Hacker News Reader

9x39on Where did all the public bathrooms go?

The utter lack of it? There's an entire industrial complex around homeless "support" to do magic tricks on money.

Portland's county allocates $9m annually. LA's county allocates $4b annually. Should it be 2x that? 20x? 200x before any positive change occurs?

"Mental health" is a non-answer designed to shift accountability and agency from individuals into everyone else vis a vis whatever system is expected to provide this vague "support", despite the failed track record of these systems to improve anything but their employees' and contractors' pockets.

9x39on Where did all the public bathrooms go?

Closing bigger public bathrooms and switching to individually lockable bathrooms - cells, basically, often with codes if at a business did work.

It filters out that bottom 10% that can't coherently speak or present themselves to pass a vibe check in asking for bathroom access.

Things did improve for those with standards, at the cost of having to deal with the bathroom equivalent of barbed wire topped walls around your home compound. That IS better than walking in on the bottom 10% or the disasters they create, but only slightly.

Collectively, squeezing the bottom out by denying them access building by building, block by block has helped turn parts of cities around. It's not that different than locking up your food high in the air when camping so animals don't get into it - they don't come around and stop coming around if they are.

9x39on Anger, Anxiety and Agency

Andrew Huberman has this idea about Duration, Path, and Outcome.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CHLavYHn-BG/?hl=en

Duration - how long will things take?

Path - how will we get there?

Outcome - what's at the end, or how I think of it, what does done look like or where do I want to be?

Things like anger and anxiety are IMO, when our brains take an unfortunate offramp instead of solving for these. I've used this as a analytical framework to calm myself and make a plan to get out of a jam many times: physical pain, pressure-cooker work stress, interpersonal conflicts.

I have also had significant success using it as mini-framework to help break down problems people have come to me with. There's a lot to emotions in general far beyond "psychologists HATE this one trick" - don't let me oversell it, but it immediately came to mind reading the article.

9x39on Canada will match US tariffs 'dollar for dollar' as trade talks break down

If you're going to start a war, don't lose. Things in the US are not to the point the people needed would defect to the strike.

It brings up the 1940s struggles of labor, industry, and .gov, and labor lost and had its back broken. Could labor outmaneuver industry and the state today if we ran it back?

9x39on Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

Amusing, but a long string of rogue cyber intrusions coupled with Jstor blocking MIT altogether a few times isn’t something to ignore. Hard to imagine just ignoring the risks and potential of that unknown.

MIT and Jstor had a bunch of incident response going on, and it isn’t a leap to consider Jstor would cut them off for good if the situation went unresolved.

9x39on Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

MIT evidently added a camera. Later that day, the MIT police made their first contact with him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#United_States_v._...

"When it was discovered, a video camera was placed in the room to record Swartz; his computer was left untouched. The recording was stopped once Swartz was identified,"

IME, months-long internal investigations in an org with Secret Service involvement would be unlikely to escape senior management, but I'm just speculating and only have the same info as everyone else. You might be right.

9x39on Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

Don't think they did trespassing:

wire fraud

computer fraud

unlawfully obtaining info from a protected computer

recklessly damaging a protected computer

aiding and abetting

criminal forfeiture

https://web.archive.org/web/20130608041804/https://www.wired...

9x39on Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

> Swartz actually did was to download copies of scientific papers

That's the root, but I think what Swartz actually did was anger someone at MIT, who called the Secret Service. The federal involvement persisted even after JSTOR and the state quit, and they had him served on a plate with MIT's help.

You can set a surprising amount of government force in action with a concerned phone call, as it turns out.

9x39on Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

MIT called up the government and said there's this guy. Whether they should have is debatable, but they did.

9x39on Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

MIT was another affected party, who reached out to the government for help.

9x39on Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

Torrents are openly accessible, even if .gov might enable infringement claims by the rights-holder. They're not hacking into networks.

Changing your IP isn't a crime, even if it has the effect of making attribution to Meta more difficult.

The thing with Aaron was that it went on for months to the point JSTOR's complaints had activated MIT's organizational antibodies, let's say, and the IS department was turned loose to investigate repeatedly. They went to the trouble of upgrading their load balancers and traffic analysis to narrow it down and installed a camera. At that point, the hook was firmly set and with digital and video evidence, the Secret Service had him red-handed abusing MIT.

Keep in mind the thing that spiraled out of control was how Aaron (mis)used MIT resources persistently and with overwhelming evidence - in the end, the civil part with JSTOR was largely irrelevant. MIT called in the big guns with the FBI and Secret Service, and they ate it up. I'm not arguing in favor of it, I'm just familiar with the zeal they bring once they get on a trail.

9x39on Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

Maybe, but the prosecution that most people would say lead to his decision to end his life was from abuse of the MIT network over months until they had him on video.

The rate of JSTOR content retrieved from MIT was a separate contract issue.

9x39on Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#United_States_v._...

The prosecution offered 6 months in low security in a plea deal.

He had been mass downloading and evading them at MIT for months until he had MIT and FBI involved and was finally caught on camera.

I bring this up because A. maximum exposure to charges are rarely applied but makes great headlines for outrage and B. the plea deal seems reasonable to someone who was unreasonably persistent in the details of the case.

9x39on Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

Is HuggingFace reaching out to the FBI for assistance to prosecute OpenAI?

What does the claim that large companies can commit large frauds have to do with anything?

