John Berry
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aniccia.bsky.social
John Berry
@aniccia.bsky.social
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NHTSA closed their year+ investigation of Waymo. Waymo's 2 recalls re to this investigation were for crashing into a utility pole and roadway barriers. Evidently, robots repeatedly driving on the wrong side of the road into traffic and disobeying traffic control devices is ok in USA. Scale that.
Telecom bricked Porsches:

"When the [Vehicle Tracking System] connection drops, the anti-theft protocol kicks in, cutting fuel delivery and locking down the engine completely.

No telecomm, no go.

Waymo robots need telecomm to a variety of cloud & telops services.

www.autoblog.com/news/all-of-...
December 8, 2025 at 7:24 PM
I agree w Prof Phil Koopman's latest article on Waymo, as well as his related articles linked within it.

FWIW, Waymo should be around or approaching 150 million uncrewed VMT cumulatively. Waymo's last update was 100 million in early July.

philkoopman.substack.com/p/waymo-lots...
Waymo: Lots happening, but nothing has changed
So much recent news about Waymo:
philkoopman.substack.com
December 8, 2025 at 6:46 PM
Matches my projection from last summer of Waymo reaching 450k paid rides per week on or about 12/4/2025.

To reach their 2026EOY target of 1 million paid rides per week, Magna will have to increase the rate they install robotics hw in new vehicles from ~6/day to ~10/day in Q1 or else higher later.
December 8, 2025 at 5:51 PM
Waymo privatized another public street as a pickup hub for an event:

Accacia & Ottilia, Daly City, CA

Fred Again show at the Cow Palace ~quarter mile walk away.

Waymo has done this repeatedly north & east of the Cow Palace. Empty robots swarm ~block into neighborhoods.

OP: tiktok.ijustagorl
December 8, 2025 at 6:24 AM
2 Waymo robots barely or nearly crashed in San Francisco, then more Waymo robots complicated the scene, as they often do.

Roboclot and prob the second Waymo+Waymo crash.

Here are 3 videos of this incident post crash, inc the robots being assisted by humans (prob inc telops).

OP: tiktok.chii_rinna
December 7, 2025 at 2:50 PM
Artificial Impatience as a service.

Too patient was long a main Waymo complaint/anecdote, which reversed as they've purposely increased aggressiveness, triggering a NHTSA investigation of Waymo around school buses/children.

Lifesafety narrows Goldilocks solution windows as AI obscurrs their edges.
December 6, 2025 at 11:34 PM
Waymo robots have had several documented (by SFFD, SFPD, & CHP) failures on freeways. Some appeared to be the didn't know what/how to do kind. Plus some crashes.

Unknown how much Waymo is allowing fwy driving, eg I have Waymo One access from San Francisco to San Jose but all freeways are excluded.
These things are dangerous as shit. They started allowing them on the freeway and the very first one I saw on the 10 this week almost caused a pile up because it didn't know how to handle the 10/110 interchange and people were slamming on their brakes while this thing wove in and out of the lane
December 6, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Waymo robot “was not recognizing that it needed to obey the state law of stopping whenever the (busses') red lights were on,” AISD Police Assistant Chief Travis Pickford

20 times, diverse conditions

www.statesman.com/business/tec...
December 6, 2025 at 6:47 AM
Looks like Serve didn't give their Chicago sidewalk robots snow tires.

Serve is a spinoff of Uber's acquisition of Postmates. Last quarter their revenue covered 3% of expenses.

OP: tiktok.keencobb
December 6, 2025 at 3:20 AM
This is ominous:

Waymo said on Friday it was "continuing to operate" and it believes its software updates have made its vehicles' performance "better than human drivers in this important area."

"better than human drivers" doesn't comply w AV laws anywhere, AFAIK.

www.reuters.com/world/waymo-...
Waymo to issue recall over self-driving vehicles driving past stopped school buses
Alphabet unit Waymo said Friday it would issue a recall for its self-driving vehicles after Texas officials said they illegally passed school buses at least 19 times since the start of the school year...
www.reuters.com
December 6, 2025 at 2:38 AM
This was posted on x by @davidshepardson.bsky.social who doesn't post here.

Austin ISD has its own police dept w ~150 staff.

We may have to wait for Waymo's official NHTSA recall notice next week to find out if their sw recall for this defect is a 3rd attempt to fix this or the already failed fix.
December 6, 2025 at 2:23 AM
"Waymo said it identified the software issue...implemented updates by Nov. 17"

then their robot did it again.

Waymo is "planning to issue a voluntary software recall...next week, Mauricio Peña, chief safety officer at Waymo, told CBS News late Friday."

For their 11/17 non-fix or a new maybe-fix?
December 5, 2025 at 11:06 PM
Another Waymo passenger stuck in a failed robot in the middle of the street, SF Bay area, though prob not SF.

On ave in California, ~2 Waymo robots are stuck w passenger(s) unable to move without human assistance (telops, field rescue driver, police takeover, tow), per CPUC.

