They will probably gain way more by the removal of parking lots that comes with it than by losing rides to pedestrian traffic or bikes.
NYC doesn’t have a lot of surface parking lots.
Readit Newsmeagher commented on Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City cnbc.com/2025/08/22/waymo... · Posted by u/achristmascarl
meagher commented on Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City cnbc.com/2025/08/22/waymo... · Posted by u/achristmascarl
meagher commented on Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City cnbc.com/2025/08/22/waymo... · Posted by u/achristmascarl
I'm not sure why you think waymo would fight against that. People getting rid of their own cars for daily use will increase how often a service like waymo is used for occasional usage. In the long run it would be a win for waymo. Not many people are taking taxis on a daily basis in New York for normal driving, they buy a car if they need to do that because even with the parking bill they will still come out ahead. And once they have their own car they feel like they need to get some use out of it.
> not sure why you think waymo would fight against that
If you were to pedestrianize 10% of Manhattan (or for example all of Broadway, which is being considered), then that’s less area for Waymo to operate and make money. To be clear, this is likely more of a long term issue.
meagher commented on Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City cnbc.com/2025/08/22/waymo... · Posted by u/achristmascarl
> pedestrianizing more of the city
Replacing dangerous, dirty, noisy cars with safe, clean, and quiet ones seems like a huge pedestrianizing step.
What's a "low traffic neighborhood"? Does that allow busses or deliveries?
It’s a step in the right direction, but they still pollute (heavy electric vehicles have a lot more tire dust) and take up a lot space (could close roads and build housing or just have more space for the millions of city residents that don’t have/use cars).
LTN still allow buses, emergency vehicles, deliveries, etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Traffic_Neighbourhood
meagher commented on Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City cnbc.com/2025/08/22/waymo... · Posted by u/achristmascarl
Believe it or not, NYC is actually the safest city in the country for pedestrians and bicyclists.[1]
[1]https://www.wagnerreese.com/most-dangerous-cities-cyclists-p...
I’d believe it, but the fact that any pedestrians/bikers are killed/injured by cars in NYC is unacceptable.
meagher commented on Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City cnbc.com/2025/08/22/waymo... · Posted by u/achristmascarl
This is great long term for having cars that follow traffic laws since human drivers in NYC are awful (kill/injure pedestrians, bikers, and other street users all the time).
Not so great for getting cars out of NYC and pedestrianizing more of the city/moving towards more “low traffic neighborhoods” as I imagine Waymo and other similar companies are going to fight against these efforts.
Edit: Lots of people talking about human drivers taking advantage of self-driving cars being more cautious/timid. Good news is that once you have enough self-driving cars on the road, it probably slows down/calms other traffic (see related research on speed governors).
meagher commented on Making Your Own Merchant Service Provider voidfox.com/blog/payment_... · Posted by u/progval
Problem with accepting crypto is the on-ramp/off-ramp to fiat
Everybody, except for the few that are holding crypto and expect it to irrationally keep rising forever, are looking to convert it into ironically fiat money which they swear is the enemy.
This means other than bordering purely illegal or prohibited businesses that payment processors cannot handle (remember there are adult processors too), crypto will never become mainstream replacement for fiat.
Right now liquidity is there to absorb the ramping process but long term observers will note how fragile and quickly this can go away. Already, the number of new wallets being created on Bitcoin is plummeting. Search terms for bitcoin has tapered off. There is almost no real interest in it being a replacement for fiat or gold.
I wish gold could become more accepted but we all know the history of e-gold and many of us know its connection to Bitcoin and its curious proximity of origin.
It's just not a good look for companies selling mainstream products to suddenly accept a medium which is clearly being used for pump and dump and laundering of money for transnational crime and no amount of gaslighting or pushing crypto will change it, in fact it achieves the opposite of their goals.
We might at some point see a digital currency but this would be completely different from the crypto in existence today and all stablecoins that isn't issued by the government runs the risk of reporting what is different than what is there in the vaults as if governments haven't been caught doing this in the past. ex) Tether's reserves unaudited unverified mystery
Seems possible that on/off-ramps are leveled up in the next few years as Stripe and other large financial institutions all try to launch and dominate stablecoins.
meagher commented on Making Your Own Merchant Service Provider voidfox.com/blog/payment_... · Posted by u/progval
meagher commented on Making Your Own Merchant Service Provider voidfox.com/blog/payment_... · Posted by u/progval
In 2018, Patreon almost got kicked off of Stripe because Mastercard objected to NSFW content (probably because of PACs and/or “moralizing busybodies”). Patreon booted most of the NSFW creators and OnlyFans scooped them up. OnlyFans is now significantly bigger than Patreon.
It would be interesting to know the fleet-level statistics for this. Driven by humans, EV might wear tires faster because of fast starts and the extra weight during stops. It's possible that the Waymo Driver accelerates and decelerates more smoothly, resulting in less tire wear than a human-driven ICE vehicle.