9x39on Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

Yeah, intent matters. Evading security matters. It's a big point that his actions were intentional and not passive or accidental - not that IP infringement by corporations isn't its own discussion.

9x39on Sticky wage norms and the real wage cost of unexpected inflation

Education degrees are broadly considered some of the easiest degrees and have large numbers of them matriculating:

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/ctb/graduate-degr...

They're signals with low leverage since everyone has to have them in their field, so you end up with lower nominal pay from the institutions that buy most of that labor.

Consider acceptance rate as a metric - education has one of the highest by this report, up there with public service:

https://cgsnet.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/CGS_GED-2025_R...

9x39on Sticky wage norms and the real wage cost of unexpected inflation

Would you staff the sane and functioning government from people outside or inside the society you're trying to fix?

Bad societies are a reflection of their people.

9x39on Sticky wage norms and the real wage cost of unexpected inflation

Working class typically rely solely on wages and have little to no wealth. So any purchasing power decrease is often referred to as a hidden tax on wages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...

Competition as a sellers’ market drives wages up, like anything AI connected today. Buyers’ markets drive wages down - GFC, H1Bs.

Working class mortgages got obliterated after the GFC and never recovered.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBSB50210

Mortgages are about 92% fixed rate (vs ARM).

https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/feb/which-hou...

9x39on And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

In the same society, some people personally experience that others are capable of robbery & much worse within days and some learn it within decades, and everything in between. Some may never have to confront this, all within the same city/state/country.

We could represent time-to-reality on a number line.

9x39on And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

Throwing something out to look at in the US at least--

Interpersonal trust might be decreasing: https://www.pewresearch.org/2025/05/08/americans-trust-in-on...

But dwarfed by the trust decrease in institutions: https://www.pew.org/en/trend/archive/fall-2024/americans-dee...

But maybe it's overstated, because trust seems sort of stable according to this group: https://www.edelman.com/trust/25years

>We no longer are capable of coordinated, collective action that benefits society.

I think this might be too doomer for people, but I think it raises the concern often called two-tier policing or 'anarchotyranny', where such collective action to reform a society is viewed as a threat by the ruling organization and systematically attacked and dismantled. In contrast, petty crimes or even serious interpersonal crimes pose no threat to the ruling organization and receive disproportionately low effort relative to the collective action movements.

9x39on And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

Social media exposes weakpoints in human nature - mob mentalities, comparisons of global norms over local ones. People died and many more are likely disturbed and divided.

India comes to mind as some of the earliest worst-case examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_WhatsApp_lynchings

I buy into teen mental health tanking correlating with the rise of mobile social media in 2012: https://archive.is/frHnA

I think there's probably far more powerful but hard to describe and prove effects out there in play by connecting to a global async awareness network, but I'll leave it there.

9x39on Apple introduces leasing program for iPhones and other devices

Individually? Who cares.

Collectively? Just one more avenue of financial destruction of the middle and lower classes.

9x39on Apple introduces leasing program for iPhones and other devices

Subsidize them with phones or apps that pay them a drip of coins for their attention, maybe even a little real money.

Use camera-enabled eye tracking to say, hey, pay attention to this content, lost you there for a second, there you go, welcome back. Tap into edge LLMs to herd the user back to consuming content, since its subsidized, the budget for this goes up.

9x39on Apple introduces leasing program for iPhones and other devices

I typically buy the newest model outright with a trade-in. Curious if this'll be cheaper. Probably not.

Might see if this pencils out for work uses - easier to establish and budget a boring lease program than have purchases of phones and laptops scrutinized.

9x39on Apple introduces leasing program for iPhones and other devices

Broadly, recurring models are profitable right now once you get that agreement set. People don't reason about $100/mo the same that they reason about $1000 upfront, nor do they generally consider total cost of ownership. They're bad at managing a flood of little spends in aggregate which is to the advantage of subscription models.

9x39on Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI

It's a low-effort drive-by comment, but I read it as tourists prompting about an issue they don't really know about.

People will recognize a glimmer of something they can attach to, prompt and get a few pages of junk about this narrow topic, and then contribute it in a way that further reduces the signal-noise ratio of the discussion or project.

Like, dude, we have the same tools. We can get the same slop from the tap at any time.

9x39on A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands

Well, the pathway requires being apprenticed to experts. There are licenses that by law limit to this pathway, but the system breaks in unexpected ways when the experts leave because it's paid better to work at a datacenter and from what I know, those journeymen are not apprenticing. Apprenticeships are capped, electricians can't apprentice 10 newcomers, so the backlogs explode.

Sure, better for the journeymen. But it leaves the newcomers behind. How is reducing pathways only a good thing?

The system isn't going to be "patched" to allow otherwise as law moves very slowly. Normally, shortages drive prices which correct the situation as people move to arbitrage - but with licensed labor (which is good, sure, things burn down otherwise) that isn't a realistic mechanism.

https://finance.yahoo.com/small-business/articles/apprentice...

9x39on Show HN: CheapFoodMap – A map of good meals under $10

Could cut demand instead, if we're imagining things.

9x39on Show HN: CheapFoodMap – A map of good meals under $10

There's the calorie. Not always a good metric of health, but it's still a signal.

$/cal varies meaningfully between home cooking, Costco, Chipotle, fast casual, sit-down, frozen meals, etc.

9x39on AI in Linux

Your comment strongly implies AI is responsible for 50C temps.

AI is at the top of an industrialization iceberg going back a century, with uneven countries as beneficiaries and externalities.