Hacker News with Generative AI: San Francisco

San Francancisco crime is down, way down (growsf.org)
Citywide crime in San Francisco is now at its lowest point in 23 years. And in the past year, San Francisco saw one of the biggest drops in crime among major U.S. cities, including a 45% drop in property crime in the first quarter of 2025, alone.
Slouching towards San Francisco (rachdele.substack.com)
San Francisco looms large over the American imagination. Even I succumb to its mysterious promise from time to time, but seldom for very long.
We bought billboards in San Francisco, for our open source product (typesense.org)
Decades later… I am ecstatic to announce that Typesense has joined this iconic club of tech companies that do billboards in San Francisco.
Crime is down, way down (growsf.org)
Citywide crime in San Francisco is now at its lowest point in 23 years. And in the past year, San Francisco saw one of the biggest drops in crime among major U.S. cities, including a 45% drop in property crime in the first quarter of 2025, alone.
SF Mayor Lurie to tech CEOs: 'How can we get you back?' (techcrunch.com)
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie wants to bring his city back to its glory days. And he’s convinced tech leaders — who often pitch utopian ideals of their own — can help him deliver.
Silicon Valley vs. San Francisco Socialists (jacobin.com)
On the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, socialist Dean Preston championed policies that tackled the gross inequality Silicon Valley brought to the city. That’s why he was targeted by tech capitalists like Garry Tan and Elon Musk last year.
Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood (supernuclear.substack.com)
18 months ago, I wasn’t planning on spending more time hanging out with my neighbors than with friends I’d known for decades. It started with a simple goal: my husband Tyler and I wanted that sense of community that feels like it’s only possible in the suburbs, but we believed we could achieve this while living in San Francisco. We brainstormed: should we make cookies and knock on doors? Should we invite neighbors over for dinner?
Stripe is stealing over $50k from me (ycombinator.com)
I run a coffee cart in SF. I am legally allowed to operate here and am not doing anything sketchy.
Waymo's milestone SFO mapping permit comes with strings attached (techcrunch.com)
Waymo has been given permission to map roadways at the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) via a temporary permit — the first step in the Alphabet company’s bid to unlock a potentially lucrative use case for its robotaxis.
Help Identify the Photographer Who Captured Many Images of 1960s San Francisco (smithsonianmag.com)
Discovered in an abandoned storage locker, the 2,042 processed color slides and 102 rolls of black-and-white film depict key moments in the city’s history
The 2005 Sony Bravia ad (sfgate.com)
On a sunny July day in 2005, a frog jumped out of a rain gutter to see an unexpected sight: an avalanche of thousands of colorful bouncy balls careening down a San Francisco street.
Explore Sutro Tower (sutrotower.com)
The Mission is the new Tenderloin (sfstandard.com)
The Sixth Street drug market has found a new home.
Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat experience of Sutro Tower, San Francisco (vincentwoo.com)
Welcome to my 3D model of San Francisco's Sutro Tower. Feel free to explore it at your own pace. If you're on a phone, you can also engage the AR mode by clicking the little cube, it'll let you explore the scene by walking around and waving your phone.
San Francisco homelessness: Park ranger helps one person at a time (sfstandard.com)
To watch park ranger Amanda Barrows is to be faced with a disturbing question: If this is what it takes to help one unhoused person, how can we manage thousands?
Engineer built 200 public benches in Inner Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco (missionlocal.org)
For more than a decade, a roller-skating engineer in the Inner Sunset has opted to go his own way, making and installing some 210 benches in the Sunset and around the city — for free.
New SF public health chief was part of McKinsey opioid-marketing operation (sfstandard.com)
Daniel Tsai, Mayor Daniel Lurie’s choice to lead the Department of Public Health, has a blue-chip résumé: After studying at Harvard University, he landed a prestigious consulting gig before jumping into government, leading Medicaid programs in Massachusetts, then federally under former President Joe Biden.
The San Francisco stadium that fog killed (sfgate.com)
The fervor over San Francisco’s glorious new baseball park was cresting. It didn’t matter that the first game was delayed several weeks by a tough winter. When Opening Day at Ewing Field came on May 16, 1914, thousands of fans traversed up to Lone Mountain and poured into their new baseball home.
Men claiming to be from DOGE show up at San Francisco City Hall, demand records (cbsnews.com)
San Francisco city officials are investigating after three men who claimed to be from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) showed up at City Hall on Friday demanding records from offices before fleeing.
San Francisco unveils marble bust of Aaron Swartz (sfstandard.com)
Hundreds gathered at the Internet Archive for the unveiling of a statue honoring the late programmer, who's been embraced as an open-access hero.
Salesforce lays off staff in San Francisco after exec talks up offshoring (sfgate.com)
Salesforce, the software giant with deep ties to San Francisco, is laying off 153 local workers.
Waymo drives through sinkhole in San Francisco during storm [video] (youtube.com)
For just $763, you can make a lot sit empty for 5 years (sfstandard.com)
In a sane world, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors would do everything in its power to approve new grocery stores.
As China seeks influence, it has a cuddly way into City Hall: Pandas (nytimes.com)
After joining the Chinese leader Xi Jinping for dinner last year, Mayor London Breed of San Francisco accompanied him to the airport to bid him farewell. There, on the tarmac, she made her request: pandas.
San Francisco Curbs Syphilis with Cheap 'Morning-After' Pill (bloomberg.com)
San Francisco reversed some of the highest rates of syphilis and chlamydia in the US after county health officials recommended a low-cost tablet taken like a “morning-after pill.”
Get the Funk Out (lessheavy.substack.com)
In my crusty ratboy phase (mercifully over now, I hope), when I lived in San Francisco, I struggled. With many things, but specifically with laundry. Like the Johnny Cash song, my workdays began by looking in my closet for my cleanest dirty shirt.
SFPD refuses to say where they've placed 400 automated license plate readers (sfist.com)
The new armada of automated license plate readers in SF are taking three million surveillance photos every day, but the SF Police Department is being cagey about disclosing where the hundreds of cameras are located.
Counterculture legend who invented bell-bottom jeans dies at 84 (sfgate.com)
At the turn of the mid-1960s, people knew they had landed at ground zero of an evolving San Francisco if they fell down the right rabbit hole and somehow tumbled inside Mnasidika.
SF Purity Test (sfpurity.com)
The official Purity Test checklist for the techies of San Francisco. Click on every item you have done.
San Francisco House Prices Drop Back to 2019 as Tech Jobs Evaporate (wolfstreet.com)
The big decline in tech employment in San Francisco and the northern part of Silicon Valley that we’ll get to in a moment has put its stamp on home prices in the city of San Francisco.