Who Watches the Waymos? I do [video]

(youtube.com)

65 points | by notgloating 3 hours ago ago

20 comments

  • dllu 18 minutes ago

    Very neat. I recently went to the Waymo depot in Bayshore (Toland St) and snapped a couple of pictures of the new Zeekrs for Wikipedia.

    [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Waymo_Zeekr_Vehicle_...

    [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Waymo_Zeekr_Vehicle_...

    • dvrp 4 minutes ago

      How did you get in?

  • netsharc an hour ago

    Makes me think of Miniatur Wunderland's "self-charging" system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC8aOLWR134

    It's the world most complex model railway with cars (not just trains) that go around in predetermined routes, and also go to the charging station when their battery is low. And I guess Waymos are a version of that but with human-scale! (Oh they still need humans to plug the charging cables into them).

    I wonder if they park themselves or if the maintenance people park them...

    Also, the footage feels like Satellite Reign https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFZVXG0g40Q (or the original game, Syndicate Wars)

  • HolySE 2 hours ago

    That art fixture's placement at the Mission Waymo Depot is kinda cool. It's evocative of a future in which humanity lives a life of indolence propped up by automation.

    • ramraj07 an hour ago

      I had to look up indolence. At least for the time being im not indolent enough not to look up such things I suppose.

  • MarioMan an hour ago

    Very interesting to see the workers in yellow presumably cleaning and manually plugging in the cars to charge.

  • Sophira an hour ago

    If anybody is wondering, the music in this video appears to be "Alonia" by Valante. Very soothing.

    • fabiensanglard an hour ago

      Thank you, I was about to start searching for it :) !

  • clemo_ra 2 hours ago

    This is cool and soothing. Merry xmas

  • Fricken an hour ago

    Getting Bladerunner vibes from several things but mostly that giant translucent synthwave Marco Cochrane statue.

  • transitorykris an hour ago

    Watch the Zoox test vehicles please. They do absolutely terrifying things, _in every encounter_.

  • lateforwork an hour ago

    Seeing all these Waymos together like this... is depressing. You get a sense of the scale at which machines are replacing humans. This could be a scary movie made in 1970s about the robotic future... and that future has now arrived. What will the world look like 10, 20 years from now? What would a scary movie made today contain?

    • bgwalter 38 minutes ago

      I would make a movie about UBI recipients wearing shock collars that are supervised by Optimus robots and pluck almonds or apples.

      Perhaps we need a euphemism for UBI: Let's call it "level-1 rich".

  • bgwalter an hour ago

    There are also neighborhood self-help groups who try to "stack" the Waymos into alleys so that they can sleep:

    https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/25/us/santa-monica-waymo-bat...

  • Mawr 2 hours ago

    [flagged]

    • akanet 2 hours ago

      Most of it is not drone, but you have to think a bit about the angle and duration to realize this. Merry Christmas

    • dang 2 hours ago

      Could you please review and follow the site guidelines? "Oh, who cares." is not an ok way to respond to someone's work on HN, and is particularly bad when a thread is just getting underway.

      "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

      https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

      (of course I understand that it's disappointing when you're hoping for certain content and end up with something else, but still - please don't express that in a hostile way)

    • blazingbanana 2 hours ago

      I actually quite liked it, was somehow soothing, especially the car park that was used as a temporary location during the night.

    • nullc 2 hours ago

      It isn't what you were expecting-- but it's really good. Give it another look with no expectations.