maxaf

Yes, that's what the liberals are saying. They're yelling for more humanity, but they want it to come at someone else's expense. This isn't my principle; it's the liberals'. I'm not the one who should be meditating on anything, as I'm also not the one preventing affordable housing from being built.

American liberals are always yelling for more “humanity”, but they keep quiet about the requirement that humanity must come at someone else’s expense. Yes, we need cheaper housing - but not here. Yes, guvment must build better jails - but not here. Yes, please run more buses - but not down my street. Yes, we must accept more refugees - but put them somewhere far away, certainly not anywhere near my child’s route to school.

Liberalism and NIMBYism are joined at the hip. Liberalism is loud and ostentatious, while NIMBYism is prosecuted quietly via the court system, lobbying, and political donations. There’s a certain poetic beauty to how both seem to coexist in the same group of people.

As it turns out, journalists aren’t immune to subconscious bias, incompetence, and plain old bribes. So what’s the difference between journalists and me? I agree that it’s a dirty job and someone’s gotta do it, but journalists aren’t the answer.

News outlets and so-called journalists only ever had “credibility” insofar as there wasn’t another information medium by which their claims could be (in)validated. Now that this medium exists (you know, the internet) “journalist” is no longer someone we need to trust, believe, or finance.

> Unless one party is truly in it for the money, there is very little advantage to it other than the social acceptance that comes from being married which is vanishing anyway.

There are other tangible advantages that you’re overlooking. Immigration and medical proxy are two that come to mind. I also find it convenient that my wife cannot be compelled to testify against me, or I against her.

This article and the sad reality it portrays reminded me of Episode 16 of Timesuck: “Is we getting dumberest?”[0] The most obvious conclusion to be drawn is that the brightest and most educated members of our species are incapable of producing offspring because our society does not support them economically. Throw another reason into the “why we’re getting dumber” bucket.

[0]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uxUXDfvBZ7o

One way is to define a set of bullet points that are representative of the team’s culture. This isn’t always easy, but is a worthwhile exercise even outside the context of hiring. Think: a localized version of the Joel Test. These values can be objective (“we strive for 100% test coverage”) and subjective (“we value communication over process”). Every candidate can be ranked relative to these values. The most important factor here is to rank every single candidate against every single value. This will most likely lead to additional questions for some candidates, such as, “tell us about a time when you found communication or process more helpful than the other, and how it made you feel”.

The point of a transparent process would be to make the rubric as non-subjective as possible. A "how much they like me" criterion, if it were still part of the decision, would become very obvious if/when a company selected some candidate that was not in fact "the best" according to their transparent rubric.

At FANG-style companies the decidedly non-transparent process is already well known and is gamed on a regular basis.

Hiring decisions can be made defensible by openly publishing a transparent process that reveals metrics at the end for all candidates.

There are metered parking zones all over Manhattan. Many are commercial-only during the day, but revert to regular meters after a certain hour. There are copious bus lanes on many major thoroughfares, which are legal to park in outside of peak commuting hours. In some areas the street sweeper dance starts the evening before, leaving many spots unoccupied after drivers have absconded in search of parking spaces that won’t see a sweeper while the drivers are at work the next day.

I use all of these hacks and more to make it possible to zip around town in a personal car.

I wish I could upvote you twice!

I’m one of the minority of Manhattan residents who use a private car instead of transit. My schedule and routes are unusual enough that transit doesn’t serve me. Even when doing a more traditional UWS->Financial District commute, I often prefer to drive because of the knock-on benefits: I can shop at Eataly and bring home some goodies for the family; I can make stops at a few stores along the way that would otherwise be too far from the standard subway commute route. I don’t enjoy sitting in traffic, but it’s so much easier for me than any other alternative. I pick my travel times to minimize delays for myself (and presumably others) and I’m tired of being labeled an entitled snob, an idiot, or a murderer of cyclists.

Are you saying that Apple is the market maker for some shady marketplace of code signing certs?

It's an acceptable price to pay for security. This price is dictated not by Apple, but by all the malicious actors who have abused the frictionless path from dev to user in order to distribute virii, malware, adware, spyware, and all the other crap that non-technical uses have been contending with for decades.

What the media can dig up is usually some small proportion of the real story, assuming that what they have is true to begin with.

Apple’s position is that the average user isn’t supposed to be installing apps from outside the App Store anyway. Who is the average user, you ask? No one who posts to or reads HN, that’s for sure. Your parents, grandparents, and clueless neighbors are all average users. They will benefit from the decrease in malware and increase in assurance that the app won’t do something fishy.

Everyone else will bypass protections and continue as before.

How people use e-anything in Manhattan already gives me a heart attack. These things are 100% silent, go 25 mph on a flat surface, and are illegal here without a license. In fact, I’d prefer a heart attack to being hit by one.

I’ve flagged your comment for non-constructive tone. Please be civil. Regarding,

> And how will that fix plastic pollution you leave everywhere from the tires on your car?

