7 ms·
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
by noname123 10mo ago
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 10mo agoBut resentment over what? I haven't seen anything on this.
- astura 10mo agoThis whole post is filled with a ridiculous amount of unfounded assumptions.
- sampo 10mo agoThis article was helpful: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/us/mit-professor-shooting-suspect-portugal-lisbon-physics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/us/mit-professor-shooting... https://archive.is/qypoz https://archive.is/qypoz
- godelski 10mo agoThat definitely doesn't explain things. It appears the motive is still unknown (But I did find this article better than the WaPo one)
- asveikau 10mo agoI 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 10mo agoI 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 10mo agoThe most obvious motive seems to be a vendetta against higher education.
- willis936 10mo agoNot 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.
- musicale 10mo agoGraduate 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 10mo agoSadly 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 10mo ago>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 10mo ago>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.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- w1ntermut3 10mo agoAcademic success perhaps. The killer and Nuno Loureiro, the MIT professor he killed, were in the same class at Instituto Superior Técnico (Portugal's leading engineering school). Loureiro had a distinguished career at MIT while the killer was homeless.
- storus 10mo agoMaybe 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 10mo agoIm pretty certain that of plagiate software would include rejected students works whole swaths of the academic successful would be let go.
- wtcactus 10mo agoJealousy is really the sickest of sins…
- IAmBroom 10mo agoThe medieval RC Church (proudly) taught that "Superbia mater malem est", "Pride is the mother of evil".
- riffic 10mo agothere 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 10mo agoI 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 10mo agoSome 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 10mo agoMany 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 10mo agoLazlo Hollyfield. Life imitates art.
- dylan604 10mo agoWe'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 10mo agoI 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 10mo ago"...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 10mo agohttps://news.sky.com/story/how-a-reddit-post-blew-brown-university-shooting-investigation-wide-open-13485440 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 10mo agoThat says he's a reddit poster, not a Brown graduate who lived in the basement of the engineering building.
- jkaplowitz 10mo agoThose two descriptions are not mutually contradictory.
- tsol 10mo agoWhat 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 10mo agoAnd...?? How does "he was a Brown graduate who lived in the basement of the engineering building" follow? Wtf?
- blitzar 10mo agoA lot of reddit posters live in basements, a subset of which are in the engineering building.
- laidoffamazon 10mo agoMy 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 10mo agoI graduated from an Ivy and, after graduation, I was (and continue to be, to this day) dirt poor.
- laidoffamazon 10mo agoI 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 10mo agoI 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 10mo agoStatistically, 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.
- djaouen 10mo agoNow 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 10mo agoMy 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 10mo agothat's why there will be a day of judgement that God has set
- kubb 10mo agoEveryone truly evil believes that they are the good one and God wouldn’t punish them.
- alexpotato 10mo agoThere 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 10mo agoIt'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 10mo agoRMS famously lived out of his office at MIT for a while.
- Moosdijk 10mo agoRMS = 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 https://stallman.org/seeking-housing.html
- LoganDark 10mo agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20190928065654/https://stallman.org/seeking-housing.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190928065654/https://stallman....
- darubedarob 10mo agoRMS could life couch surfing from conference to conference?
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- js8 10mo agoI am not American but there was a good interview on American homelessness in TMR: https://youtu.be/osFQMTJz1w8 https://youtu.be/osFQMTJz1w8
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- unsupp0rted 10mo ago> in a society that rewards conformity, settling and stability. It also rewards value generation, often above the other things
- mmooss 10mo agoValue defined how and for whom? Single parents without paying work provide an enormous amount of value but often can't get housing.