Waymo problems in La La Land as robotaxis set aflame Five Waymo robotaxis were torched on Sunday during protests against the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency's efforts to detain and deport suspected undocumented immigrants. Social media footage from the protests shows the automated cars covered with graffiti and on fire. Some reports suggest protesters …
Conquering the land, one city at a time.
I wonder whether there is actually a difference between "suspected" and "proven" undocumented immigrants whenn deportations are involved.
My impression was that anyone they could lay their hands on was deported, one way or another.
Waymo camera footage is sent to the police who use facial recognition software to identify targets. Farcical recognition has a high false positive rate on a good day and quickly gets worse for people with dark skin. The people black bagging random people off the street know they are doing wrong - that is why they wear masks instead of showing ID.
404 Media reports that the Los Angeles Police Department recently acquired video from one of the self-driving cars as part of a hit-and-run investigation. The video was published on the LAPD’s YouTube channel in an effort to gin up tips from the public. Gizmodo - "Waymo’s Driverless Cars Revealed to Be Narcs as Cops Use Them to Probe Crimes "
That's the "proof" I keep seeing linked to your assertion. I guess some important people are too busy doing something about air pollution by burning EV's to read past the headline "Waymo’s Driverless Cars Revealed to Be Narcs ..." . The actual story content is that the police got a warrant for footage related to a hit-and-run, and the police released that footage looking for tips, which by my judgement is actually a very good thing.
If you do not like the link I did not provide try a quick web search. In under a minute I found several articles of police using Waymo footage for more than just that one hit and run incident. (To be fair, that particular hit and run incident came up three times in the top ten results.)
>...anyone they could lay their hands on was deported, one way or another.
I'm not sure that deportation is even the actual objective.
They obviously need to deport a few for "optics", but there seems to be a lot of "pop them in a privately run internment camp, and send the government a weekly bill for each and every one of them.
I imagine the weekly cost is what you would expect when the work went to a company that tendered the largest bribe, as I dare say there was no credible public tender process.
Failing to do "due process" means that the annual cost will expend to tens or hundreds of billions a year, with no real idea of who, how many or why they are even in there.
Masked "ICE" chaps in unmarked vans, now just appear to be more private contractors, so the rounding up is also just a lucrative boondoggle, with no reason or incentive to try and achieve anything from it.
Right on! And here I guess the masked ICE Islamic Tangerine Revolutionary Guard Corps snatching folks right off the streets at random, leaving their kids alone on the sidewalk, was not enough for the Incubus Orange Ayatollah ...
So it became necessary to send in 4,000 Mandarin Kent State Shootings National Guard Troops instead, for a more accurate on-site recreation of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.
But even that couldn't satisfy the Clementine Offal Oriffice of Fake Cosplay Spray-On "I am not a crook" Cheese, and so now it's an additional 700 Grapefruit Butcher of Damascus' Marines that are deployed to properly gas his own people ... but don't worry, it's only a shower
Clearly, all constitutional right have been suspended, by an unhinged fruitcake, and chihuahuas, imho!
In a country where people do not routinely carry documentation to prove their nationality or immigration status, it would be quite easy to find people to detain on suspicion. Some of those who've railed against a "Papers, please!" society may be about to find out that it's not the papers but the society that they need to worry about.
Waymo has likely recalled all of their vehicles back to the barn for the duration as the last thing they'd want is for their insurance company to have a massive incentive to find those loopholes that get them out of paying for what's already be torched.
Protesting injustice is one thing, but the look is not improved by waving foreign flags, riding around Mad Max style on off-road vehicles and spray painting anything and everything.
What's the main company that makes tasers? I want to buy some stock.
the look is not improved by waving foreign flags
I hate to mention it, but California was part of Mexico until it was seized by America in a war described by a certain Ulysses S. Grant as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. Once you've established the principle of taking territory by force, condemnation of violence sounds a little hollow.
A large part of that is high tech, which can relocate pretty much anywhere. The rest is mostly the huge farms that are sucking up all the water thanks to decades of corruption and poor governance that allowed the farmers to buy up huge amounts of water rights.
California is the world's 4th largest economy, roughly 14% of the entire US economy, pretty much double that of Texas.California would have no problem at all leaving the US because of trump and standing as an independent country.
