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
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 šARTIFICIALš
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.
Katharina BuholzerThe best public transport system is the Swiss. Fully integrated and interval schedules nationwide. With guaranteed departure every 30 mins and change of line, mode (e.g. train to bus etc) with a guaranteed connection from your departure point to destination.
@katharina_buholzer @n_dimension But with a population millions less than just the L.A. Metro Area.
@lauren @n_dimension No. LA Metro 10 Million, Switzerland 9.
The system moves over 10 million passengers a day. the area of Switzerland is larger than LA Metro. If you combine LA Metro, Orange County and SD , you have ca the size of Switzerland.
And their topography is slightly more complex.
@katharina_buholzer @n_dimension L.A. Metro area was about 14 million almost 2 years ago. Agreed that the exact definition of that area is not precise. In any case, mass transit is of limited use here and never will get beyond that, given a range of factors. I used to study urban planning, and little has changed in this respect for decades in terms of solutions that would serve more than a tiny percentage of the population. The billions spent on the subway were a spectacular waste of money. Even for the few people relatively that ride it, it's not even safe.
@lauren @n_dimension The root issue with LA: There was once a rather good Tramway system. Disappeared for various reasons. The city, being young, was built around cars. And the urban topology therefore also around cars, whereas Switzerland has an urban topology around nodes as hubs and spokes of traffic between.
So having grown like that over centuries, it is easier to upgrade the traffic spokes to the integrated and intervalled schedules.
@lauren @n_dimension But they spent considerable money to do it. The Bahn2000 as the first portion cost 7 billion USD. The second portion ZEB 6.5, the NEAT 29 billion.
@lauren @n_dimension So in LA, you'd have to start from scratch.
@katharina_buholzer @n_dimension Let's call that, uh, unlikely, given that there barely is enough funding for major street repairs, you can forget about sidewalk repairs, and the budget situation from the fires has only made it much worse.
@katharina_buholzer @n_dimension I'm old enough to just barely remember a bit of the streetcar system in L.A. (not the original one, but the one that looked like electric buses with tires on overhead power or buses on overhead power on rails. Just barely. But even then the system was collapsing as the suburbs had already grown way out into the Valley.
@lauren @n_dimension On Santa Monica Blvd, one can still see some of the tracks and I believe they kept one of the cars. Back then, that was current tech for streetcars.
But if nothing is maintained and expanded as the metro grows, it of course collapses.
It collapsesd when everyone thought private car is the only future. happened here too, but they reverted. maybe people saw: if we do that our cities will look like LA.
@katharina_buholzer @n_dimension There are some chunks of abandoned tracks still visible out here in the Valley in various places. The active tracks for current trains are toward the north end of the Valley. I think it was torn down relatively recently, but until then there was a hardware store in my area where to the side you could still see tracks and one of the doors (not in use) was original door used to access those tracks when that building was a working railroad station.
@katharina_buholzer @n_dimension At Pico and Sepulveda (yes, the song Dr. D. made famous!) there was for many years a diagonal track that crossed the intersection, and occasionally there'd be a boxcar off on a siding there. When I was a kid there was an active line just down the block from a house we rented, and I'd go down there to watch the freight trains rumble by. I think the tracks are gone now, but the right-of-way is still there and filled with plants and stuff I think much of the way down so it's obvious where the line was.
Why Swiss Trains are the Best in Europe
@lauren @n_dimension And this is the shameless counter promo
I Spent Over 12 Hours on an Amtrak Train (on purpose)
@katharina_buholzer @n_dimension By the way, how do you carry all those bags of groceries home on mass transit? Especially if you're older. Or infirm. Or ...
@lauren @n_dimension First: trains and busses must be disabled accessible. And must provide space for luggage and bicycles.
Second: Retail is logistically more fine grained, with shops in your neighborhood.
Third: Malls must provide and pay for bus service and integration into the transport system. Without that: No building permit.
Other than groceries. A lot is done online with door delivery.
@lauren @n_dimension Infirm people: they can get groceries delivered to the door via outpatient service, which does medical care as well. Health insurance pays for that. (Not the groceries, but the service).
@katharina_buholzer @n_dimension Well for most people that wouldn't be paid by insurance here, and lots of people who don't quality as "infirm" still wouldn't be able to manage the packages themselves or pay for delivery.
@lauren @n_dimension Insurance here is mandatory. And the Outpatient service is part of the insurance system. We open another topic here so I won't digress further.
@lauren @n_dimension And I am not suggesting that the entire US should or could use such a system. For that, your infrastructure is just way too inferior and outdated. Especially related to trains and tracks.
You can't even get a decent intercity express system going in California. A state that certainly should have the finances.
@katharina_buholzer @n_dimension I voted for the L.A. <-> S.F. train project. One of the votes I most regret in my life. Horrific mismanagement. I'm actually glad Trump is trying to cut off federal money for it. An utter waste the way it was handled.
@lauren @n_dimension Trump...igitt.
The problem with that line was: Where the line was supposed to go through. eg in the middle of nowhere instead of like Sacramento proper. Afik not starting in LA main station. Whereto in SFO?
You do not have the technology for such trains. And your tracks are from the cowboy era.
The legal context in your country is unsuitable for such large infrastructure projects. How did you get the Interstate system done btw.
@lauren @n_dimension And yes, it is my opinion that the PM skill set is not there anymore for that type of project across several jurisdiction and local dons able to object to every step and mile of such a project.
.
.
@lauren @n_dimension Having that said: The Neat project in CH: Part of that was the new Gotthard tunnel, going under the mountain base, no incline. Afaik there were only 10 Project managers and firms worldwide, who could do it.
@katharina_buholzer @n_dimension The Interstate system was initiated by Pres. Eisenhower, sold as a system that could be used for military transport. In that post-WWII era, that argument won the day -- and the resources needed to do it properly.
@lauren @n_dimension How did they overcome the legal challenges e.g getting the building permits per section through?
@katharina_buholzer @n_dimension As a federal project designated military they were able to bypass a lot of red tape, and there was massive (historic) use of eminent domain to get the land.
@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 šunlessš 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. Iāve contemplated building my own, but thereās 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 āsurpriseā left for you half of the problem. Thereās 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 Theyāve already demoāed several hybrid āalmost walkingā bots. Legs with wheels can work perfectly well for porch package delivery. A company also showed a ātaxiā 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 š
@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 š
@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 š¶@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.