µBlock for Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock <comment><USER2> Well while this is being seen by many, I just want to take the opportunity to reiterate what is said in the README of the project:

> Without the preset lists of filters, this extension is nothing. So if ever > you really do want to contribute something, think about the people working > hard to maintain the filter lists you are using, which were made available > to use by all for free.

Specifically, EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Fanboy Social, Malware domains, and a many more are the basis of many other blockers: Adblock Plus, AdBlock, AdGuard, BlueHell, and many others I am sure.

It seems such a tedious amount of work to maintain these lists, this needs to be acknowledged -- none of the above blockers would do very well without these lists.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been using this port instead of Adblock Plus for a few weeks. I like the low overhead, but usability is bad.

\- It's hard to list what filters are applied (though not impossible, if you like pain: hunt for the right icon using hovertext, find an empty page, hunt for icons again this time without hovertext; one icon will trigger something that will fill up a log, but it stalls a few seconds first and there's no progress indication).

\- The big green "power" icon is the wrong metaphor. IMHO uBlock should just stop using icons.

\- ABP has simple and obvious text menus, uBlock fails at making its features discoverable. This despite ABP being much more feature-complete.

\- There's no way to enable and disable filters from a page.

\- There's no easy way to reach uBlock preferences (though not impossible, if you click random areas of the main panel)

\- There's no rule editor. ABP's rule editor makes the simple cases easy and the tricky ones possible.

\- The element hiding picker is unusable. The ABP picker is well polished, but ABP also integrates with the Firefox developer tools. That simple feature makes it unnecessary to code a custom picker.

<comment><USER4> I hear what you're saying but to me the advantage of ABP has been never having to see its preferences. I've used it for many years and I can't remember ever going into the preferences for any reason.

I've said this before but being a habitual user of noscript I feel that all I really need from an adblocker is to skip those annoying youtube commercials. Everything else noscript handles pretty well. So I'll have to see if uBlock can do that for me.

<comment><USER5> You need to atleast go into the preferences to select extra lists (if you want them) and to disable whitelisted sites (also, if you want to do that since ABP enables "some" ads by default).

(I'd probably enable the whitelisted stuff... IF I wasn't more concerned about adware than anything else over ad-networks)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I decided to dump extension-based privacy stuff and installed Privoxy instead.

I used to have Ghostery, Disconnect, ABP, and some other things running simultaneously. When you think about it, that's a lot of JS running and iterating the DOM multiple times every time you load a page.

Now there's a single, purpose-built, standalone process written in C doing it. Not going back.

<comment><USER7> Any issues connecting to sites over SSL using Privoxy? I'm thinking mainly of banking web-sites.

<comment><USER8> I've used Privoxy since late 2002 on a Linux gateway box - never had a single issue with SSL.

In fact the only issue I've _ever_ had was building it an forgetting to enable threaded mode ..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I tried this out for a couple of weeks after the "Adblock makes things slower" article came out, and I found it was blocking more stuff - but not necessarily the right stuff. I was finding that sites were breaking, stuff was disappearing and it was because of uBlock. I think I was trying to log into Medium and the Twitter and Facebook had been hidden, literally breaking the functionality of the site. That's not what I want from an adblocker.

<comment><USER10> Well, as the README says, it's not an "adblocker" but a generic blocker.

Hiding Twitter and Facebook log-in functionality on Medium is a _feature_ not a _bug_ for me. By including those javascripts, both companies can build up a history of the sites I visit.

So I gather this is more of a privacy+ad blocker rather than strictly ad blocker.

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, even with EasyPrivacy and "Fanboy's Social Blocking", you will find that blockers (ABP, AdBlock, uBlock, etc) do not prevent 100% connecting to Facebook, Twitter, and whatnot.[1]

This is one of the reasons I see dynamic filtering as a key feature: users have the last word, not the filter lists.[2]

For example, I currently block all Facebook, Twitter, Disqus, and any of similarly ubiquitous domains by default using dynamic filtering, so that I have now 100% certainty that no connections to these domains occur on any page, while such certainty is not possible when relying solely on the filter lists.

[1] [https://www.diffchecker.com/pz6rv6lq](https://www.diffchecker.com/pz6rv6lq)

[2] [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic- filtering:-qu...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic- filtering:-quick-guide)

<comment><USER11> > _do not prevent 100% connecting to Facebook, Twitter, and whatnot_ //

Sounds like more of a job for a filtering proxy or hosts file.

<comment><USER2> uBlock will do it for you _while_ keeping the point-and-click ability to un- block on a per-site basis. For example, a site which breaks if it can't connect to Facebook.[1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bzB6tESynM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bzB6tESynM)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have been using µBlock for 3 weeks now.(previously adblock plus). There is one irritating thing it has that almost makes me go back to adblock again.

It is often blocking the false positives.

So if developer has named one of their assets file with social media names like "twitter/facebook/etc", it blocks the file right away. Since it does not have custom configuration options for each site, you can either disable µBlock or go with the crashed site.

Not all the sites are written professionally by experts, and this becomes an issue when you are trying to purchase stuff from small online shops. (to support local sellers)

I am too busy for a pull request these days, but maybe this will be fixed soon by someone else. My point for µBlock is for now 5/10.

<comment><USER13> µBlock enables Fanboy's social blocking list by default. If you want your Twitter/FB buttons and so forth back, you can turn it off in the subscription options.

<comment><USER14> It hasn't blocked them by default for a while now. It used to though.

<comment><USER13> Both the Chrome and Opera versions did for me, and quite recently too: only switched on Chrome about a month ago at most, and I've only even had Opera installed for about a week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems like, if one were an evil web developer, one could thwart blockers like these with a few nasty tricks. Server-side: on each request of a resource, salt all linked resource URIs and encrypt (after the host name) before sending the final document to the client. The resources can still be fetched, because the server can decrypt any requests, but the client has no way of knowing whether a particular resource is an ad or not. That thwarts URI based filtering. To thwart DOM filtering, randomize element classes and ids.

Though impractical, I thought it was an evil/funny idea.

<comment><USER16> If the resource names are still "static" your resources can still be blocked. But if they are altered slightly every time, you may also thwart caching, right?

<comment><USER15> Right, which is why I added the bit about salting the URIs before encryption. The salt could be per request, per session, or rotated after some period of time (say once per day). If only rotated once per day, it would still thwart ad blocking, but have less of an impact on caching. It would turn into an economic question of whether the extra ad impressions are worth the extra bandwidth.

<comment><USER17> Since most ads are effectively blocked at the domain level, I doubt your scheme would provide much bang for the buck.

<comment><USER15> The idea is that the ads would be served from the original host. Combined with encrypted URIs and the ad resources become indistinguishable from content resources. Thus thwarting blocking. As others have pointed out, yes this evil trick is incompatible with existing ad networks (which use their own domains). But it wasn't my intention to put forward a viable idea. Just an interesting one (namely, ciphering URIs to prevent blocking).

<comment><USER11> How would the ad network verify metrics under such a regime?

<comment><USER18> That's their problem. If they have to spy on me to "verify metrics" they can go fuck themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is awesome! I recently read this ticket[1] mentioning that porting of µBlock seems to be a starting point for gorhill to port µMatrix. In my perfect world, I would be using Firefox with nothing but µMatrix, as it is right now I'm having to use Chrome with µMatrix and sadly can't get rid of µBlock until µMatrix can hide blocked frames. Still, getting closer to that perfect world! The work done by gorhill is amazing.

[1]: [https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/issues/73](https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/issues/73)

<comment><USER20> Check out Policeman: [https://github.com/futpib/policeman](https://github.com/futpib/policeman)

It's similar to uMatrix and is under very active development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The GitHub site also states that it's available for Chrome, Opera and Safari (not yet in the extension gallery).

Chrome: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cjpalhdlnbpafiamej...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm)

Opera: [https://addons.opera.com/en- gb/extensions/details/ublock/](https://addons.opera.com/en- gb/extensions/details/ublock/)

Safari: [https://chrismatic.io/ublock](https://chrismatic.io/ublock)

Haven't tried it out myself yet but it's nice to see effort put into lowering the memory & CPU usage of such blockers.

<comment><USER22> Thanks for those links. While the earlier versions for Safari (like v0.8.2.0, found here [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/117](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/117)) work well on Safari 5, these new versions on your Safari link do not. They crash the browser during installation.

<comment><USER23> Seems to be this issue: [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/547](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/547)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If the author is here, please turn off the counter by default. We're blocking distracting things in our browser, we don't need another pointless distracting thing in our browser toolbar.

<comment><USER25> Counter opinion: I like the number because if there's a website working not quite right, I can easily see the number and disable uBlock to test out if that's the cause.

<comment><USER24> But you can't, though. uBlock shows the _total_ number of blocked items since you started Firefox. Not the number for a given page or site. Making it a basically superfluous mostly useless datapoint.

<comment><USER26> On Safari and Chrome, it displays the number of filters applied on the current site. This is (super) useful. If on Firefox you're getting a global count then that's a bug (so please report it on Github).

Perhaps changing the color from red to something more "off" (grey?) would help distract less.

<comment><USER24> Useful why? It's blocking stuff, that's great. I don't care how many things it blocks on a specific page. It make no difference to me while browsing. The little counter changing just looks like an annoying animated GIF in the corner of my browser.

