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   Lauren Weinstein (lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Jul-2026 00:11:54 JST Lauren Weinstein

   This is the text of my national network radio report yesterday discussing the misbehaving teens turned over to police by Waymo, and the broader implications of surveillance and actions by robotic vehicles. As always there may have been minor wording variations from this script as I presented this report live on air.

   - - -

   So in 1951 the great science-fiction author Ray Bradbury published a short story called "The Pedestrian". It told of a robotic police car roaming a future city looking for so-called "unusual" behaviors -- in this case walking alone at night. And a pedestrian in the story was arrested by the car and driven off to be incarcerated.

   There are many real world questions about robotic vehicles -- like Waymo robotaxis -- and how they'll interact with our laws and privacy rights and other aspects of society. There were new Waymo problems again in San Francisco a week or so ago on July 4th, with their apparently being unable to deal with the celebrations causing another case there of Waymo triggered traffic gridlocks reportedly involving at least dozens of the vehicles, Waymos reportedly running out of power, reports of people being terrified when they saw a Waymo driving right over fireworks that had just been lit -- yeah, kinda scary stuff.

   Most human drivers would know how to handle these situations but robotaxis don't have common sense -- in fact Waymos were just recalled due to an unfortunate tendency to drive into flooded areas, and first responders continue to be angry about robotaxis interfering with emergency operations.

   Now we have an event in San Mateo in the San Francisco Bay Area that invokes Bradbury's story and other predicted robocar scenarios. In this case we have a couple of teenagers who were indeed misbehaving in a Waymo. Reports are that they were drinking, but obviously they weren't driving since they were in a Waymo -- and were shooting Orbeez -- squishy soft gel water beads -- from a toy gun out a window. Some of the details of this are still vague. But the bottom line is that the Waymo diverted from the teens' ordered trip, took the teens to a parking lot, stopped there, and called the police.

   Apparently the police showed up in force, perhaps because Waymo didn't understand it was a toy gun involved, so it's lucky nobody was injured in that kind of police response situation. Early reports were that Waymo locked the teens in the vehicle, which of course would have all sorts of safety implications among other issues, but later reports suggest that the doors were unlocked but Waymo lied to the teens and falsely told them that there were maintenance issues to get them to stay with the vehicle -- meanwhile Waymo was actually getting the police involved.

   Many of the stories about this seem to be taking a kind of chuckling tone and saying gee wasn't this cool? And in this particular case nothing obviously serious ultimately seems to have happened, at the time of the last report I saw the teens hadn't even been actually arrested or charged with any crimes. But a broader look at this sequence of events and the situation in general seems much less clear. One way to look at it is asking how a human taxi driver might have reacted to the same set of circumstances. Probably they would have told the teens to "knock it off" and if they continued to misbehave kick them out of the cab. And probably they wouldn't have lied to kids about a false taxi breakdown, secretly call the police, and sit in a parking lot with them for the police to arrive.

   But obviously robot vehicles, even when under remote control from humans at a central facility, have a limited set of options since there's no human driver physically present. Some observers of this event have suggested that what Waymo did -- given that they're not an agent of the government -- could be technically categorized as kidnapping, even if it's viewed as a safety-positive action in this case. And in fact the formal definition of kidnapping includes taking someone where they didn't ask to be, by use of deception. Whether that word is used isn't very important for now. And really we can put aside for today the details of the teens' Waymo adventure.

   But there's a whole long list of questions that have been percolating in the background about robotaxis that are now pushed to the front of the stage. These vehicles have cameras and microphones everywhere. What kind of passenger activities inside would trigger the firms diverting passengers to other locations against their will or surveillance reports being filed? Could this capability be abused by future authorities, or by hackers, perhaps on a mass scale by technologically sophisticated terrorists? And that's just to start. These may sound like sci-fi concepts but the reality of robotaxis is already here and as a society we seem to be virtually unprepared for its implications.

   In Bradbury's story, there was only one police robocar for an entire city. But Waymo reportedly has something close to a 1000 robotaxis in San Francisco alone, and many more in other cities in their rapidly growing robotaxi fleets. Other firms are building their own robotaxi fleets as well. How these vehicles are going to interact with government authorities, and society more broadly, is far too important to be left to the tender mercies of the Big Tech Billionaires in their never ending search to maximize their profits.