California would have big problems, mainly this one-
Public finances
Revenues $195.73 billion (2022-23)
Expenses $286.4 billion (2022-23)
So a public sector deficit of probably >$100bn now, and it would lose any Federal funding. Some of that would be offset by not having to send taxes raised in Cali to the Fed. Which Newsom and some of Cali's finest public servants have been threatening to do. But that would then invoke the wrath of the IRS & DoJ, and Newsom could be arrested. Which the DoJ could probably do anyway because of the 'sanctuary city' status, sheltering illegal immigrants and possibly assisting the rioters and interfering with lawful attempts to detain and deport people who are in the US illegally.
But I suggest it's mostly a publicity stunt. The last election results showed that ilegal immigration is a hot topic, as is law enforcement. The Democrats are in something of a crisis at the moment, and Newsom is being tipped as the DNC's next candidate. So provoking something that can portray Newsom as weak, ineffective or incompetent, especially on hot-button issues helps the Republicans. But it also doesn't help Cali, especially when it's probably going to have to increase taxes to pay for fire damage, it's rail project, and has the Olympics to pay for.
Plus it's already been depopulating due to high taxes and cost of living, and it's easy for a lot of Cali businesses to move out of state, either physically, or just on paper. I think depopulation also means it's going to lose 4 electors.
As for Waymo, seems like their autopilot needs updating. They can already do congestion avoidance, so need to add riot avoidance into their algorithms. Especially given potential liability, if they send a passenger into a storm of bricks or molotovs.
You failed to understand if Cali left the union and declared itself a country, the DoJ, IRS etc would have no authority over them.
A public services deficit of $100Bn sounds huge but only if your brain is too small to understand a revenue of >$4Tn, then it becomes almost spare change
A public services deficit of $100Bn sounds huge but only if your brain is too small to understand a revenue of >$4Tn, then it becomes almost spare change.
And you fail to understand that revenue != income, or taxable income, or other money that Cali could get their mitts on. So it's a bit like figuring out how many Angelinos could dance on the pinhead in the Governor's office. Just because AlphaGoo, Apple etc have bases there, it doesn't mean Cali could help itself to all their revenue. Especially when Delaware, and the big companies being highly proficient tax minimisation.
Then there's the tax balance t'other poster mentioned.. which showed a surplus of 'only' $76bn. Which isn't a lot, especially given that tax differential is mostly indivdualls and businesses. If those leave, then obviously their money goes with them. Plus there would be boring little details like Federal businesses also obviously leaving Cali. NASA relocates JPL, DoD moves USN out of San Diego, and maybe does a bit of a Gitmo and keeps Coronado to launch raids and psyops campaigns into Cali etc etc. Or there's Hollywood, currently in decline and perhaps terminally.
Then there's other fun. So Trump's proposed tariffs in foreign film productions. Hollywood then becomes foreign. Oops. Or the small matter of California's ports handling a lot of the West coast's shipping traffic. Which is also in decline and would be subject to tariff fun & games. Then what would happen next fire season, and California losing any Federal emergency funds, or funds to deal with mudslides next winter.
And then there's just the political optics. California politicians talking about escalating the riots to protect illegal immigrants, Newsom talking about tax evasion, or just secession, which if serious, would be de facto insurrection. Entertaining as it would be to see Newsom perp-walked on his way to a maximum security prison, I think that unlikely. But come mid-terms, or the next election, Republicans could just point at Newsom's track record of defending criminals, and laugh.
"and has the Olympics to pay for."
Welllllll, the LA City Council is increasing the minimum wage for hospitality workers to $30/hr (wish I made that designing rocket avionics). <https://californiaglobe.com/fr/la-city-council-votes-12-3-to-give-hotel-airport-workers-30-hour-minimum-wage-by-2028/>
This has hotels considering shutting down in advance of the Olympics which has the possibility of there being fewer rooms available than the OOC deems a minimum. They may allow that adjacent cities with good public transportation links can make up for that. In the mean time, a lot of hotels will shut down and those that are left will charge a premium especially during the Olympics. Somebody better start funding the Metrolink commuter rail system right away so they can recondition spare train cars and engines in time to be able to increase service as well as coordinate running more frequent service in both directions where tracks are shared with freight.
"Stats show clear trend during Biden's term of people leaving California. Please tell us why?"
