You say that, but it's clearly not true. Imagine all the problems of the DMV as it is now, plus dealing with a buggy blockchain app where people use malware to steal your car registration. Or, in 10 years, when you have to download and install buggy, poorly-maintained apps and figure out how they work, just to sell your car. It can definitely be worse.
This kind of activity is exactly what I hate about Github and the new and unimproved "open source community".
No one cares you updated your vimrc file. Nobody wants to see another "awesome list" in a code repository. Nobody cares about that cool project you started over a weekend and haven't touched in three years.
Your commits are not important.
We have become so narcissistic. We are now coding with the kardashians.
Odd to me, I have always been the "fun parent" the kids wants to play with constantly. My wife probably feels like he does, but she basks in it because it's finally time for her to be alone and recharge.
The data isn't always accurate. Just because it hasn't happened to you doesn't mean it's not happening often. Your perception isn't always correct.
Anecdote, I spent some time wandering around east palo alto (at the time, was the murder capital). It didn't feel particularly bad, but the data said otherwise.
You can't trust random people's perception of safety. You can't trust the data either.
The great bargain of America is that you live in a country with insanely high violent crime rates for the developed world but don't complain about it too much because it's usually well contained to gangs or other communities/neighborhoods which are easy to avoid by those with means. What you experienced, even in East Palo Alto, is exactly that. Even in Chicago which has really high rates of violent crime, the north side neighborhoods are perfectly safe.
You're right, but it's not a sustainable way to govern nor has it ever been fair to anyone not of means. In SF I see this anger that people of means can't separate themselves from crime and I think it's time for Americans to finally have the conversation on safety work for everyone and not just the moneyed.
The Bay Area has always been particularly badly segregated. Palo Alto is wealthy and posh, East Palo Alto is a dump. San Jose boasts huge tech companies while East San Jose is full of gang fighting. I grew up in one of these violent areas of the Bay (starts with East but that's all I'll mention publicly) and the gap in resources is huge. Bad schools, poor libraries and community spaces, poorly maintained parks, unsafe neighborhoods, no pedestrian affordances, high speed badly maintained roads, the list is endless.
The downtown part of SF isn't really considered a posh area by most of the old money interests in SF, who live in the Northwestern parts of the City. The old political families of SF all live there in huge, beautiful houses and the neighborhoods are very different than the parts of FiDi and SOMA that new money tends to hang around.
The Wire is a great show that goes into some of the politics and challenges of America's containment style of policing.
One of my last memories in SF was around 4th and King where I watched a man steal from Walgreens, grab a person's handbag and run past a police officer and down the street.
The officer didn't do anything and shrugged when the Walgreens employees were asking for his help.
edit: by the way, this was around afternoon/lunch time in broad daylight.
Foot chases are being forbidden in some jurisdictions because it causes a higher risk of harm, such as a suspect running into traffic and causing a crash.
That, and some DAs have built their career on lowering felonies to misdemeanors and directing people to "alternative" or "restorative" justice, meaning sending them to community service rather than prison.
What's the point of chasing a robber who probably took less than $1k and will be released without charges anyway?
The problem is one of perception and human nature. You will eventually reduce your economy because of an outflow of business and human capital out of where this is happening. It’s how food deserts in America happen. No one wants to be in places where they are physically threatened.
Edit - especially when they can’t defend themselves. I don’t like proliferation of guns. But condoning this is specifically making a case for concealed carry, stand your ground laws and increased risk of life.
> What's the point of chasing a robber who probably took less than $1k and will be released without charges anyway?
What is the point of the government continuing to employ police, when they refuse to do their jobs as a protest against government decisions on justice policy?
> What is the point of the government continuing to employ police, when they refuse to do their jobs as a protest against government decisions on justice policy?
Realistically, none. If the DAS won't prosecute and the state won't imprison, then there's no point other than optics. Of course, sensible people want to keep existing police in the hopes the DAs and states will change their policies. But if there's no hope of that, then yes, it would make financial sense to eliminate police and let the cities descend further into anarchy. At least then, some revolutionary instinct may awaken in the general populace and they can institute new, competent governance, as is their right.
Why is police choosing not to make arrests (at high physical risk to all involved) in cases where the DA has announced intent to not prosecute “not doing their job”?