I get that a subset of users would derive some pleasure at knowing how many things are blocked on every single website they visit or users who'd like to use it to troubleshoot a specific page that doesn't load when blocking is enabled (in which case having a quick right-click toggle to turn it on so users can use it to troubleshoot would be ideal), but I'd wager that most users do not. Users that want it on can turn it on. (cue subset of users responding that they either 1. enjoy seeing the count or 2. use it to troubleshoot the rare page that doesn't load as a result of blocking)

<comment><USER27> This is super useful feature for debugging. Happens sometimes that something goes wrong and an ad is regenerated after being blocked. So the ad blocker would block it again, thus generating an infinite loop that can take up all the memory (if the ad blocker saves any information about the blocked ads on the current page in memory) and crash your machine in less than a minute in the worst case. In the best case it would just lock up your browser window and you wouldn't know why. Knowing the number of ads blocked would quickly help debug such situations.

<comment><USER28> This is a very specific corner case, which doesn't justify the default settings

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> How is the performance for the firefox port? I might of missed it, but all I see are reports in comparison to adblockers on chrome.

<comment><USER30> [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Firefox- version:-benc...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Firefox- version:-benchmarking-memory-footprint-of-the-early-preview)

<comment><USER31> Wah Chromium uses way more ram than Firefox. 425M (firefox+ublock) vs 1.04G (chromium+ublock)

in all cases memory is reduced :)

<comment><USER2> I did warn on that page:

> You can't compare directly the figures between the browsers

Still, yes, Chromium uses more memory. A good part of this is because per- process tab. Once Firefox get the same per-process tab architecture, it will be easier to compare both browsers together.

<comment><USER32> Yep, Chrome / Chromium are now the #1 reason to bump my ram to 16GB. While using a laptop for coding / VMs etc. I still find my browser eating more ram most of the time - it simply doesn't handle paging out gracefully, and is horrific for my uses with < 4GB ram on any OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Hopefully at some point someone will do something similar for element-level blocking.

A lot of my custom ABP rules are actually blocking dynamic HTML slide-ins, overlays, animated carousels, etc.

<comment><USER34> If you just want to remove elements from the page, rather than block connections to third-party servers, I recommend Stylish. You can just write custom CSS rules and make those elements display:none. Alternatively, write a user script that does the same.

<comment><USER35> ABP prevents unwanted crap from being downloaded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Can someone familiar with the code explain what's the difference between this & adblock/disconnect etc. Why is this lighter? (a little technical algorithm difference would be good to know)

<comment><USER37> I think uBlock only injects the CSS rules needed, not 14000+ like ABP: [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/161#issuecomment-52...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/161#issuecomment-52638574)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Does this work on any of the mobile browsers? I'd kill for something to block stuff properly on mobile.

<comment><USER39> I just tried and was unsuccessful at installing it on Firefox for Android. (Fails to install silently after download.)

That said, Ghostery (and for that matter, HTTPS Everywhere) both work great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> From my experience of using this for a few weeks now on Chrome, I would recommend this over AdBlock Plus etc. I haven't done any specific performance tests and personally no numbers to back it up. However, I do have the subjective impression of improvement.

I'm using it in combination with µMatrix.

<comment><USER41> > I'm using it in combination with µMatrix.

I'm curious: how do you use it? Do you have to mass-enable stuff using the 'power' icon, for many sites? Or do you just enable the things you know you need, on a per-site basis? Or are your default just good enough?

The reason I ask is that I was curious about it, so tried it out for a couple of days. I found many sites were not usable with the default settings, e.g. Udemy's login box didn't show up until I turned off µMatrix.

<comment><USER42> I haven't used uMatrix, since I use Firefox, but I can speak for RequestPolicy, which is kind of the same thing basically AFAICS. It's very very very rare that I end up whitelisting everything that's requested on a site. The more you use the extension, the more you learn to recognize what domains you need to allow in order to have the site working as intended, and this way you end up building your own whitelist: allowing requests from a domain is a one-time only thing most of the times (additionally, there's an extension you can install that syncs your whitelist to your Firefox Sync account).

<comment><USER43> > the more you learn to recognize what domains you need to allow in order to > have the site working as intended

Sites using cloudflare are a major issue here, specifically their cryptic subdomains. If someone were to hide an ad network behind those they would be hard to tell apart from the rest, at least for humans.

<comment><USER42> Yes this is true. If a site is not working and the only reasonable domain to allow is something from cloudflare, I resort to allowing it temporarily. Not many ways around that, I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> They claim that when the extension gets added to addons.mozilla.org, it would start to auto-update.

<comment><USER45> Auto-updating is possible even without using addons.mozilla.org, sites like Pinterest do it all the time for their plugin.

Mozilla rolls that option into their CFX builder - [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add- ons/SDK/Tools/cfx#cf...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add- ons/SDK/Tools/cfx#cfx_xpi) \- the update file just needs a consistent place to live. I use CloudFront for it.

<comment><USER46> Unfortunately I doubt the auto-updates will work when the add-on's .xpi URL is not stable because it includes uBlock version number. He might be able to workaround that limitation by hosting a stable .xpi URL on a github.io website.

[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases/download/0.8.5.7/...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases/download/0.8.5.7/uBlock.firefox.xpi)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I like it, but so far anyway, I'm not feeling discernible differences in performance. That's just me though!

I would like to see something akin to Ghostery's interface where I can see exactly what trackers/ads are hitting me at a site, and whitelist by domain.

</comment><comment><USER48> Does anybody know if I really need the "Malware domain list" if I have Chrome's malware and phishing protection activated at the same time? Sounds like they might contain the same sites anyway.

</comment><comment><USER49> Under OS X I like [https://glimmerblocker.org/](https://glimmerblocker.org/)

Glimmerblocker works on operating system level and you don't really need an adblocker in your browser.

</comment><comment><USER50> I've never had an (Ad) blocker as I'm relatively happy with most sites but there are some that are not behaving well.

When I last looked (at least two years ago) there wasn't a single blocker that supports a blacklist-only mode. Meaning: Allow everything unless I block a certain domain.

Does anyone have an idea if something like this exists now?

<comment><USER51> Well if you disable all the filters of Ublock and add your block list to the "My filters" tab that should do what you want :)

<comment><USER50> Thanks but that's not what I'm looking for.

I don't want to maintain any block lists myself. I want to use all the 3rd- party Filters available but I only want them to be active on certain spammy websites. As far as I can tell ublock doesn't let me do that either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Installed it in Firefox 35 and Chromium 39 on Arch Linux, now browsing is noticeably faster :-) Whooohooo!

</comment><comment><USER53> I haven't been able to do performance tests, which is supposed to be the best advantage of this extension. But at least, it seems to block ads properly on Chrome.

Has anybody made some tests outside of the developers of the extension?

</comment><comment><USER54> How does this compare/contrast with Privacy Badger?

<comment> Anthony-G Good question. It's a pity that the only response was a flag-killed irrelevancy. Only last week, I downloaded and started using Privacy Badger as an alternative to Ghostery. I'm liking it so far but my current laptop is 7 years old and only has 1GB RAM (running LXDE) so resource consumption is my main concern after safe-guarding my privacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I tried this for Chrome for a couple days and found that it really didn't block too much ads(I can say none ads were blocked) comparing to ABP.

</comment><comment><USER52> Awesome exactly what I was looking for. Because AdBlock Plus is extremely slow at times. Also uBlock provides many more filters. Thank You!

<comment><USER28> The official XPI are here: [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases)

<comment><USER52> Thanks :-) Will check it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Does this also work for Firefox on Android?

EDIT: it seems that it's not compatible with Firefox 35 on my Android. Oh well, more patience required :-)

<comment><USER57> Bluhell Firewall does work on Firefox for Android, if you're looking for an ad blocker while you wait for µBlock.

<comment><USER58> And so do Adblock Plus and Adblock Edge. The reason I am interested in this is because of much lower resource consumption than either of those.

I haven't tried Bluehell Firewall though. Can you comment on its performance as compared to Adblock Plus/Edge?

<comment><USER57> Bluhell is touted as a lighter weight solution. I haven't taken measurements, but Firefox Mobile certainly feels snappier with Bluhell than with Adblock Plus/Edge.

<comment><USER58> Thanks, I'll give it a try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It isn't quite clear to me what add-ons this can replace. Obviously AdBlock, but perhaps also Ghostery and No-Script?

<comment><USER59> It's a replacement for AdBlock. JavaScript is not blocked unless it's part of an ad. The Easy Privacy list is part of uBlock by default, so there's some effective overlap with Ghostery but they're still different.

<comment><USER2> You can control javascript execution when enabling "advanced user" mode: [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic- filtering:-qu...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic- filtering:-quick-guide)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Use /etc/hosts blocking if you are worried about CPU and memory. It also works on rooted Android devices.

<comment><USER61> Blocking at the DNS level produces a lot of requests to 127.0.0.1, which can be quite annoying e.g. if you are using a local webserver for development. Also if you do not have a local webserver on 127.0.0.1 the browser still will wait for answers to your request, what can be an annoying experience. Would be interesting to measure how much CPU and memory actually is wasted with many tabs waitung for elements from 127.0.0.1.

It is the better approach to not let these requests happen right in the browser, what this plugin does, if I get it right.

A warm and big THANK YOU to the developer of this great software, it is so important and good to see that many developers are helping users to protect against the morally challenged who are stealing the privacy of millions every day.

