>>Does Waymo benefit society enough to carry the tradeoffs?
>Absolutely.
Citation needed.
Why stop at Waymo? The entirety of your digital activity happens on private property. You should have no expectation of privacy, and your attempts at privacy should mark you as a higher risk subject. We should algorithmically police your digital life in case you start showing signs of anti-social behavior. I don't want to wait until you get your gun into a Waymo to have the cops handle you. I want you to be caught much earlier. This will make the world much safer.
There are other ways to solve safety issues, but they are harder and more expensive - civic education and a government invested in incentivizing a productive life, better law enforcement training, freely available mental health services etc.
No? The Fourth Amendment only grants you protections that apply to government action. The police are allowed to accept evidence gathered voluntarily by private citizens or corporations.
Maybe we shouldn't put the whole burden of world justice on Waymo, this allowing it a complete invasion of the privacy of both the people who use it and those who don't? Guy takes a drugged up girl on the train, should we hold the train responsible for the outcome also?
That's the key question: whose laws are Waymo enforcing? ICE and Flock's extra-constitutional policies? City ordinances? A future eco-radical government's laws?
How about things taking place outside the car?
Can Waymo mount a robotic machine gun next to the LIDAR and snipe suspected terrorists? Release tear gas? Self destruct, killing several nuns to protect s CEO?
Yes? I am pretty sure they don't do algorithmic policing. Fwiw, they probably don't do any policing, but that is a different subject.
I am not against monitoring for safety - I am against deploying a sophisticated network of automated monitoring that covers all digital and soon physical aspects of my life for my "safety" by for profit companies.
Public trains are covered in camera surveillance and that footage is very often used in conjunction with tracking down and prosecuting criminals. You should have no expectation of privacy on a public train.
I agree we should also add live facial recognition to train stations.
No expectation of privacy in public does not mean we should eliminate privacy from public areas or allow our government to engage in mass surveillance.
I think the risks are different on a train, which is far more public than the inside of a taxi. There are more likely to be other people and/or an operator to intervene.
Flock is bad, but fleets of cars strapped to the teeth with cameras and sensors are suddenly ok even when they call the police on you? Why? Because of the makers of the technology that powers the cars say they are safer (via datasets that we have no way to validate)?
What do you mean? Google is legally required to share information, and does share information, when such information is requested through a whole variety of different means available to local governments. https://policies.google.com/terms/information-requests
That's the same as the police getting security footage from any random building.
The problem with Flock is that they let police hop on and look at whatever they want whenever they want. Completely different operating modes and intentions.
Also, Google and Waymo are different companies under the same parent. Google's policies are irrelevant.
Yeah good point on the policies. It makes Waymo's case worse though, because they have nothing defined publicly. They are also for-profit, and trying to deploy to more cities. The concerns are real - https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2025/jul/1/driverless...
"While companies like Waymo insist they require search warrants for footage, based on probable cause and judicial approval, the legal framework for accessing autonomous vehicle data remains unsettled. A 2022 analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (“EFF”) noted that few states have specific laws governing law enforcement access to such data, leaving gaps in oversight. In Arizona, where Waymo operates extensively, police must typically obtain a search warrant to access footage, as required by state law for electronic records and consistent with Fourth Amendment protections. "
Depends on how you feel about guns. I think people who are opposed to them would agree with this, people who are in favor of guns would be alarmed by this.
> I think people who are opposed to them would agree with this, people who are in favor of guns would be alarmed by this.
Bizarrely, I think it comes out backwards. In this article, the comments are surprised that Waymo's gun detection led to someone contacting authorities - it's not over guns, but that it was "young people" with guns, which means they can't use generalizations, there have to be bespoke solutions unique to every individual, calling the police to assess on potential threats is too broad.
The gun crowd would neither use taxis broadly to carry weapons, nor do so in the manner of the "juveniles" found in the article. Generalizing, they're well-versed in the minutiae of gun transport laws and more or less anticipate law enforcement contact, whether inadvertent or from Karens.
Best day was when my dad said he's good at Texas Hold'em, I said 1v1 me, I won, he said it's not realistic unless we play for $200, I agreed, I won again
fwiw for all the praise that dang & co get, they moderated this website into this state. there is a "blessed" way to break the rules and be a total asshole to people here, and there is the "other" way, that they punish relentlessly. we all have bad days, but HN's comments are just an exhausting cesspool of cynicism and cheap takes for the most part these days.
It's obviously subjective, but I have a feeling this community has descended into hardcore cynicism and cheap meta analysis of most article I care about. Maybe it's the times we live in.
I barely spend much time in the comment sections nowadays - once I stopped visiting this website I started following a bunch of makers on youtube and printables, and got looped into some discord groups and meetups. It was a breath of fresh air - would definitely recommend.
Phoronix is so much worse... but in general I think it's mostly a problem with older tech "experts". They have developed a jaded, egotistical world view where only their own opinions can matter, and everyone else is wrong.
I never spent much time there but I have heard people say that. A part of me worries that I might have become the old "get off my lawn" type of person in some ways.
I just don't relate to a lot of the upvoted content here, so instead of singing my soul trying to make sense of things, I moved on. Perhaps it's not my place to be any more. These new places I have joined are much easier for me to talk in, and there are no upvotes/downvotes so people tend to be pretty chill and genuine, even if it causes friction sometimes.
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