a refuge from the summer heat, but I feel like this drives others from using it.
This is unfortunately accurate for SF also. Luckily we have the Mechanic's Institute which is a relatively inexpensive private library and some of the small neighborhood libraries are still places for people to learn. However, the main one is more of a homeless respite than a place I enjoy working.
I've never been to a library in SF, so I don't know what they're like, but is being close to homeless people a distraction? Is it a noise thing? In my local library there are often one or two people that could be homeless, but they were mostly quiet and not causing any fuss.
I'm not going to lie, homeless people make me uneasy. I'm not rich, white, or privileged that I put myself on a pedestal; I'm simply aware that a great deal of homeless people are mentally ill, and that doesn't make me feel secure or comfortable.
I have found some homeless people hard to communicate with before. I've tried volunteering with homeless people, and it's quite surreal to have them genuinely not remember who you are and speak to you as a stranger even if you spoke with them the week before, which happened on multiple occasions.
The main thing that encourages me to look past that is the thought that I could've easily ended up one of them. I'm not the most emotionally strong person I know, if I wasn't born into a supportive family I can easily see how I'd end up in their shoes.
Mental health issues are unfortunately common. Hopefully more resources can be made available to help people overcome them.
In the SF main library, it's mostly a smell thing for me. I would feel the same as you if I didn't have to feel like I was reading a book in a sewer. I agree, I don't care about the socioeconomic status of the library patrons.
I'm glad we agree on the socioeconomic aspects of homelessness, and I can understand that the smell could be distracting. Are there many programs to help the homeless in SF? From what little I know, I do get the impression that issues surrounding homelessness are becoming a major concern in SF.
According to this SF Chronicle article [1], SF spent $241m to combat homelessness in 2015-16. Homelessness is a major concern in SF, but as with everything here - the politics around it are very complicated.
Thanks for the link. It does sound complicated. The main problem is finding programs that allow people to become self-reliant. This seems particularly tricky in SF as one of the key ingredients for doing so is building affordable housing, which could drop property values generally, which existing homeowners may not be too pleased about.
However, aside from relocating people outside SF or continuing with the status quo, there doesn't seem to be much choice. As I'm not a homeowner in SF, I can see the benefits of affordable housing (for homeless people and for people who currently rent), both in terms of reducing social tensions and in growing the local economy, but it's easy to have that view when you've got nothing to lose.
The city tries certain efforts to fix homelessness, no one will ever go hungry or unclothed, but the way they spend money to fix the problem is sometimes asinine. They built a new shelter complete without running water or bathrooms [1]. At over $200m a year, they could have definitely had city sponsored housing for this issue, adding building by building year after year for the affected. But if they took that approach, there would be even more homeless flocking to SF for all of the freebies.
With the Pier 80 shelter news story you linked to, looks like it was describing the situation back in February 2016, any news on running water since then? Can't imagine it'd take a year to fix. As for the following section of the article...
"But if homeless campers don’t buy the idea, the city could be headed for an ugly scene. If San Francisco police or Department of Public Works employees go to the campgrounds and order residents to pack up the tents and leave, and the residents refuse, what’s the next step?
Because video of cops and DPW workers rousting homeless people out of tents, with the inevitable shouting and confrontation, would go viral. It would be fodder for the far left fringe homeless advocates and could feed into the uproar about the SFPD."
If it comes to it, and people need to be forcibly moved on to a semi-permanent shelter, so be it. I don't see this as a reason to stop pushing forward with plans like the Pier 80 shelter.
EDIT: Looks like San Francisco's local government bottled it, the shelter was shut less than 6 months after it opened:
The smell is unbearable not to mention having to be on edge because it’s very likely someone might touch you or come right up to you and start staring, begging, screaming at you.
>"But cities like LA utilize libraries as refugees for homeless people which completely destroys the purpose."
Isn't the purpose of a public library to collect, preserve and disseminate information freely to the public? Please explain how a homeless person "destroys" those purposes when they participate?
>"It should be a refuge for people working hard and trying to excel in life, not a place for people who have given up on life."
That view on what a library's purpose is seems uniquely and selfishly your own.
It's interesting that you declare homeless as "people who have given up on life"
yet you yourself have apparently given up on them as human beings. Honestly it sounds like you could stand to learn a little empathy.
