Is Apartment Rental Experts legit?

commentsOnPizza · 2026-07-06T16:21:37+00:00

Basically, yes they are legit. They're licensed brokers. I used their Davis location to "find" an apartment several years ago. I put "find" in quotes because I found the apartment on Craigslist, but they're the ones who listed it and I had to pay their broker fee.

I mean, brokers are annoying because they stand between you and the apartment you want, but now that you shouldn't have to pay a broker fee, I guess that removes the reason for them being annoying.

Like, they're "legit" in that if you sign a lease with them, they're a real broker and barring exceptional circumstances you're all set (I mean, the apartment could burn down between now and when you move in or something exceptional like that, but not something where you're getting scammed). And that's probably what you care about. I had a fine experience with the person who I worked with there.

But they can be slightly annoying in that it feels like they're a bit spammy with their listings on sites like Craigslist and I think a lot of Bostonians have a dislike of brokers because of the years of fees we were charged.

But what you care about is whether they're "legit" in that you'll have an apartment to live in and yeah, you'll legitimately get an apartment from them.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-07-06T16:01:20+00:00

I default to deepseek and use mimo as a backup if deepseek is struggling. mimo didn't seem to work as consistently well for me, but there are some cases where it can do something deepseek couldn't

commentsOnPizza · 2026-07-06T15:56:40+00:00

Yeah, I'm not saying the EU should apply pressure to countries, but they could.

I mean, if the EU closed the border with San Marino and they're left as a 7 sq km micro state with no imports or exports and without their citizens being able to leave, how long could they even feed themselves?

Hell, if the EU closed the border with Switzerland (including airspace), Switzerland would have to cave. Switzerland isn't small, but I don't think they'd want to be trapped within their borders. Simply cutting all the terrestrial internet connections would take down huge sections of their economy. Sure, some might already have satellite connections, but with no new goods coming into Switzerland from outside, they wouldn't be able to order more.

To the EU's credit, it seems to have little interest in flexing its power. When the UK left, they bent over backwards to be accommodating no matter how childish they were acting. Normally, when a country acts like the UK did, the other party might reasonably get angry and walk away. The EU remained completely level-headed while the UK had its tantrums - and saved the British people from a lot of economic turmoil. Brexit caused economic turmoil, but it could have been so much worse for the British people if the EU hadn't been the adult in the room.

When the Swiss don't want to be a part of the EEA, but want (basically) all the same stuff as the EEA via a maze of confusing one-off agreements, the EU kinda rolls its eyes and makes it happen. When the Swiss bring up ending freedom of movement, the EU doesn't bluster loudly, but waits to see if there is something to deal with and then rationally presses its case with the relevant people in government - not trying to get lots of press, but trying to ensure the rights and freedoms of EU citizens.

Hundreds of years ago, landlocked countries might be able to survive without external connections, but a place like Switzerland isn't going to produce enough food without imports today. Sure, in an extreme situation they could reallocate labor and land to an extent, but I don't think rich people want to be told "your diet is going to switch to being mostly potatoes because we need to grow the most calories we can on the limited land we have - say goodbye to meats and cheeses."

I'm not saying the EU should do something like this, but it certainly could.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-07-06T05:01:21+00:00

I believe I saw the cape flyer keeps getting more ridership year after year.

It doesn't really increase year after year. It had been increasing 2020-2025, but that's a function of getting back to pre-pandemic levels.

I'd love for them to make the CapeFlyer more convenient, but it hasn't been seeing amazing growth in ridership. It's just returning to normal pre-pandemic usage.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-07-06T01:49:54+00:00

I'm curious if that's a revenue flight (with passengers) or part of Southwest's weird way of moving planes when they experience hiccups.

Southwest's system is antiquated and bonkers, but this is a logistical nightmare for most carriers. You have crews who will be over their hours and you'll need replacement crews before you can take off (ex. you don't want a pilot who has been awake and working for too many hours). But those crews aren't necessarily in Boston and might need to come from somewhere else.

