Ah that's sweet
Compassionate assholes aren't they?
Solution to tech bros' disgust of SF homeless people launched
A radical augmented reality (AR) solution to the appalling problem of tech bros having to see people less fortunate than themselves on the streets of San Francisco has been launched. CLEANR is the brainchild of SF resident Jon Adams and uses wearable tech to effectively delete undesirable people from your view. Adams explains …
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Saturday 20th February 2016 10:19 GMT Ken Hagan
Re: Ah that's sweet
"The next version will also allow the tech bros to blank out women in meetings."
and for a modest sum the premium version replaces them with ... ok, let's not go there.
Actually, all this sounds terribly do-able with current AR technology. Someone, somewhere, probably has gone there already and is about to launch.
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Monday 22nd February 2016 10:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Ah that's sweet
Can I get one that blanks out people who blank out women?
I go out of my way to be helpful and inclusive to women in the workplace, if someone wants help learning to improve their position, i'm more than happy to spend my lunch hour going over the basics of coding...
Although you have to be careful....
For every clever, happy and friendly woman in the workplace, there is somewhere hiding an evil feminist waiting to pounce with a sexual harrasment claim because of something innocent.....
(I don't think all feminists are evil, just some)
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Sunday 21st February 2016 01:54 GMT Turtle
Re: Ah that's sweet
"The next version will also allow the tech bros to blank out women in meetings."
I want to comment on this because this was not the first article in which I saw the "tech bro" meme surface. I know that there are far more males than females in the tech industry, but what reason there to think that the women as a group are any more compassionate about the homeless than the men - other than gender stereotypes?
Are they really all closer to Florence Nightingale than to Carly Fiorina cutting thousands and thousands of jobs while trying to purchase five more corporate jets?
Would anyone really be surprised if the women feel more threatened by street people generally, than the "tech bros"? And if the women do feel more threatened, they might well have very good reason to feel that way - even if they weren't constantly taught to think of themselves as victims always in danger of becoming ever more victimized.
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Sunday 21st February 2016 17:35 GMT Suricou Raven
Re: Ah that's sweet
He's making the point that the response of many local governments to homeless people is to nudge them to go be homeless elsewhere.
There was an incident in 2013 that drew a lot of attention in North Carolina, when city police started harassing and eventually arresting a church that tried to distribute food to the homeless - because, much like rats, they congregate where the food is. Withdraw the food and they will scatter and become someone else's problem. It only hit the news because the organisation as a church so they could start the 'wah wah persecution' thing and get a lot of sympathy in certain media circles. There may be next to know public sympathy for the homeless, but much of the US does love a good story about Christians being persecuted somehow.
There's another one brewing in Florida right now, basically a repeat of the same situation - a church in Oakland tried to distribute food, the local government decided this is in violation of zoning regulations. It's not really about religion or about zoning, it's just that influential people don't want to live in proximity to the homeless.
Policing is another approach - many US cities have laws against 'sleeping in a public place' or similar to allow the homeless to be arrested. Quickly released again, but the intent is to harass them in to leaving the area and going to a suitably derelict side of town where the sight of them will not lower property values. Some places have rather less subtle methods, like sloping or very narrow benches, benches with armrests between seats to prevent laying upon them, or buildings designed to create no sheltered alcoves. An up-market apartment building in London neglected to do this in the design stage and was caught instead using anti-homeless metal studs embedded in concrete near the doorway to make sure no-one would shelter there.
Next time you see a public bench, take a moment to look at it - there's a good chance you'll see some feature that, innocent at first glance, on further consideration seems to serve no purpose other than making it impossible for a person to lay down comfortably.
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Sunday 21st February 2016 21:24 GMT Coen Dijkgraaf
Re: Ah that's sweet
Another anti-homeless system that some places have implemented are "anti homeless sprinklers", basically a motion sensor with a timer linked to a sprinkler so that out of business hours it will start spraying water if someone stays too long in an alcove so to prevent homeless people from sleeping there. In some jurisdictions they were forced to take them down again.
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Monday 22nd February 2016 10:50 GMT JetSetJim
Re: 2.0 Beta
Surely it would be feasible to write a Greasmonkey script to filter out such stories from all news sites - although I admit the Daily Mail would probably then render as an empty page a lot of the time (thus reducing its value as a comic satire on modern life).
If it has been done, I expect someone to post a link to it in 3... 2....