"Isn't the purpose of a public library to collect, preserve and disseminate information freely to the public? Please explain how a homeless person "destroys" those purposes when they participate?"
By destroying books and furniture, screaming loudly when people are trying to read and becoming violent, among other things.
>"By destroying books and furniture, screaming loudly when people are trying to read and becoming violent, among other things"
Really are all homeless people acting that way? I have seen plenty of suburban teenagers in libraries do some of those same things. Why is it different if it's homeless?
By the way your "next question" comment is quite a display of arrogance. Seriously who goes around saying that?
If anyone has proposed ejecting homeless people who are behaving in a civilized manner, I haven't seen it. Have you?
"By the way your "next question" comment is quite a display of arrogance."
Your feigned ignorance of the fact that crazy/drunk homeless people disrupt the library deserved it.
To expand:
If a homeless person (or any other person -- I don't actually care if the guy is homeless or Bill Gates) can comport themselves in the library in a civilized manner, they are welcome there as far as I'm concerned. If they can't, they aren't.
That would include:
1) Not shitting and pissing in the book stacks, or littering them with used condoms and needles.
2) Not yelling obscenities or incoherencies, whether due to intoxication, mental illness, or both.
3) Not pulling weapons on the other patrons or staff, trying to fight them, or making verbal threats to them.
4) If using the public computers, not engaging in public masturbation, playing loud porn videos, etc.
Should there be a place for people who can't control themselves to this minimal extent to go? Yes. Should that place be the library? No.
Homeless people are typically people with mental health issues who are unable to find treatment, due to lack of money, insurance, or having been discharged early from state mental health facilities after budget cut backs.
Maybe build another building next to the library for people who want a refuge but not books. Have a few amenities to attract the homeless there, like bathrooms, air conditioning, water, a few snacks, laptops for internet porn, a couple security guards to prevent fights and predation, etc. Make it more attractive for the homeless than the library.
It shouldn't be a refuge to homeless people either. You go to the library to read, study, look at things on the computer if you don't have access to one. Everybody agrees that homeless people should have access to knowledge, but a library is not a place to sleep, bathe and deal/consume drugs.
Absolutely. Every time I visit the USA I'm floored by the absence of public spaces and facilities for the lower class and impoverished. It's truly amazing how poorly it seems they handle their national wealth.
The situation is the same in Minneapolis but so what? I've been a library patron since I was a little kid and spent time there weekly for the last few years. The majority of people at the library are homeless or low income and yes they take up seating. They're just people though. If it was filled by academics or suits would the limited seating be such an issue?
Maybe the library means different things to different people. For them it's a place to loiter with air conditioning and free wifi. For upper and middle class, a place to gain knowledge or have fun. For aspiring writers, a place to attend workshops and talk with other authors. Does it matter if they loiter though? I've taken naps and played with my phone at the library too.
In over fifteen years of going to the library, I've only ever had one homeless person be aggressive towards me and security gave them the boot right away. You're probably more likely to be mugged on the street than attacked while reading a book at the library.
This feels more like an image problem. Being surrounded by poor people may not feel good but I don't see a problem with it. They're just people doing something at the library. More power to them if they're using the library for job resources or want free internet access.
Isn't there some valid probability in stating humans should likely eat what they've adapted to over hundreds of thousands of years?
And humans have been using medicine for thousands of years, which have an intrinsic property of being good for us -- thus vaccines are just an extension of this.
I'm all for resisting fallacies but this hypertechnical idea that natural vs unnatural is completely irrelevant due to a few exceptions is counterproductive. It's practical and beneficial for the average person to view natural things as better.
When Mike Hearn quit bitcoin (Jan 2016), he wrote the Chinese miners were worried about bitcoin getting too popular because of their limited access to the Internet. And said they were actively trying to supress its popularity. But obviously that isn't true now?
It's amazing BitGo whould shrug off Emin's help when he helped fix their software. Emin's super smart, ignoring his offer to serve as a technical advisor is ridiculous.
And then BitGo goes on to be partially responsible for a $320,000,000 loss (current value) that almost destroyed BitFinex.
It's just sad that so much fighting and ego has prevented technical collaboration. I'm a supporter of the Core devs but Emin is a genius who should be respected.