The public demands that police only focus on the worst offenders, everyone demands that use of force is eliminated, and the DA announced intent not to press charges for victimless crimes like property theft.
How would it be appropriate for police to take action in that scenario? If that chase ends in a tackle and the thief is harmed, and the government would have just let the dude go, how is that in any way consistent with the government’s interest?
Responding to clear direction from political leadership and the public is not “protest”, if anything failing to do so would be.
> Why is police choosing not to make arrests (at high physical risk to all involved) in cases where the DA has announced intent to not prosecute “not doing their job”
The specific claim made upthread was that this was justified by DAs pursuing alternative/restorative justice. Not arresting because they don’t like DAs doing that instead of seeking prison is very much not doing their job.
Similarly, not arresting because they don’t like DAs charging misdemeanors rather than felonies.
Not arresting in specific circumstances where DA has indicated no action of any kind will be taken, if done consistently, is reasonable; but even here, police are very inconsistent, and will frequently arrest nonviolent protestors (and engage in viewpoint discrimination as to which protestors get this treatment) – for possibly legitimate offenses, sure – in circumstances that they know will not be prosecuted, while using the lack of prosecution as an excuse not to arrest for equally legitimate offensea of other kinds. This is, itself, a form of political lobbying while on th4 clock as civil servants.
The worst of the worst list is especially interesting, though the numbers for at least three arrests are more indicative.
Whatever it is we're doing, it's not working. The people who lose in this case are the victims.
As for differential treatment, it's not too hard to see arrests of protesters who start becoming aggressive with officers as a means of nipping something worse in the bud.
Compare that with the upthread example where a guy was running after having stolen something. The threat of violence was over, there wasn't a risk of escalation unless the officer ran after him.
I think the real challenge you’re running into is that the line between enforcement-worthy and not enforcement-worthy crime is in the eye of the beholder. But the DA saying _x_ is no longer a felony would seemingly be a clear signal about how police should be prioritizing their work.
The DA is a political actor too and could be pressuring cops to funnel people to their restorative Justice programs if they wanted to.
Police don't get to choose the method of justice. That's up to the judge, and depends on what the DA's orders are regarding what charges are actually filed (i.e. felonies won't qualify, so drop charges to a misdemeanor).
Arrest gives them legal authority to search the person of the accused and find evidence of other crime. Perhaps they will find something that leads to a felony and authorization to hold. For instance, you probably wouldn't want to release someone who was heavily intoxicated in public while in possession of a deadly weapon.
To be clear, I'm not saying I'm thrilled about prosecuting people for many of the crimes for which the contraband would constitute, but the advantages of arresting the perp even if they'll immediately be released is obvious.
All that you’ve said is clear Abe obvious and the logic of the post-90s sustained reduction in crime we saw for decades.
The challenge is that holding people accountable for misdemeanor crime, using stops as pretexts for deeper investigation, and aggressive enforcement of nuisance laws all contribute to disproportionately bad outcomes for underprivileged people. That consequence is more directly obvious than the consequences of not going effective police work, which is why our society collectively made the choices it did over the last few years.
I used to blog and quit (pulled all of my content from the web). I still have a landing page, which serves as a general "This is who I am, I'm a real person" because I have a business and people Google my name.
I couldn't find a good reason to continue publishing content for everyone to read. I also gave up on the open source community at the same time.
The idea of "giving back" to the community is gone. The open source (and open knowledge) web is gone. People (and companies/ML models) take/pilfer/plagiarize/rehash/profit from your contributions and you get squat in return. I decided to no longer take part in it.
I can write on my own, privately. I can share and link to content with private links. I don't need the vanity, opportunities or monetization (ie, peanuts).
Apparently this is a controversial opinion based on the position of the comment, but I feel like it's a painful truth.
Spending double digit hours to polish up an insightful or useful article then posting it publicly to the internet feels like playing the lottery. There is a chance that you'll get "monetization", "opportunities", or "notoriety"; but you can be sure that the house is getting their cut. With the current web scraping models out there, it feels like the house's cut is only getting bigger and your upside is getting slimmer.
Sure posting a tutorial that you wrote anyways to help yourself digest something has low personal downside, but you're basically just crowd sourcing away a technical writer's job at whatever entity is responsible for (or benefiting from) the tech you're researching.