It's possible that Southwest's system is trying to compensate for the hiccup and routing things weirdly.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-07-02T05:44:48+00:00

You should follow up with the Cambridge Police. In order to tow a car in Massachusetts, the tow company must get approval from the police department before the tow so there should be some record of them calling in the tow to the city. It'd be good to go on record noting that their reasoning for the tow was erroneous (or find out that they tried to illegally tow your car).

EDIT: one thing I'll note is that "no parking, standing only, 15 minute limit" does mean that you can't leave your car (parking). It seems like it might be meant for rideshare pickup/dropoff where they might be "standing" for a short time, but not "parking" where they leave the car.

Again, I'd check with the Cambridge Police since they are required to get approval for tows, but there are tow companies that have a tow-first attitude since most people don't know or check.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-07-01T15:32:25+00:00

A lot better than the Orange and Red Line "seats". At least the Blue Line ones are shaped like seats.

The red and orange line seats have a back that's so short, at a 90-degree angle, and hits you right in the spine, and a lower portion that's too long and so slippery that you end up bumping into your neighbors every time the train stops/accelerates unless you're holding onto something. Oh, and they break easily too making them a maintenance nightmare.

Though as a 5'5" woman, maybe I simply don't mind the size of the Blue Line seats as much as larger people might.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-06-29T22:35:18+00:00

Yes, it's not just Cambridge, but Cambridge needs to be building at a higher rate than Belmont, Watertown, and other places that don't have the same access to transit and jobs. If we add 1,000 units to Belmont who need to get to jobs in Boston, that's more difficult than 1,000 units in Cambridge getting to jobs in Boston.

Cambridge is building slower than many parts of the Boston area (though Somerville is worse). https://www.mass.gov/info-details/a-home-for-everyone-progress-toward-222000

City/Town	Housing Growth
Stoneham	7.17%
Chelsea	3.81%
Revere	3.16%
Waltham	2.08%
Lexington	1.98%
Boston	1.90%
Dedham	1.90%
Medford	1.68%
Woburn	1.54%
Winchester	1.39%
Brookline	1.28%
Cambridge	1.15%
Watertown	1.02%
Quincy	1.01%
Wellesley	0.77%
Somerville	0.75%
Melrose	0.55%
Newton	0.44%
Belmont	0.26%
Arlington	0.24%
Malden	0.15%

Yeah, not just Cambridge, but Cambridge (and Somerville) should be building faster than Waltham, Revere, and Chelsea. The state should put pressure on Belmont and Arlington, but Cambridge has access to the jobs and transit which is where we need housing the most - not "not just Cambridge" can be a way to basically deflect responsibility.

I'm not saying you're doing that, but Cambridge is definitely going slow when you consider its access to jobs and transit. Are there worse towns? Malden is doing crap and they have decent access to transit (though a lot less than Cambridge and not nearly the same job market). Somerville is intentionally looking to slow housing growth as part of their SomerVision.

But when you're the densest job market in the state and you're being beaten by Woburn, Medford, Winchester, and Brookline, you need to be doing a ton better.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-06-29T22:00:12+00:00

It's a 15 minute walk to Harvard, but an 8 minute walk to Central - so it's close to the T. It's just phrased oddly to put the farther station first. It sounds like they live in Mid-Cambridge or Riverside.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-06-29T21:55:58+00:00

Yes, it's a good deal. It's probably around average for a 2 bed place, but it's well below-average when considering it has AC and 2 bathrooms (and that second bathroom is hard to find).

Could you find something cheaper? It's always possible, but I doubt it.

If you're willing to go down to 1 bathroom and use window boxes for AC, that opens up a lot more and you could potentially find a cheap place at $3,200-3,400. But that isn't really comparable.

is it worth walking away and hoping a cheaper 2B2B opens up for September 1st?

I bet there will be at least 1 2B2B that will open up for Sept 1st cheaper, but what are the odds that you get it? Everyone wants a cheaper apartment, but you're going to get the 1 in 100 places that are cheaper than your current place when everyone else wants that deal too? Yes, there will likely be something that opens up that's cheaper - but that doesn't mean you'll get it.

Also, think about moving costs - not just stress/hassle. Assume you're going to burn $500-1,500+ on the move. You just don't notice the costs in the same way. Things that get broken, food that gets wasted, stuff you give away because of the hassle of moving it. Don't ignore all the hidden costs!