> It's just sad that so much fighting and ego has prevented technical collaboration. I'm a supporter of the Core devs but Emin is a genius who should be respected.
Emin has a bad track record of lying about his work.
For example, he claimed in the announcement(1) for his Teechan payment channel scheme that it could do 2480 transactions per second, but neglected to mention that it achieved that by failing to actually write those transactions to disk and storing them in RAM only. If your computer crashes, you can lose money in Teechan. This is not unlike advertising the high performance figures achieved by making a new RAM-only database, without advertising the fact that you achieved them by storing everything in RAM.
Similarly, Emin's announcement and paper also gave the impression that payment channels weren't currently possible to implement on Bitcoin without segwit, when in payment channels with similar properties to Teechan have been possible to implement for multiple years now via BIP65. Oddly, BIP65 is cited in the Teechan paper, but for an unrelated reason.
Then there's how Emin's PR around that announcement presented Teechan as something that could be implemented right away as a replacement for segwit via Intel SGX, without mentioning that Intel required SGX users to get licenses to use it in production, and Teechan didn't have one.
I could go on, but that's just a single project... The sad thing is Emin is often right and can do good work, but with a track record like that it's no surprise that people aren't interested in working with him.
That's classy, trying to hijack the top comment to spread lies, ad hominems and smears.
>For example, he claimed in the announcement(1) for his Teechan payment channel scheme that it could do 2480 transactions per second, but neglected to mention that it achieved that by failing to actually write those transactions to disk and storing them in RAM only.
First of all, our actual deployments showed that Teechan can do more than 30,000 tx/sec across the Atlantic, in fully fault tolerant mode.
Second, the Teechan paper made clear exactly how we reported the initial, unoptimized numbers, which is precisely why you're here writing these bogus critiques.
>Emin's announcement and paper also gave the impression that payment channels weren't currently possible to implement on Bitcoin without segwit
We learned after publication that there are rumors of a "Lightning Network" implementation without Segwit. Unless you can point to a protocol specification, however, these remain unbacked and uncharacterized assertions, of the kind "I believe I can fly."
>Then there's how Emin's PR around that announcement presented Teechan as something that could be implemented right away as a replacement for segwit via Intel SGX, without mentioning that Intel required SGX users to get licenses to use it in production, and Teechan didn't have one.
This is HN, and I usually try to be more diplomatic, but this is stupid. First, Teechan is a protocol, it isn't tied to SGX. We are working with HSM vendors to deploy it on non-Intel hardware. Second, Teechan does NOT require the users to obtain licenses, it just needs to be signed by an entity. Third, Peter Todd has no idea about the nature and scope of academic work and how it differs from industrial deployments, which explains why he feels so threatened as to indulge in personal smears.
I could go on, but tearing down a known Bitcoin troll is pointless.
> First of all, our actual deployments showed that Teechan can do more than 30,000 tx/sec across the Atlantic, in fully fault tolerant mode.
I'd appreciate if you linked to those actual deployments, something with a description of how they worked.
As you know, actual remote attestation capable hardware has severe limitations on persistent anti-replay mechanisms due to the fact that they are implemented in hardware. Your Teechan performance figures reported in your paper and initial announcement were recorded with those counters implemented in RAM, in such a way that a power outage would put users in a position where they can lose funds. Meanwhile, the actual SGX anti-replay counters that are currently available limit counter updates to as infrequent as multiple minutes between updates.
> We learned after publication that there are rumors of a "Lightning Network" implementation without Segwit. Unless you can point to a protocol specification, however, these remain unbacked and uncharacterized assertions, of the kind "I believe I can fly."
Payment channels != Lightning network.
Specifically, you presented Spilman payment channels as state of the art, when you are well aware of the fact that they have been made obsolete by CheckLockTimeVerify/CheckSequenceVerify payment channels.
Teechan as presented in your paper that I was criticizing wasn't a Lightning network competitor, it's a payment channel competitor. So obviously an apples-to-apples comparison would be appropriate.
> Second, Teechan does NOT require the users to obtain licenses, it just needs to be signed by an entity.
What do you mean by "signed by an entity" in your statement here? To be clear, by "SGX users" I am referring to developers of SGX-using products, not end-users.
