I was not prepared for the gaslight machine to feed this to me today. Gosh.

I firmly believe that every slogan created needs to be run by a room full of teenagers to see if it passes the giggle test.

This is a good thing. It's really nice to just see less curated content in my feed.

There are times when I've just gotta agree with public washroom graffiti.

I didn't make it to staff dinner this year -- Something conflicted, so I would've missed you anyway. Next time. @lonetiggs.bsky.social is trying to convince me to come to @calfurry.ca though, and I've gotta see if that's in the cards!

Enough to entice people who were fence sitters waiting for a sale to buy the product. This is especially common in products where the initial purchase leads to additional revenue (digital goods, etc.) since less profit on the initial purchase is a small cost compared to boosting the userbase.

When it comes to generic SIXLTR brands, and consumer goods where the MSRP is not really publicized much, you're likely to get a bad deal. For more iconic goods (specific cellphone models, game consoles, etc.) where the MSRP is known, there are still thankfully some minor deals to be had.

But, because it became a cultural phenomenon, consumers are trained to wait to spend on something because they expect a deal. The illusion is kept up, and people go nuts.

In the early days, Black Friday still had deals to be had, since it was inventory clearing.

Nowadays, with enormous amounts of data on consumer habits enabling forecasting, combined with Just In Time manufacturing and logistics means there's almost never excess inventory.

That's an amazing set of photos. Very American Beauty of you ^^

Sounds like a good opportunity to give some clearcoat to the undamaged parts of it to avoid this in the future. People can still sign on top of the clear, you can just clear over that at some point too!

Your set went hard -- was so glad to see you n.n

I'm sad I didn't see you guys this year, but I'm glad you had a wonderful con!

Damn thrifty ice cream. The cylindrical scoops are a core memory. I remember getting a 3 scoop cone felt unmanageable.

Would love to see you if you get the chance.

Overall, this is a topic I'd love to discuss more, and hear contrasting viewpoints on. Once again, I've got no love for Waymo in particular, I just believe that improvements in ASD will make the roads safer, and the statistics I've seen seem to bear this out.

The sources I linked in my previous posts are also from personal injury law firms, who are the ones you'd hire in the event that you were pursuing litigation in the event of an incident involving a self-driving car. I would expect their bias would be to find the ASD vehicle at fault.

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If you could manage to get braked checked at that speed, you're not paying attention, following too closely, or both. Once again, this is based on my own experience with driving, and I'd love to hear other viewpoints.

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Regardless of whether a human or computer was driving either car, I can't think of a situation (and please help me if I'm just not thinking of one) where the car in the rear would not be at fault for striking a stationary vehicle in a 25mph zone.

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Additionally, in many of these cases, assessing fault isn't particularly difficult, and there aren't a whole lot of options. The majority of reported crashes happened in a 25mph speed limit zone, a good number of them involved someone hitting a stationary Waymo, mainly in the rear.

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I don't quite understand what you're saying, or why I'd be disqualified from talking about any particular subject. I'm not any supporter of Waymo in particular, or an apologist, just someone who believes that this is a new technology that as it matures will save lives.

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Improvement in technology is undoubtedly necessary to avoid edge case failures like the one you linked, but in order to improve, we have to find those edge cases, and the only way to do that is by moving into what is effectively an open beta. I hope for other players to step up and compete.

The indisputable facts about humans is that we're subject to fatigue, emotions, and judgement imparing substances. We also break rules when it's convenient. Computers are endlessly patient, unemotional, and always alert, follow the rules, and can't drive drunk.

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What I've linked here are examples, and certainly not the extent of the data I've perused. I am aware that bias is real and that what anyone reads can be garbage, so I encourage folks to do their own noodling around on this subject as well.

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But in the case of things like the incident you cited, the systems have erred on the side of caution.

I'd love to have more controlled testing, but there's a point at which technology like this needs to improve in real world conditions. You don't find all edge cases in test.

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I'm a skeptic, and I'm certainly not a shill for any particular company. I have no reason to defend Waymo themselves, but I believe that ADS systems are safer where it counts.

Failures and oddities like you cited are problematic, and are certainly a need for improvement

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Waymo Accidents | NHTSA Crash Data [Updated 2025] Waymo robotaxis are spreading across the United States, but how often are they crashing? Are they safe? We analyzed 4 years of NHTSA crash data.

Additionally, if you look at the NHTSA data for incidents reported involving Waymo vehicles, almost all of the incidents are caused by other drivers on the road vs. the Waymo vehicles (Some examples here: www.damfirm.com/waymo-accide...)

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Comparison of Waymo rider-only crash data to human benchmarks at 7.1 million miles This article examines the safety performance of the Waymo Driver, an SAE level 4 automated driving system (ADS) used in a rider-only (RO) ride-hailing application without a human driver, either in ...

What do you consider a "failure"

From what I've read, Incidents per million miles (IPMM) are roughly 80% lower for Autonomous driving vs. Human drivers (www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....)

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Is this going to be like my 2024 FC where I took the longest day trip ever arriving Saturday and leaving Monday night?

I feel that picking someone up is one of those things that should always involve informed consent, regardless of how many times you've met them -- unless blanket consent to do so has already been explicitly given.