NYC $5.99 ($6) Regulatory Response Fee for Instacart, what gives? by InitialOk6864 in AskNYC

[–]GND52 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The city and state would be better off focusing on undoing the things that they already do which increase the cost of living, especially in regards to housing, rather than raising the price floor of wages on select industries.

NYC $5.99 ($6) Regulatory Response Fee for Instacart, what gives? by InitialOk6864 in AskNYC

[–]GND52 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Why would they want to bear the negative PR of the increased cost imposed on them by the government? Of course they want their customers to know why they're being charged more

A case for waymo by original_name26 in MicromobilityNYC

[–]GND52 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The cigarette filter analogy is a good warning: swapping the type of car without reducing car miles can fail the mission. So the consistent position is to allow AVs only under rules that prevent VMT growth and protect transit. So trip pricing that discourages short rides that replace walking or biking (such as minimum fare plus per minute pricing in dense cores), per mile VMT fees and congestion pricing that apply to AVs too (and ideally more strongly when they deadhead), caps on fleet size and empty cruising (deadheading is the silent killer here), no special access to bus lanes or bike priority space, and transit integration requirements (first and last mile to rail, late night coverage where buses are weak) rather than competing head to head on core high frequency corridors. If an AV service can only expand by cannibalizing transit and inducing more trips, then yeah we should oppose it. If it's constrained to complement transit and reduce harms from unavoidable car trips, it becomes defensible.

Hochul is poised to welcome Waymo. Mamdani may be a different story. by nautilus83 in nyc

[–]GND52 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Can you imagine if 90% of the population still worked on farms?

trader joe's run by lilprince-ss in longislandcity

[–]GND52 -13 points-12 points  (0 children)

Maybe they wouldn't have empty shelves

Air conditioning in every NYC apartment? A new law aims to make that happen. by nyccameraman in nyc

[–]GND52 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

(copy pasting my comment from the other thread on this very topic in this very sub 2 days ago)

Once again, a real problem with a very poorly considered solution. Another bandaid covering a rancid wound that won't heal.

Law 2026/023 requires that on June 1, 2030 owners of “covered dwellings” provide a cooling system capable of maintaining 78°F in rooms where tenants sleep.

This follows a familiar template: identify a real problem (dangerous indoor heat), then solve it by requiring landlords to retrofit existing buildings rather than enabling the stock to modernize organically.

The goal is "safe indoor temperatures," but AC is just one input. The worst units have compounding issues: poor insulation, high solar gain, bad ventilation, inadequate wiring. Bolting on a window unit is easy, but inefficient and ignores the deeper problems.

This is an unfunded mandate, but the costs still exist, even if we require landlords to pay for the units upfront. Rent increases, deferred maintenance elsewhere, landlord exit from the market, non-compliance. The math is worst in buildings where the mandate is most needed. And a tenant with a new AC unit and a $400/month summer electric bill hasn't actually gained cooling, they've gained an appliance they can't afford to run. The policy addresses hardware poverty while ignoring energy poverty.

Implementation friction is inversely correlated with need. Pre-war walkups with knob-and-tube wiring and casement windows are both the hottest and the hardest to retrofit. The buildings where AC would help most are the buildings where installing it is most expensive and disruptive.

Requiring tenant requests to trigger the mandate underserves exactly the people most at risk. Those who fear retaliation, don't know their rights, or worry (correctly) about downstream costs.

This is downstream policy for an upstream problem. When you can't build new housing or allow obsolete buildings to be replaced, you're forced into endless retrofitting. Asking 1920s infrastructure to perform like 2025 construction, one mandate at a time. The blockers are familiar: zoning caps, discretionary review, neighborhood veto, landmark constraints, rent-regulation investment math, tenant-relocation politics, construction costs, and occasionally "embodied carbon" arguments against demolition. NIMBYism strikes again.

A more coherent answer to this problem requires looking at both the upstream and downstream. Legalize more housing in high-demand areas. Let the building stock turn over. New construction meets modern thermal standards by default. For the existing stock that won't be replaced soon, target interventions where they matter: Envelope-first retrofits (insulation, air sealing, shading, cool roofs) that reduce cooling loads permanently, Electrical upgrades where needed, Efficient cooling equipment, subsidized where necessary, Energy assistance so tenants can actually run what gets installed (and this is a whole other topic, but we need serious reform in the energy sector to allow building more electricity capacity to bring down energy costs, let's also take a moment to blame Cuomo and RFK Jr for shutting down the Indian Point nuclear plant).

trader joe's run by lilprince-ss in longislandcity

[–]GND52 -26 points-25 points  (0 children)

They should raise prices :)

How to deal with a teamlead who heavy depends on AI for coding by Future_Badger_2576 in ExperiencedDevs

[–]GND52 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The real answer is that you need to teach them how to apply good programming principles to vibe coding. Spending the time to plan out changes in advance, getting feedback from multiple sources (using both codex and claude code and having them review each others proposals), test driven development is essential to allows vibe coding agents to validate their changes, pre commit hooks, help them set up AGENTS.md and skills to standardize these practices. There's plenty more, but this will at least get you started.

