Lauren WeinsteinL.A. residents are finding creative (and simple) ways to disable disruptive Waymo robotaxis (as I predicted long ago would come to pass with autonomous vehicles).
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/25/us/santa-monica-waymo-battles
Sunny
mike805@lauren So why can't these charging lots be somewhere outside the city? Or at the top of a mall's parking structure, which is presumably empty at night? Electric robot taxis are a potentially green alternative to LA's parking nightmare, but they need to not be a nuisance or people are going to mess with them.
@mike805 They are no better a solution than human-driven taxis, which would at least provide work for the drivers and be far better suited to deal with exceptional situations. And not further enrich fascist Big Tech.
@lauren Human-driven taxis are never going to replace private cars, unless you bring in a servile class to drive them.
Robot taxis could eventually be the primary mode of transport in cities. You could then have smaller parking lots, and charge people to park.
Robot taxis could either seat four with hard partitions between them so people would feel safe sharing, or they could be half-wide and share the lanes.
They can form convoys when they are all going to the same area, reducing traffic.
Wulfy#Robotaxi is not a solution to a city transit problem.
It's a solution to a #crapitalism problem.
*ANY* portion of profits diminished by labor is unacceptable to capitalists.
@n_dimension @lauren So what is a solution to a city transit problem? Even cities with conventional mass transit have a lot of traffic. Robotaxis solve the end to end problem without having 90% of the cars idle and hogging space at any given time.
Yes you will still want a metro to take people from residential areas to work and back. Robotaxis are a better solution than private cars for everything else.
Robot buses would be useful for taking people to concerts and the like.
What is the solution to a city transit problem?
Plentiful and affordable city public transportation.
I have lived in 4 large European cities and many smaller cities.
The best (Vienna, Stockholm) are such that unless you have a special need (heavy delivery business, travel out of town), public transport is not just adequate. It's SUPERIOR to owning a car.
I lived in Vienna for 6 months and in that time I have never once regretted not having a car, even travelling to the outer suburbs.
An old friend of mine lives in a Dutch small city where there are no cars. It's all bikes. You can still own a car, but it's parked at the outer rim.
Remember that the US reliance on cars is 👉ARTIFICIAL👈
It's a result of a concentrated effort by the oil industry to actively DESTROY Municipal transport. They bought many trams, light rail and rail systems only to shut them down.
@n_dimension @mike805 Robocars are a "solution" in search of a problem. They are a quintessential example of Big Tech groupthink -- and believe me, I've been in meetings where I've seen first hand how that works! ANY problem that you can name related to taxis in a city can be solved with human drivers who have VASTLY more flexibility in unusual situations, rather than subject human passengers to face those situations alone in the back seat with no human driver to assist them or get them out situations that a remote center controller can't handle. And this is just the beginning. Wait until people REALLY get angry, and start doing things like jamming the mobile frequencies these vehicles use for contact with central, leaving passengers stranded. The ways that robotaxis can be rendered useless are almost unlimited. And the more that Big Tech pushes this stuff, the more likely you are to see more of those methods deployed by angry residents of these cities.
@lauren I have a whole rant about autonomous cars. I build autonomous helicopters for the DoD. I know exactly how we plan the development and testing, to ensure we are never a danger to anyone. None of that was done for driverless cars, and it *will* go bad because of that.
And, even theoretically, they can't work the way people want them to. To make them safe and effective, you would end up re-inventing public transportation. So why not just do that instead?
@agreeable_landfall Exactly. What these firms are doing with robocars is the polar opposite of MIL-SPEC.
@n_dimension @lauren I've been to European cities but never lived there. In London I got called to the grocery store to help my hosts carry home the stuff they bought. Downside of no car.
Touring via public transit is nice. But that still assumes a small apartment, big city, white collar job sort of life with a decent outdoor temperature.
Everywhere else people want a car. If they could be electric and non-cloud self driving that would be a huge gain.
@n_dimension @lauren Specifically thinking of LA area here. It is obvious that the people who run this city are not capable of fixing the transit in any reasonable time. Yes there is some, and people who happen to live and work around it use it, but otherwise it's faster to drive despite the traffic.
Robotaxis can be deployed quickly without any infrastructure building. Technologies like that usually win out, whether they are a utopian ideal or not.
Just move the charging location.