   So it's up to us to make sure that these firms act appropriately in society's best interests and don't drive society, and all of us, right off a technological cliff.

   - - -

   L

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   Chuck Darwin (cdarwin@c.im)'s status on Monday, 29-Jun-2026 02:25:34 JST Chuck Darwin

   The richest man on Earth owns X.

   The family of the second-richest man owns Paramount, which owns CBS, and could soon own Warner Bros, which owns CNN.

   The third-richest man owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

   The fourth-richest man owns the Washington Post and Amazon MGM Studios.

   Another billionaire owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, and now the Roku streaming service

   Why are the ultra-rich buying up so much of the media?

   Vanity may play a part,
   but there’s a more pragmatic
   – some might say sinister – reason.

   If you’re a multibillionaire, you might view democracy as a potential threat to your net worth.
   Control over a significant share of the dwindling number of media outlets would enable you to effectively hedge against democracy
   by suppressing criticism of you and other plutocrats,
   and discouraging any attempt to
   – for example – tax away your wealth.

   You also have Donald Trump to contend with.
   In his second term of office,
   Trump has brazenly and illegally used the power of the presidency
   to punish his enemies
   and reward those who lavish him with praise and profits.

   So perhaps it shouldn’t have been surprising that
   the editorial board of the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post
   defended the razing of the East Wing of the White House to build Trump his giant ballroom
   – without disclosing that Jeff Bezos-owned Amazon is a major corporate contributor to the ballroom’s funding.

   The Post’s editorial board also applauded Trump’s defense department’s decision
   to obtain a new generation of smaller nuclear reactors,
   but failed to mention Amazon’s stake in X-energy,
   a company that’s developing small nuclear reactors.

   And it criticized Washington DC’s refusal to accept self-driving cars
   without disclosing that Amazon’s self-driving car company was trying to get into the Washington DC market.

   These breaches are inexcusable.
   It’s much the same with the family of Larry Ellison,
   founder of the software firm Oracle and the second-richest person in the world.
   Ellison is a longtime Trump donor
   who also, according to court records,
   participated in a phone call to discuss how his 2020 election defeat could be contested.

   In June 2025, Ellison and Oracle were co-sponsors of Trump’s military parade in Washington.

   At the time, Larry and his son David,
   founder of Skydance Media,
   were waiting for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
   to approve their $8 billion merger with Paramount Global, owner of CBSNews.

   In the run-up to the sale, some top brass at CBS News and its flagship 60 Minutes resigned,
   citing concerns over the network’s ability to maintain its editorial independence,
   and revealing pressure by Paramount to tamp down stories critical of Trump.

   No matter. Too much money was at stake.

   In July, Paramount paid $16 million to settle Trump’s frivolous lawsuit against CBS
   and canceled The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,
   much to Trump’s delight.
   Three weeks after the settlement was announced,
   Trump loyalist Brendan Carr, chair of the FCC,
   approved the Ellisons’ deal,
   making David chief executive of the new media giant Paramount Skydance
   and giving him control of CBS News.

   In October, David made the anti-“woke” opinion journalist Bari Weiss
   the CBS News editor-in-chief,
   despite her lack of experience in either broadcasting or news.

   Earlier this month, it was revealed that CBS News heavily edited Trump’s latest 60 Minutes interview,
   cutting his boast that the network “paid me a lotta money”.

   I’m old enough to remember when CBS News would never have surrendered to a demagogic president.
   But that was when CBS News
   – the home of Edward R Murrow and Walter Cronkite
   – was independent of the rest of CBS,
   and when the top management of CBS had independent responsibilities to the American public.
   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/13/trump-media-ultra-rich-democracy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

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   Jonathan Schofield (urlyman@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 22-Mar-2026 17:29:18 JST Jonathan Schofield

   In the same time period, the world’s privately-owned oil companies have made $5 billion in elevated profits.

   So we might infer that the price of a tonne of carbon should be $1,000 per tonne.

   The EU has one of the highest carbon prices. It’s currently at about €68 ($79), so at least 12x too low

   #climateDiary https://mastodon.world/@davidho/116271391844076790