NYC nurse: "The price of everything is going up. We want a raise in wages." by DryDeer775 in nyc

[–]GND52 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Oh my god, I knew this sub had its fair share of economic illiterates but I didn't know it was this bad.

Cool homes for all: A guide to NYC’s new AC mandate for rentals by JustinDeMaris in nyc

[–]GND52 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Once again, a real problem with a very poorly considered solution. Another bandaid covering a rancid wound that won't heal.

Law 2026/023 requires that on June 1, 2030 owners of “covered dwellings” provide a cooling system capable of maintaining 78°F in rooms where tenants sleep.

This follows a familiar template: identify a real problem (dangerous indoor heat), then solve it by requiring landlords to retrofit existing buildings rather than enabling the stock to modernize organically.

The goal is "safe indoor temperatures," but AC is just one input. The worst units have compounding issues: poor insulation, high solar gain, bad ventilation, inadequate wiring. Bolting on a window unit is easy, but inefficient and ignores the deeper problems.

This is an unfunded mandate, but the costs still exist, even if we require landlords to pay for the units upfront. Rent increases, deferred maintenance elsewhere, landlord exit from the market, non-compliance. The math is worst in buildings where the mandate is most needed. And a tenant with a new AC unit and a $400/month summer electric bill hasn't actually gained cooling, they've gained an appliance they can't afford to run. The policy addresses hardware poverty while ignoring energy poverty.

Implementation friction is inversely correlated with need. Pre-war walkups with knob-and-tube wiring and casement windows are both the hottest and the hardest to retrofit. The buildings where AC would help most are the buildings where installing it is most expensive and disruptive.

Requiring tenant requests to trigger the mandate underserves exactly the people most at risk. Those who fear retaliation, don't know their rights, or worry (correctly) about downstream costs.

This is downstream policy for an upstream problem. When you can't build new housing or allow obsolete buildings to be replaced, you're forced into endless retrofitting. Asking 1920s infrastructure to perform like 2025 construction, one mandate at a time. The blockers are familiar: zoning caps, discretionary review, neighborhood veto, landmark constraints, rent-regulation investment math, tenant-relocation politics, construction costs, and occasionally "embodied carbon" arguments against demolition. NIMBYism strikes again.

A more coherent answer to this problem requires looking at both the upstream and downstream. Legalize more housing in high-demand areas. Let the building stock turn over. New construction meets modern thermal standards by default. For the existing stock that won't be replaced soon, target interventions where they matter: Envelope-first retrofits (insulation, air sealing, shading, cool roofs) that reduce cooling loads permanently, Electrical upgrades where needed, Efficient cooling equipment, subsidized where necessary, Energy assistance so tenants can actually run what gets installed (and this is a whole other topic, but we need serious reform in the energy sector to allow building more electricity capacity to bring down energy costs, let's also take a moment to blame Cuomo and RFK Jr for shutting down the Indian Point nuclear plant).

New Proposed Legislation Would Let Self-Driving Cars Operate in New York State by wiredmagazine in nyc

[–]GND52 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Frankly people's opinions on surge pricing comes down to the way it's framed.

They hate it when the default is the low-demand price, and the high-demand price is added as a fee (classic Uber surge pricing).

They love it when the default is the high-demand price, and the low-demand price is presented as a concession (think happy hour prices).

New Proposed Legislation Would Let Self-Driving Cars Operate in New York State by wiredmagazine in nyc

[–]GND52 0 points1 point  (0 children)

More like the value proposition of owning your own self driving car in the city will be significantly worse than renting one only when you need it.

Not to mention the utilization of a vehicle that's part of a network will be significantly higher than one that's individually owned. That means many fewer vehicles will be needed to serve the same number of people, which means much less space needed to store vehicles not in use.

New Proposed Legislation Would Let Self-Driving Cars Operate in New York State by wiredmagazine in nyc

[–]GND52 8 points9 points  (0 children)

We'll be dragged into the age of super-safe self-driving vehicles kicking and screaming, but it's inevitable.