Correlation. The skyrocketing cost of living in California and the ever increasing taxes are chasing people out. The state legislature is pulling stupid stunts such as passing laws requiring petroleum companies to hold 2x the amount of finished fuels in inventory. Instead, those companies are shutting down refineries and relocating business offices to other states such as Texas. Some pessimistic forecasts have California needing to import finished fuels (Petrol, Diesel and Jet-A) from foreign sources to prevent crippling shortages once several refineries close and the companies have pulled up stakes. For those that don't know, California is a big oil state. New off-shore drilling and exploration was banned some years ago. It's tougher to get permissions to drill new wells or open new sites to the point where companies don't want to bother to wade through the red-tape and political stew with $5,000/hour attorneys to navigate.
Rather than any President, California's issues are home-grown. The worst ideas get exported to other liberal states.
Only due to a small number of people hoarding all the wealth. One family owns a vast amount of the farmland and a huge amount of the water.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Resnick
Outside of farming, big tech or the film industry there isn't much left. You could remove LA from California and not make much of a dent in the economy. Actually it would probably make things better as the state would not have to fund all the corruption in the homelessness industrial machine.
I remember hearing a radio article about a teacher in California (LA?), trying to explain to her high school students just how unaffordable it was to live there. They really didn't get it (they were generally the kids of wealthy families) until she told them she was homeless herself and living in her car, because her salary wasn't enough to pay the rent.
It is a death spiral. Mega corp wants to attract people so pays mega $$$, these people can afford to overpay for services such as housing, prices go up, mega corp pays more $$ to keep its people cos they make such insane profits, the rest of the community spirals into the ground. You know full well that mega corp won't pay the cleaners the mega bucks.
Some friends of a friend both worked for Meta in the before times and lived not too far from the main office. The amount they had to pay for their house was beyond normal comprehension.
If you raise everyone's wages it just becomes a catastrophic inflationary mess. Rent control usually backfires resulting in rental properties being owned by the same family for decades and passed down to the kids.
The reality is that the USD is hugely over-valued but due to its status as the world reserve currency and also its usage as the petro-dollar there cannot be a re-adjustment.
If you raise everyone's wages it just becomes a catastrophic inflationary mess. Rent control usually backfires resulting in rental properties being owned by the same family for decades and passed down to the kids.
Yep, it's crazy. Last time I looked at LA, 'normal' family homes cost $2-4m putting them waay out of reach of normal families. Then seeing things like teacher or police officer salaries being >$100k but property still out of their reach. So like you say, just a tad inflationary. Not sure what the solution could be because like you say, rent control rarely ends well. Maybe more social housing for key workers, but that also tends to have problems with the definition of key worker. Plus most of the land already owned, burned or fought over by developers wanting to maximise their return.
I think Gordon Gecko was wrong when he said 'greed is good' and it would be nice if we can get back to a world where homes are for living in rather than flipping. But I think there are signs that bubbles are about to burst in places like LA & Miami, with inventory exceeding supply, especially in Miami.
Remember in LA we are talking about an administration that spends over 800k per unit for housing for homeless people.
https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles-homelessness-c2363a1e415b06fcdce71e406919658c
Just how much of that 800k went to backhanders to LA politicians and lawmakers?
"Yep, it's crazy. Last time I looked at LA, 'normal' family homes cost $2-4m putting them waay out of reach of normal families. "
Good grief, where are you shopping for a home? Bel-air? California is more expensive than many states, but it also varies a whole lot. You also have to look at the TCO. Some states have such high property taxes that a low purchase price isn't helpful. Especially since that tax goes on even after you've paid off the home.
Areas with rent control can be doomed to losing housing for rent. Those properties aren't saleable as nobody wants to buy them at market rate and then be handcuffed by how much rent they can collect to pay the mortgage, much less upkeep and improvements.
Maybe if real world math was taught in schools, people would see what I see when headhunters want me to re-locate to Silicon Valley. The cost of living is so high that even a salary that pays for a reasonable standard of living gets taxed to pieces. Many of the companies there fail to make it out of an investor funded startup phase and that can often end precipitously. One week you have a job and the next week you don't. You do have a lease on your housing that you will need to try to get out of and everything is super expensive. If you don't find another job in short order, you better have the money to move (in the dead of night if you can't break the lease).
If you can't afford a home, you aren't likely going to be able to afford the rent in the area either. Those landlords have mortgages to pay, upkeep to pay for and want to see a profit on top. You need to be able to work out if the salary you can earn will pay enough to live where you are or might move to. A job that pays $150,000/yr sounds grand, but not if you wind up having to put things on a credit card every month to live nearby. No holidays, no new car, no eating out, etc. I've run numbers with very similar salaries and it made zero sense to take the job. In other parts of the US, I could live like a king on that much money.