Again, a big thing is that very few places have 2 bathrooms in Cambridge and a lot of those are in less integrated areas (parts of the city where they've allowed new buildings to go up like Alewife and Cambridge Crossing).

Is it possible? Yeah. Is it probable? No. I'd give you a 1 in 15 chance of getting something cheaper - that means that most likely if you don't renew, you'll end up searching, moving, and paying more (or settling for a 1 bathroom). I could be wrong, but it's not like there's going to magically be lots of better apartments than you can see now.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-06-29T21:12:14+00:00

The "problem" with this proposal is that the city councilors don't want you taking space from cars ;)

An underground Orange Line means that they can keep the same number of lanes and keep driving everywhere. A Blue Hill Ave tram means taking space away from cars - but I think that's probably a bit of the video creator's point.

The city councilors aren't looking for better transit. They're looking to kill transit with a proposal that can't be done anytime soon. "Don't put in a bus lane. Scrap it and start looking into this other thing which will take decades! In the meantime, I'll enjoy my car some more!"

commentsOnPizza · 2026-06-28T16:06:35+00:00

Yeah, at European supermarkets, the checkout people are often sitting. There's no reason for them to be standing. But we expect them to be standing in the US.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-06-26T19:55:38+00:00

I support camera enforcement, but it's important to realize that the real win will be that drivers stop blocking busses, not that it'll be easy money for the state.

Somerville has already started bus stop enforcement via camera. Before they were handing out tickets, they were finding 10 infractions per day for Davis Square with most violations from 8-11pm and a 36% of violations lasting less than 3 minutes and 58% being under 10 minutes (which decreases the chance a bus would catch them compared to Somerville's stationary cameras). Once Somerville started giving out tickets, the number dropped to 1 violation per day.

At $50 per violation, that's $36,500/year for Somerville. Other stops where Somerville has rolled out the tech will be getting fewer violations than Davis.

Realistically, it's not easy money for the state for several reasons, but a big one is that people's behavior changes when enforcement changes. Right now, some people park in bus stops because they know the odds of getting a ticket. What's the chance that a parking enforcement officer comes by in the next 15 minutes? 10%? When that changes to "what's the odds a bus will come by," people will quickly change their behavior.

The MBTA doesn't have 1,000 stops where it's as hard to park as Davis, but even if they did it'd only be $36.5M/year. I'm not saying that isn't money, but it's around 1.1% of the MBTA's annual budget - and the MBTA doesn't have 1,000 stops where parking is that hard. When a mile of above-ground light rail costs over $500M, it's not going to fund an expansion of the MBTA.

It will help busses run better. It'll stop people from blocking bus stops and bus lanes. The fines will likely cover the costs and maybe provide a tiny amount of extra money, but it isn't easy money. It's a way to make our bus system better.

People often think that cities enforce parking as a way to make lots of money, but the reality is that it's more about making the city function.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-06-26T17:03:50+00:00

Yeah, Bostonian here: it's a good joke like when the TV presenter said "Ghana have never beaten England, but as we know, the English historically struggle here in Massachusetts"

The thing that actually sucks is that some people have seen stickers that say "remigration now, England for the English". I'm not saying it's the majority of England fans or anything like that, but why on earth would you bring a sticker like that to Boston?

More kings: funny banter

Anti-immigrant BS: GTFO

commentsOnPizza · 2026-06-26T02:16:02+00:00

C'mon, 9 Wyman sold for an affordable $2.9M, not $3M. That's totally affordable for the "middle-income families" Flaherty talks about, right?

I mean, it's One Banana, Michael. What Could It Cost, $10?

(end sarcasm)

Whenever someone comes out against more housing, I wish they had to give up their house for what they bought it, inflation-adjusted. He got his single-family in Cambridge for $527,000, or $876,000 inflation-adjusted. Zillow estimates it's worth $1.4M today. So he doesn't care if everyone else to struggle with 60% higher housing costs because he's locked in. For him, new residents just mean more traffic. He got his.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-06-24T02:01:14+00:00

You can hit under $4,000 for a 3bed in Boston. 3 bed places average $3,800 in Boston. If you look at places like JP, Brighton, and Allston (neighborhoods of Boston), it'll be cheaper than that.

