Taxi Medallion Owner

Plan revealed to increase FHVs from 100k to 150k So much for the hand wringing over congestion, ”creating sidewalk charging stations for the up to 150,000 zero-emission cars it expects professional drivers to be using by 2030.” thecity.nyc/transportation…

New York State population grew 2% in the last decade. State spending grew 24%, inflation adjusted. Again - where did all the money go?

NYC posted its second quarter of more businesses closing than opening. Last time that happened? COVID. Net loss of ~1050 bizs q3 2025, after ~4900 Q2. If we want jobs, we need biz. can’t assume they’ll just stay because it’s nyc. edc.nyc/sites/default/…

NYC Taxi Trips Down 6.8%, Apps Up 2.8%; Is Empower the Growth TLC Can't See? automarketplace.com/newsletter

"Waymo and select Uber and Lyft vehicles are set to enter the third and final phase of a pilot program to allow the companies to drop off and pick up passengers on the road that’s been shuttered to cars since 2020"

NYC and Chicago need this ASAP

Can't state strongly enough how devastating this chart is for New York. Tax generating private sector industries have fled NY & been replaced by the taxpayer funded Medicaid industrial complex. This is what an economic death spiral looks like for a state.

@nytimes Eventually our politicians will treat the subway for its intended purpose of transit instead of a place to warehouse societal ills.

A Florida man who said he never worked for Uber said the app reported income in his name to the IRS. It's the latest example of Uber and other apps struggling to verify who is on their platforms. Source: Business Insider share.google/kLBzs5AGGMosYk…

IRS Sent Tax Bills for Uber, DoorDash Income People Say Isn't Theirs - Business Insider share.google/puiS7MKz4gjrvp…

BREAKING NEWS: KATHY HOCHUL'S CONGESTION TAXATION SCHEME IS DEVASTATING THE BRONX'S AIR QUALITY Predictably, Kathy Hochul’s unlawful congestion taxation scheme is redistributing traffic and pollution into the Bronx. Data from New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene monitors shows deadly increases of PM2.5 at 17 of 19 sites across the borough. Much of this corridor was already designated an environmental justice community, meaning residents were already exposed to disproportionate environmental burdens. Now the policy designed to “clean the air” in Manhattan is: → pushing vehicles north → concentrating emissions in vulnerable neighborhoods → and worsening conditions where the city claims equity matters most cc @SecDuffy

Cooney introduced new legislation to support commuters. His bill would expand pre-tax benefits to cover bicycle rentals and ride-hailing services. It would also include costs linked to bicycle commuting. In addition, Cooney has emerged as a strong supporter of autonomous vehicles

Platforms like Uber require drivers to provide Social Security Numbers to set up a driver account, but illegal immigrants routinely circumvent this by buying or renting active accounts from other people who are legally allowed to have them.

@AndSeparate Conclusion- @nyctaxi TLC has no idea who is behind that wheel. Must really screw up insurance claims when there’s an accident. Ya think?

Conclusion- @nyctaxi TLC has no idea who is behind that wheel. Must really screw up insurance claims when there’s an accident. Ya think?

The New York Times has an article examining how a Nepalese Uber driver named Anup Baniya supports a family on $25k take-home pay. Midway down the article, we learn a shocking fact: Baniya pays $2,400 per month to rent a Toyata RAV4 hybrid SUV. A new RAV4 costs around $32,000 for a base model. The monthly payment on a 60 month financing plan is $629. So why is this guy paying four times that? Because NYC caps the number of licenses it grants for for-hire vehicles, so people with the licenses rent out their cars and plates to people who don't have them for hundreds of dollars per week. But why would anyone take such an arrangement? Why would Baniya pay $30k in overhead to earn $25k? Why doesn't he just walk into a McDonald's and ask for an application? Hourly fast-food workers earn about $40k per year in NYC. According to the article, Baniya drives under this arrangement because he likes being able to choose his own hours, though he complains about the impact of sedentary 10 hour driving shifts on his health. But if you find that unpersuasive, another possible reason someone might work under such an arrangement could be that his legal status bars him from other work (the article does not say whether Baniya is legally allowed to work in the US). Platforms like Uber require drivers to provide Social Security Numbers to set up a driver account, but illegal immigrants routinely circumvent this by buying or renting active accounts from other people who are legally allowed to have them. A recent Transunion survey of gig workers found that 45% of respondents had rented out or sold access to an account. The article mentions "a recent tax return," but that doesn't mean Baniya is here legally. Illegal immigrants in New York file tax returns under ITINs, which enables them to get refunds for taxes withheld, as well as qualify for public subsidies on health insurance and childcare. Illegal immigrants who file this way are protected from immigration enforcement by New York's sanctuary law.