@mike805 @n_dimension I've lived in L.A. my whole life, in various sections of the city. I've watched the changes good and bad, increases in traffic, everything. And I'll say this. WE DON'T NEED OR WANT GODDAMNED ROBOTAXIS. Period. Full Stop. And attempts to force them down our throats by Big Tech will be regretted by those increasingly fascist firms. Anyone who knows me knows how painful it is for me to say this.
I've been working on the Net since early ARPANET days at the first ARPANET site at UCLA. I've worked inside Google. I still have many friends at Google -- that is, the ones who haven't already resigned or been fired.
Robotaxis are a means toward total control and surveillance of populations by authorities. Not so much in and of themselves, but as part of the fascist dream of eliminating human drivers entirely.
Things have changed. The factors that used to apply no longer can be taken at face value. If I sound fed up with the direction tech is taking now, you're damned right I am.
Mr. Completely@lauren @mike805 @n_dimension yes, and:
The big payout the VC/finance crowd is chasing isn't about taxis or passenger cars, but automation of delivery driving at every level. This is one of the biggest employment sectors in the country & therefore one of the biggest "efficiency" (layoff cost reduction) opportunities in the adjacent possible. I've seen estimates (that finance people seem to believe) that there's around a trillion dollars to be made by capturing and automating that business.
@lauren @mike805 @n_dimension imo this is the reason Tesla became an increasingly crappy wrapper around a self driving tech company. Not for the passenger cars (not that great a feature), not for robotaxis (prob not great margins really) but building up the tech to jump from those vehicles to delivery trucks. Now under Trump they'll be able to make that leap no matter how crap the driving automation is, unless it has some kind of disaster (very possible)
@mrcompletely @lauren @mike805
Of all the crapitalists, some of the most brutal and exploitative ones are the transport industry.
That's because the margins are so slim, by the nature of their sub-sub-sub-contract business, that left unregulated, the cargo haulage industry will literally drive 40tons of cargo, into a family car, without applying any brakes with an functionally unconscious drugged biological in "control" of the vehicle.
All in pursuit of extra 0.50c per tonne.
Point being that 👉unless👈 there is money to be made, cargo haulage will not pick up Tesla trucks. Range is too short, and batteries are too heavy. Maybe we need a good shooting war in oil-lands to make electric trucks affordable?!
@n_dimension @mrcompletely @lauren The old NYC taxi industry was a good example. The taxi licenses were crazy expensive so you had a class of "taxi landlords" that rented the licenses to the actual cabdrivers and robbed them blind.
Once you have robot trucks, scale container shipping down to the individual package. Put the batteries in larger containers and stack them as needed. Robots should load both batteries and packages.
As with container shipping, the whole process has to be rethought.
@mike805 @n_dimension @mrcompletely Again, not going to scale, and will face enormous blowback. Watch and see.
@mrcompletely @mike805 @n_dimension Those estimates like all the estimates surrounding fanciful applications for deliveries by robocar or drone at scale, are likely vastly overstated. The delivery case has an obvious flaw. Not only do you have to be able to drive to a location and find a place to stop and/or park, but get the package out and to the location for final delivery. Humanoid robots? Good luck. Strange little devices trying to navigate dirty stairs and elevators? Good luck again. Demand that people come out to get the packages from the cars at the street? Have fun with that one. It's all almost entirely VC wet dreams at the expense of everyone else.
Dr Sian Gramates@lauren @mrcompletely @mike805 @n_dimension The most common reason I take taxis is to get home with 6 bags of groceries. Cab drivers will carry those bags to my porch (and then I tip them really well). Is a robotaxi going to carry my groceries, or is it going to drive off with 5 bags while I'm carrying the first one to my porch? I know which option I'd expect.
@lauren @mrcompletely @n_dimension These things exist in Hollywood, I've seem them. They are a box on wheels. It stops, you get a message, you go out and unlock with your phone and grab your food. Generation 1 is going to be exactly that. You go fetch from the curb.
Walking robots that can drop a package on the porch will be generation 2.
As for Tesla, they were basically a carbon credit laundering scheme. They managed to make Teslas a status symbol for a while, until they weren't.
@mike805 @mrcompletely @n_dimension Never gonna scale. These are all essentially big demos to try gather more investments. If the physical layout is exactly right you can have those silly little boxes trundle along, but most areas (especially residential) aren't like that. Nor can they deal with a typical load of, say, Amazon boxes. And what of people who don't have or routinely use smartphones? More of them than you probably think and the number is increasing. But this is academic. Most of this stuff is billionaire fever dreams, and as someone who at one time studied urban geography and planning, you can rest assured this stuff will remain niche for the foreseeable future.