<comment><USER62> DNS blocking works quite well. It's also very effective if you can set it up on your gateway so that it blocks ads/malware for all devices (PCs, phones, tablets ... even your guests will get adblocking for free!). However, while the /etc/hosts trick works I don't think it's the best way. The reason is that while parsing a plaintext file is easy and generally fast, it doesn't scale well especially when you have to traverse several megabytes of it for _every_ DNS request.

The way I have done it is by installing unbound[0]. If you aren't using something else like dnsmasq, you will notice a speedup from the DNS caching alone. While unbound isn't supposed to serve authoritative answers (i.e.: don't use it to manage your zone) the possibility is there. The unbound-block- hosts script[1] can be used to convert Dan Pollocks' hosts file to the appropriate unbound syntax.

To avoid the timeout from localhost, my first approach was to setup a firewall rules that discards the request (the browser receives a connection refused message _immediately_)

Another way of proceeding is to setup nginx to serve a 1*1 transparent GIF for every request it receives. If you find nginx to be too big a dependency, there are alternatives such as pixelserv[2].

The issue is that you can't block a specific element, but you still catch a fair share of ads.

I have explored the possibility of running a http proxy to address this, but I haven't got around to it yet. (In addition, I'll probably need to MITM myself if I want to block elements in HTTPS; still needs some thinking :)).

[0] [https://unbound.net/](https://unbound.net/) [1] [https://github.com/jodrell/unbound-block- hosts](https://github.com/jodrell/unbound-block-hosts) [2] [https://github.com/h0tw1r3/pixelserv](https://github.com/h0tw1r3/pixelserv)

<comment><USER11> Am I reading right - serving data for responses on localhost is "cheaper" (for some value of cheap) than letting those requests fail? Or does it just return faster, is it faster than using firewall rules?

Why serve a gif, why not a single byte or something? Does the browser require the data to be parseable?

Sorry, lots of questions.

[http://proger.i-forge.net/The_smallest_transparent_pixel/eBQ](http://proger.i-forge.net/The_smallest_transparent_pixel/eBQ) gives info on smallest gif/png/jpeg files which might be useful.

<comment><USER62> No, certainly not cheaper (for any value of cheap). I haven't measured but I can't see how it would be possible, as in the first case the network stack takes care of it (in kernel land) and in the other case you have to go all the way back to userland.

The reason I tried the transparent GIF trick is because some sites have frames with ads and whatnot and having the firewall refuse the connection will result in having an error message displayed in the browser. Not really aesthetically pleasing. While I don't care, because I know the reason it is displayed; some less technical people might start thinking their Internet is broken.

In addition to that, the GIF results in a cheap form of "element hiding" since you end up replacing a 50 _50 banner with a 1_ 1 transparent square. Now that you mention it though, I wonder what would happen if I set the server to serve a null byte for instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Is this considered stable now? Last I checked it had some problems, if fixed already that is awesome

</comment><comment><USER64> This came just in time. My Firefox was crawling with ABP. Now it's flying along again.

</comment><comment><USER45> Personally, I hope that this doesn't get added to addons.mozilla.org. Their arbitrary human-control editor policy would be the best thing to cause stagnation of innovative plugins such as this. If the author goes the self- hosted route, automatic updates are still achievable (and can even occur faster.)

+1 for not having this in AMO!

</comment><comment><USER65> My version of firefox (34.05 on mac) says the tool is corrupted

<comment><USER66> try installing it from here: [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases)

worked for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> is this on addons.mozilla.org? I couldn't find it there.

</comment><comment><USER68> Please get us uBlock for Chrome on Android and iOS.

<comment><USER69> I'd recommend Javelin Browser[0] on Android.

[0] [http://javelinbrowser.com/](http://javelinbrowser.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> It would be nice if the link was to the top of the page, or the start of the Readme, instead of to #installation. A bit presumptuous there.

</comment><comment><USER71> ublock doesn't work on quite a few sites, whereas I've never had an issue with adblock. Couple of examples off the top of my head:

1\. giphy: it removes the share and twitter buttons

2\. doesn't block ads on hulu

There were others as well that I seem to be forgetting (I remember having to disable it on quite a few sites). Good intention (lowering memory consumption), but the execution still has some way to go.

<comment><USER72> this is just different filter presets. You can change the filters. In my case, I had ABP doing all that same blocking, only I had to opt-in, whereas with ublock that blocking is opt-out.

<comment><USER71> fair enough, but if you're going to compare ublock to ABP, as a user my expectations from it are going to be like those from ABP. By default it should work like an ad-blocker, with an option to block other stuff. For users like myself, who don't really care about tracking, just about ads cluttering up a page or delatying a video, blocking out stuff other than ads just 'breaks' the site.

<comment><USER72> Why should it have to have those same assumptions and defaults? In my view, it's fundamentally better to block that other shit too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> > ...the inalienable right to privacy.

Yes, you have a right not to visit any website you don't want to.

<comment><USER74> If all websites declared all privacy violations up-front, that might be a viable solution.

<comment><USER73> Turn off cookies and JavaScript.

<comment><USER75> >Turn off cookies and JavaScript.

In your first comment, you seemed to be against altering the presentation of websites; you offer a binary choice: go to the site, or do not, based solely on the content. Seemingly advocating that sites should be accepted or rejected whole-cloth with no modification. Yet here, you seem to be just fine with blocking Javascript and cookies, despite the fact that both these technologies are often used as part of ad services to generate revenue.

So which is it?

<comment><USER73> I'm not against altering the presentation of websites at all; I use Ghostery myself (plus Greasemonkey etc.). I just think it's dishonest to pretend that this has anything to do with rights violations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I'm curious as to what drives the creation of this multitude of add-blocking projects? What is their income model and what supports their development?

<comment><USER77> The obnoxious and spying nature of ads.

<comment><USER76> ... I'm not asking about why you'd want one. - I'm asking about why you'd make a new one and who would pay for your work on a new one when others already exist?

<comment><USER77> But that is the same question. Not everyone is trying to maximize their wealth all the time.

Do you ask "why did Linus write Linux when there were other operating systems available at the time and no one was paying him for it?" or similarly the Atheos.cx guy? Gnome when there was KDE? Gimp when there was Photoshop? Facebook when there was MySpace?

<comment><USER72> The last one isn't comparable to the others. The original Facebook made by that other guy Aaron Greenspan arguably was just someone doing something because it was useful. Zuckerberg and co. made what is today's Facebook specifically to gain profit and power.

But your point is well-made otherwise. The answer to "why?" for uBlock and others is "because people care enough to do it."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Amazing work.

One concern is that the EasyPrivacy list -- which is in my opinion overly aggressive -- is enabled by default. Most pertinently, it entirely disables Google Analytics on every site.

<comment><USER79> Does the deactivation of Google Analytics impact the user negatively?

<comment><USER80> They don't get the privilege of having their data analyzed and used to market products back to them.

Some of the marketing people on here will probably find that to be horrendous. Where is my relevant promoted content?!

<comment><USER78> If most geeks end up blocking GA (in most cases without realising it) then the audience of geek-focused content might end up being severely under-reported to publishers. This will only accelerate the mainstreamification of our culture.

<comment><USER80> You ought to be supporting publishers that are important to you with your dollars, not with HTTP requests to Google Analytics.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Despite money and effort, homelessness in SF as bad as ever - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Despite-money-and-work-homelessness-in-SF-as-bad-11242946.php <comment><USER2> The high cost of housing and commercial real estate in SF, NYC, Boston, DC, LA, London, ....all have the same underlying cause which was fixed in Japan by the Japanese federal government.

It is a market inefficiency caused by zoning density restrictions and overuse of historic landmark status which creates a politically induced artificial scarcity in housing (scarcity = rising prices). These "rent-seeking" restrictions are a regressive tax transferring income from renters to wealthy landlords including Donald Trump. It is wrong, and Japan has fixed the problem removing zoning density restrictions at the local level. The result, in 2014 there were 140,000 homes built in Tokyo compared with about 90,000 for all of California and 20,000 in NYC.

Economist David Ricardo wrote about this phenomenon of "rent-seeking" about 200 years ago related to the Corn Laws. Corn Laws taxed the import of all grains which benefited not farmers but landowners. Ricardo joined Parliament and managed to overturn the "rent-seeking" law.

The solution is a federal law in the US following the example of Japan.

<comment><USER3> I understand the desire to convert a discussion of homelessness to a discussion of high house prices, but homelessness is not caused by high house prices. 99% percent of the population cannot afford to buy a house in Manhattan. That doesn't mean that they are living on the streets there. They move to where they can afford to live, and the U.S. has many areas where housing is quite cheap. If you are able to maintain a steady income, then you can also maintain housing. But if you are not able to maintain a steady income, then there is no price at which you can afford to buy a house. Even if free, you would not be able to pay property taxes, maintenance, or utilities. San Francisco has a high homelessness problem because of the mild climate, large amounts of city services, and the liberal attitude.

The homeless people here expect and receive a steady income from people on the street as well city services. I remember the first time I was in San Francisco and someone came up to me and demanded money for food. He said "I don't eat meat!". I was stunned, both at a stranger coming up to me and asking for money and also about why they can be so picky about their diet. I gave him $1. He looked at me like I insulted him and said "Salads cost more than meat". The homeless in San Francisco are really quite aggressive in comparison to other cities, and just like the rest of my fellow San Franciscans, there is a strong feeling of entitlement. There is just no price at which the number of homeless will decrease -- only when we start paying the homeless to live in houses will that happen.

