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A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

waymo.com

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Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#101

Post by fragmede »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #78
egypturnash wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if that's somewhere on Zorhan's to-do list :)

Yeah but the plan of "ban them because the taxi drivers union said so" is ludicrous. Why not have a partial integration with re-training programs for existing taxi drivers, and work with the city council to establish laws that effectively strip Waymo of its profits for operating in the city, making them only barely break even, and siphoning the rest of the funds into the aforementioned retraining programs and transpo…

Then again, the areas underserved by Uber/Lyft are underserved because they're bad neighborhoods so drivers won't go there. How many Waymos need to be torched or their passengers carjacked before Waymo decides to stop going there? Fun fact, if you throw a traffic cone at the Waymo, it panics and stops moving, meaning your can now break the rear windows and assault the passengers for their valuables. If you wear a mask and leave your phone at home, there's no recourse for the passengers.

Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#102

Post by fragmede »

cyberax wrote: post #44
fwip wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you near the city center, or out near the suburbs? It's common for a bus to be crowded on one part of the route and nearly empty at the end.

And this is a fundamental issue with transit. It _has_ to travel as mostly empty on avereage to be useful.

...no? In the heart of downtown, with people riding in both directions, I don't see how it follows that it has to mostly empty to be useful. If it's full you can't get on so that's not useful, but anything less than totally full should still be useful.

Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#103

Post by fragmede »

cco wrote: post #53
belinder wrote: post #7

Would love to get them in nyc

I'm very open to being wrong about this, but will they actually work in NYC? Waymo requires some grace from other drivers and pedestrians in order to function and I just can't imagine New Yorkers will offer it. Do you think they will?

I've been cut off by a Waymo before, so the real question is if they Waymo backend is designed is such a way that the NYC Waymo driver can run with different aggression settings from the one in Phoenix Arizona and Tokyo.

Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#104

Post by fragmede »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #62
tfehring wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo also lets you pick, but only from a predetermined list of pickup/dropoff locations. Sometimes there's not a spot on the side of the street you'd want, other times it will default to a spot on the other side of the street but you can override.

Your market may vary, but I can assure you that in Phoenix, you can drop the pin practically anywhere that's safe and legal. The app has changed the method a few times. It used to show green or blue segments for valid spots, but today as it is, I just pick up the pin, drop it, hope for the best. It also demonstrates which way the car will be facing. Dropping a precise pin on the map is no guarantee that it will actua…

https://sfstandard.com/2025/09/16/waymo-receives-permit-oper...

Waymo does have a permit too go to SFO now, so it's only a matter of time.

Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#105

Post by nxc18 »

MostlyStable wrote: post #89
nxc18 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two different audiences. Unfortunately for them, messages cross streams. I think it is a good message if you’re trying to scare people into giving you money (or else they lose out on unlimited profits down the road).

Who is this audience that thinks unasked-for and un-controllable felonies is a good message, or who wants to fund that?

Everyone who is buying into RSI/AGI hype. That hype is the only thing sustaining this investment cycle. The bubble will pop as soon as people realize “AI” is a normal technology.

Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#106

Post by DiscourseFan »

fragmede wrote: post #101
DiscourseFan wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but the plan of "ban them because the taxi drivers union said so" is ludicrous. Why not have a partial integration with re-training programs for existing taxi drivers, and work with the city council to establish laws that effectively strip Waymo of its profits for operating in the city, making them only barely break even, and siphoning the rest of the funds into the aforementioned retraining programs and transpo…

Then again, the areas underserved by Uber/Lyft are underserved because they're bad neighborhoods so drivers won't go there. How many Waymos need to be torched or their passengers carjacked before Waymo decides to stop going there? Fun fact, if you throw a traffic cone at the Waymo, it panics and stops moving, meaning your can now break the rear windows and assault the passengers for their valuables. If you wear a mas…

I was thinking of rural areas, not dangerous neighbourhoods, which are already served by uber/lyft

Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#107

Post by fwip »

cyberax wrote: post #44
fwip wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you near the city center, or out near the suburbs? It's common for a bus to be crowded on one part of the route and nearly empty at the end.

And this is a fundamental issue with transit. It _has_ to travel as mostly empty on avereage to be useful.

Its not a meaningful issue. The passenger density is higher on even a mostly empty bus than cars, and the pollution is lower as well.

Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#108

Post by MostlyStable »

nxc18 wrote: post #105
MostlyStable wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is this audience that thinks unasked-for and un-controllable felonies is a good message, or who wants to fund that?

Everyone who is buying into RSI/AGI hype. That hype is the only thing sustaining this investment cycle. The bubble will pop as soon as people realize “AI” is a normal technology.

I had a whole long response typed out and I realized that it probably wasn't worth it. I think that I just have to admit that I find your view and understanding of the world completely incomprehensible. Thanks for humoring me, and have a nice day.

Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#109

Post by m463 »

xnx wrote: post #83
m463 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are they? I know that tesla is behind, but they have so many simulation miles, several generations of their own hardware, and lots of people behind the wheel taking over. I've also seen the autonomous waymo vans, which seem nice too. Is there a "theoetical" ahead and a "practical" ahead? How do the finances look and does financial solvency count? will someone run out of money first? There have been two waymo artic…

> Is there a "theoetical" ahead and a "practical" ahead? Yes. Waymo is doing something like 400K fully autonomous rides per week and Tesla is doing hundreds or low thousands of supervised rides.

Tesla has 1.5m subscribers to FSD, maybe that's millions of drives per day (or two)

Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#110

Post by laurencerowe »

fragmede wrote: post #99
laurencerowe wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the city buses in my UK home town are now battery electric double deckers. These carry up to 85-90 people (with 25 standing), weigh 11 tonnes, and is 10.5m long. A typical jaguar Waymo usually carries up to 4 people (usually just one), weighs 2.1 tonnes and is 5.2m long. So the double decker bus should be more environmentally efficient with maybe 5 passengers making independent journeys, though operational co…

The real question is what's the optimal size for a bus if you don't have to pay a human to drive it? Once the technology is proven, there's no reason you can't put the Waymo or other self-driving technology in a bus. A bus designed for a dozen people instead of 30, and a fleet of them that did point to point rides instead of a fixed route, just all booked via the app so you share rides with other people. I dare say t…

> The real question is what's the optimal size for a bus if you don't have to pay a human to drive it?

It will depend on the area. Where I am in San Francisco we have articulated buses designed for 100+ people running every few minutes above BART. (We probably need more BART stations.) There’s simply not enough road space for smaller buses (let alone cars) to carry commuter traffic downtown.

(I’ve never worked downtown though so always drove to work in desolate Silicon Valley office parks.)

Even in my smaller UK home city (250k people) you need double decker 70+ capacity buses running every 15 minutes on two routes from city centre to university to handle demand because the jobs are not so distributed.

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