@lauren @mrcompletely @n_dimension Okay how's this for a plausible alternative. It looks like an Amazon truck, but the side looks like an Amazon Locker. I.e. it has a bunch of pockets that can individually unlock. That rolls up to wherever you are, you get a notice, and you go get your stuff. Has the advantage that your package can come to you at work if you want it to.
There is a solution here, just as there was for sea transport, but it requires a full rethink of how things currently work.
@mike805 @mrcompletely @n_dimension So the truck just sits there waiting for you because you happen to be taking a shower. Or it waits there for you to come down from upstairs apartment when the elevator is busy. Or it waits there for you because you had no way to know it was there because you don't have a smartphone sitting there turned on all the time. Or it waits there for you ... most people aren't going to want to have to go out to the street and carry packages back up to their house or apartment. Many CAN'T. Sorry, except in limited circumstances, this doesn't work.
@mike805 @mrcompletely @n_dimension And of course, I didn't mention the most obvious case, when you're simply not home at the time of delivery. Obviously there are some areas where leaving packages in such situations can be problematic, but there are many areas where it's not a problem. Also, many people use systems that electronically allow delivery persons to leave packages inside the house or garage. Others use lock boxes on their porch. The whole point of deliveries in the general case is that they're not dependent on your being immediately available at the time of delivery. That's important both for the person receiving the delivery and for the delivery service that doesn't want undelivered packages piling up on their trucks.
Tubemeister@lauren @mike805 @mrcompletely @n_dimension@infosec.exchange The whole thing is edge cases. Finding a solution that works for say the 80% (if it even is that high) obvious cases is nice and all, but the tech industry has a habit of forgetting the other 20%, or expecting them to just adapt to whatever scheme they've cooked up. Reality doesn't work like that. There will always be edge cases and they tend to be people far removed from the techbro world, like the elderly who often can't easily adapt.
Trouble@lauren @mike805 @mrcompletely @n_dimension delivery lock boxes would probably become a thing. I’ve contemplated building my own, but there’s a small market for premade ones (heavy steel, pretty wooden huts) that can be purchased. Amazon did it for awhile (still do? Dunno) where you could install an amazon lock or garage door opener, and they would leave the package inside your domicile (no thanks!) solving the trapped child or “surprise” left for you half of the problem. There’s always a fix.
@lauren @mrcompletely @n_dimension There are already too many large boxy vehicles driving around, and stopping in the street. The California Vehicle Code actually permits that. Delivery drivers can stop in places where the ordinary citizen would be towed immediately. So UPS, Fedex, DHL, Amazon, etc. doesn't scale either.
It was once predicted that everyone would be either a telephone operator or a telegram messenger the way things were going. Communication was automated. Transport needs to be.
@mike805 @lauren @mrcompletely @n_dimension They’ve already demo’ed several hybrid “almost walking” bots. Legs with wheels can work perfectly well for porch package delivery. A company also showed a “taxi” which essentially was an extendable cargo box that could extend up and out for level boarding from your front door. That one looks less plausible (cantilevered weight, compressible soils) but when does reality get in the way of a solution searching for a problem?
@trouble @mike805 @mrcompletely @n_dimension And none of them can possibly compare with a human who just sprints up stone steps covered with branches and leaves with several boxes in their arms, avoids debris in their way, and is back in their truck 10 seconds later. The thing about robodrive vehicles is that when anything unusual happens they just STOP or pull over to the side to wait for some human in a control center to get around to them and figure out what to do. A human driver is infinitely more flexible in dealing with exception conditions. But as I said earlier, the pushback is going to be enormous, and since these vehicles are helpless if they can't reach their control centers, jamming (which can be done with a $50 device -- probably less) is going to become a very popular methodology used by individuals and groups doing the pushing.
@lauren @mike805 @mrcompletely @n_dimension you're right, jamming and theft are going to be far more likely!
@lauren @mike805 @n_dimension oh I know. I'm not saying I believe it'll actually work. I'm saying it's plausible that this is what Elon, Andreesen et al believe and that it's one of their goals. Like most Elon schemes it ignores a lot of steps in the critical path. It's worth talking about bc of the damage the attempt could cause along the way. The likelihood of it working is perhaps greater than the Mars plan, that's about all I can say for it 😁
@lauren @mrcompletely @mike805
I think that there is far too much opposition to Felon Muscovite's #mars colony plan...