The only thing I can think of is fully funded group homes that are mandatory to live in -- basically prisons with nice amenities and educational programs that you can graduate out of based on demonstrating a track record of being able to provide for yourself. Because as long as we give people the option of living on the street, there is a certain small subset of the population that will prefer to do that over the other options available to them, and San Francisco will be home to an outsized share of that population.

<comment><USER4> _but homelessness is not caused by high house prices._

I have had an actual college class on homelessness and public policy. There is no single cause of homelessness, but sky high housing costs definitely contribute to homelessness. There has been a serious and growing lack of affordable housing in the U.S. going back decades, about 80% of SROs were torn down in the 60s and 70s at a time when they weren't really needed for demographic reasons but they were never replaced, and average housing size has more than doubled while average number of occupants has dropped. Meanwhile, homelessness has been on the rise nationwide for years.

No, high housing costs do not single handedly and directly cause homelessness. But that's because there is no single cause of homelessness. But high housing costs are absolutely a contributing factor.

Your dystopian solution of basically imprisoning the poor is outlandish.

<comment><USER3> It's nice that you've took an actual college class on homelessness. I've logged about 10 years in volunteering for programs to feed the homeless, and have shared my home with homeless people for almost 7 years (until I stopped). I've talked to many, many homeless people and every single one of them could have stayed in a shelter but chose not to because of the restrictions on personal freedom. Every single one had some sort of serious mental issue, often compounded by physical disabilities, and was simply unable to care for themselves. Every single one had serious attitude problems to where they basically gave up on trying to make it in this society.

Here, I am talking about the chronic homeless, which are the root of the problem. Not families that may need to sleep in the car because they are in between housing or people crashing on couches while they straighten themselves out. I mean people with tents.

The one person I knew the longest was basically camping out around Palo Alto. The reason why you don't see so many homeless in the suburbs is because the Police are fairly effective at driving them out with beatdowns and destroying their property. This is the reality of not forcing them into group living situations -- let them live on the streets creating a lot of quality of life issues or have an unspoken policy of police brutality. So I would say that what we have now is dystopian.

The last homeless man I let live with me I ended up asking to leave, because he was unable to keep steady work. I just asked him to do something, anything -- it didn't have to be full time -- and he could keep the money himself. But he was able bodied and needed to work. I drove him to his job. At the end of the day, he was pretty blunt in telling me that at his age -- he was in his 50s -- he couldn't stand doing menial work and being ordered around by some kid. For him, it was either a high paying job or camping out. So I finally asked him to leave and he's been camping out (assuming he's still alive at this point -- it's been a while).

I think it's cute you took a college class and now understand the issue. But housing costs have nothing to do it. You can today find a place to live in the U.S. for a few hundred a month. No, not in San Francisco or Manhattan or Monaco, but most of the country is incredibly cheap.

Look at rent prices in the middle of the country. For example, in Phoenix, real rental costs have not increased for 30 years. They've been basically flat. But in Phoenix, the homeless don't have the same access to city services as in San Francisco, or NYC.

<comment><USER5> It's true. Homeless people have no money. The difference between 200 and 2000 a month doesn't matter, they can't afford either.

<comment><USER4> This is not true. Some homeless people have no money. Others have a social security check and nothing else or a military retirement check and nothing else. Some even have jobs. For people like me, if we could find a decent (not hell hole) place for $200, that would absolutely get us off the street.

I could afford about $400 a month in the near future. I am trying to find a way to get off the street now that my student loan is paid off and that frees up enough money where I could afford that much for shelter in the near future.

<comment><USER5> Not trying to be critical or anything just curious. Why not get like a Van with a 300 dollar note? At least you have shelter and can park near city services.

<comment><USER4> I'm sure you mean well, but one-off comments from internet strangers are not going to solve my problems. I am solving them. It is just much slower than I would like. I did not comment on my situation in order to solicit advice. I did so in order to make it clear what the basis of my opinions are.

<comment><USER5> No man I hear you about the homeless who have potential like yourself. Homelessness is a huge trap. I mean I feel like simply providing showers and some sort of basic amenities to help the homeless who are trying to work their way out of it would help enourmously.

But these homeless programs that just keep the homeless subsisting are better than nothing but sill aren't helping the ones who could escape.

<comment><USER4> I only went to homeless services when I was truly destitute for basically the first six months. If I can find another solution, I do. Most homeless services are incredibly crappy and often counterproductive.

<comment><USER5> I'm with you. I've been homeless before. I would never use a shelter. But if there had been free showers I would have used them lol. I had to use the shower bus riding around SF. Also, if there had been free toothpaste and soap that would have been nice.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, I mistook your original query. It was amongst a bunch of such comments and some seemed to not be getting made in good faith.

The super short version is that I don't want to live in a van because I no longer drive due to my medical condition. There are other factors, but that's a big one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I interviewed a few homeless for a project for this social justice class I took as an undergrad requirement. Bought em' a meal and asked them to tell me their life stories.

Yes there was drinking, drugs and mental health issues, but there was also this sort of resignation where once they'd got used to sleeping and defecating in the street and they knew where they could get food and maybe some cheap liquor they kind of stopped caring about improving their lives. They didn't want to move into a shelter with dangerous people who would steal their meager posessions or attack them. They had basically accepted they had failed at life and had come to terms with an existence of scraping along the bottom of city existence.

I think the main thing that attracts them to San Francisco is the nice climate, progressive politics that doesn't persecute them and that they can walk to services, walk to begging spots, walk to the liquor store, and walk to where they sleep. Notice how there are no homeless up at the top of hills in S.F?

<comment><USER7> > _They had basically accepted they had failed at life and had come to terms > with an existence of scraping along the bottom of city existence._

At that point they have a job, it's working at being homeless full time.

<comment><USER8> Reminds me of one of my favorite short stories:

 _I've been homeless for six years now. If there's such a thing as an effective homeless man, then I suppose I'm effective. Being homeless is probably the only thing I've ever been good at. I know where to get the best free food. I've made friends with restaurant and convenience-store managers who let me use their bathrooms. And I don't mean the public bathrooms, either. I mean the employees' bathrooms, the clean ones hidden behind the kitchen or the pantry or the cooler. I know it sounds strange to be proud of this, but it means a lot to me, being trustworthy enough to piss in somebody else's clean bathroom. Maybe you don't understand the value of a clean bathroom, but I do._

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/04/21/what-you- pawn-i...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/04/21/what-you-pawn-i-will- redeem)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A huge, unmentioned part of the problem is that SF has settled on housing policies that makes low-end housing unavailable or unaffordable. The people who can only afford to live in a single-room occupancy aren't going to magically disappear when you restrict the number of SROs available. They're going to go onto the street.

Yes, it's bad that someone can only afford a 60 square foot room to live in. The solution isn't to make it illegal to let out a 60 square foot room to them, or to force market-rate housing to subsidize a few lucky winners.

<comment><USER10> The policies that would solve the supply/demand problem are things people don't want. The cities aren't priding themselves on unaffordable housing, it's the NIMBYs that are the problem.

A 10 story building blocking MY view? No way!

You want to add 1,500 more cars to the street in front of my house? But my children play in the front yard!

We can't tax or deny foreign ownership of property! That unfairly targets immigrant entrepreneurs!

(I'm not saying these arguments aren't valid in some peoples minds, but they are the root of the problem)

<comment><USER11> _" A 10 story building blocking MY view? No way!"_

There are quite a few skyscrapers in SF, actually. A new huge one was built for Salesforce recently. Building affordable housing isn't a priority, though, apparently.

<comment><USER12> > Building affordable housing isn't a priority,

But why should it be? Why is creating low cost housing in the bay area better than spending that money in, say, Sacramento? What are the individual, societal and area benefits of doing it on the bay area vs anywhere else in the state of California?

I am being contrarian to be sure, Full disclosure: Australian with no dog in this fight.

So I ask because Tyler Cowan ([https://medium.com/conversations-with- tyler/patrick-collison...](https://medium.com/conversations-with- tyler/patrick-collison-stripe-podcast-tyler-cowen-books-3e43cfe42d10)) made the point that the Bay Area makes a lot of great global goods, and loosening housing regulation is effectively a tax on the current, extremely productive people that live in the Bay Area.

Given that these people pay taxes in California, why not find somewhere else to house less well to-do people? Somewhere less expensive, less productive and less likely to be problematic for the residents, would seem ideal.

$1,000,000 in SF buys sweet FA, but that would 3 median priced houses in Sacramento, and it is less than 100 miles away.

So I just wonder what the correct level is to do these things at: country, State, City, Suburb or street? I just think there are only so many dollars, why is the argument about where they are spent, rather than how effectively?

<comment><USER13> > loosening housing regulation is effectively a tax on the current, extremely > productive people that live in the Bay Area

No, it's a tax on the landlords. How many producers of value are homeowners and not renters? (At least one person on HN, but I mean proportionally.)

<comment><USER14> Figure out a way of discouraging renters and landlords then. Disallow people from renting homes out or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can't help but wonder if 275M would be better spent by the city if they created a facility somewhere - anywhere - that is cheaper than the SF Bay.