The CEO of Google DeepMind just admitted that if the decision had been his, we would've cured cancer before anyone ever used ChatGPT. And that's not even the scariest thing he said on a recent interview. Demis Hassabis is one of the most important people alive in AI. He won the Nobel Prize last year for AlphaFold, the system that cracked the 50 year protein folding problem. 3 million scientists now use his tool. Almost every new drug being developed will touch it at some stage. In a new interview, he was asked about the moment ChatGPT launched and Google went into "code red." His answer was one of the most revealing things any AI leader has ever said on the record: "If I'd had my way, I would have left AI in the lab for longer. Done more things like AlphaFold. Maybe cured cancer or something like that." Read that again. The man running Google's entire AI division is publicly saying the commercial AI race we're all living through was a MISTAKE. That the industry got hijacked by a chatbot when it could have been solving the biggest problems in science and medicine. His vision was simple: Build AI slowly, carefully, like CERN. Use it to crack root node problems one at a time. Cancer. Energy. New materials. Let humanity benefit from real breakthroughs while the foundational science was figured out over a decade or two. Then ChatGPT dropped in November 2022 and everything changed. Demis described what happened next as getting locked into a "ferocious commercial pressure race" that none of the labs can escape from. On top of that, the US vs China dynamic added geopolitical pressure. The result is everyone sprinting toward products instead of breakthroughs, shipping chatbots while the scientific opportunity gets buried under marketing cycles and quarterly earnings. But he's not saying progress isn't happening... He's saying the progress got redirected away from the things that actually matter most. And then it got even scarier: Because when Demis was asked what he worries about with AI, he laid out two threats. The first is what everyone talks about: Bad actors using AI for harm. Terrorist groups. Hostile nation states. Cyberattacks at scale. But that's not the threat he's most worried about. His second worry is AI itself going rogue. Not today's models. The models coming in the next two to four years as the industry enters what he calls "the agentic era." Systems that can complete entire tasks autonomously. Systems that are increasingly capable and increasingly hard to control. His exact words: "How do we make sure the guardrails are put in place so they do exactly what they've been told to do, and there's no way of them circumventing that or accidentally breaching those guardrails? That's going to be an incredibly hard technical challenge if you think about how powerful and smart and capable these systems eventually get." A Nobel Prize winner who runs one of the 3 most advanced AI labs on Earth just said publicly that within two to four years, we're entering a phase where AI alignment becomes a real problem, and the technical challenge of solving it is enormous. And almost nobody is paying enough attention. He called for international cooperation between labs, AI safety institutes, and academia to tackle the problem. He said this is the thing even the experts aren't thinking about enough. He said the only way to get through the AGI moment safely is if everyone starts treating this with the seriousness it deserves. Most AI CEOs give you careful PR answers about "responsible development" and move on. Demis said something different... He said the commercial race FORCED us into a premature deployment of a technology we barely understand, and the window to get alignment right before the next generation of agents shows up is two to four years. If the man who built the system that might cure cancer is telling you he wishes it had happened first, maybe we should listen to what he says is coming next.

Mamdani Could Appoint Five New TLC Commissioners. Will Desai and a Driver Be Among Them? Five TLC Board seats are in play — three vacant, two occupied past their terms. For a Mayor with deep ties to NYTWA and the driver community, the question is how far he goes automarketplace.com/newsletter

One of today’s e- bike assaults on 2nd Ave/54th St at 1:15 pm. @JulieMenin @vmmaloney @NYCCouncil @ShaunAbreu @NYC_DOT CARE ABOUT SENIOR NEW YORKERS! Priscilla’s Law ( #802) NOW!