Also to be clear, you claimed - based on the fact that SGX was widely deployed - that "[Teechan] side-steps a controversial proposal to change the underlying Bitcoin protocol, and provides all of the much-touted benefits of Lightning Networks today, without having to modify the base protocol at all." (emphasis mine)
To say that without making it clear that SGX is not in fact something that can be deployed on a whim due to the necessity of getting a license to use a SGX application in production is quite dishonest, especially in the context of the Bitcoin segwit debate that you positioned Teechan within.
Hi, I don't normally comment on HN but this thread intrigued me. As someone who was quite interested in the Teechan work when it first came out, I have a couple thoughts/questions:
> I'd appreciate if you linked to those actual deployments, something with a description of how they worked.
I'm not sure if this is it, but it looks like something was recently put online (seems to match the authors names): https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.05454
> Your Teechan performance figures reported in your paper and initial announcement were recorded with those counters implemented in RAM, in such a way that a power outage would put users in a position where they can lose funds.
I don't think they disputed that, in fact iirc, they made that quite clear and even under failure cases where a user's CPU loses power, funds are not completely lost; two options remain, either the counterparty can settle the channel (meaning no funds are lost), or the refund tx comes into play. Of course this isn't ideal, but the point remains, for channels where the difference between the most recent state and the refund state is not enormous, this deployment model can make sense. If you want to avoid this, it can be circumvented with backup power generators etc. But they never tried to hide this fact. If you read the paper, they were clear that Teechan did not use hardware counters.
> Teechan as presented in your paper that I was criticizing wasn't a Lightning network competitor, it's a payment channel competitor. So obviously an apples-to-apples comparison would be appropriate.
Surely for an "apples-to-apples" comparison as you request, CLTV/CSV payment channels don't even compare with LN/Teechan: CTLV/CSV are only unidirectional and they suffer the exhaustion problem. In addition they can only be funded by a single party, so to compare them to bidirectional payment channels like these would be unfair too, no? Also, if you want to compare LN/Teechan pre-segwit, you have the same problem: LN payment channels can only be funded by a single party, in addition, they also require monitoring the blockchain (at the moment). I'm not saying Teechan is the better, I'm saying it has it's own set of advantages/disadvantages and as someone who seems to be pushing back against Teechan a lot, you should know these trade-offs?
> To say that without making it clear that SGX is not in fact something that can be deployed on a whim due to the necessity of getting a license to use a SGX application in production is quite dishonest, especially in the context of the Bitcoin segwit debate that you positioned Teechan within.
Granted, although this might be the biggest challenge in deploying Teechan today, it's by no means impossible: I know of a few companies who have licenses with Intel. Intel didn't create this stuff to sit on a shelf. And even if you ignore Intel, it seems to me that several companies are now looking into deploying payment channels with trusted hardware. e.g. I'm sure you are aware of Blockstream :)
To summarize, Peter, sometimes you have to give credit where credit is due. I know you might have personal differences with Gun, and I don't want to get between you, but for outsiders who don't really have much technical insight here, you seem to be twisting the facts a little? Sure, you might not agree with the work, but hey, the company you work for seems to like it enough to pay someone to do it (http://jobs.khoslaventures.com/jobdetail.php?jobid=698427)
If the soft fork goes through, the Chinese miners are going to attack the chain.
If the soft fork fails, Core developer Luke-Jr said they'd change the Proof of Work algorithm and possibly create an altcoin (or bitcoin if enough follow).
This is like a Russian Roullete situation. The gun's loaded, all signs point to neither side conceding. It's the cypherpunks vs the corporate miners (plus some former devs and very credible people).
No, Luke is saying that if chinese miners attack the chain and are successful, then the core chain will need to change PoW (otherwise with a minority of hash power it will take al long time for difficulty to adjust.)
There are three factions here-- Segwit2X and Core, who both want segwit, and Bitmain which does not want segwit and which has threatened a forcible hard fork into a bitcoin that has unlimited block size-- and they are even talking about doing an ICO and things like that:
And I know Snap has been trying to do Snap2Store. Their head hardware guy made the Ring doorbell hardware. He also made some thermal imaging system. I'd probably give Snap a key to my house with Snapdrones surveilling. (Automonous social ephemerality to highlight my life?)