I'm not saying ship the poor away and make them someone else's problem. I mean caring for people in a more cost-effective manner, and in a way that isn't just treating the symptoms.

There are 6,686 homeless people in SF [1]. With a budget in the hundreds of millions, it is conceivable that all of these people can be housed and treated in an inland community in perpetuity. Many homeless suffer from mental disorders that require treatment, not just housing and food.

[1][http://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Franc...](http://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Francisco%20Homeless%20Count%20%20Report_0.pdf)

<comment><USER16> > I can't help but wonder if 275M would be better spent by the city if they > created a facility somewhere - anywhere - that is cheaper than the SF Bay.

Probably not.

> I'm not saying ship the poor away and make them someone else's problem.

But you are saying "ship the poor away". Which is problematic, historically, to implement even _locally_ , which is why much of that money is spent reaching then in the community.

> I mean caring for people in a more cost-effective manner, and in a way that > isn't just treating the symptoms.

If you want to treat more than symptoms of poverty, you need to restructure the economy and society, not move the victims.

> There are 6,686 homeless people in SF [1]. With a budget in the hundreds of > millions, it is conceivable that all of these people can be housed and > treated in an inland community in perpetuity.

The number (and, even moreso, the identity of the individuals that are homeless) isn't static. Though forced relocation without any clear plan for improving the ability of people to escape homelessness will probably make the condition stickier.

<comment><USER15> I'll concede that it does indeed sound like "shipping the poor away". Historically, it meant making it someone else's problem (1-way ticket to SF) which I agree is indeed problematic, and is not what I'm advocating for.

I _do_ want to treat more than just the symptoms, but I don't think handwaving for socioeconomic restructures is a realistic way get anything done. I'm advocating for a way to make the ~30K/person go farther by not being in one of the most expensive areas of the country.

Many of these people need long term mental healthcare, and is the main reason they are homeless. Our current system is not well suited at helping people with mental disorders.

Perhaps I'm ill-informed and I don't pretend to have the answer, but evidenced by the fact that homelessness is a growing problem despite throwing more and more money at it. I do think we need to try another approach.

<comment><USER16> > Historically, it meant making it someone else's problem (1-way ticket to SF) > which I agree is indeed problematic

No, even local relocation (like forcing people into shelters for services) has been problematic historically.

> Many of these people need long term mental healthcare, and is the main > reason they are homeless.

Yes, a minority do, and institutionalization (which, generally, might as well be outside of SF) may help a fraction of that minority.

Forced dislocation would also probably _aggravate_ mental health problems for some others in (and out) of that that minority.

> Our current system is not well suited at helping people with mental > disorders.

Sure, but "ship people elsewhere", even if the responsibility doesn't shift, isn't a solution to that.

<comment><USER15> A cursory google search reveals that 1 in 4 of those in homeless shelters have a severe mental disorder. Nearly 1 in 2 have severe mental disorders _and_ substance abuse problems.

These numbers do not paint a small minority that could benefit from institutionalization or other forms or long-term care, and our current system is poorly setup to handle these issues.

<comment><USER16> > A cursory google search reveals that 1 in 4 of those in homeless shelters > have a severe mental disorder.

The number I'm familiar with is 35%, but either is a minority.

> These numbers do not paint a small minority

Which is probably why I never qualified "minority" with "small".

<comment><USER15> I got my numbers from here:

[https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Mental-Health-By-the- Numbers](https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Mental-Health-By-the-Numbers)

> ...may help a fraction of that minority. > Which is probably why I never > qualified "minority" with "small".

I believe we're now arguing about semantics, so lets agree to disagree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One success story in homelessness has been Utah's Housing First program [1]. Is there any effort to do something similar here?

At first glance it appears very affordable. Rents in the city center appear to be about $5 per square foot per month judging from a quick perusal of craigslist listings. So to give all 7500 homeless in the city a 100 sq foot efficiency would have plausible annual expenses of about $45 million -- a small fraction of the $300M plus mentioned in the parent article. Obviously there are many problematic details, such as there are almost no appropriate apartments currently available, but ultra-small units do exist [2] and seem to be a favorable alternative to sleeping on the street.

[1] [http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced- chronic...](http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic- homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how) [2] [http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/truly-tiny-4-apartments- unde...](http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/truly-tiny-4-apartments- under-100-square-feet-213282)

<comment><USER18> Real estate prices (buying) in the city range from $400 to $1000 a sq ft. That's probably a better estimate, as you'd have to create new spaces. Taking the average of that range, you get $700 * 100 * 7500 = $525M.

I'm all for just setting the more salvageable homeless up in a 900 sq ft condo, and subsidizing it for them (i.e. free), then let them sell it in 3+ years. They can pay back the subsidies, and take the equity and move elsewhere. There would be other requirements as well (attending substance abuse programs, staying out of jail, etc)

<comment><USER17> You're calculating the cash flow of an all-cash financing scenario, but not the real cost. Since the buildings are durable you need to amortize their benefit over the life of the structures. Using the standard depreciation schedule on the $525M gives only $18M per year + maintenance & tax -- close to the figure derived from rents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I started getting off at Powell station and I can attest to this article. I've commuted to NYC stations for over 4yrs and even though i've seen my share of homelessness inside the NYC subway stations, it's nowhere as bad as SF BART station (Powell).

Every day I see some weird stuff going on (it's at a point where it's no longer weird to me).

<comment><USER20> I moved to SF from New York a couple years ago. A huge difference in the homeless populations for me has been the aggressiveness of the SF homeless. I can't recall a single time in New York where a homeless person got in my face or yelled at me or anything of the like. Since being here I've had a full cup of (hopefully) soda thrown on me and been yelled at from a 3ft range multiple times. It's a surreal experience. I'm not sure what led to cultural difference.

<comment><USER21> What would happen if you threw a cup of soda on someone in NYC or Boston, Trenton or Baltimore? I think you'd learn very quickly not to do that. Cultivating a culture where that sort of response by the person on which soda is thrown is frowned upon certainly doesn't help.

<comment><USER22> A homeless woman spit on me in SOMA a few months ago for no apparent reason. Just walked up to me squawking like a bird and spit on me. Probably was on something.

My immediate reaction was to jump out of my chair and aggressively move towards her - I'm actually not sure what I would've done next because it all happened so quickly. Probably shoved her? That seems like a legitimate response to someone walking up and spitting on you. Thankfully I was with a few friends and they restrained me before I could do anything and the woman ran away unscathed.

The entire experience left me so confused. I am legitimately concerned that if I had shoved her I would've been considered the 'bad guy' here be the absurd SF hyper liberals and could've ended up in jail been fired if my employer found out.

What are you supposed to do in this situation? There needs to be some sort of disincentive to this behavior but it seems like the way things are in SF it's actually socially acceptable behavior.

<comment><USER23> I guess NYC and SF have more in common than we realized.

We have our own spitting lady: [http://nypost.com/2017/04/24/notorious- spitting-lady-loses-i...](http://nypost.com/2017/04/24/notorious-spitting- lady-loses-it-in-court/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think it was Deming who said "your system is set up perfectly to produce the results you are getting." SF has:

\- a mild climate (attractive if you don't have shelter)

\- our society has no place for mentally ill. They may not ever be able to live life by themselves.

\- a $250 million of subsidies for being homeless, apparently

\- a culture of spending money on the symptoms rather than solving the problem. For instance, a number of comments here suggest paying for them to live in a house/apartment somewhere. Now you're stuck paying their rent forever, because the underlying problem of they aren't making enough money to live is still there. Plus, if I'm homeless, now SF looks like a good place to move, because they'll pay for my apartment!

\- a culture of permissiveness. Why do homeless people get to act with different standards? If a "homed" person defecated on their neighbor's sidewalk they would call the police, but it's okay for the homeless to do it? If a "homed" person throws liquids at you, it's probably grounds for charging them with assault. But it's okay for homeless people?

\- persistent lack of housing, which means that some people who might not be homeless can't afford housing. Combined with the above, there isn't much incentive to move to a place they could afford.

I think the attitude of entitlement by some of the homeless (see rsj_hn's comment, for instance) suggests that SF's structure is enabling homelessness, rather than caring for the homeless.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have come to the realization that SF's homeless problems cannot be solved. It is simply because this is probably the only city in America that is willing to not unleash the police on homeless population and tries to take care of them. After all they are citizens of this country as well. In my suburban city in the Bay Area, homeless people are not tolerated in any of the neighborhoods. In a way I applaud that SF is doing something to help poor and mentally ill folks, but the price is degradation of quality of life for everyone else.

<comment><USER26> I see SF cops interacting with the homeless regularly. And, what I've personally seen has been overwhelmingly positive. I see friendly conversations on street corners. I see cops checking up on people who in especially bad shape. Lately, I've several times seen cops driving by sidewalk-sitters where both yell back and forth to each other. It looks angry if you don't pay close attention. All parties are smiling.

<comment><USER27> This is absolutely wonderful to hear. Constant harrasment by angry police officers (as I've seen in other locales) can be very damaging to the psyche if those who already have so much to deal with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've seen estimates that it costs up to $80k/year in the Bay Area to give a homeless person housing and treat their underlying mental illness, substance addiction and other health issues. So for 8,000 homeless we're taking about $700million per year liability. You can't solve homelessness in the Bay Area by throwing money at the problem. The underlying issue is the cost of housing, health care and law enforcement or how those things are applied - all are deep political issues.