Maybe this is "pulling the ladder up behind you", but it feels more like "not being climbed on in a human pyramid". I would have no problems with "content" I spent time producing only benefited individuals with no compensation in return (probably still citations if warranted), but like OP said the reality is that your "content" will either be:
- not generically valuable in the first place
- iterated on without credit
- digested into the beast (blog spam & ML models) with no compensation
That's never what open source was about. It's the tragedy of the commons.
I don't disagree--drive-by comment just to say that's unfortunate as there's often really brilliant, unique, esoteric and useful content scattered about individual blogs (as my bookmarks can attest), that is very difficult to find elsewhere, if at all.
The thing that pushed me over the edge was browsing personal sites I found via http://wiby.me/
I was reading fairly old gamedev, emulation and other blogs. The content and spirit of them made me realize how things have come along since and depressed me. Said fuck it.
There's nothing wrong with un-publishing old stuff if it no longer reflects how you think, or if you feel it's not relevant anymore. You can always keep a private archive.
I think a lot of people think of blogs as "production-quality writing", which is natural because for part of the 2000s, blogging = money/recognition. That era is over, no matter how many people start (and later abandon) Substacks.
In general, writing/podcasting/making videos with the primary intent of directly monetizing them has pretty long odds. The recognition angle may be useful if it's connected to your day job and anyone cares if you have a public persona or not. It's been useful for me but you have to have the right expectations going in or you'll probably be disappointed.
I was going to say something similar. Journaling has been way more valuable to me than I realized before. Among the many notes I jot down to myself every day, I write blog-like entries where I dump out my current thoughts, including very intimate ones. Surprisingly, I get about as much enjoyment as I got out of blogging but without the need to consider an audience besides myself, especially when it comes to making sure that I won't be misunderstood. The act of writing down my thoughts has been really helpful in processing them, coming up with new ideas, understanding my emotions, and planning for the future.
People can get the same thing out of blogging, but I came to really dislike the nature of online content today, and all the considerations one has to take in order to make one's blog "readable" undermines the personal benefit one can get from the act of writing.
It was one thing back in the early days of the web when a blog could be scrappy and written in a very personal way. Those days are long gone. If you want to write a public journal in a personal and informal way, and interact with an audience, then be prepared to have some malcontents tell you to "cite your sources" about the most trivial shit, despite you never having made the promise of writing academically. If you're not making money, why bother listening to the peanut gallery? And let's say you want to make money off your blog; first off, blogs are not easy to monetize, and with money in the picture you now have to think about the voice you use, the structure of your writing, whether you're being too offensive, etc. In other words, you now have a shitty job on top of your day job!
Yeah, count me out. I know some people get enjoyment and profit out of blogging, but the wild west of the blogging is in the past, and the current state of the internet is largely not for me as someone who might otherwise want to produce content. The only content I generate is here in HN comment sections.
In case anyone reading this is interested in getting started journaling, what I do is use Apple Notes and encrypt all my notes. The nice thing about the encryption is that the notes aren't easily searchable, and the Notes app will lock the notes after a few minutes if you aren't interacting with them. The safety of the encryption allows me to write virtually anything to myself, which I've found to be a really good thing for my mental health. My more formal entries are just a title, a date, bullet points for what I've achieved that day, bullet points for things I still need to do, and a "debriefing" section where I can just write about whatever I'm thinking about the current or previous day.
I hope the open source communities can go back to their roots before the bubble crashed first. With the advent of auto code writers we could see a true open source renaissance. I'm trying to publish in this space[0] but I want to reach a better model than slapping sponsors on a newsletter.
There are some good thoughts in there, but it fails to answer the actual question. Why publish a blog? Sure, writing has benefits. You don't need a blog to write. You don't need a blog to make your own content linkable.
The only nuggets in there are "vanity", "monetization" and "possible opportunities" which are all pretty bad reasons to publish a blog.
Sharing knowledge doesn't require sharing publicly? You seem to be looking at blogging exclusively as a vanity/recognition thing. Meanwhile, I've come across numerous blogs that have helped me solve a problem. I don't remember most of their names, but it's the kind of thing where I'll recognize the website if I need to search for the solution again.