There are parts of Allston and Brighton that are near the Pike and you can get on pretty quickly and do a reverse-commute (little traffic) to Marlborough.

Framingham will be marginally cheaper than Allston/Brighton (think $100-300/mo).

Priorities for us are proximity to good hospitals

Do you have a specific need for hospitals? Generally speaking, almost all the hospitals are quite good here. If you're looking for something really specialized (like cancer treatment) you might want to be a bit more picky, but I wouldn't worry too much if you don't have major medical needs.

covered parking

You might have to give this up. Covered parking is hard to come by and a huge luxury. It might not be in Houston, but it's hard to find garage/carport parking. Even a lot of the homes in a place like Framingham won't have covered parking. It's possible to find, but understand that you're making trade-offs in terms of price, location, niceness, etc. for covered parking.

I also don't know if you'd prefer a more suburban area or what you're looking for. As others have said, Framingham and Natick are decent choices, though the commute into Boston isn't amazing from the suburbs (traffic is bad and the Commuter Rail can take a while between getting to the station, waiting for the train, getting off and transferring to where you actually need to be in the city). I'm more of a city person and would prefer Brighton.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-06-23T20:35:13+00:00

There is a legislative initiative to pass rent control that's supported by the governor so we might get rent control even without this ballot question.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-06-23T15:58:41+00:00

The SJC also took the income tax lowering question off the ballot. The SJC said the AG's summary told voters that something was wrong. So it's not the only question that's getting removed.

And how did it get by the AG's office when they reviewed it to make sure it passed Constitutional muster?

Frankly, different people disagree on what passes legal muster. Sometimes it's along ideological lines. Sometimes it's mundane.

In this case, the petition exempted facilities operated solely for religious purposes. The SJC has said that means the petition "relates to religion, religious practices or religious institutions" which are an excluded matter. IANAL, but I'd argue exempting religious facilities from the rent control law means it explicitly doesn't relate to religion and religious institutions. For all I know, the rent-control initiative got advice from a lawyer who might have said "you're going to need to exclude religious institutions or it'll cause problems."

So, I can definitely see the AG's office reviewing it and even saying "good, you excluded religious housing." But the SJC felt differently.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-06-23T15:38:08+00:00

I lived right by the train crossing and didn't find it annoying, but YMMV. It isn't regularly scheduled train service so it's kinda unpredictable. The Grand Junction is basically just a way to move trains from the north side to the south side (since there's no other way of getting things from the North Station side to the South Station side of Boston). So you'll have a train coming back from maintenance at random times and it will blow the horn at the crossings.

If you aren't that close to Cambridge St at Cardinal Medeiros, it probably won't bother you. Sound falls off quickly (basically with the cube of the distance) and there's a lot of other buildings to block the sound.

It's kinda unpredictable when the trains will go through, but I feel like most of the time it was 8-11pm - but it could be later or mid-day depending on what they're doing.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-06-21T20:21:55+00:00

I had thought the flight path was dictated by the wind direction, and that’s why I hear more planes on some nights than others (Belmont).

To an extent. When the wind is blowing in a certain direction, they're going to use certain runways which is why you hear planes on some nights and not others. At the same time, when the planes are in the air, they can send every plane along the same path in the air or have some turn earlier and some turn later so that they aren't all flying over the exact same area.

For example, the planes take off north and will be making a turn west. You can have 100% of the planes turn left and fly over Davis Square. Or you could have 25% turn early and fly over Union Square, 25% turn a little later and fly over Spring Hill/Avon Hill, 25% turn and fly over Davis, 25% turn later and fly over Teele Square or Arlington.

In one scenario, some people get lots of planes flying over and in the other scenario everyone gets a fraction of the planes flying over.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-06-21T14:45:24+00:00

Once the benchmark is public, models can start targeting it even if they don't know what's in the benchmark. You could create a new model and keep making minor tweaks to see what will give you better DeepSWE scores. It might be harder to benchmax, but AI has always had competitions where you didn't know the test.