My own running list of root problems that underly the homeless epidemic in California:

\- zoning. we have technology to build inexpensive micro-apartments, theres just no cost-effective way to gain approval for tens thousands of them convenient to health care facilities and economic opportunities.

\- building codes. to build cheap micro-apartments, they need to be prefabricated. building codes enforce customized busy work for individual plumbers, electricians, inspectors and other contractors on each installation. The systems resists pre-fabrication which would be safer and much cheaper overall.

\- local attitudes about state power. police use of force. crimes of poverty aren't often prosecuted. City attorneys/prosecutors are highly disincentivized to tackle quality of life crimes. cost of jury trials.

\- high cost and poor state of prisons

\- lack of police headcount, expense of police salaries/benefits.

\- high cost of health care & related labor. regulatory capture by licensed professionals, hospital companies, drug/equipment companies. cost of healthcare liability insurance.

\- lack of regional coordination between low-cost and high-cost areas within the state

\- lack of state-wide mental health and drug abuse treatment policy

\- lack of money for preventative care and early intervention for new homeless - don't tackle problems till its far too late and more costly / impossible to fix

</comment><comment><USER29> I hold what could be an unpopular opinion and what some might call irrelevant, but I think a big factor here is tech. To preface what I'm about to state, I work in tech myself and I know many of you are, and I'm not blaming tech from an outsider point of view.

There is a disproportionate amount of companies starting or moving into SF over even just the past 5 years. Before, if you're starting a tech company, it could be equally common to start it in the peninsula (maybe even more so), say Palo Alto or Mountain View and the like. Nowadays, the default choice is SF and that's majority of the cases by far.

I think collectively, the whole environment is pushing towards building SF into the New York of the west, except instead of banks and the financial industry filling up the town, it's tech companies. I'm not saying it's the agenda of anyone in specific (in government or otherwise) to build out SF that way, I'm saying it's what we're all collectively doing, whether intentional for some of us or simply riding the waves for others.

SF is a city that used to support many industries. Tech is obviously the one industry that is almost the top earner overall (or might even be the absolute top earner by industry). It seems like an obvious factor (and a big one) that's driving anyone not in tech away. In some cases, at the lowest end of the income spectrum, they might not have anywhere to be driven away to other than to the streets. Another anecdotal point is that recent popular article about how <$105k is considered low income in SF.

If this is indeed a factor, one of the things we collectively as part of the tech industry can do, is to intentionally spread ourselves away from SF, into other areas of the bay area. I get it that people want to live in the bay area for its climate and all the conveniences. There's no reason why there can't be tech companies HQ'ing in East Bay, for example. (and I'm not talking about just Oakland, but everywhere from San Leandro down to Fremont, or further east like Pleaston, Livermore, Walnut Creek, etc.)

<comment><USER30> I want to voice an opinion that I've held in secret, I'm curious if you think that this is completely overboard...(downvotes are appropriate here, people).

While a lot of these startups might be useless Tinder clones or Uber for X, there are also startups that quite literally change the world ~for the better~ in objective ways. Don't we have a moral imperative to cater to these companies at the expense of all else? Isn't it better for the long term to ensure they have all the resources available?

Yes, some of the startups are scum money grabs, but for every cancer researching, ag developing, energy innovation startup shouldn't we extend them every benefit possible?

<comment><USER4> I'm homeless. I have been for 5.5 years. I am author of the blogs "What helps the homeless" and "San Diego homeless survival guide."

I have a bunch of blogs because of the free service BlogSpot. I have an earned income because of an online writing service. I have social contact and an intellectual outlet because of free forums, like Hacker News. I do most of my banking online. I am paying down debt and my earned income is gradually going up.

I could really use more traffic for my websites, more customers for my resume editing service and access to decent basic housing that doesn't cost an insane amount. If I could find a simple 2 bedroom place for about $400/month, I could get off the street in the very near future. I can't seem to find that. I am in the Central Valley, not SF and I am willing to potentially move to another state, though not just ANY state. I am still finding it incredibly hard to locate a potential viable housing solution for me.

While I agree that some things add more value to the world than others, there aren't really any clear cut boundaries. Some of the people on the street are, for example, cancer survivors who are broke in part because they got treatment that saved their life (so far) but it cost a helluva lot. We really need a few more basic things solved, like universal access to basic healthcare. More cancer solutions can potentially just put more people on the street. It doesn't necessarily fix this problem.

Homelessness isn't a simple problem space to solve. There is no one thing that causes it. Some things that would help enormously:

More affordable housing, which has been in short supply for decades and getting worse.

More middle class employment options. These seem to be going the way of the dinosaur.

Single payer health care system to provide universal coverage.

<comment><USER31> Why are you unwilling to move to certain states? I know that in kentucky, for example, you could find a 2 bedroom for 400 a month fairly easily- I know that because I lived there.

<comment><USER4> I have serious health problems that are significantly impacted by things like climate and local vegetation. It is vastly cheaper and more cost effective for me to not be deathly ill. Most homeless people have challenging personal problems of that sort. It is a significant contributing factor to homelessness and it doesn't help when people act like we are just being unreasonable or something.

<comment><USER32> I'm not sure of the specifics and it may not be very easy to get there, but I know Hawaii has a single payer system and a similar climate. It might be something to look into.

<comment><USER4> Hawaii is very expensive. It would require airfare to get there. Volcanos emit sulfur, to which I am allergic, and other fumes, which are contraindicated for my respiratory condition.

I am looking basically at West Coast states and other Western states. Nevada and Idaho are two I am looking at very closely at the moment. I am inclined to simply leave California for various reasons, but I also am looking at the possibility of finding something here.

But thank you for your concern.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> That sounds so obvious - these funds have to be used to deter people from becoming homeless or squeeze them out of city if they became so - but they seem to be used to make life of bums more comfortable, obviously you have more and more of them.

I guess experience of Belarus in eliminating bums should serve as example. There are no bums in Belarus. Why? You aren't supposed to ask, they won't tell you. People are happy, and the government is doing its job. Everyone knows that wandering in the street dressed and smelling like a bum is a bad idea and won't last for long.

<comment><USER34> > There are no bums in Belarus. Why? You aren't supposed to ask, they won't > tell you.

It sounds like you're advocating for killing homeless people.

<comment><USER35> Of course there are no killings. Mostly they were moved to small/half abandoned villages out of sight.

When society on all levels is really not-welcoming to homeless that may force some people to try much harder not to end-up as bum on the streets.

<comment><USER34> > Mostly they were moved to small/half abandoned villages out of sight.

That's not a whole lot better.

<comment><USER33> They are supposed to be sent to forced labor to chemical plants and other harmful conditions work (Belarus also has a lot of work to do on contaminated Chernobyl lands, so maybe there as well).

Thing is, bumming is a _crime_. As far as i know, it is a felony in just about every country. It is just that cops are closing their eyes on this crime so frequently that most people even forgot that it was against the law.

<comment><USER35> It is not a crime on its own, unless you live in opressive country. Against the law should be actions making it not safe for others

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is _nuts_. $275M and no results? Seriously? The city really needs to rethink this.

The homeless in SF are disgusting. Why does the city dump so much money into them? Is it really worth the amount spent per person? Why not spend that money on improving public schools, the efficiency of public transit, and things that useful members of the society would actually benefit from?

<comment><USER37> > The homeless in SF are disgusting.

Why don't you tell us how you really feel?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I wonder what the editorial reasoning is behind publishing a story spurred by a recent homeless count, and omitting the number of homeless counted.

Instead, we get numbers about how expensive programs are, how many needles have been cleaned up, and how many complaints made about the homeless on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis with a map, with a special highlight of human excrement complaints.

If I were cynical, I'd say that this is an anti-homeless piece with the summary: "Our spending is going up 10% a year, and homelessness is barely going down (take our word for it.)"

My cynical take on why the number of homeless was omitted: it's 7,499. $275MM/7,499 = $36,700 for each homeless person. This is obviously more than enough to house every homeless person directly, but the money is being drained away by subcontractors and salaries. Instead, the paper is implying that more money isn't the answer, policing is (notably not implying that spending be reduced, either.) Shifting emphasis to more policing of the poor will create a material benefit for the people who've decided to live in a gated community but forgot to put up a gate, while maintaining spending will keep up the flow of money that is going to a network of graft that results in little material gain for the supposed object of that spending.

<comment><USER39> San Francisco took this thinking to its logical conclusion years ago. "We're spending tens of thousands on services for homeless people. Why don't we just give them the money and let them buy what they need?"

So the city got rid of the "subcontractors" and started handing out cash. The homeless people (as a group - I'm sure there were exceptions) pretty much treated the assistance as extra money for booze and drugs. Also, you can imagine what happened when homeless people living in _other_ cities learned about cash benefits.

Gavin Newsom rose to prominence by changing the system _back_ to what it had been before cash assistance. So we're back to having bureaucrats administering services, because it turns out a whole lot of homeless people are homeless for reasons that go beyond bad luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I used to live in SF near a camp at 10th and mission. I saw the homeless daily; it's very sad to see and people just walk around them. I moved out of SF because it is so damn expensive and I didn't have to be there.

$275 million is a lot of money. Instead of trying to help the homeless survive in SF, why not help them relocate somewhere more affordable. There's lots of space in the country and almost all of them are cheaper than SF. 275 million goes a very long way to help people resettle and their quality of life would surely go up.