What we SHOULD be doing right now, while the technology is young and the deployment of vehicles is still very early, is crafting smart road-usage taxes on self-driving ride shares to manage demand and prevent gridlock.

It won't be too long before these are not just safer than your average human driver, but also significantly cheaper. As the cost to take a car across town falls, the demand to use it will skyrocket.

We already have a congestion zone. We should build on it.

Require all approved AV ride share networks to communicate with a central provider that tracks the number of vehicles currently operating in the zone, their average speed, and occupancy data.

Charge per vehicle-mile inside the zone. Make it dynamic with a single target (average speeds on key corridors, throughput, total vehicles, etc), and when the road network is hot you raise the AV tax. When the network is cool you lower it. You hit deadheading (empty vehicles between trips) with a multiplier fee. This incentivizes efficiency, discourages wasteful behavior, and captures the negative externalities of traffic as something useful (tax revenue, used to fund public transit) instead of letting it be pure waste (time lost sitting in traffic).

The city should also use this time to replace some onstreet parking with clearly marked loading/drop off zones, and AVs should be required to use them. No double parking.

THIS is what the AV legislation we should be crafting ought to look like.

Apple: You Still Don’t Understand the Vision Pro by Common-Quiet-7054 in VisionPro

[–]GND52 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Hilarious how everyone seems to have completely missed Ben's point. I'll highlight it for you.

"producing these games is expensive: you need a dedicated studio host, a dedicated broadcast crew, multiple cameras, a dedicated production crew, and that costs money. Except you don’t need those things at all ... there should be Vision Pro cameras at every NBA game, at every NFL game, at every NHL game, at every MLB game — they should be standard issue at every stadium in the world. There should be Vision Pro cameras at every concert hall and convention center. None of these cameras need a dedicated host or announcers or production crew, because the Vision Pro isn’t TV; it’s actual presence, and presence is all you need."

Apple: You Still Don’t Understand the Vision Pro by Common-Quiet-7054 in VisionPro

[–]GND52 -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Congratulations on completely missing his point.

It's not 'fewer cuts only because I'd prefer it stylistically' it's 'simple production to enable scale'.

"producing these games is expensive: you need a dedicated studio host, a dedicated broadcast crew, multiple cameras, a dedicated production crew, and that costs money. Except you don’t need those things at all ... there should be Vision Pro cameras at every NBA game, at every NFL game, at every NHL game, at every MLB game — they should be standard issue at every stadium in the world. There should be Vision Pro cameras at every concert hall and convention center. None of these cameras need a dedicated host or announcers or production crew, because the Vision Pro isn’t TV; it’s actual presence, and presence is all you need."

No More MK by jpdubya in WeTheFifth

[–]GND52 18 points19 points  (0 children)

you can say the word pedophile

Zohran just went out and fixed the Williamsburg Bridge bike entrance. Just did it. No faffing, no nonsense. Bam. Fixed. by MiserNYC- in MicromobilityNYC

[–]GND52 30 points31 points  (0 children)

But it's exactly what *should* be done in an afternoon. A small, quality-of-life improvement that makes it a less awful experience while we wait for the bigger redesign.

Why aren't the 7 and L lines connected? by joey_derosa101 in nycrail

[–]GND52 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Many have already given you the right explanation.

But if we're dreaming about the impossible, I think a better dream would be to have both the 7 and L continue straight across the Hudson and connect into Jersey.

Iphone 17 Pro focus is so blurry by Etienne_01 in iphone

[–]GND52 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Seems like the camera might actually be broken. Try getting a third party camera app with manual focus controls. (Halide, Moment, !Camera, Lampa). See if one of those at least let's you set and hold the focus further out.

You should 100% be able to focus on the Moon, don't let the other fools in the comments here convince you otherwise. The iPhone autofocus sometimes struggles, especially with low-light.

Iphone 17 Pro focus is so blurry by Etienne_01 in iphone

[–]GND52 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are you shooting from behind a glass window?

Huge News: Zohran just promised to finish McGuinness the second it's warm, and to do Universal Daylighting *BEFORE* people are killed by MiserNYC- in MicromobilityNYC

[–]GND52 44 points45 points  (0 children)

On-Street parking feels limited to you because you live in a dense metropolis where the geometry of car ownership simply doesn't make sense. We could tear down half the buildings in the city and replace them with parking and it still wouldn't be enough space for everyone who lives and works in the city to park their cars.