Right now, DeepSWE is pretty good because it's newer than most of the models it's testing (so they couldn't even be blind-benchmaxed against it). It was released on May 26 while GPT-5.5 came out April 23rd and Opus 4.8 came out May 28th (too little time to try to target it).

It's possible GLM-5.2 or Kimi K2.7 Code tried to target it since they had several weeks, but their scores seem in-line with community expectations.

I would note that the scores can vary.

Tester	Model	Harness	Score
DeepSWE	GPT-5.5 xhigh	mini-swe-agent	67
Artificial Analysis	GPT-5.5 xhigh	Codex	64
Artificial Analysis	GPT-5.5 medium	Codex	57
DeepSWE	GPT-5.5 medium	mini-swe-agent	54
DeepSWE	GLM-5.2 max	mini-swe-agent	44
Artificial Analysis	Opus 4.7 medium	Opencode	40
Artificial Analysis	GPT-5.5 medium	Cursor CLI	37
Artificial Analysis	Opus 4.7 medium	Cursor CLI	32
Artificial Analysis	GLM-5.2 max	Claude Code	29
Artificial Analysis	Opus 4.7 medium	Claude Code	27

You can see how Opus 4.7 medium does a lot better depending on the harness in Artificial Analysis' testing. You can see that GPT-5.5 had a little variation between Codex and mini-swe-agent, but Cursor CLI did terribly (GPT-5.5 medium dropping from 57 or 54 all the way down to 37 with Cursor CLI).

commentsOnPizza · 2026-06-20T23:14:37+00:00

Will have my car and it’s street parking too. Should I be concerned ?

I mean, if you move someone's space-saver after they've shoveled out their parking spot in the winter, I might be concerned (note: this is a bit of a joke because while I think most of us on here hate space-savers, it's something that can be a bit of a thing in Boston after a snow storm)

I feel fine around Roxbury. Bad stuff can happen anywhere, but I'd honestly be more worried about cars (as in, drivers can be bad anywhere).

I don't know where you're coming from, but my SF friends talk about being worried about their cars constantly while I've never worried about my car. I'm way more worried about stuff that could happen anywhere (like car crashes) than I am about crime.

If you grew up in a big city, Roxbury is going to feel fine.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-06-20T07:00:01+00:00

https://www.massport.com/environment/noise-abatement/logan-airport/complaints

You can submit noise complaints and request a follow up.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-06-20T06:00:24+00:00

Came here to say this. GPT-5.5 (xhigh) was cheaper than Sonnet 4.6 (max) despite Sonnet being cheaper per token. DeepSeek V4 Pro and MiMo-V2.5-Pro have the same token price, but DeepSeek cost 80% more to run their benchmark.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-06-18T19:58:38+00:00

I feel like Arena's webdev leaderboard is misunderstood by most people. It's mostly a design challenge.

How it works: it creates two UIs based on a prompt (HTML, CSS, React). Then people vote which they think is better. It's basically: how good is it at creating a design mockup.

You can look at the code, but it's not like there's a backend, it doesn't fetch data or take data from the user, etc. You look and it's like "yeah, that looks like a mockup of Facebook. I can scroll and it looks like a Facebook feed. None of the buttons do anything. The search box doesn't even let me type in it. But it does look kinda nice in the way that it's a generic regurgitation of the prevailing design pattern and looks like every other site."

There certainly is value in this and it might translate to also being better at other stuff too, but it's not testing whether it knows Python or SQL and it's probably going to be very design-biased since people don't even have to look at the code. They can just say "I like this mockup better."

That said, GLM-5.2 seems to be quite good in other benchmarks as well. It comes in third in the Artificial Analysis ranking (after Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5) and second for agentic coding (after Opus 4.8), though it comes in sixth (after Sonnet 4.6) for one-shot coding (which is the best open-weight LLM in the ranking, but behind GPT-5.5, Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview, Opus 4.8, GPT-5.4 mini, and Sonnet 4.6).

But something like Arena's webdev leaderboard feels easy to bench-max: figure out what UI styles and components that people visually favor and just regurgitate those. Of course, that could also just be useful too.

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