Disclosure: To be clear, I did just what I'm suggesting: I relocated due to the high cost to somewhere more affordable for me. I've met many others over the years that have as well.

<comment><USER41> Giving the homeless a one-way ticket to the city of their choice is a very effective homeless removal strategy that a lot of cities employ. Guess where a lot of homeless people choose to go. SF would literally be paying to ship the Horne less away to a city that will simply ship them back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Looking online, it seems like there are around 7000 homeless in SF. 300 million is over 42k per person per year.

Housing is certainly the problem. If there was a glut of housing, the city could just hand out 30k per person, save a lot of money, and the homeless could just rent a place. With the remainder of the money, people could get back on their feet. Give people back hope.

<comment><USER43> >city could just hand out 30k per person, save a lot of money, and the homeless could just rent a place.

Have you ever tried heroin?

<comment><USER44> i'm sure it's easier to get off heroin when you're already off the streets

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Want to solve 90% of homelessness?

Fund an infinite supply of government make-work jobs with included housing, legal drugs, and okay pay.

Model the make-work towns off of coal towns of old. On cheap land so housing is cheap.

Have a minimum age of 30 to prevent kids/teens/young adults from moving to these towns and being employed at these subsidized (read: un-profitable for the government) jobs.

<comment><USER46> I'm sure that more than 10% of the homeless are under 30. Some random stats I looked up on google - 650k recorded homeless in a study in 2014, 130k were children, and another study says the mode age ranges from 21-23.

It isn't just people who fall through the cracks when they lose their jobs, its also those who never could get a start to begin with.

<comment><USER45> Make the minimum age 25 then. A minimum age may not even be necessary, but we should have some incentive to not be in these make-work towns. But we don't want the incentive too high that the homeless don't want to go to them.

The promise of these towns for the homeless should be legal drugs, guaranteed income, and something to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Having a property or house should be our natural birthright, period. Once you die this property or house should be released and made available in a system where you can move to another/better place when it's available.

But, as it is now you don't even get a square inch. Everything is owned by government, landlords, businesses etc.. The result is that once a man starts to earn a little money, it all flows back to the owners. Earning enough to buy and really own a property yourself is only for the lucky few. Even after 20 or 30 years of hard work you can end up in the streets if you lose your job. And if you are unlucky enough having a (mental) illness, your chance to succeed is near zero.

Homeless are a product of the system we live in. And the best way to describe this system is a pyramid game. In the end there will be a few owning (and controlling) almost everything. It is sad to see that democracy totally fails to address this problem.. Maybe even more sad is that most children are not properly educated, especially when it comes to the system we live in and homelessness. I learned in primary school that homeless people are just lazy, and being on the streets was their own punishment.

It would be a miracle if a new generation really understands the problem and can solve it politically by changing the system we live in.

<comment><USER48> How does that work for people who don't live in the same place all their life?

Do you release your property and get given property in a new city when you move?

<comment><USER47> The system I propose does not exist yet and needs to be designed properly, just as we design a software system. It should of course be flexible enough to allow for people moving to another place.

As the situation with property and ownership is now, it is random chaos. Even a rudimentary design has never been made. A financially successful billionaire (who says not by criminal act) can buy and own thousands of houses forever, and the income from that will grow tremendously, which allows him/her/progeny to buy even more property. This is just insane, how can this ever scale for the benefit of all people considering the greed we all have built in?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> SF, Seattle, Portland... What is it with the trendy west coast cities in particular that struggle with vast homelessness?

The cost of housing and living in the west coast states has increased astronomically over the years and continues to do so, is it that simple?

<comment><USER50> See the reasons listed in the other responses. Another one, which used to be much more significant, is the dark side of the west coast culture's radical acceptance ethic.

Port cities were all about radical acceptance once upon a time, because they needed laborers. It didn't matter who you were or what you did: if you could carry goods off a ship, you had a place as a dock worker. And if you couldn't, you could still cook or launder for dock workers. So radical accpetance predates the 60's, though it became more of a thing afterwards.

Well, it's nice to know you have a city to go to if your home town cannot accept you. If you're gay, or bookish, or artsy, et cetera.

But if what the people around you are not accepting is the erratic behavior that your incipient schizophrenia is getting you to engage in (or the lack of acceptance is actually a delusion induced by it, and your family does still accept you), and you've heard of San Francisco, well, you go there. You cut off ties to your home. And then the schizophrenia kicks in full blast.

A nice thing about social media is that people having mental breakdowns tend to make it obvious on Facebook and invite intervention. And, it makes it harder to cut your old ties, when once upon a time it was harder to maintain them.

But when you see 50 year olds in the streets around the Mission, holding debates with the voices in their heads, well, this is how they got there.

<comment><USER51> Port cities didn't need the workers (though they are important), they needed the foreign ships.

As a result whatever background your dock workers are, they have to get along with the crews of all those ships coming in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A few factors here:

First, housing in SF is insane. I have seen lots of articles about how bad it is and that $50k or even $100k is considered "low income" in these parts.

Second, the weather in the Bay Area is very homeless-friendly. If you need to sleep outside year-round, it is best to be someplace where you will neither die from the heat in summer nor from the freezing cold in winter.

Third, homelessness is on the rise nationwide. Homeless people can relocate relatively easily due to not having to give notice at their apartment and having lost most or all of their material possessions. So, the odds are good that some people are simply coming out here for the weather.

Fourth, big cities like SF tend to have more services for the homeless. There are meal kitchens and the like. If you are completely destitute, you go to where you can get free meals and other services. I know because that is exactly why I went to downtown San Diego for six months as a homeless person. I left and went elsewhere when I was no longer outright destitute and did not need access to things like soup kitchens to have any hope of surviving.

So, I think if you want to solve homelessness in SF, you need to work on homelessness across the nation.

<comment><USER52> > Third, homelessness is on the rise nationwide.

That's incorrect according to "The 2016 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress" at [https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2016-AHAR-P...](https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2016-AHAR- Part-1.pdf) . Page 8 has a graph of all homeless people, which has been on a downward trend from 2007 to 2016.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the source. I will look at it some more when I have time. But on initial skim, it is a count for a single night in January from which they extrapolate for the whole year. Furthermore, it outright states that actual unsheltered people has risen by 2%. What has gone down is people in the shelter system.

I have been seeing a lot of articles about the rise in evictions, among other things, and I left downtown San Diego when I did in part because homeless services were suffering distress and were less and less useful to me because they were overwhelmed. But I will dig into this and see if I can come up with a more nuanced and accurate means to convey my point.

We have a very serious housing crisis on our hands. People who are homeless per se are merely the tip of the iceberg.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> How in the hell did they blow through three hundred million dollars in one year on this? According to figures they have to provide the Federal government for assistance this is for a population of approximately 7500. Seven thousand five hundred.

Utah took a decade but slashed their numbers by making sure the homeless had an apartment and phone. For the amount of money SF is spending they could buy them homes. The real crime here is the wasteful spending. They are burning close to 40k per person. People harp about wasteful spending on incarceration need to start looking here.

So how is that for even a third of this they cannot house the thousand that still need a bed each night? That number should have been taken care of in the first few months. Sorry for the hyperbole but if we want an example of a government needing a expose on waste and bureaucracy this is an ideal candidate.

Hard numbers as provided by the city.[1].

7,499: 2017 total homeless population 7,539: 2015 total homeless population (The number was 6,436 in 2013, and 6,455 in 2011.)

5,518: 2017 single homeless adults 5,342: 2015 single homeless adults

1,363: 2017 unaccompanied homeless youth 1,567: 2015 unaccompanied homeless youth

1,100: 2017 approximate waiting list for shelter bed 900: 2016 approximate waiting list for shelter bed

[1][http://sfist.com/2017/06/26/2017_san_francisco_homeless_cens...](http://sfist.com/2017/06/26/2017_san_francisco_homeless_census.php)

<comment><USER54> They couldn't buy them a home in California. Utah didn't slash homelessness, they slashed chronic homelessness. They still have about 14000 homeless as of 2015. [http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced- chronic...](http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic- homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how)

[https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness201...](https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness2015.pdf)

The 2016 Utah report doesn't have the same graph showing the homeless population in state over the decade (it did not show a slashing of the homeless population in 2015 just a slight downward trend) but it does show the cost for housing a homeless person across the country - it's roughly 40,000-50,000 per year almost everywhere they surveyed.

[https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness201...](https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness2016.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> It seems unlikely to me that the homelessness problem in SF has anything at all to do with high housing prices. It's certainly not software engineers living on the streets, and I'd bet that even the people that work at Starbucks in SF have homes, even if they're crappy apartments shared with roommates outside the city.

<comment><USER56> How do you get a job at Starbucks starting as a homeless person though? It could be a hill too high to climb out of, not only purely economically, but socially. For example, how do you convince an employer or prospective roommate to give you a chance when you're a homeless alcoholic without an address?

<comment><USER57> The thing is, it's not just giving someone a chance, it's giving someone a chance at the expense of someone else. It's simple to hire the optimal person, it's impossible to decide who should get to be employed in the grand scheme of things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Why is no one talking about healthcare?

I work in the tenderloin and it seems that quality of life would increase dramatically if they would get mental health and medication, seems pretty obvious to me. How about spending all of those millions on free healthcare for the bottom 5% ?

