frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

The Great Crime Decline Is Happening All Across the Country

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/great-crime-decline/685695/
23•andsoitis•2h ago

Comments

downrightmike•58m ago
Just like abortions in the 70's stopped the super criminals from existing in the 90's. Not having unwanted kids goes a long way to prevent crime. Now we are in the place where people want kids, but can't afford them so they aren't.
beaned•54m ago
Children have never been more affordable than they are now. People's wants and expectations have changed.
bdangubic•51m ago
might be craziest thing written here this month, I really hope you were being sarcastic
onemoresoop•49m ago
In the vein of ‘LLMs can now raise your children’
rayiner•47m ago
You should look at some actual statistics instead of vibes.
bdangubic•28m ago
that is asking too much for this crowd ;)
monideas•31m ago
In 2026 in the West, most correct ideas and understandings of things come across as crazy because the elite strata within Western societies promotes ideas and even entire epistemological frameworks which are abjectly and just simply wrong and often also insane
chanakya•40m ago
Exactly. If you want to bring up kids the way they were brought up in the 50s and 60s, it will cost less as a proportion of people's incomes today. No one wants to bring up kids that way, though.
Der_Einzige•29m ago
They're downvoting you because you're right and they know it and they don't like that.
OutOfHere•35m ago
Crime will surely go back in red states in a couple of decades due to the current return of the abortion bans in those states.
manwe150•13m ago
I’m not sure if either of you are being honestly factual or snarky, but I seem to recall this hypothesis is actually quite highly contested in social circles, and not at all as strongly supported as the parent seems to state it as fact
searealist•16m ago
I thought we were pretending it was lead?
erkt•43m ago
Failure to prosecute crime leads to crime stat drops.
jdlshore•29m ago
Are you claiming that’s what happening, or just engaging in ominous speculation?
hn_throwaway_99•8m ago
I think we know the answer to that one...

Besides, GP is flat out wrong - not prosecuting crime does not result in reduced crime stats. The crime decline is led be a relatively huge 15% reduction in homicides. Even if those homicides remain unsolved or are not prosecuted, they still end up in crime stats. And unlike other crimes where you may argue they go unreported, when someone ends up dead (by usually violent means in a homicide) it rarely goes unnoticed.

OutOfHere•38m ago
https://archive.is/ofDew
bm3719•22m ago
I think the effect is polycausal, but I think there's an important primary one that is often ignored: alienation crossing a threshold.

In a tight-knit (below Dunbar's number) society, crime is largely non-existent by our standards, because the tribe and the individual are coextensive. One can't hurt the tribe without also hurting yourself, so while individual interests may not coalign, the overall goals do: the health of the people and therefore the self.

As population increases, that coalignment becomes more nebulous, and the individual can more easily gain while hurting the other. This is partly why crime increased as the species civilized, created cities, and exploded the population. This, as an isolated factor, might've increased forever, and most dystopian fiction from the 20th century assumed it would.

However, alienation then largely became complete, thanks to technology. This had the contrary effect, because the public surface became a smooth wall, removing much of the opportunity for anti-social behavior. The alienated man now lives in his bubble, without connectivity to the outside world of other individuals. Human emotion, as a pre-req for the anti-social behavior we classify most crime as, required an other, someone to direct it against. It's harder (though not impossible) to get angry at abstract social megastructures like corporations and governments, and even when you do, what are you going to do about it? You can't stab Google, you can at best post something unkind about them (on your Android phone) and the algorithm (your actual interface to the entity you may despise) ignores it. Most of us realize this and don't even bother getting angry. Thankfully, these same non-human entities provide the products we need for emotional regulation. Feeling lonely, bored, understimulated, sexually frustrated? There's a product that will safely mediate those desires and get you back into a metastable, yet ever more alienated, state.

So great, we have less crime, sure, but it required the social neutering of the species.

