
Living under a tarp next to Facebook HQ - rbanffy
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/31/facebook-campus-homeless-tent-city-menlo-park-california?CMP=twt_gu
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closeparen
Hasn't Facebook tried to build housing near its campus, and been rejected, out
of precisely the same righteous indignation at the presence of (the wrong kind
of) rich people dripping through this article?

Hard to complain about tech companies causing homelessness if you won't let
them use their money to build homes.

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itchyjunk
I can't put my finger on it but I dislike something about the way the article
is presented. I am not a fan of facebook having disabled it years ago. Maybe I
am just inferring it, but I feel like a needless negative connotation is
implied. "Here is facebook campus. It looks nice. Possible rich people. Here
is some homeless people."

On the other hand, maybe this will make fb campus notice and help the people
out. If that is the case then I suppose its good.

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yeukhon
Often when I pass by a person who isn't well, I just wonder for a bit how
fortunate I am. They were once a baby, and many probably had a good family
cheering the arrival of the newborn. Fast forward to a grown up sleeping on
the street curling in the corner, possibly covering in human feces, and
without access to clean water and healthy food. From a lovely baby to this
state is heart broken. Here I am sitting in a house I own under my name, with
a very good salary and have a family behind my back.

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joshmn
This breaks my heart and reminds me of how fortune I am.

I know it's an exhaustive question, but what can we, as hackers, do to help?

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stagbeetle
Forgive me if I come off as idealistic and aggressive, but this question is
useless and dumb.

The first question that should be answered is: "What can we do to actually fix
the problem?" Not cover up the gangrene and pretend like something's being
done.

What you can do as a person who _can 't_ is contribute to discussions on
practically solving the issue, to inspire those who _can._

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spraak
I think you're fighting the superficial. The parent poster asked essentially
the same questions you've posited, and I don't see any concrete answers from
you, either.

~~~
stagbeetle
In denotation, but not connotation.

> "What can we as hackers do"

Implies a limited scope of vision and lack of initiative to fix the problem.
Instead it's a half-baked plea to quench one's emotions.

I'll reshape my answer: If you believe that all you can do is donate your time
or money, you are in the "can't" category of doers. As harsh as it is, the
best position for you to fill is, for lack of a better title, the "idea guy."
By promoting discourse and idea generation, you may be able to aide those who
"can" \-- make an impact on the problem -- and contribute to a more important
solution.

What you can do as a _person,_ and not the abstract and non-existent "hacker,"
is the above.

~~~
mercer
Perhaps this is the growing interest in zen buddhism talking, or perhaps it's
something else, but I've grown more and more weary of this kind of reasoning.

It's not that I disagree, it's more that it strikes me as a too-rational
approach that doesn't really fit with what I learned about human behavior.

All else being equal, theoretically, obviously taking on the 'big questions'
and being an 'idea guy' is probably better than volunteering in a soup
kitchen.

But more often than not, based on my own thinking and conversations with
friends, talking about the big picture leads to 1) a kind of analysis
paralysis, and 2) the issue being too abstract for us to push through this
paralysis.

There are so many paths I can think of that lead a person to bigger, more
structural 'idea' solutions via, as you put it, the "can't" type approach:
frustration over 'mopping with the tap open', a friendship with an addict,
homeless person, etc.

Furthermore, by skipping the small stuff, we might end up coming up with 'idea
guy' solutions that are not based on a proper understanding of the problem.
I've seen a lot of that kind of non-solution in particular from 'idealistic
highly-educated, idea-focused' people who sometimes even make the situation
worse by not having spent enough time 'in the trenches'.

Now to be fair I've also experienced the other end of the spectrum: a
particular one that comes to mind is 'volunteer tourism' in developing areas
that severely upset more structural efforts but made the tourist feel like
they did something.

But than even that end, looking back, serves a purpose. These 'tourists' often
provided an optimistic energy that we 'non-local locals' had lost over time.

I guess my point is that I think anything is better than nothing, but if
you're gonna start somewhere, start with the thing that activates your emotion
and only _then_ put in effort to optimize for effect. Because I think the
primary problem for many of us idea-people is that we don't care enough, or
don't know what to care about, not a desire to 'do good'.

