adrianparsons

Great writeup! I work with NYC open data but did not know about this dataset!

> Garages make up one-fifth of NYC buildings

I'm quite surprised by this.

Veritasium has a great video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pir_muTzYM8

Yes! He organized a barebones conference out of the Meetup office in New York. The premise was that all attendees would do a 10 minute talk on any subject (I think it was called 10conf?). Mikeal spoke about his pour-over coffee setup while using it to make coffee for everyone.

I really enjoyed time I spent with him and appreciated his kindness and leadership in the community. My thoughts are with his family and loved ones.

This was an aside at the end of the article, but what an interesting strategy:

I bought the stock for the same reason I buy stock in every hotel, airline, bank, and similar I use: in the unlikely event a not-particularly-high-stakes poker player has a routine customer service complaint, Investor Relations is available as an escalation strategy, over e.g. hotel staff who might be long-since inured to listening to complaints from people who lost money in a casino.

It sounds like this is already the case, somewhat. The article says:

> Ambetter was obligated by state law to provide one outside of its network if Ravi couldn’t find one in a “timely manner” — which, in Arizona, meant within 60 days.

(They didn't)

Compared to overtime, though, which cost $800M+ in 2023, lawsuit settlements by the NYPD only cost $115M in the same year[0].

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/nyregion/nypd-police-misc...

Similarly, I was surprised by the "lawsuit settlements" section on this Lieutenant's page on the referenced 50-a.org site

https://www.50-a.org/officer/JPRP

> Right now if you want to create content for Netflix you need to buy like a $30,000 camera .

Just noting that the official guide[0] lists a number of cheaper cameras, including one that retails for $2k (the Panasonic BGH1).

0: https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/360...

I laugh when I see these because I've witnessed the process that leads to them. It goes something like:

  1. Relatively confusing UX is designed and built.
  2. User testing or executive review concludes the UX is relatively confusing.
  3. Product Manager says "We'll build a slideshow/interactive tutorial!" to solve the problem.

The process and end result is completely understandable. It's hard to rehash a design when you've already built it and gotten buy-in.

I want to spend as little time as possible with most tools (especially enterprise tools), and so often these interrupt my work.

I just have to say the the entire Hokusai exhibition currently on view at MFA Boston[0] is very very cool. Great Wave is on display (as shown on this site), but the dozens of other prints (From Hokusai, Hiroshige, and others) are just incredible.

0: https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/hokusai-inspiration-and-influ...

State and local laws matter a lot. I moved to a tenant-friendly state (NY) from a tenant-unfriendly state (Texas). NY has much stronger protections for renters. Better eviction laws, access to housing court, and actual enforcement of housing laws.

Yesterday's post about Ikea[0] reminded me of this company that exclusively sells cardboard furniture.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35700751

Further afield, but may I also recommend the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas and the smaller but also great Silverball Museum in Asbury Park, NJ.

http://www.pinballmuseum.org/

https://www.silverballmuseum.com/asbury-park/

> can you give me examples where fire codes are over-zealous?

There's a small movement to eradicate the requirement for midrise buildings to have 2 stairways. Advocates point to European regulations and claim that a single stairway is just as safe as 2.

Double stairways, they say, makes construction more expensive and results in awkward, undesirable apartment layouts.

https://slate.com/business/2021/12/staircases-floor-plan-twi...

Wow, bad timing for Eve Air Mobility, who just started trading on the NYSE this morning.

https://evtol.com/news/eve-goes-public-nyse-zanite-sharehold...

For electronics, B&H photo is good, too! (Also I'm in NYC and they're a local company with local distribution centers)

They could, but WeWork has a nice network of spaces. We have seamlessly moved from one WeWork building to another in the same city, opened up satellite offices in other cities, etc. It's also nice to be able to reserve a workspace or conference room in other cities when I'm traveling.

I'm impressed with how small the dev team was, how much fun they seemed to have working, and how much freedom and creativity they had. I wonder if we stifle innovation by building crazy large hierarchies.

I noticed this the last time I was in Berlin. A cafe can process a line of 10 people paying cash very quickly.

Is that a fair comparison? I'm actually asking, I don't know anything about CPU development. It just seems like it's a different kind of work entirely.

Ah, gotcha. That makes some sense to me.

Would you call pre-streaming Netflix a tech startup? It feels like a startup to me, but at first it was just Blockbuster through the mail.

Maybe the difficulty in categorizing is that every company today has to use technology. When Netflix started out, getting a DVD in the mail was pretty novel. Nowadays, e-commerce doesn't have quite the "wow" factor it used to.

pg has some thoughts on what a "startup" is [0].

I used Warby Parker as an example because their business model is disruptive, they're high-growth, and they leverage technology. I think the disruption and innovation are really important aspects.

0: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

I live in NYC and the main difference I noticed about food in CA is how produce-centric it is. NYC food is incredible, but eating out usually means meat, cheese, and bread.

I completely agree.

I also love the influence NYC industries have on tech startups. Warby Parker is tech+fashion, Buzzfeed is tech+media, Betterment is tech+finance.

This makes total sense. Uber & Lyft lowered the barrier to entry for private transportation. Instead of paying $20,000 for a car, I only need $10 and I can ride in comfort from lower Manhattan to Brooklyn.

Nice. from that Wiki article:

  An alternative to using leaky feeder in underground railways is to use Distributed Antenna System (DAS). A DAS system was deployed in some New York City Subway stations by Transit Wireless to provide WiFi and mobile phone and data coverage for customers.

I wonder what the pros and cons are for each solution.

Interesting, I wonder why. Stockholm's subway was built in 1950[0], which is a bit newer than NYC's. That may or may not explain why.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_metro

This is so cool!

I would love more time radii (30 minutes, 15 minutes)!

Similarly, I wonder what awesome things could be done if we didn't spend such a high percentage of our GDP on health care.