Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | maratbn's comments login

Maybe 1,000 lbs of weight, so instead of 40,000 lbs cargo trailer would be limited to 39,000 lbs, but lots of people would not get decapitated. There is also no reason why states could not allow extra 1,000 lbs of total vehicle weight when trailer is equipped with side-guards.


Side underride guards weigh as little as 150 lbs, and have been successfully tested at 40mph speeds.


Absolutely! I pointed this out only to address the arguments from the industry side, as far as I understand them. I’ve seen many debates getting hijacked by “smart” contrarians who are accusing people of misrepresenting the issue.


According to the US law enforcement system, in the context of TK, a long slow torturous death is more moral and humane than a quick execution.

Another aspect to TK's story is that prior to becoming a murderer he was involved as a subject in the "MK Ultra" human experimentation.

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

There is a public perception that the effect of this dirty experimentation (that also involved help from good ol' dirty German Nazis, which BTW could not have been any less evil or murderous than TK, but were spared the kind of prison term that he got) was not sufficiently considered during TK's trial and sentencing.


Bars close at 2 am


There are a few spots in soma open way later than that.


The emotional narrative that was initially gravitated toward is in fact correct.

Had there not been the entrenched environment of lawlessness in SF the perpetrator would not have even attempted his attack. And had the victim not been a prominent person the SF police would not have bothered to keep looking.

The only mistake the murderer made here is he underestimated the public outcry that forced the police and the DA to keep investigating in fear of theirs and the city's reputation.


As for me I used to go to SF at every opportunity. Now I only go there if it is absolutely necessary for some short errand, and as soon as I'm done I leave ASAP before my car gets broken into.

In my view the main problem is not the politicians but the ineffective opaque police that does not have to produce any metrics and is not subject to any kind of oversight, not in SF and not anywhere else either.

For example, I had a car window smashed not in SF but in Fremont, and when I went to the police, they informed me that that is not even an arrestable offense. Window was smashed in front of a hotel with a prominent security camera overlooking the street. The police told me they left a voicemail with the hotel asking if their camera caught anything. The hotel never returned the police voicemail, the police never bothered to follow-up with the hotel, and told me they don't have authority to take the security footage of the public street without hotel's consent. Some time later I noticed that the hotel removed that street-facing security camera they had, leaving just an empty pole.

I wrote a letter to the Fremont city council regarding their police not wanting to work and lying to victims of crime. And that's when I got back some police action -- in the form of a mental Fremont PD police sergeant calling me in the morning to harass me and bitch about my letter.

So even if SF is bad, outside SF it is not much better. Another nugget to consider is that back in 2014, back when crime was nowhere as bad as today, CA voters, not liberal politicians, voted for Proposition 47 "Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act" which made potential felonies chargeable only as misdemeanors.


Vancouver is just as gorgeous as SF and much safer (downtown was kinda sketch years ago) but kinda tech hostile

All of the west coast suffers from high structural costs. People really only endure SF for the venture money and trips to GG bridge, otherwise it makes little sense as a founder to operate there. My dream tech scenario would combine Sand Hill or London VC with Eastern Europe operating costs and lifestyle. But SF is a hotbed of AI now and so ppl literally risk their lives to work there

If you could fund and run an AI startup on the Croatian coast, I imagine SF might empty out pretty quick


Obviously I wrote that before learning about Paul Schmidt


Isn’t this mostly due to rampant inequality as the main factor?

I remember whenever I mentioned the swaths of homeless people, locals would often tell me “they are homeless by choice”.

This attitude again, seemed to be very common and was one of the main reasons why I never wanted to move to the Bay Area.

Mekka it was no more - the disconnect was just too apparent to ignore from an outsider’s perspective.


Indeed. A massive country open to everybody and with civil freedoms not even comprehensible in most other countries is going to be a magnet for bad people no matter what. 500k incarcerated is actually not that much in this scenario.

Name another country just as free and open with fewer incarcerated. Not Switzerland for sure.


I don't even know how to respond to someone talking about how the US has one of the highest rates of incarcerating its people by saying how it is one of the most free countries in the world.

Also the incarcerated population is 1500k not 500k.


By saying that US is one of the most free countries I meant in terms of freedom of expression and relatively better opportunities to pursue different careers and lifestyles, freedom to have almost any kind of hobby, freedom to not be bound by traditional cultural norms and freedom to go to and join any kind of party. Most prisoners in US are not in there for "insulting a government official", "insulting a royal subject", "blasphemy", "membership in an undesirable organization", being an Uighur, and so on.

You take those 1500k and put them into some other country and have them do the same thing they did that got them incarcerated in US prison, and unless they are friends with somebody important in the government there they'll get incarcerated there too. Furthermore, in lots of countries selling / smuggling drugs is an executable offense. Furthermore, many of these 1500k would not even be admitted to enter many Euro countries with the low incarceration rates that you envy.


Re Tesla, now that I think about it, I think I witnessed a very mean nasty dude stealing a bike near Mission & 3rd. He did it so leisurely that I assumed he was just taking his own bike.


Jailing the perpetrator also warns other potential perpetrators that they might also be jailed if they perpetrate the same crime.


Local SF politics notwithstanding, criminals figure they won’t get caught, not that they won’t get punished. But sure, jailing individuals can be considered a systemic fix, too.


>> The most basic definition and purpose of the state is to hold the monopoly of violence. It must jealously protect this. The alternative is unsustainable anarchy followed by someone else filling that void.

Can we re-phrase "monopoly of violence" to maintaining the rule of law. The government has an obligation to maintain the rule of law. Monopoly on violence by itself does not provide real legitimacy.


You can't maintain a rule of law without the state having a monopoly on violence. Violence is the only way to enforce law.


They are not being forced to fill out that paperwork on their own time, it is part of their work shift for which they are compensated. I can think of no other occupation where an employee can refuse to fill out paperwork or refuse to do some other tedious task just because they don't like it and not get fired.


I always do my required paperwork but I admit I must have lost some money because I "forgot" some of my expense reports.

I also admit that a large part of why I often just walk during lunch breaks at clients instead of eating sometimes ridiculously good lunches might be because I hate collecting those papers/digital notes and have to force them into the accounting system at work.

Don't underestimate the dread of certain kinds of paperwork for certain kinds of people.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: