[HN Gopher] Brown/MIT shooting suspect found dead, officials say
___________________________________________________________________
Brown/MIT shooting suspect found dead, officials say
https://archive.md/ShO4E https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-
news/live-blog/brown-univers...
https://www.masslive.com/news/2025/12/were-catching-serial-k...
Author : anigbrowl
Score : 184 points
Date : 2025-12-19 03:19 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| Glant wrote:
| I live in the area. Crazy how many helicopters and drones showed
| up so quick and how many police there were. For several hours
| more and more police and FBI vehicles kept arriving. Probably
| ended up with close to 100 officers on scene. Salem NH PD,
| Methuen MA PD, Providence RI PD, NH state police, MA state
| police, FBI, and US Marshal service were the ones I saw.
|
| I think it's the biggest response I've personally seen since the
| Boston Marathon Bombing.
| sans_souse wrote:
| Same perspective here just 15 miles northwest of scene. Pretty
| sure they confirmed officially presence of MA NH LEO, NHSP,
| MASP, FBI, CIA, ATF, and Secret Service.
| websiteapi wrote:
| all of that and they basically just got lucky. the guy walked
| to brown from his car parked nearby and shot up some kids,
| waited days, went to a guy's house in Massachusetts, killed him
| and never even got caught - he committed suicide and was only
| found days after his _second killing_
|
| if anything this whole saga makes me happy smart people aren't
| killers more often because this guy basically got away...
| dustincoates wrote:
| Being smart doesn't guarantee you'll get away with murder:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_and_Loeb
| c22 wrote:
| Actually being smart guarantees you won't have to.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Na, if you're smart you just start a company and have it
| kill people via industrial accident, then it's just a fine.
| card_zero wrote:
| Sometimes criminology students kill people, apparently as
| research: Bryan Kohberger, Nasen Saadi.
| nervousvarun wrote:
| I keep seeing this sort of sentiment everywhere and I'm
| trying to understand it. The same thing happened after
| Charlie Kirk was killed and the arrest there hinged on a
| confession by the killer to his dad. A lot of commentary then
| that the police/FBI got lucky. Ditto Mangione. They got lucky
| he was found in a random McDonalds.
|
| What exactly is the expectation here? Is there some sort of
| wide-spread belief that the world works like an episode of
| Law and Order and every crime is instantly solved by rolling
| up your sleeves and doing good old fashioned detective work?
|
| Would assume for the majority of planned murder to be
| resolved as quickly as these highly publicized cases have
| been (the Kirk deal took about 2 days also) there's going to
| have to be an element of luck. Piecing together
| digital/forensic evidence is going to require time and
| effort. If it's not an obvious connection (domestic violence
| etc.) and there's no direct witnesses it seems logical you
| only have a few outcomes:
|
| A) Going to be solved due to a lucky break
|
| B) Going to be solved after a ton of time/interviews/piecing
| together forensic evidence
|
| C) Not be solved.
|
| Also he only "got away" because he killed himself. They
| likely would have caught him fairly soon after this because
| they had his identity from the car tags. I guess the point is
| though luck is all you have if it's solved this quickly
| because it's so random.
| agoodusername63 wrote:
| I believe the theory that Mangione even wanted to be caught
| and arrested because he didn't see a viable life for
| himself anymore with his spinal problems and medical bills.
| Who social engineers their way into getting a CEO's
| itinerary and then keeps a manifesto on their person well
| after the crime
|
| Now he doesn't have to worry about paying for that. Or
| getting reasonable treatment but hey,
| firesteelrain wrote:
| He became radicalized over time and even wrote that his
| pain was improved. Somewhere along the way he read
| something or got it into his head that he had to murder
| the United Healthcare CEO where he never was a customer.
| It was just one if not the largest healthcare insurance
| company.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I can't speak to his thinking, but being caught with the
| gun used, and a confession letter...
|
| Tells me he knew he was going to be caught and is angling
| for a hung jury.
| ikamm wrote:
| It's a fun theory that everyone likes to support but it
| falls apart when you read his Reddit account and realize
| he had insurance that paid for spinal fusion surgery and
| claimed to have no pain afterwards without the assistance
| of medication. That's probably also why he doesn't appear
| in any pain in his appearances since the incident, not
| because the NY DOC (infamous for their terrible
| healthcare) magically got him surgery instantly.
| websiteapi wrote:
| I disagree that his catching was inevitable. They only knew
| an identity yesterday. If the suspect wasn't a coward it's
| plausible they could've just driven away to literally any
| other part of the United States and then flew back to
| Portugal. I have no comment on the Kirk case.
|
| As for the expectation, other than if civil liberties are
| going to be violated in the name of safety I expect much
| faster results, and I'm sure the MIT professors family
| would agree.
| nervousvarun wrote:
| How could they possibly have solved it faster than this?
| There's no magic to this and it takes time like anything
| else. Yes there's digital footage but someone has to go
| through it. The murder in Massachusetts isn't immediately
| obviously related.
|
| Of course the family wants it solved right away but
| there's a reality to this that seems to be overlooked
| here but is also not unique here. A lot of murders are
| never solved. Luck is a factor all the time.
| websiteapi wrote:
| I am not saying luck isn't a factor - you're missing my
| point which is we're compromising privacy and going
| further into a surveillance state, yet it's not like the
| actual outcomes are improving.
|
| I'm not really sure what you think I'm arguing.
| techdmn wrote:
| I have a theory, it would be great if someone would do a
| rigorous study to back me up! Ha. I'm most likely wrong,
| but anyway:
|
| The more effort a state puts into surveiling its
| population, the more effort law enforcement will put into
| suppressing dissent, and less into addressing crimes
| targeting the general populous.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Portugal extradites.
| ecshafer wrote:
| If you watch some of the real life detective / crime shows.
| The people who murder people and get caught be cops,
| basically shoot people in broad daylight on camera, tell
| people about it, then immediately fold in interrogation.
| mc32 wrote:
| People often fold during an interrogation/questioning
| unless they are career criminals and have been through
| the system and learn from their prior mistakes/luck.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| _Innocent_ people often fold during interrogation.
| mc32 wrote:
| Sure, but in the 21st century people are typically not
| thrown in prison on the basis of a confession only. The
| prosecutors have to have corroborating evidence.
|
| We do have criminals who fold, either they're too
| confident, they trip up, etc. Recently some guy killed
| his sugar-momma in Fla, then took her car and drive it
| cross country to Seattle and along the way used her CC.
| He gave it all away in the jail interview.
| rectang wrote:
| In the 21st century, innocent people routinely accept
| plea deals to avoid the risk of trial. The corroborating
| evidence need not be strong because the threat of the
| trial penalty is enough when you can't afford a good
| lawyer.
|
| https://innocenceproject.org/coerced-pleas/
| pixl97 wrote:
| >The prosecutors have to have corroborating evidence.
|
| Bla bla bla, prosecutors are the good guys and show all
| the evidence they have....
|
| Um, not.
|
| We keep finding again and again we're putting innocent
| people in jail even for things as serious as capital
| crimes, and later it was found the investigation was
| botched and there was no evidence that person was guilty
| and other evidence was never presented.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| wrong. confession is the pimary way most people get
| convicted
| olalonde wrote:
| Or unless they exercise their right to remain silent.
| mothballed wrote:
| Yes but if you do it wrong then your silence can be used
| against you. And if you ask for a lawyer slightly
| incorrectly then that doesn't count either.
| duskdozer wrote:
| Well, how exactly _were_ they supposed to know he wanted
| a lawyer and not a lawyerdog, whatever that is? I don 't
| even think that's a real thing! Clearly the suspect was
| crazy.
| idrios wrote:
| You're missing a 4th and unsettling option:
|
| D) Going to be "solved" by catching someone unfortunate who
| seems plausible enough and lacks an alibi.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > Is there some sort of wide-spread belief that the world
| works like an episode of Law and Order and every crime is
| instantly solved by rolling up your sleeves and doing good
| old fashioned detective work?
|
| There is to a point, and it's not some random organic
| sentiment: this is the image that has been crafted for
| decades, if not centuries. The police has a role in pushing
| it, but it's also has been a useful fiction for our
| societies as a whole.
|
| "crime will somewhat get punished" has more weight with a
| competent agency with at least average intelligent people.
| asdff wrote:
| The sentiment is basically that the "all hands on deck"
| manpower effort is futile and if anything even a
| political/propaganda effort to dissuade others from having
| similar thoughts. What good is it to mobilize 1000 FBI
| agents if they aren't going to move the case forward at
| all? What good is having a budget capable of mobilizing
| that many people for a single case and not to bear any
| fruit with it? Is this outcome better than what might have
| happened if this were relegated to local PD? Surprisingly
| the answer is "no, not at all." That is a big indictment on
| federal law enforcement and their abilities to turn their
| budget into actionable effort that makes the population
| safer. And probably suggests that such resource draining
| manhunts might even come at the cost of whatever the FBI
| does in fact do well.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| Half of life is collective "give a damn". If you see 1000
| FBI agents, read 47 headlines, and hear a dozen gas
| station conversations then you start to tune in. That's
| when the tips start coming in, as everyone wants to be
| part of the big "thing".
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| A lot of fiction will be generated too
| chongli wrote:
| Then it's a good thing you have a lot of people available
| to sort through it!
| reed1234 wrote:
| Isn't that hindsight bias?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| There is always going to be a PR element in police
| efforts.
|
| In a democracy you need to show the voters you're doing
| work.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| The society of the spectacle needs a spectacle!
| hluska wrote:
| It's easy to criticize a police investigation after the
| suspect has been caught. But in the moment, none of the
| responding officers had a clue what they were walking
| into. Brown is a large campus in a strongly residential
| neighbourhood with many hiding spots; and people were
| ordered to shelter in place.
| xrd wrote:
| Just checking, are you sure this is the story: "hinged on a
| confession by the killer to his dad." It seems that story
| is a-changing and that's an important note. My point might
| be that what is put out as the story often comes with an
| agenda.
| wildlogic wrote:
| This is a reference I think to the Charlie Kirk murder.
| expedition32 wrote:
| In my country if the police is really serious, and I mean
| national crisis level of serious, they can go full China
| and track everyone. They have the means.
|
| Like presumably the US has doorbell camera databases and
| every car on the highway is electronically flagged?
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Flock is around but it's not as prevalent as some would
| want you to believe. At least not yet.
|
| Ring cameras and other cameras still require warrant.
| Same for the data that Flock collects
| shbooms wrote:
| It depends where you are. most cities in the US have them
| everywhere now
| DaSHacka wrote:
| > Ring cameras and other cameras still require warrant.
| Same for the data that Flock collects
|
| That data is now one and the same though:
|
| https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-safety-and-ring-
| partn...
| almosthere wrote:
| I mentioned to someone that day that the person would be
| caught by a family member - that this stuff was looking
| more and more like Mangione - who was also primarily caught
| by his mom. That being said, the only reason family ends up
| ratting these people out is because of the high pressure it
| ends up on the family. If it turns out they find these
| people, and the family did not turn them in, they are going
| to the big house too.
| watwut wrote:
| > the only reason family ends up ratting these people out
| is because of the high pressure it ends up on the family.
|
| That is not true. There was no pressure on unabomber
| brother - he "ratted" him out entirely on own will. Also
| Elliot Rodgers parents called police after they read the
| manifesto - before any pressure happened. Ex wife of DC
| shootings had restraining order on him, feared him, and
| when police asked whether she thinks he is capable of
| violence like that her first answer was "yes".
|
| The thing also is, these people are often assholes in
| their own lives, toward relatives too. They tend to have
| track record of domestic violence and abuse.
| stocksinsmocks wrote:
| D) the FBI stitches it up to protect the real criminals and
| brings out some poor fool to take the blame.
| bagels wrote:
| But they found him? If he was alive, he probably would have
| been caught eventually, no?
| websiteapi wrote:
| I mean I guess all criminals die or are caught, yes.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Maybe. The average homicide clearance rate in the US is
| only around 60%. But that includes a lot of killings where
| nobody really cares about anyone involved. This was a much
| higher profile crime so it would get a lot more attention.
| But there are high profile cases that get a lot of (at
| least local) attention that don't ever get solved either.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It is really difficult to ascertain motive and suspects
| when it's a chronic homeless case getting murdered. It
| could be a thing from drugs to just looking at a crazy
| guy wrong one night, you literally have no leads unless
| there is a video or some other piece of hard evidence. It
| isn't really about caring, judt that the environment they
| live in is so chaotic and uncontrolled that you'd have a
| suspect pool that is too big to reasonably investigate.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| "this guy basically got away"
|
| Titanic basically sailed safely across the Atlantic, except
| for a bit of bad luck.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The Titanic disaster was a confluence of many instances of
| bad luck. Including the idea that if the lookout had
| noticed the berg a few seconds _later_ , it wouldn't have
| sunk.
|
| (Because then it would have hit the berg head on, crushing
| the front, but not ripping most of the side open.)
| tayo42 wrote:
| 50% of murders are unsolved
| dantillberg wrote:
| Every agency has to show how relevant they are.
| lawlessone wrote:
| Like the song 99 red balloons:
|
| >Everyone's a superhero
|
| >Everyone's a "Captain Kirk"
| cafard wrote:
| My apologies to the guy who first proposed that the shootings
| were related--I thought that was a real stretch.
| binary132 wrote:
| yeah, very surprising
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It was a stretch, but that didn't mean it wasn't possible.
| energy123 wrote:
| Unless there was a reason to believe they were related, I
| wouldn't apologize to a broken clock.
| notKilgoreTrout wrote:
| The arguments against seemed to show the weakness of
| frequentists in practical deduction.. It certainly could have
| been a domestic where the police already knew but weren't
| communicating it but otherwise most suggestions didn't match
| the statistics of the specific demographic/locations to
| compete with the anomaly of a total AWOL with good luck,
| nothing to lose and a connection to top academia who wasn't
| dead or in jail.
| ndarray wrote:
| There are two types of broken clocks. One is always
| suspicious, the other thinks nothing ever happens. One is
| more often right than the other, but both are equally broken.
| websiteapi wrote:
| sadly flock ended up being helpful here (according to the police
| per the article). also interesting that it was some random
| homeless guy who happened to be there that blew the whole thing
| wide open. despite all of the surveillance...
| blast wrote:
| > some random homeless guy
|
| Was he homeless? I haven't seen that mentioned in the articles.
| WhyOhWhyQ wrote:
| New York Post states it in a YouTube video titled 'All About
| Brown, MIT Shooting Suspect Claudio Neves Valente - who
| BARKED During Massacre'.
| ayhanfuat wrote:
| https://www.foxnews.com/video/6386706790112
| tapoxi wrote:
| Was it helpful? The man committed two shootings and they caught
| him after he committed suicide. It didn't prevent a crime.
| websiteapi wrote:
| It connected the two incidents per license plate readings per
| the article. Why do you think it wasn't?
| bigbuppo wrote:
| My question is how many other license plates also would
| have been connected this way? What's the false positive
| rate?
| websiteapi wrote:
| Why is that relevant for this case?
| bigbuppo wrote:
| If there's any claim that "flock found these two plates
| were seen in both areas!!111" then how many other plates
| were seen in both areas in the same timeframe? How much
| of this is throwing away results that disagree with the
| narrative?
| websiteapi wrote:
| Again, not sure how that's relevant.
| bagels wrote:
| Who ever credibly claims that cameras prevent crime though?
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| He may have only committed suicide once he knew they were
| closing in.
| vablings wrote:
| How can you not read this and just see it's a huge puff piece
| for Flock. As far as I can read from the first article and
| reports they were not pivotal in tracking down the killer. It
| was once again only someone else who knew that person and came
| forward, exactly the same as Tyler Robison case
|
| "Phil Helsel Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said a
| person who had information about the suspect played a crucial
| role in the case."
| Computer0 wrote:
| The commentor you are replying to is likely in support of
| Flock.
| websiteapi wrote:
| lol why do you say that?
| websiteapi wrote:
| The police state in the article it was helpful in linking the
| crimes. What evidence do you have to contradict their
| testimony?
| blast wrote:
| > John posted about the encounter on Reddit after the shooting
|
| Anyone have the Reddit link? (I wonder why the article doesn't
| include it)
| albroland wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/providence/comments/1pnkwoq/comment...
| rationalist wrote:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/providence/comments/1pnkwoq/fbi_pos.
| ..
| caymanjim wrote:
| I feel sorry for this guy. His Reddit inbox is probably
| fucked, and he's absolutely going to get doxxed and hounded
| by news people, and I wouldn't be surprised if even worse
| things happened to him.
|
| Good on him for reporting what he saw. He also went to the
| police the next day and reported it directly. But now the
| media machine is going to make him regret he ever said
| anything, which is unfortunate.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| He's already public, but he can make a new Reddit account.
|
| > Now the media machine is going to make him regret he ever
| said anything
|
| We'll see how it turns out, but I don't see why even the
| internet mob would hate him. He probably can't live in
| Brown's basement anymore, but maybe with the reward money
| and recognition he can find a real place.
| ManuelKiessling wrote:
| This is admittedly _very_ tangential only, but as a non-native
| speaker / not a US-American, I found this sentence from the
| NYT reporting[0] a bit confusing:
|
| > John said that the suspect's clothing was inappropriate for
| the weather and that they had made eye contact.
|
| Why is the report mentioning the eye contact? Is that
| culturally significant, as in, in the US you don't normally do
| eye contact with strangers, and if a stranger does make eye
| contact, it's suspicious?
|
| [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/us/brown-mit-shooting-
| inv...
| wmeredith wrote:
| I think the eye contact bit is useful as a signal that the
| witness got a very good look at the suspect's face.
| nine_k wrote:
| I suppose that made eye contact = the face was clearly
| visible for a second or two, and thus recognized with more
| certainty.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| I think the eye contact in question was a prelude to the two
| of them kind of following each other around and a minor
| verbal altercation, so the later context shows that it was
| probably kind of suspicious eye contact, rather than a
| friendly "what's up?"
| zdragnar wrote:
| I agree with the other comments that this sentence is just
| poorly written.
|
| In cities people tend to not make eye contact while walking
| by each other, though in smaller towns it is more common to
| acknowledge each other in passing.
|
| In neither case would it be accurate to find eye contact
| suspicious. The sentence appears to be a summation of several
| things the person saw, convincing them poorly and creating
| the ambiguity.
| Aliabid94 wrote:
| Worth noting that a partner at Sequoia (Shaun Maguire) publicly
| accused the wrong guy of being the shooter.
|
| https://www.fastcompany.com/91463942/sequoia-shaun-maguire-b...
| tptacek wrote:
| Graeme Wood (always a good read) on this:
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/12/conspiracy-rumors-...
| fwip wrote:
| > Maguire subsequently partially apologized for those comments
| in a video. "This tweet did not land the way I thought it
| would,"
|
| What an asshole. He could have gotten the kid killed, not to
| mention the damage to his social reputation. And he can't even
| manage a "sorry if you were offended" non-apology.
| zerocrates wrote:
| The "did not land" video they're talking about, that was his
| response to people being mad at him for calling Mamdani an
| Islamist (and being "from a culture that lies about
| everything"). Also, "partially" is doing a lot of work there:
| he starts that video saying "cancel culture is alive and
| well" and doesn't in fact back off at all from his claim: the
| "did not land" part is even just Maguire lamenting that he
| accidentally helped Mamdani by targeting him.
|
| Anyway, when he went after the Brown student saying he was
| "very likely" the shooter (also bringing in Mamdani again),
| he did less: he simply deleted the video.
| fwip wrote:
| Oh - thank you very much for the correction, I must have
| been reading the article too quickly!
| UncleMeat wrote:
| The whole VC industry is poison at this point.
| lawlessone wrote:
| It's like a lottery for rich people.
| tucnak wrote:
| Why are you downvoted? VC's mostly give money to rich kids
| from prestigious schools. VC's basically hate the poor and
| want nothing to do with them.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| I hate everyone involved in this. It's like a confluence of
| every type of perma-victim with immense privilege.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Shaun Maguire has a long history of inflammatory comments and
| pushing false information on Twitter.
|
| Every time he's involved in a new scandal I'm surprised all
| over again that he's still a partner and Sequoia still hasn't
| pressured him to stop.
| godelski wrote:
| I'm impressed he hasn't been fired and sued into bankruptcy.
| hiddencost wrote:
| It's because they agree with him.
| throwaway12531 wrote:
| I can't express how puzzled I am that Maguire is still at
| Sequoia. Forget cancellation; anyone should be free to say
| whatever they want. This is about judgment, humility,
| discretion and dare I say empathy, which are fundamental skills
| in any investment process and which a partner at the most
| storied venture fund in the word ought to have.
|
| In what world is it good or right to dox a random undergrad
| based on speculation, simply because maybe just maybe it will
| net you Internet points? Note that Maguire never apologized
| once it became clear he was wrong; he simply deleted the post.
| He gets to keep the engagement and outrage points and move on,
| paying no price for spreading a dangerous lie. The undergrad he
| and others doxxed can't say the same.
|
| Shaun would be just another rage-baiter if it wasn't for the
| Sequoia imprimatur. With an investor like this on your cap
| table, who needs enemies? It shouldn't matter if Shaun is the
| "Elon guy" at Sequoia or indeed the best investor in the world.
| Integrity should and does precede returns in time. But maybe I
| am naive and this just isn't true for megacap venture as an
| asset class, where so much depends on sidling up to the 50 or
| 100 founders who can reliably produce decacorns to return your
| fund.
|
| Perhaps all we can do is vote with our feet. Sequoia is on my
| cap table today, but if I was fortunate to have the choice
| between them and a similar firm that actually demonstrated
| integrity instead of just talking about it, I would not take
| money from them again. In all likelihood they won't care a whit
| about me, but they may care more about some of you, reading
| this.
| tucnak wrote:
| > This is about judgment, humility, discretion and dare I say
| empathy, which are fundamental skills in any investment
| process
|
| I'm sorry, don't take this the wrong way, did you smoke pcp
| before writing this?
| noname123 wrote:
| I work on campus (very very close to the engineering building)
| and I previously lived near Brookline. So all of this hits home.
|
| But what got me was the tipster who blew wide open the case is
| reportedly a homeless Brown graduate who lived in the basement of
| the engineering building (a la South Korean film Parasite). It
| made me so sad but also not surprised, that building does have a
| single occupancy bathroom with showers; and no keycard access was
| needed in the evening until 7pm.
|
| So it made sense to me that he or she would've used that building
| for shelter and comfort. Also it didn't boggle my mind at all
| that a Brown grad (from the picture, the tipster looked like a
| artistic Brown student vs. the careerist type) would be homeless
| - given that I known many of my classmates who have a certain
| personality, brilliant but also idealistic/uncompromising that
| made them brittle unfortunately in a society that rewards
| conformity, settling and stability.
|
| I can't get over the fact that two Brown student whom presumably
| have fallen on the wayside of society have chosen two different
| paths, (1) the homeless guy who still perseveres even in the
| basement of Barrus & Holley for 15 years a la Parasite after 2010
| graduation but still has the situational awareness and rises to
| the occasion to give the biggest tip to the Providence Police,
| (2) the other guy who harbors so much resentment over a course of
| 25 years to plan a trip from Florida to gun down innocent kids
| who are 18 and 19 and his classmate when they were 18 and 19 year
| old.
| 10xDev wrote:
| But resentment over what? I haven't seen anything on this.
| astura wrote:
| This whole post is filled with a ridiculous amount of
| unfounded assumptions.
| sampo wrote:
| This article was helpful:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/us/mit-professor-
| shooting...
|
| https://archive.is/qypoz
| godelski wrote:
| That definitely doesn't explain things. It appears the
| motive is still unknown
|
| (But I did find this article better than the WaPo one)
| asveikau wrote:
| I don't know much about the suspect, but I do know that
| people have been saying for years that they go into deep debt
| to get degrees, even in things that are supposed to be
| respected or in demand, and then it turns out there is
| actually no job market or success path for that degree. I
| assume the implication is it had something to do with this
| kind of frustration. (Though the suspect went to school two
| decades ago and did not receive a degree)
|
| Since this site has a lot of people who have successful tech
| careers, many of us are isolated from these stresses.
|
| But honestly, this guy's turn to violence makes me suspect he
| had some serious issues driving him, possibly in the mental
| health realm. Most people, even economically distressed
| people, won't turn to murder.
| tsol wrote:
| I haven't heard any clear motives yet. Some people are
| saying it's simply a case of someone who was a genius that
| ended up in a mediocre place in life, leading to to
| killing. Still that story is so common in America I don't
| see how it leads to killing innocent children at your alma
| mater? It makes no sense to me.
|
| But as with many of these situations the truth might not
| make sense-- sometimes it's simply irrational thinking by
| someone mentally unwell. It reminds me a bit of the Reiner
| killings as well, considering there too there's no clear
| motive except maybe a hypothetical mental break.
| Truthfully, we might just never have a satisfying answer as
| to why this tragedy happened.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| The most obvious motive seems to be a vendetta against
| higher education.
| willis936 wrote:
| Not at all obvious. I'm not sure why HN comments are
| overlooking that the killer was the same age, from the
| same country, and studied at the same undergrad
| university as the MIT professor while starting a graduate
| degree in the same field. We don't know the exact nature,
| but it is difficult to believe that these points are not
| highly involved with the motive.
| Aurornis wrote:
| I think there's a lot of projecting going on in these
| comments. The truth is we don't know the motivation.
| Guessing at student debt seems unlikely given that he
| didn't finish the degree, left the country, and made vague
| posts about deception on physics message boards around the
| time.
| asveikau wrote:
| You misread me. I said "with this kind of frustration",
| meaning a broad category of frustration with the system
| of academia and education. That is not that 100% of the
| problem is student debt. It's that aspiring academics and
| scientists can have a hard time supporting themselves.
| Aurornis wrote:
| No I understood. Your guess that it was related to
| finances is just a guess.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| "this guy's turn to violence makes me suspect he had some
| serious issues driving him, possibly in the mental health
| realm"
|
| You "suspect possible mental health issues"? Amigo, what
| further evidence could possibly be required?
| asveikau wrote:
| I actually have tons of experience with people who suffer
| mental health issues, including psychotic illness. One
| thing that experience gives me is to be cautious about
| making armchair diagnosis from afar.
| kelipso wrote:
| If someone else had posted exactly the same thing you
| just did, I would have assumed it was supposed to be
| funny...
| rectang wrote:
| When we define criminality as evidence of mental illness,
| all we've done is medicalize criminality -- which if
| anything hinders our ability to recognize abnormalities
| of the mind which may or may not lead to criminality.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| At least when I was in school 15 years ago
| (math/engineering), a non- or partially-funded (including
| living stipend) grad school "acceptance" in the US was
| understood by all of my peers to be a rejection. I saw a
| post on reddit a few years ago saying that's still true and
| is in fact also true in the humanities (with an assumed TA
| role). Is that not accurate? Why are people going into debt
| for grad school? Did no one tell them you're not supposed
| to pay for it? Are they just unwilling to accept they were
| rejected?
| musicale wrote:
| Graduate student violence is more common that it should be.
| For example, you hear about suicides every year.
|
| I can't help but suspect that sometimes it may be related to
| graduate school itself, which can be stressful and
| unforgiving, with minimal support, and where supervisors
| often hold both academic power over their students' futures
| and financial power over their livelihoods. (And switching
| supervisors, even at the same institution, typically requires
| restarting research from scratch.) It can't be good when,
| after a lifetime of top-tier success, you are facing failure
| for the first time, with no preparation for handling it and
| no obvious path forward.
| thaw13579 wrote:
| Sadly so, students often associate their self-worth with
| research and academic achievement, so if things go south,
| for whatever reason, they are in crisis.
| firefax wrote:
| >Sadly so, students often associate their self-worth with
| research and academic achievement, so if things go south,
| for whatever reason, they are in crisis.
|
| A lot of people also are doing research they think will
| benefit the world, so it's not just about failing in a
| personal quest -- you feel you are letting down all of
| humanity if you do not achieve your goals.
| firefax wrote:
| >I can't help but suspect that sometimes it may be related
| to graduate school itself, which can be stressful and
| unforgiving, with minimal support, and where supervisors
| often hold both academic power over their students' futures
| and financial power over their livelihoods.
|
| I dropped out of a PhD -- took the master's I earned for
| coursework, did my quals so it would be clear I chose to
| leave, then took an "academic-ish" job that paid very
| poorly. I'd hoped to do that a bit then get hired by a big
| tech company, but I found out that you have less free time
| in a job than grad school, and my tech skills began to
| erode, further sending me down a path I did not want.
|
| What caused me immense, IMMENSE distress is that I felt,
| for lack of a better term "involuntarily destitute" -- my
| adviser in grad school had told me that she'd ONLY give me
| a positive reference for "research" jobs, and that trying
| to leave for industry was evidence I had lied my way into
| the program, and thus she could not give me a positive
| reference for any roles without a research component.
|
| I feel that she purposefully tried to "trap" me with her --
| she was having trouble recruiting new students as word of
| her behaviors and convictions spread (she'd racked up a DUI
| during the liminal period between my acceptance and
| starting school, among other gems).
|
| I currently work in a job that has nothing to do with my
| field -- I had many, many years of strife because when I
| was fresh out of college, I looked around my hometown and
| found I couldn't even get a helpdesk job because my
| skillset was that of an open source nerd, and they wanted
| people who could answer questions about the UI of Windows
| like "How do I enable this printer" that, having not used
| it for years, I couldn't answer off the top of my head --
| and it's not sustainable to "just Google it" on calls over
| and over, people will get frustrated with the wait times.
|
| (That was the way people generally broke into infosec back
| then -- get a help desk job at a bank, hospital or
| university, study during downtime, maybe do some certs or
| try to do an interesting project to present at a
| conference, move up to sysadmin, and eventually security
| analyst/engineer)
|
| I thought I'd found a third way -- I could do this PhD, and
| at worst leave with a master's, and sidestep the tedium of
| the help desk and the uncertainty of if I'd move up. (I
| knew people who got worked many hours, struggled to study
| up, and got trapped).
|
| Anyways, academia can be incredibly abusive and downright
| medieval. That's not an excuse for violence, but it _is_ an
| explanation.
| lazide wrote:
| Graduate school violence == suicide?
| musicale wrote:
| Perhaps I should have said something like intentional
| harm leading to death to make it clearer. But the person
| isn't any more alive even if they were somehow killed by
| some gentle, peaceful method.
| lazide wrote:
| That has a clear definition which I doubt is what is
| occurring?
|
| Or are you asserting that these folks are getting locked
| up and tortured until they kill themselves?
| w1ntermut3 wrote:
| Academic success perhaps. The killer and Nuno Loureiro, the
| MIT professor he killed, were in the same class at Instituto
| Superior Tecnico (Portugal's leading engineering school).
| Loureiro had a distinguished career at MIT while the killer
| was homeless.
| storus wrote:
| Maybe he had some idea that his buddy ran away with and he
| attributed his success to his idea, while he was homeless?
| There was a whole TV show around a similar idea (Breaking
| Bad).
| darubedarob wrote:
| Im pretty certain that of plagiate software would include
| rejected students works whole swaths of the academic
| successful would be let go.
| wtcactus wrote:
| Jealousy is really the sickest of sins...
| riffic wrote:
| there is so much systemic failure and it says a lot about the
| people who are elevated by society and the people who are
| demonized.
| noname123 wrote:
| I agree 100%. The biggest example here is if you read and go
| back to the threads of HN before the downfalls of SBF and Liz
| Holmes, you'll see so many people on here worshipping them
| and apologists for their bad behavior. Most are corporate
| types are conformists who buy what they are told ('till the
| narrative are changed). It used to bother me but nowadays I
| just keep it pushing and aim for the tails and let the mid-
| curve people be the mid-curve people.
| newyankee wrote:
| Some day while the dreaded soc* or comm* words have been
| abandoned, a better description might come along to account
| for the fact that in fact while the system is positive sum,
| reality can still seem zero sum to a large portion and
| there is only so much you can stifle the same human
| creativity, energy and desire to sustain themselves.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Many people are terrible judges of character. They either
| undervalue it, see it as weakness, or just aren't able to
| discern the potential for malevolence.
| lisbbb wrote:
| Lazlo Hollyfield.
|
| Life imitates art.
| dylan604 wrote:
| We'll have to wait to see how the Brown student's life turns
| out after. We'll see if he drives a way in an RV. Doubtful
| he'll be living in the basement after this though
| noname123 wrote:
| I think Christina Paxson should hire him to be a director
| of patrol or more realistically a community liason for
| Brown campus police. The RI/FBI circus were all mum on
| whether the guy will receive the 50K reward - very on-
| brand. He wants privacy so I don't know even if there will
| be a GoFundMe but I think they should do the right thing
| and give the guy his 50 grand at the very least.
| sometimez wrote:
| "...the tipster who blew wide open the case is reportedly a
| homeless Brown graduate who lived in the basement of the
| engineering building..." Where did you read this?
| shagie wrote:
| https://news.sky.com/story/how-a-reddit-post-blew-brown-
| univ...
|
| > How a Reddit post blew Brown University shooting
| investigation wide open
|
| > Frustration had mounted that the murderer had managed to
| get away and that a clear image of his face hadn't emerged -
| until a Reddit post finally put police on his trail.
| astura wrote:
| That says he's a reddit poster, not a Brown graduate who
| lived in the basement of the engineering building.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| Those two descriptions are not mutually contradictory.
| tsol wrote:
| What I heard is he called the police tip line and left a
| message but didn't hear back for two days. After two days
| he left this tip and then was made a person of interest.
| This is just what I heard, not sure if there's more to
| this story.
| astura wrote:
| And...?? How does "he was a Brown graduate who lived in
| the basement of the engineering building" follow? Wtf?
| blitzar wrote:
| A lot of reddit posters live in basements, a subset of
| which are in the engineering building.
| astura wrote:
| Most Reddit posters are children. What of it? How does
| "he was a Brown graduate who lived in the basement of the
| engineering building" follow?
| kurthr wrote:
| https://kfanplus.iheart.com/content/2025-12-19-homeless-
| man-...
|
| It was posted on a Fox News affiliate. He won't get the
| reward, because he called 911 rather than the tipline.
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| That doesn't surprise me at all.
|
| Makes me furious, but it doesn't surprise me.
| rectang wrote:
| I assume he will also no longer be able to live in the
| engineering hall basement. Beyond personal moral
| satisfaction, coming forward only means sacrifice.
|
| But a number of people have lost their lives, which keeps
| the scale of the tipster's personal losses in
| perspective. A terrible event all around.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _number of people have lost their lives, which keeps
| the scale of the tipster 's personal losses in
| perspective_
|
| I disagree. The shooter's victims fell to a random act of
| violence. (As in the victims were randomly selected. The
| shooter didn't randomly occur.)
|
| It is tragic. But it was a crime committed by one man,
| now dead, who targeted the innocent.
|
| The tipster is more than innocent. He is a hero. His
| eviction is not a random act of cruelty, but a result of
| his heroism. And his assailants aren't a monster, whom we
| don't expect to strive for goodness, but us.
| bofadeez wrote:
| Last sentence went a little insane.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Last sentence went a little insane_
|
| I'm drawing a moral analogy to mass murder, so the whole
| thing is going to tend towards the unhinged. But I'll
| stand by it. There is something sad in ordinary people
| bending to banal evil. Monsters being monsters is just
| horrific.
| bofadeez wrote:
| Mass murder is about as far as you can get from banal.
| It's an extremely rare tragedy to experience. But we're
| talking about two things: one is a violent crime and one
| is a civil matter involving a squatter.
|
| The building owners do have a right to occupy their own
| building, right? Or are you proposing we deny them their
| ownership as some kind of reward to the hero? That would
| amount to advocating that two wrongs make a right.
|
| Calling the building owners 'assailants' for simply
| wanting to peacefully occupy their own building is quite
| insane.
|
| Why not give him cash or a job or something else?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| He wasn't interfering with the building owners. You're
| making up a justification to screw this guy over. That's
| _really sad_.
| bofadeez wrote:
| Oh if he wasn't interferring, then they must have allowed
| him to keep living there? Why is that sad, you _want_ him
| to be kicked out?
|
| (You forgot to use logic or explain a point of view and
| instead just made a random moral judgement and expressed
| the emotion it made you feel, so I had to make some
| assumptions about your intentions and depth of thought)
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I think my logic is fine. You pulled reasons to get rid
| of him out of nowhere, not based on the facts of the
| case. Not just supporting a _possible_ eviction but
| _preemptively_ deciding it 's the only way to get
| peaceful use of their building even though they were
| already getting peaceful use of their building. That's
| sad, because you're justifying a big punishment as
| consequence of doing a big good deed, with nobody
| benefitting.
|
| And your first sentence makes no sense. That's not how
| people usually work. They get possessive and risk-averse
| and ban things that are unusual. That "if-then" is a
| total joke, and without it your criticism of my argument
| falls apart.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Mass murder is about as far as you can get from banal_
|
| Not what was said.
|
| > _Why not give him cash or a job or something else?_
|
| Sure. Why not.
| rectang wrote:
| > _Calling the building owners 'assailants' for simply
| wanting to peacefully occupy their own building is quite
| insane._
|
| The characterization of "us" as "assailants" is an
| acknowledgment of the sorrowful fate that we as a society
| inflict on nearly every whistleblower despite the fact
| that we as a society encourage people to be
| whistleblowers.
| bofadeez wrote:
| This is conflating whistleblowing with the need to pay
| rent on your residence. This guy is not exactly a Julian
| Assange.
| rectang wrote:
| > _And his assailants aren't a monster, whom we don't
| expect to strive for goodness, but us._
|
| I expect monstrous actions from all humankind, though.
| What sets "us" apart from deviants is the deftness of our
| self-justification.
| rafram wrote:
| To be clear, there's no actual evidence that he's being
| evicted. Talking about "his eviction" is pretty
| premature. It also seems like he _will_ receive the
| reward.
| WhyOhWhyQ wrote:
| FWIW, The New York Post video on this said he will get the
| reward.
| tartoran wrote:
| Im a bit worried for the homeless guy, he helped solve the
| case but he likely blew up his cover and will have to find a
| new shelter.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| My assumption is most Ivy leaguers (specifically undergrads)
| generally have no monetary constraints after graduating so this
| very much reads to me as a bohemian "by choice" decision to be
| more interesting than an actual tragic story.
| djaouen wrote:
| I graduated from an Ivy and, after graduation, I was (and
| continue to be, to this day) dirt poor.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| I have some doubts about this, or at least what your
| definition of dirt poor is.
|
| The ability required to get into an ivy is so significant I
| don't see how someone could fail to make substantial sums
| if they wanted to.
| djaouen wrote:
| I grew up in NYC and was lucky enough (or smart enough, I
| suppose) to get into one of the top public high schools
| in the city. Because of that (and doing well enough in
| that school), I was able to squeak into Cornell via its
| wait list.
|
| But I don't come from connections: my mother was a
| receptionist and my father was a sanitation worker. For a
| while after college, I managed to find work doing backend
| development for various local businesses, but nothing
| fancy. But even that has dried up due to various reasons
| (including a major health issue I developed after
| graduating).
|
| For some reason, it seems people in authority positions
| are irked by me due to my humble beginnings & my
| insistence on continual learning, even after graduating
| from school. If I had a penny (or I guess now, nickel?)
| for every time an interviewer asked me, "How did you
| learn that when you majored in Industrial Engineering,"
| I'd be a very rich man.
|
| Or at least able to afford all the books I want to read.
| :(
| alephnerd wrote:
| Statistically, you're correct. That said, the thing about
| statistics is that outliers exist.
|
| Also, imo the "Ivy" advantage is moreso a "family background"
| advantage - traditionally high social prestige and high entry
| barrier vocations were gatekept by Ivy and Ivy-adjacent
| membership.
|
| The rise of competitive salary and low barrier of entry
| vocations like Software and Accounting helped dampen the
| value of that "Ivy" premium.
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| Your assumption is ignorant.
|
| Most Ivy League schools have free tuition if your parents
| household income is below $200-$100k and full ride room and
| board if below $100-60k.
|
| Rich kids can get cut off from their parents.
| tartoran wrote:
| Rich kids do get cut off from their parents but that's
| usually when they get off the rails, e.g start doing drugs
| or drinking heavily, drop out of school. When attending
| university most of them get some form of support from their
| rich families.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| I want to improve my communication skills so I'd love
| pointers on this.
|
| Where exactly did I imply that it was the cost of the
| degree that is the constraint? Everyone knows poor kids and
| even middle class kids don't pay anything to go to elite
| schools. I simply don't think that means they face
| financial constraints exiting undergrad (or during
| undergrad). Why would they when HRT is paying $500k for new
| grads?
|
| There's this weird belief that I should feel sorry for
| people that didn't come from means but got into Yale or
| Brown or Stanford. Sorry, they're just as alien and
| inrelatable to me as Jeff Bezos' kids. These people are in
| an entirely different plane of existence and ability so I
| have a lot of trouble thinking they wouldn't have unlimited
| opportunities exiting university that I can't even dream
| of.
| phlakaton wrote:
| This generalization is very, very wrong. I can tell you, from
| my personal college network, many students had monetary
| constraints coming in, and many certainly had monetary
| constraints coming out. Some of that was choice of career
| path; some was not.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| I don't understand how someone coming out of Brown or Yale
| would have constraints coming out. Their degree is
| basically free, basically any degree can get them an
| analyst gig on Wall Street if they so choose, and at worst
| they can go down the law school path.
| Philadelphia wrote:
| You don't become one of the wealthy just by going to
| school with them. You're still an outsider, lesser, just
| one of the little people, not their type.
| somenameforme wrote:
| This is definitely incorrect. If you graduate with a low-
| value degree from an Ivy League, you're still going to be
| just as unemployable as somebody that graduated from Party U
| with a low value degree. The only real difference is that at
| top schools there are less people that are completely
| directionless in life (since you're less likely to get
| admitted in such a case) so if somebody is graduating with
| e.g. a philosophy degree, then they're probably doing it
| explicitly with the intent of going to e.g. law school or on
| an academic path, whereas many people at lower ranked
| universities end up there largely through inertia and may
| pursue degrees of minimal value with no real thoughts beyond
| taking the easiest path to achieving a college degree, which
| is the direction they were pushed onto without ever really
| thinking about it.
|
| And even for valuable degrees, the advantage yielded is _far_
| less than you might think. It 's not like the movies where
| you have dozens of companies begging you to come work with 6
| figure starting salaries and fat bonuses up front. You open a
| few more doors, and people have a better than average initial
| impression of you, but at the end of the day - it's not a
| world-shifting advantage. The overall edge in outcomes is not
| because of the university, but because of the sort of people
| that the university admits. The sort of guy who graduates
| class president, valedictorian, wrestled at state, and with a
| near perfect score on his SAT is going to do
| disproportionately well in life completely regardless of
| whether he ends up at MIT, Party U, or just skips university
| altogether.
| corimaith wrote:
| There are plenty of directionless people in Ivy League who
| aren't emotionally invested in the paths their parents sent
| them, they just go into Finance or Consulting. And in those
| places, pedigree does matter alot, the actual skills are
| not as important as the cultural compatability.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| BCG consultants and traders at Five Rings are very much
| not financially constrained after undergrad (about
| $100-200k difference between them but either way)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| There are still a lot of jobs that (for maybe debatable
| reasons) require a college degree. Major is far less
| important. So if you have that degree, you at least have a
| larger job pool to work in. Of course, having a degree can
| overqualify you for some jobs, so it's not a purely better
| situation in all cases.
|
| And (so I'm told) at least half the value of an Ivy degree
| is the people you meet while you are there. I guess that
| assumes you do some network-building, which maybe not
| everyone does.
| duskdozer wrote:
| People have such an odd belief that the Ivy League is all
| trust-fund babies, even though for years and years, these
| schools have shown that they recruit disadvantaged people and
| make it affordable for them to attend.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| What about what I said made you think I said everyone there
| had a trust fund? I have a problem with homeless to Harvard
| as much as I have a problem with billionaires kids at Yale.
| Do you not understand this? How can I be more clear?
| djaouen wrote:
| Now compare these two divergent "endings": would you rather be
| gone from this cold and cruel Earth, finally free, or denied
| reward money for failing to call the correct phone number,
| still homeless and (probably) hungry? Obviously I am not saying
| to off a bunch of people prior, but still.
| noname123 wrote:
| My response is there were many people (primarily engineering
| students and professors) who might have seen the shooter
| during the previous weeks - but it is only the former student
| who given his background of being homeless and being extra
| vigilante as a homeless person noticed the shooter as
| suspicious and even followed him to his car that led to the
| tip.
|
| Many in tech will quote Steve Jobs "you can't connect the
| dots forward, only backwards" speech, but this guy whom I
| don't know, I like to believe he lived it. Flip your question
| on your head, would you be willing be homeless for 10 years
| and in the process help catch a school shooter?
| claysmithr wrote:
| that's why there will be a day of judgement that God has set
| kubb wrote:
| Everyone truly evil believes that they are the good one and
| God wouldn't punish them.
| alexpotato wrote:
| There was a homeless guy living in the gym at Rutgers prior to
| the late 1990s and it's why you had to show ID to get into any
| of the gyms/dorms.
|
| Very similar story of:
|
| - he was older
|
| - dressed normally
|
| - everyone assumed he was an assistant coach, grad student etc
|
| They mentioned it multiple times in safety briefings and even
| at "how to be a club officer" meetings to ensure that everyone
| participating/involved was actually a student.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's not uncommon. University buildings are pretty open even
| today. I worked with a homeless guy who was a university
| employee, so he had a legit staff ID card. He just didn't
| want to spend money on rent. He knew where the empty rooms
| were that nobody ever used, where the showers were.
|
| I bet every major university has a few people
| living/sheltering in campus buildings.
| lambda wrote:
| RMS famously lived out of his office at MIT for a while.
| Moosdijk wrote:
| RMS = Richard Stallman, responsible for the GNU project
| and the free software foundation.
|
| He had a page dedicated to his housing situation:
|
| https://stallman.org/seeking-housing.html
| LoganDark wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20190928065654/https://stallm
| an....
| darubedarob wrote:
| RMS could life couch surfing from conference to
| conference?
| ghaff wrote:
| My somewhat anecdotal observation is that a lot of access
| has been tightened down. Some happened during COVID and was
| just never removed. It definitely varies. The campus I'm
| most familiar with, you could wander pretty freely and
| that's less the case today.
| i80and wrote:
| I feel really sad about this -- I was amazed as a child
| to learn that I was allowed to just... GO IN to buildings
| and lectures as long as I was quiet and respectful. I
| always took pride in my university's openness.
|
| Then I took my boyfriend for a tour a couple years ago
| and found all the buildings had signs warning that access
| was only permitted with a University ID card. Nobody
| challenged us or kicked us out, but it was a sour
| demoralizing shock.
| ghaff wrote:
| Things were very locked down at the peak of COVID and
| some of us even semi-officially grumbled a bit to people
| we knew.
|
| The main public buildings are generally open again during
| the day at least. I don't go in as much as I used to.
| (And have ID in any case.) But definitely not as open as
| it used to be.
| js8 wrote:
| I am not American but there was a good interview on American
| homelessness in TMR: https://youtu.be/osFQMTJz1w8
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| > in a society that rewards conformity, settling and stability.
|
| It also rewards value generation, often above the other things
| mmooss wrote:
| Value defined how and for whom? Single parents without paying
| work provide an enormous amount of value but often can't get
| housing.
| lisbbb wrote:
| The thing that bothers me about the whole story, apart from the
| deaths of course, is that we live in a surveillance state. While
| I want major crimes to be resolved and there to be deterrents to
| future ones, I just don't know about turning the whole US into
| East Germany. It's not going to work out well for any of us. As
| you can see, it didn't help solve the crimes, either. It was
| witnesses who did all the heavy lifting here.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| Our surveillance state is mostly for commercial and political
| reasons. It doesn't exist for crime fighting
| kittikitti wrote:
| This is a good point and worth noting because we sacrifice so
| much for the supposed benefits.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > As you can see, it didn't help solve the crimes, either. It
| was witnesses who did all the heavy lifting here.
|
| That is not the case. If there was more high quality footage
| with a clearer resolution and full coverage to the time the
| suspect went to the car, then it would have been trivial to
| locate them without a witness.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| It's almost like the claim that you live in a surveillance
| state is hugely overblown.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| You'd think the washington post would have figured out how to
| turn off ads on somber articles by now
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| Oh how naive you are...