OP: tiktok.carlita__00
December 5, 2025 at 8:34 PM
Here's the footage of a Waymo robot killing KitKat despite a woman attempting to save the cat and the woman's description of events.

Waymo describe this as the cat darting under their robot. Waymo's redacted NHTSA crash report should be publicly available in ~10 days.

OP: tiktok.nytimes
December 5, 2025 at 4:17 PM
"Footage obtained by The New York Times of the moment a Waymo car ran over Kit Kat, a beloved San Francisco bodega cat, raises new questions about the company’s safeguards."

Waymo's robots lack situational awareness to an alarming and prob unacceptable extent.

www.nytimes.com/video/us/100...
December 5, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Another Waymo robot w passenger drove into floodwater. OP said the robot drove through it ok. Many ways it could've had a bad outcome.

Jaguar I-Pace has a wading depth of almost 20 inches.

Waymo, not a ride, an adventure.

OP: x.kwuchu
December 5, 2025 at 6:32 AM
NHTSA sent Waymo a letter regarding their Austin school bus problem, strongly hinting this should be a recall which makes sense as there is no doubt it is a safety defect, ie an unreasonable risk.

I don't think ppl appreciate what a thin margin Waymo has.

static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2025...
December 5, 2025 at 1:22 AM
There's another news report w another Waymo rep saying they implemented some unspecified sw change to address their school bus problem. Unclear if he meant the same fix that didn't fix it or a new fix that only time will tell if it fixed it and/or if it caused new problems or side effects.
December 4, 2025 at 11:36 PM
NHTSA added the 19 Waymo incidents w Austin school buses to their investigation of the first report of this in Atlanta.

IMO, NHTSA should expand this investigation to inc similar Waymo misbehavior/incidents w police & fire vehicles and prob transit as well. All similar defect/fault pattern, AFAICT.
December 4, 2025 at 6:51 PM
Irony, foreshadowing, or both; a Waymo robot w passenger(s) in the heart of Silicon Valley struggling to pivot, blocking the way:

Kipling St by University Ave, Palo Alto

The nearly 100 year old Varsity Theatre (now a Blue Bottle) can be seen in the background.

OP: tiktok.xo_huizar
December 4, 2025 at 6:55 AM
California DMV released proposed Autonomous Vehicle regulations today, starting a 15 day public comment period.

If these regulations go through, then uncrewed/driverless trucks >10k lbs will for the first time be legal in California and with a permitting scheme.

www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehic...
California Autonomous Vehicle Regulations - California DMV
To encourage innovation and promote road safety, the Autonomous Vehicles branch of DMV establishes regulations governing autonomous vehicle testing and deployment on California roads.
www.dmv.ca.gov
December 4, 2025 at 4:12 AM
Austin schools (AISD) asked Waymo to shutdown during bus pick up & drop off and threatened legal action.

On Nov 5th, Waymo told AISD they'd changed their sw. Within a week AISD recorded 7 more violations. Another in Waymo's recurring pattern of a fix-not-fixing.

www.statesman.com/business/tec...
Austin ISD asks Waymo to cease operations during bus pick-up, drop-off
Footage from stop-arm cameras reportedly showed Waymo vehicles slowing or stopping for the buses but then proceeding past them, in violation of Texas law.
www.statesman.com
December 3, 2025 at 11:04 PM
Second the recommendation for anyone interested in how/why computing in space is different than on earth.

NASA also has some good not too technical explanations, particularly of how they invented/perfected communications over vast distances.
an important read for at least 2 reasons:

1. shows how big tech operates on intuitions and vibes and not rigorous research

2. this is a masterpiece in how to breakdown complex scientific concepts in simple language and elegant pros that captivate the lay reader

taranis.ie/datacenters-...
Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea.
There is a rush for AI companies to team up with space launch/satellite companies to build datacenters in space. TL;DR: It's not going to work.
taranis.ie
December 3, 2025 at 7:21 PM
Lowering sales goals trickles down to lowering investment which trends to a top or in this case pop like a bubble.

Missed ad sales goals helped accelerate the bursting of the dotcom bubble, as the boom had been fueled in part by startups buying marketshare via ads and once that faded...deluge.
"Multiple Microsoft divisions lowered how much salespeople are supposed to grow sales of certain AI products after many missed goals, according to salespeople in Microsoft’s Azure cloud unit. It’s rare for Microsoft to lower such quotas for specific products." www.theinformation.com/articles/mic...
Microsoft Lowers AI Software Growth Targets as Customers Resist Newer Products
Executives at Microsoft and other enterprise software firms heralded 2025 as the year artificial intelligence would be capable of automating tasks that involve multiple steps, such as generating dashb...
www.theinformation.com
December 3, 2025 at 6:06 PM
Tesla almost certainly logs this act and includes it in the data they automatically upload.

The servers of Tesla, Waymo, etc contain a wealth of evidence of illegal driving by their tech, should regulators ever want to enforce the laws.

All fun until the forensic investigators arrive.
this should just immediately write you a ticket when you turn it on
Love to share the road with cars programmed to blast past speed limits
December 3, 2025 at 5:34 PM