...I do not see any downside to loading all the Nazis onto spaceships and sending them to another planet.
I was a big fan of sealing millionaires into barrels and dropping them to the bottom of the sea, but for some reason that great idea on hiatus 🙃
@n_dimension @lauren @mrcompletely Somehow I don't think Musk will be getting into a Starship any time soon. They are about as safe as homemade submersibles. When the Soviet N1 blew up 4 times in a row they gave up.
Dr Andrew A. Adams #FBPE 🔶@lauren @mrcompletely @mike805 @n_dimension
It's not about getting rid of the huma. to the door, it's about de-skilling and de-regulating the driver/deliverer to just a delovwrer. Drivers require a deiving license and are regulated to how many hours a day they can work. Deliverers less so.
It's not about getting rid of the huma. to the door, it's about de-skilling and de-regulating the driver/deliverer to just a delovwrer. Drivers require a deiving license and are regulated to how many hours a day they can work. Deliverers less so.
@a_cubed @lauren @mrcompletely @n_dimension Deskilling should be taxed hard. Either automate or do not automate, but do not deskill.
Deskilling reduces the quality of the product. I'm already having to chase down missing mail and deliver other people's packages. It sucks for both the workers and the customers.
@mrcompletely @lauren @n_dimension Around here, Amazon vehicles seem to be immune to traffic laws. They just stop in the middle of the road and deliver stuff. And they are gas powered. USPS vehicles are also very un-green.
If delivery could be automated end to end, that would eliminate a whole lot of car trips, and all the vehicles could be electric. You could UBI anyone whose job is eliminated and still come out ahead.
Hollywood has little electric robo delivery vehicles on the sidewalks.
@lauren @n_dimension I share your frustration with the state of tech. Example, I have a 2007 Acura with a self contained navigation system. I've recently been joyriding 2025 model cars. They ALL have external dependencies - cellular transceivers, forced upgrades, subscription cloud navigation systems. I like the Accord Hybrid over the Camry but am reluctant to buy it for that reason.
I like "small tech" as well, here is an example: https://TheUnCloud.co/
@lauren @n_dimension And yes a Waymo is a cloud connected big brother sort of thing. I do wonder how much of their "self driving" is a sweatshop in India steering the cars out of situations they cannot handle.
However, so is an Uber. Or a conventional taxi nowadays. I guess if you want an off the grid vehicle, get an ebike. Or an old car. My dad has a 1999 pickup, one of the small kind you can't get any more, and we're keeping it maintained.
Ulrike Walter-Lipow@mike805 An efficient public transport system (buses, trams, where feasible underground rail) and a safe bike & walking infrastructure are the solution to city traffic. As has been proven in many cities. As is essentially self-evident, because anything that relies on cars requires too much space & energy to move a single person. @lauren
@lipow @mike805 In some cities for some people. In decentralized very large cities such as L.A. it has remained problematic, and many people are not physically able to deal with public transit, biking, or walking any distance, even assuming they're not carrying packages as well. Public transit in L.A. has always been a problem since the beginnings of the suburbs that quickly outgrew the original rail and streetcar networks, and only relatively high density areas are being considered for expanded public transit these days. The city is just so large and so decentralized that mass transit will always be of limited value here.
@mike805 Replacing a system that lets people drive where they like with an automated system that the government can completely control in every aspect, even taking you to destinations that you didn't plan? Robocars as the primary means of transportation are a wet dream of fascism.
@lauren Cities with public transit and limited parking are already inherently totalitarian. I'm really glad I didn't live in one when COVID hit, because there would have been no way to avoid every day exposure to it. No, an N95 will not guarantee your safety if you are in a bus or subway car full of sick people. Better than nothing but not safe.
You want freedom? Live outside the city! Yes you need a car. You can still go in to visit. In a city an ebike is probably the freest mode of transport.
@mike805 A great number of people are not in a position to simply choose to live outside a city, unless perhaps you're planning to subsidize them. And many people are not physically able to ride bikes of any kind.
One of Australian Prime Ministers said that country living is a "lifestyle choice" unfortunately, he said it about first nation people living in literal stone age camps in the middle of the desert...
...it's not as if he was a racist and a bigot...he nominated himself as...
A MINISTER FOR WOMEN.
🙄
cy
Ben Stokman@lauren kibdy