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| Its amazing people are downvoting this
|
| These media companies _love_ tragedies like this. It is what
| makes them the most money. Why would they disable ads on
| their most lucrative pages?
| twixfel wrote:
| It's very silly to say they "love" them. It's unlikely
| anyone is happy this happened. They are a news company,
| they report news, and people are interested most of all in
| bad things that have happened.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| No it's not silly. These companies would be at a tiny
| fraction of their current revenue if people didn't like
| reading bad news and especially terrible tragedies. How
| much do you think their page views spike when there is an
| active manhunt or major events that happen? From a
| business perspective: they love them.
| j-bos wrote:
| Legacy media gets a pass from advertisers.
| doctorwho42 wrote:
| Legacy of bezos now.
| eduardogarza wrote:
| Obviously a lot of footage in investigations does not reach the
| public, during active ones or even after. But if you've followed
| these stories it seems liket between the Brown shooting and the
| Kirk/Utah shooting, there is a potential concern with
| universities not having security footage in certain areas of
| their campus? Has anyone else inquired more into this?
| xrd wrote:
| Well, Candace Owens and Valhalla VFT are talking about exactly
| those things and the MSM is saying their concerns are baseless.
| I can't believe I actually watched Candace Owens discuss some
| of this stuff, I shudder to write that.
| pppppiiiiiuuuuu wrote:
| Owens is unhinged. She's also claiming the French government
| are trying to have her killed because she's claiming their
| first lady is secretly transgender. It's not just the "MSM"
| who are pointing out she has no credibility, it's also people
| like Ben Shapiro from her same corner of the media.
| mhb wrote:
| I'm sure Flock's sales team has made inquiries.
| y-curious wrote:
| That's funny, picturing their sales team smirking and rubbing
| their hands mischievously at every publicized manhunt
| bdangubic wrote:
| _exactly_ what we need, _more_ cameras everywhere
| crubier wrote:
| I mean, yes? The cameras do help solve a ton of crime. The
| real issue is using them for surveillance without a cause,
| and that imo this is what should be under scrutiny. But
| trying to fight cameras existing in general is a lost cause
| imo
| elif wrote:
| Another shooting with random or unclear motives, which
| conveniently fits an anti-immigrant narrative, also conveniently
| tied up with a bow... Don't get too caught up in the specifics of
| the spectacle, and take a long view of really weird coincidence.
| eBombzor wrote:
| Is there really much of an anti-immigrant narrative here?
| astura wrote:
| The killer was an immigrant (from Portugal).
| pavon wrote:
| The Trump administration has suspended the green card lottery
| program, using this murder as an excuse.
| noobermin wrote:
| They are taking advantage of a situation. You'd think a
| false flag would definitely have someone who could be
| construed to not be a white immigrant.
| krapp wrote:
| I don't think it's a false flag but the online right has
| already decided the shooter isn't white.
|
| If anyone has ever been confused by the concept of race
| being a cultural construct, here is an object lesson.
| vkou wrote:
| Any crime by an immigrant or by a non-immigrant can be
| twisted into an anti-immigrant narrative by Trump. And this
| one has been.
| fastball wrote:
| Which non-immigrant crime was twisted into an anti-
| immigrant narrative?
| rafram wrote:
| Among others:
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/how-a-fox-news-
| rep...
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68353305.amp
| Myrmornis wrote:
| "This is a very advanced technology, and whatever nation masters
| it first is going to have an incredible advantage," Loureiro
| says.
|
| https://energy.mit.edu/news/funding-the-fusion-revolution/
| ewild wrote:
| i was at the cvs right next to the extra storage when the
| helicopters showed up and all the police it was kinda nuts to be
| so close to an event like this.
| Tripping5292 wrote:
| What was the motive? The targets seemed unique. One the VP of the
| Republican student club and the other a prominent Jewish
| physicist.
| typs wrote:
| It's unlikely the students at Brown killed were targeted. He
| opened fire on a room of students at a review session, shooting
| 11 people. It seems very possible that this was an act of
| violence out of resentment towards Brown, where he dropped out
| a graduate program over 20 years ago. He would've had most of
| his classes and spent most of his time in the building where he
| carried out the shooting.
|
| He appears to have attended the same undergraduate program in
| Portugal as the MIT professor.
|
| Therefor it seems possible that these shootings were carried
| out of personal resentment, though only he knew for certain.
| noobermin wrote:
| I hate to bring this up, but the conspiracy theories around this
| are nuts and I'm honestly quite bothered and annoyed by it. While
| the death is an absolute tragedy, the idea that the CIA killed
| him because fusion is around the corner and I suppose Loreiro was
| to usher in the next age of limitless electricity is quite
| ridiculous.
|
| I will say that there is a non-zero overlap of people pushing
| this insanity and the posters here, given what I've seen
| elsewhere on the internet, and I will kindly ask that you stop.
| fithisux wrote:
| It does not make sense why kill Loureiro.
|
| Sorry, but it seems very brittle as a story.
| doctorwho42 wrote:
| The answer is, no one can know for sure.
|
| The most probably answer from the facts we have is quite simple
| and human... Jealousy. They both were classmates in the same
| overseas undergrad program, Nuno was a well established and
| accomplished professor in one of the preeminent tech schools in
| the world. While he flunked out of his program, and hasn't done
| much of note.
| Zopieux wrote:
| >ctrl-f "gun control"
|
| >0 results
|
| Never change, HN.
| oceansky wrote:
| Instead, there are people arguing for increased surveillance.
| Which even if implemented "correctly" would not prevent crime.
|
| Might be used to track women seeking abortions though.
| Geonode wrote:
| How did banning drugs work out? Alcohol?
| jmyeet wrote:
| There are going to be many, many questions about this because a
| lot of it doesn't make sense and doesn't fit any profile.
|
| School shootings in particular and mass shootings in general tend
| to follow a particular pattern. Usually the shooter has no
| intention of escaping or otherwise leaving the scene. Usually
| they are killed at the scene either by the police or by their own
| hand. Some do escape but it's rare.
|
| So this shooter allegedly escaped the scene and then a couple of
| days later went on to kill one particular researcher at a
| different college 50 miles away in what looks like it was
| targeted and planned.
|
| These are two very different crimes.
|
| And then the shooter commits suicide?
|
| If the MIT researcher was a target, why commit a mass shooting
| prior? If the mass shooting was the goal, how do we explain the
| planning and intent of the second attack? And why wasn't that a
| mass shooting?
|
| Was it the same gun in both attacks? If so, why weren't the
| incidents linked sooner? If they were different guns, that too
| raises questions.
|
| In case it wasn't clear, the MIT attack was cased for at least 2
| weeks prior.
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