You literally just found out about this with the rest of us. Buses and bicycles are afflicted by the same problem, since tire technology is the same everywhere. I’m sure a new material can be found; there’s no need to forever condemn ground transport just because the current implementation of tires is faulty.

> plenty of cities around the world with reliable and effecient public transport, don't write it off completely because NYC's is subpar.

I'm certainly not writing off public transit as a concept. I'd love to be able to step out of my building, step into a magical conveyance that I didn't have to drive myself, and step out next to my destination.

It's great that other cities managed to solve this problem, but I don't live in those other cities. Yes, NYC could right itself, and build more subway/tram/BRT lines, but this tends to take forever. I need to get places now. My life won't wait for the city to sort itself out.

> The fact that you equate building 200 miles of bike lanes to "pushing drivers out"

I haven't actually said that, so please don't put words in my mouth. I myself am an "intermodal" traveler, in that I do use bikes when I travel solo; I simply can't transport my 11 year old daughter by bike with two backpacks. I'm in favor of installing more bike lanes, as these tend to get cyclists out of the way of cars. Mixing slow cyclists with fast cars couldn't have been a worse idea, so shunting the two modes of traffic into separate spaces makes a lot of sense for us drivers. Likewise, when I ride a bike, I find myself relaxing more in a dedicated lane than when I'm forced to weave between cars to get anywhere.

I don’t know how things are in Paris (never really been), but here in NYC public transit is extremely unreliable and optimized for only one use case: to move 9-5 commuters between their homes in the outer boroughs and the two central business districts of Manhattan. For any other use case the transit system is basically useless. For example, my kid needs to get from school to swim practice multiple times a week. School and swim team schedules are set in stone, but there isn’t a public transit option that will allow the two to coexist without incredible daily feats of arbitrage between ride share and a hellish commute involving two buses. This is physically impossible, not merely inconvenient.

Let’s not pretend that transit can solve for the needs of every single city resident. If the city has any ambition to be a melting pot for all, it needs to allow everyone to coexist. Some people will choose to drive, others will take transit, but to push one group out in favor of another will leave the city a hollowed out core once again... just like it was before the urban renaissance which began in the 1990s.

PS: If your main objection to cars is pollution, we’ll mosey on over to electric cars as soon as charging infrastructure gets off the ground. There’s only a smattering of Teslas in Manhattan, but soon enough there will be enough charging stations to get our gas guzzlers off the road for good.

> Penalties for offences whilst driving are often extreme in their leniency compared to same impact caused by other means.

Yes, yes, absolutely. That was my point: change laws to bring punishment in line with crime.

If people can be nudged by street design or transparent B-pillars, they can also be nudged by heavy penalties that are commensurate with the deed.

I didn’t miss the point of the article; I simply strongly disagree with it. I oppose the constant drive to diminish the need to act responsibly. The idea of “baseline distraction” is used to provide an excuse for killing and maiming other humans. If your loved one were killed by a “baseline distracted” driver who blamed the collision on vehicle and road design, would you consider it fair? Would you willingly lay your child, spouse, or parent on the sacrificial pyre signaling the need for better cars or roads?

Life isn’t some kind of A/B experiment. Stop treating it like one, and stop moving blame from yourself to others.

Drivers are the ones subject to licensing and insurance requirements. Drivers are the ones operating heavy machinery. Drivers are thus the responsible party, even when pedestrians are clearly not looking out for their own safety. There’s never any downside to being the bigger person and watching out for the well being of fellow humans, even those who should really know better.

This is a contrived situation that never actually happens (even here in Manhattan, arguably the craziest place on Earth), but I’ll address it anyway. Where pedestrians are present, there’s never a sound reason for any vehicle operator to accelerate to speeds at which “stopping instantly” becomes the only logical (and physically impossible) option for avoiding a car-on-ped collision. Drive slowly, and suddenly a whole host of problems go away. NYC lowered its default speed limit from 30mph to 25mph a few years ago. This helped traffic move more smoothly and reduced the number of collisions involving pedestrians.

Do you want to spend a year in prison for running over a pedestrian? Does anyone else?

Cars don’t kill pedestrians; drivers kill pedestrians. This is a case of lopsided stakes: pedestrians have everything to lose in case of car-on-ped collision, while drivers will merely have their day’s schedule derailed. The fundamental problem here is that drivers simply don’t care, and fail to operate their vehicles with due compassion towards vulnerable road users. An attentive driver who accelerates modestly and takes the time to become sure of his surroundings will not collide with anything: pedestrian, cyclist, another vehicle, or street furniture.

I believe strongly in robust mechanisms for keeping drivers responsible. Unfortunately, at least where I live, the justice system is completely impotent and unwilling to punish drivers for causing serious bodily harm or death. A system of heavy fines or imprisonment targeted at drivers would have resolved the inattention issue quicker than a typical driver can make a three-point turn. A year’s worth of income, or one year of imprisonment, for any car-on-ped collision would do the trick.

> - Why were you selected for the team and who selected you?

I was there, I was breathing, I was on the payroll.

This one made me laugh out loud.

You’re thinking of median, not average, but your question stands.