</comment><comment><USER59> $300M/year on homelessness for 7500 people! That's utterly unbelievable, that's >$3000/month/homeless person. Where is the money going??

</comment><comment><USER60> I really don't buy the "cost of living" explanation. Are we suggesting that these homeless people can't afford $1800 a month per rent, but are somehow going to get a more reasonable $1000/month apartment?

Exactly what job are you going to get if you smell, are missing teeth, have an alcohol problem, don't own clean clothes, and potentially have mental health issues?

I think we need to think outside the box on this one.

<comment><USER61> You seem to think that you wake up one day and you are a stereotypical 'high visibility homeless person'. Plenty of homeless people are struggling on the edge of normality (especially women) and are sleeping in cars, looking relatively clean and well-behaved.

Aside from the hard-core mentally ill, a lot of people might be relatively easily intercepted _before_ they wind up looking/acting like the person you describe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I read a comment here that there is slightly less than 7000 homeless people there.

I ask not why they are homeless, but why are they there rather than in a cheaper area?

<comment><USER63> Cheaper? They're homeless, the cost of living in SF doesn't mean much if you have no money and live on the streets.

As the article mentioned, homeless like SF because of how much the city spends on them:

> _The city spent $275 million on homelessness and supportive housing in the > fiscal year that ends Friday, up from $241 million the year before. Starting > Saturday, that annual spending is projected to hit an eye-popping $305 > million._

Also the moderate climate, and there's so much wealth it's excellent for panhandling.

<comment><USER62> It means a LOT actually. The 20$ a nice stranger gives won't even feed you for a day in some places.

Compare it with a more rural area where you could survive on it for a week. In terrible conditions but not starving.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Are there reports on the manner in which the funds are being used by the various organizations whose mission it is to reduce/end homelessness and and analysis on the effectiveness of each of the avenues and levers they are using?

</comment><comment><USER65> What I've learned in Germany is that many homeless are homeless by choice.

</comment><comment><USER66> Being homeless in SF is awesome:

0) Free muni passes,

1) great social & free housing programs - some even have stipends & phone service

2) a few decent shelters,

3) close by methadone clinics,

4) friendly 420 doctors (police don't arrest for 420),

5) tons of crack/meth on eddy street,

6) great places to pan (market),

7) weather is amazing (no hot days, no snow),

8) huge! public parks.

9) super friendly locals

10) a pretty liberal police department

SF hilariously always takes the wrong approach to things. If you want a city full of homeless, make it awesome. This would definitely be my plan G.

<comment><USER67> > SF hilariously always takes the wrong approach to things

Compassion isn't hilariously wrong

<comment><USER68> $250,000,000 a year for an industry that is at least partially responsible for importing 1 in 5 of San Francisco's homeless from the rest of the state and country and dumping them on the streets isn't compassion - it's trafficking in human misery.

I'll post my source (a SF gov census) later today, when I'm not on my phone.

<comment><USER69> [http://sfist.com/2017/06/26/2017_san_francisco_homeless_cens...](http://sfist.com/2017/06/26/2017_san_francisco_homeless_census.php)

It's more than 1 in 5, in fact it's almost 1/3rd of the homeless that have 'moved' to SF.

<comment><USER68> That may be closer to the current number of 'non-resident' homeless. The figure I had for that is 23% - 1 in 4 - from 2015.

1 in 5 is the number of homeless (from the same survey) whose first place of residence in San Francisco was a homeless shelter. It's buried under figure 16 in this survey:

[http://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Franc...](http://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Francisco%20Homeless%20Count%20%20Report.pdf)

So 1 in 4 ( or 1 in 3) people are coming here directly to use the services. The 1 in 5 figure is significant because it strongly suggests that homeless nonprofits are actively seeking referrals from other parts of the state and country. We know that in some cases people are literally being sent here:

[http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/10/nevada-settles- busin...](http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/10/nevada-settles-busing- homeless-lawsuit-san-francisco)

Yes, that was found to be illegal and some wrists were slapped. I find it hard to conceive that this is the only homeless bussing program - there's no other conceivable way that so many of them are arriving, and immediately finding places in homeless shelters that typically have waiting lists, and definitely have plenty of underserved former tenants.

Ultimately, the organizations involved have no incentive to stop referrals from other parts of the country. The more people they serve, the more money they can ask for from the city, and the more 'successful' they are as a non- profit business.

And just as serving more people is in their interests, so is dumping the most troubled, and consequently, most costly onto the streets in order to serving another round of newcomers. Once they've outstayed their welcome, or become too costly, they are shunted onto the streets. And the worse the crisis gets, the more money they can ask for from the city.

I'm not suggesting that this is some kind of intentional human trafficking. I am sure that (almost) everyone involved is doing so because, in a small minded way, they think that they are improving the world. However, the end result is a travesty.

My thesis is that our current environment is is the result non-profits being run in a capitalist business environment, with a capitalist, MBA-style mindset. Eventually, the business model achieves stasis with it's environment, which, in this case, involves letting the city be a dumping ground for human tragedy, and letting the city's tax payers pay $250 million dollars a year for the privilege. The crisis is the side effect of this expanding bureaucracy achieving homeostasis and justifying its existence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> All the maps illustrate is an increase in complaints not necessarily an increase in homelessness on a similar scale.

</comment><comment><USER71> Perhaps San Francisco can be a perfect test case for UBI: [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/finland- univ...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/finland-universal- basic-income-lower-stress-better-motivation-work-wages-salary-a7800741.html)

<comment><USER72> It's already a hotbed of basic income for the rich: VCs earn huge capital gains :p

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Houston has a homeless problem too... I dont know what we can do. Im thinkign about starting some volunteer work program

</comment><comment><USER74> Despite?

</comment><comment><USER75> I'm willing to bet that this will not get better. It's going to get worse. Much, much worse. As mass employment disappears, you're going to have millions of people become destitute across the country, and many rural, semi-rural and suburban settlements will simply no longer be viable. Some families will return to subsistence farming, but many others will flee to the larger cities. The current homeless camps will expand into large slums and shanty towns, while gated communities connect into upper class enclaves. When you see in Powell Station will be the general situation across all US cities in twenty years.

<comment><USER69> This has been feared with every technological advancement for a couple of centuries now, from textile automation in the late 1700s to the 'robots' in the 80s and more. The thing is, it has yet to come true - not even close.

Most of the jobs being done by the people reading this weren't even invented when they were born...

<comment><USER76> That's fair, but on the other hand, none of those other waves of automation have empowered machines to do knowledge work, the last refuge of human productivity. That's the barrel our generation is staring down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Why are people

</comment><comment><USER77> My wife and I moved to the Midwest 23 years ago because the homelessness and - less importantly - the traffic (in SF) were getting bad back then (relative to the previous ten years).

One of the changes at that time was having to pay a homeless person to 'watch our car for us' when we went to get a bite or see a band south of market.

Awfully sad scenario and well-documented in this article.

</comment><comment><USER78> I'm not sure how the homelessness issue in SF has any relationship to housing costs.

The root cause was losing a lot of funding for mental health services during the Gov. Reagan years.

But go ahead with your strawman.

<comment><USER2> Homelessness comes from high cost of housing. It is emotionally convenient to blame other causes, but there is still mental health support in cities through federally funded community health centers.

<comment><USER79> Housing definitely helps the working class and mentally healthy people who are trying to work themselves out of homelessness. I fail to see how the housing crisis will help severely mentally ill people with addiction issues, schizophrenia, etc. Such people need long term hospitalization. The de- institutionalization of mental health care was exacerbated by, but did not originate with Reagan. Personally I think it has to do with an over correction against the abuses of early/mid 20th century psychiatry, and the mania for freedom from the 60s onward. A lot of mental health professionals, even in liberal west coast cities, sound downright libertarian when describing patient freedom. The freedom to die in prison or on the streets if you ask me.</comment></comment></comment>


The secret behind great copywriting - <AUTHOR> https://www.felixjamestin.com/post/the-secret-to-great-copywriting <comment><USER2> Why is every piece about writing posted to HN rife with run-on sentences?</comment>


California has the worst quality of life of the 50 US states - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/california-worst-quality-life-state-us-conservatives-celebrating-a8236656.html <comment><USER2> i dunno man. i've seen the frakking runoff in north dakota and seen the results of water tests from various rivers in california. seems a bit like BS to me.

but dang if the cost of living out here isn't waaay too high and a lot of people i know have hellish, one hour (or greater) commutes. so it's not like i'm saying it's all peaches and rose water.

but i suspect the mckinsey study probably picked metrics they knew california was going flunk.</comment>


Why Devs (Should) Like Estimates - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/10/23/why-devs-should-like-estimates/?cb=1 <comment><USER2> I mean, sure. If estimates were used to build timelines, rather than managers trying to negotiate estimates smaller to fit preexisting timelines. And if estimates were used according to their definition, rather than as deadlines passed down from God Himself to beat developers with for failing to be "productive enough". And if management honored scope and didn't try to creep more features into an existing scope with a reasonable estimate. And if estimates were treated as an expert opinion, rather than an option that was up for discussion. And if...

Then sure, they would be a good thing that we all would like. But this is the real world and things go wrong. And as such, until management allows estimates to be as flexible as they expect their developers to be, estimates will continue to be a hellish experience that never work and leaves everyone more miserable than before.</comment>