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Saturday 20th February 2016 14:36 GMT SVV
Re: 2.0 Beta
Mine's got stuck in "maximum protection" mode, so now EVERYONE gets changed into one of the many cute cartoon animals that are srupplied with the latest version.
Waiting at the bus stop yesterday, I was surprised by the regular arrival and departure of marching bands made up of cartoon monkeys in colourful uniforms, until I realised that this was an ingenious undocumented feature that even prevented me from seeing anything associated with poor people.such as public transport.
Turning all the planes in the sky into the Starship Enterprise is just a geek trip too far however in my opinion.
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Sunday 21st February 2016 10:53 GMT macjules
Re: 2.0 Beta
This could add a whole new concept to electioneering. From now on you now longer have to worry about whether Rubio, Trump or Cruz is winning: you just need to know if its the Azalea, the Shrub or the Potted Palm. Likewise for the Democrats we need only concern ourselves about the Gladioli or, in Hillary's case, the Rafflesia Arnoldii (parasitic with a smell of rotting flesh when in season).
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Saturday 20th February 2016 02:40 GMT Captain DaFt
"someone looking homeless can strip them of their Rolex, iWhatsits, Credit cards etc. and they won't even see who did it."
"Can you give me a description of the muggers, sir?"
"Why yes, one was a charming wrought iron Victorian lamp post, and the other was a terracotta planter full of begonias."
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Monday 22nd February 2016 11:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
"a few bullets would be far cheaper and more permanent"
Or, radical idea... the wealthy could pay to get the homeless into shelters and educated...
I hate seeing homeless on the street, because its terrible for them to live that way, I want govermnets to build shelters for the homeless
They don't need much, go for Japan style pod hotel beds (with decent locks), shared showers, toilets, and food.
Add in somewhere to learn and maybe they can pull themselves out of poverty....
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Monday 22nd February 2016 14:44 GMT Swarthy
Kill the poor?
I think I've heard that proposal before.
Icon for the Neutron Bomb, mentioned in the link.
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Friday 19th February 2016 21:33 GMT Erik4872
Is it already April 1?
Very funny guys, and it even uses the social media bubble meme of dropping the "e" from the end of the product name ("cleaner" becomes "cleanr", instant marketing genius; here's a $150K salary!) So if the cloud service powering this real time reality distortion field goes down, is there a local backup to at least filter out the "yuck" category? :-)
I never thought anything would top the dotcom bubble for sheer ridiculousness of startup executive personalities. I'm wrong! 24 year old CEOs with way too much money make for very entertaining stories.
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Friday 19th February 2016 23:50 GMT Mark 85
Re: er...this is a spoof, yeah?
The product is... but the letter to the mayor and police chief... No.. http://justink.svbtle.com/open-letter-to-mayor-ed-lee-and-greg-suhr-police-chief
The mainstream press has picked up on Mr. Keller's letter and they are not being as nice as this article was.
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Friday 19th February 2016 22:13 GMT Malcolm Weir
I think that's true, but largely only by comparison with other got-rich-quick types (like Wall Street wizards).
However, while I am deeply distrustful of Facebook, I was genuinely touched to see that San Francisco General Hospital, which is where the indigent and everyone in the city goes who can't afford health care (and whose AIDS wards were the final stop for so many in the 1990's)... is now called the "Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital".
Yeah, that beats a new concert hall, or wing at a museum any day.
Respect, Zuck!
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Sunday 21st February 2016 13:19 GMT Afernie
"Of course he could have just given them the sodding cash without insisting on having his name plastered all over it."
If it strokes his ego, who cares? The money's been given and if self-aggrandisement is his motivation it doesn't stop it being used where it's needed. You get to laugh at his ego, and people get medical care. Win.
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Friday 19th February 2016 23:00 GMT Chris G
Surgery
Both Jon Adams and Justin Keller are clearly in need of abdominal fenestrative surgery , so that they can still see where they are going while their heads are so far up their own arses.
There but for the grace of god/luck/karma etc go I.
Let's hope they get a taste of being homeless and hungry some day and experience 'don't care in the community'.
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Friday 19th February 2016 23:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
Is this actually real? What next Brownr or Blackr? Seriously, as a society is this what we are reduced to?
This is one of the most appalling things I have ever seen.
I was actually homeless in my youth and I didn't beg (though I knew people that did and they made a nice amount of money) but at the end of the day this is disgusting. Here's a tip if you ever end up on the streets, don't sleep on concrete, cardboard stops you being ridiculously cold.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