Self-parking car using genetic algorithm (2021)

https://trekhleb.dev/blog/2021/self-parking-car-evolution/
13•trekhleb•34m ago•2 comments

When did Google get so weird?

https://sancho.bearblog.dev/google-weird/
787•sancho-panza•5h ago•422 comments

Ember-1

https://fireworks.ai/blog/ember-1
357•gmays•8h ago•182 comments

Alan Kay's answer to “Did the ENIAC have a BIOS”?

https://www.quora.com/Did-the-ENIAC-have-a-BIOS/answer/Alan-Kay-11
72•midnightfish•6h ago•28 comments

Lunar Terminator Paradox

https://notes.secretsauce.net/notes/2026/09/27_lunar-terminator-paradox.html
43•dima55•4h ago•28 comments

The state of SIMD in Rust in 2026

https://shnatsel.github.io/state-of-simd-rust-2026/
95•verdagon•2d ago•19 comments

There is more to code review than (automatable) detection

https://www.adaptivecapacitylabs.com/2026/08/24/there-is-more-to-code-review-than-automatable-det...
66•utiiiD•1d ago•28 comments

Show HN: Lofi Cities – Pixel-art city nights with browser-generated lofi

https://loficities.com/
171•safaelmali•7h ago•77 comments

Don't couple your Go code to GitHub

https://iain.rocks/blog/dont-couple-your-go-code-to-github
147•birdculture•9h ago•77 comments

Self-Hosting on the Dark Web

https://david.alvarezrosa.com/posts/self-hosting-on-the-dark-web/
58•mooreds•5h ago•22 comments

What I did at Recurse Center

https://thill.me/2026/09/11/what-i-did-at-rc.html
71•bingden•6h ago•18 comments

Guitar amp and effects pedal built on the Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-2.06

https://github.com/dashersw/coyopedal
9•arbayi•1d ago•0 comments

Imp is a full port of DSPy to the BEAM

https://github.com/deepfates/imp
49•mpweiher•6h ago•5 comments

Oral history of John Chowning, inventor of FM synthesis [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1Xn3030IvM
51•Rochus•7h ago•10 comments

In an $80 motel room, a discovery to shed light on the origins of life

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/26/science/motel-science-discovery.html
210•danso•11h ago•81 comments

Replacing the old battery on rechargeable bike lights

https://jvns.ca/blog/2026/09/27/replacing-the-old-battery-on-rechargeable-bike-lights/
138•surprisetalk•12h ago•73 comments

Previously unheard recordings of John Coltrane, captured by Frank Tiberi

https://www.jazzwise.com/content/news/john-coltrane-centenary-celebrations-see-impulse-records-re...
62•gregsadetsky•2d ago•19 comments

Have an LLC

https://zachholman.com/posts/you-should-have-an-llc
31•mlex•5h ago•20 comments

Writing Efficient C++ Code (2013)

https://asawicki.info/articles/writing_efficient_cpp_code.php
134•ibobev•2d ago•82 comments

A New Experiment Meta-Strategy

https://chillphysicsenjoyer.substack.com/p/a-new-experiment-meta-strategy
10•surprisetalk•2d ago•0 comments

My Recent Woodworking Projects

https://notoriousbfg.com/recent-woodworking-projects/
29•trwhite•5h ago•14 comments

Flip Fluid on Flip Dots

https://mitxela.com/projects/flipflip
367•blutack•1d ago•24 comments

Fragment of oldest known peace treaty found in Turkey

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/ancient-egyptians/we-have-found-traces-of-peace-thousands...
60•gmays•11h ago•8 comments

Fakecloud: Local AWS cloud emulator for integration tests

https://fakecloud.dev/
112•theanonymousone•1d ago•60 comments

Research finds 485 chemicals in US pesticide products linked to breast cancer

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/26/breast-cancer-us-pesticide-products
5•Teever•28m ago•0 comments

The Cartesian Hand: In-Hand Manipulation with All-Linear Fingers

https://generalroboticslab.com/cartesian_handv1
60•AareyBaba•1d ago•10 comments

S3 Is the Future, S3 Is the Past

https://btrblocks.com/blog/s3_is_the_future_and_the_past/
53•tkhattra•2d ago•44 comments

Video CDs Break Windows Explorer

https://clydesnotes.blogspot.com/2026/08/video-cds-break-windows-explorer.html
106•ClydeN•1d ago•36 comments

Every Household in This Rural Town Receives $10k If a Data Center Gets Built

https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/every-household-in-this-rural-town-receives-10-000-if-a-data-cent...
10•JumpCrisscross•55m ago•5 comments

Faster prompt lookup drafting in llama.cpp

https://jadidbourbaki.github.io/blog/prompt-lookup-llama-cpp/
71•pptadversary•1d ago•11 comments