Tag: nyc

Menu Danger

Menu littering is a huge problem in New York City. The increasingly competitive takeout and delivery industry hires their delivery guys during off hours to foist menus under the doors of apartment dwellers. It is now routine to come home to a pile of duplicate menus on my door mat — not only annoying but a total waste of paper. Moreover, buildings routinely get fined by the city’s department of sanitation if the menus are left near the front door of the building.

EveryBlock

We aim to collect all of the news and civic goings-on that have happened recently in your city, and make it simple for you to keep track of news in particular areas. We’re a geographic filter — a “news feed” for your neighborhood, or, yes, even your block.

holovatys next mashup
2008-01-25: nice job. hopefully nice visualization like this will increase government transparency. like, why is the crime data several months old?

Midtown Lunch

So here’s the deal… if you work in an office, then you know how lazy people are when it comes to lunch. And nowhere is that more true than in Midtown Manhattan. 1 block in either direction is about as far as most people will go, and usually it’s just for a crappy, overpriced salad or sandwich. I’m not one of those people. To me, lunch hour is sacred- and I’m not going to waste it in some generic overpriced “deli” (unless it doubles as an all you can eat buffet.) This site will hopefully be a place for you to find the gems in a sea of duds, wherever it is your work.

Free Transit

If you were to design the ultimate system, you would have mass transit be free and charge an enormous amount for cars.

+1!
2008-01-12:

A group called the Nurture Nature Foundation, founded by New York labor lawyer and negotiator Ted Kheel, will soon release a study showing how New York’s subways and buses could be free. The tradeoff? Making auto trips into central Manhattan more expensive–much more expensive.

now this would be real progress: $16 tax on cars entering the city
2020-03-20:

These agencies’ leaders envision fare-free transit achieving 2 urgent goals simultaneously. First and foremost, the move can help protect transit passengers and employees. Free transit can also offer another benefit: a financial cushion to riders struggling during the pandemic.

this would be a good time to stop the insane nonsense of only allowing access to the bus in the front door, and even worse, carrying a bunch of coins.

NYPD entrapment

Despite anyone finding a lost wallet having 10 days by law to return it, NYPD is using entrapment techniques to immediately arrest anyone who picks up planted wallets and bags which are now seeded with credit cards to make it a felony (instead of just cash which was a misdomeaner). 50% of the people arrested had no previous criminal record whatsoever.

NYPD continues to be stupid.

LIRR FOIA

We are suing the Long Island Rail Road because they have failed to comply with the Freedom Of Information Law, rejecting our request for their schedule data in a digital table format. 3 times we have asked for LIRR’s schedule information in this format, and 3 times they have denied our request. For such a simple and easy request their obstinance is confounding. So now my lawyers and I are taking them to court to MAKE them give it to us.

the problem with FOIA is that agencies can respond with crap like “here are our schedules in pdf, have fun”

MTA Wifi

woo. not sure what the MTA has to “test” wifi for, but if we’ll get wifi in all stations.
2012-09-26: Free WiFi in the NYC subway? You could probably outfit all 200 underground stops for 20m and then put a captive portal on it for millions to enjoy per day. Or make them solve captchas: an underground workforce gasping for bandwidth.
2012-09-26: Free Wifi in the NYC subway? You could probably outfit all 200 underground stops for 20m and then put a captive portal on it for millions to enjoy per day. Or make them solve captchas: an underground workforce gasping for bandwidth.