"But still, 4th largest economy in the world so, they're not doing all that bad."
That depends a lot on how you calculate it. Gross revenues are not net profits and several very large companies have moved, are in the process of moving or stated they plan to move out of the state. There's also a lot of pass-through business due to the ports.
Of course it is.
It's not like a few burning automated vehicles is going to keep Silicon Valley startups from getting more venture capital and setting themselves up for going public, right ?
Any human driver should sense a riot area is not a place to be and avoid or exit fast. Can a Waymo sense there is a difference between every day pedestrians and rioters?
Guess soon Google SatNav will have another red marker alongside roadworks and collision with the pop-up "Is this riot still ongoing, Yes/No".
Nicely timed demonstration of the stupidity of self-driving AI, unable in real time to take account of dynamic events and so reroute around the protests, instead continue on their pre-planned flight path.
> Guess soon Google SatNav will have another red marker
Expect Waze to get it first.
If our dear leaders were able to listen to protesters without this happening this would be different. However it is only when things become violent and it draws media attention that our dear leaders begin to slightly listen.
A peaceful protest doesn't interest the medias. If there no media show politicians are not interested. If you want to be heard, you have to make a lot of noise. The more disturbance you create, the more politician may take care of the problem. It's sad, but it's a reality.
Except the same people who utterly lost their shit over Jan 6th are now back to calling the LA rioting 'peaceful' and 'constitutional'.
Something that people miss is that on Jan 6th no private property was damaged. No cars were burned, no shops looted, nothing. The protesters took their grievance to the seat of US federal power, as they are legally allowed to do, for redress. They were then attacked by law enforcement and showered in tear gas, stun grenades, baton rounds and other 'less lethal' munitions.
What we have in LA, just like with the 'summer of love' in 2020, is a lot of private property damage and looting and the talking heads saying that the protesters are being provoked by the feds. There is also evidence that there are groups supplying, if not actually controlling, the 'protesters'.
We even have the good old Beeb saying that the protests are the result of 'misinformation':
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1kv1lgdpkjo
Now what was it that happened in the UK last year that was caused by misinformation? And what was the reaction? Hmm...
Hmm... indeed.
You as an Anonymous Coward appear to know everything there is to know about these riots and Jan. 6th.
I believe you to be a functioning nutter that takes every word of the great orange turd as the gospel truth - clue, Trump is barely coherent most of the time let alone truthful.
"They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats." What kind of person would say that during a debate by potential political leaders on TV? Possibly a person that knows that ill informed people watching will take that as the truth as their blessed leader knows all. I'm struggling to remember Sleepy Joe saying anything along those lines. Perhaps you can enlighten me and post a link to something Joe said that is anywhere near as crazy as "they're eating the pets of the people that live there".
PS I still don't downvote people, however out of touch of reality they are.
What we have in LA, just like with the 'summer of love' in 2020, is a lot of private property damage and looting and the talking heads saying that the protesters are being provoked by the feds. There is also evidence that there are groups supplying, if not actually controlling, the 'protesters'.
I think this is one of the interesting aspects, especially wrt political warfare. So I saw suggestions from the 'summer of love' that someone had been leaving strategically placed pallets of bricks around the rioting areas. Then same thing may have happened again. Might just be a conspiracy theory and they're there because planned works for repaving etc. That's something I've pondered a few times, so urban planning vs civil disorder. Block paving looks pretty, but not when rioters can easily lift the bricks and start lobbing them at cars, law enforcement, shop windows etc.
But DoJ is investigating if there are organisers, and if they can be linked to the Democrats, that'll just provide more political ammunition as well. Also curious how lawfare will work out. So interfering with ICE could be an easy Federal obstruction charge & felony, keeping offenders out of Cali State catch & release justice system.
In 2020 the riots did seem to be kept away from federal buildings. It was really only in the Portland area where the protesters actively went after fed buildings. Everywhere else was state & local or private property. Also very notably the riots were in cities with very left leaning DAs and AGs. You did not see major rioting, or any protests really, in red areas. They were protesting the Republican administration by smashing up and looting Democrat cities...
"So I saw suggestions from the 'summer of love' that someone had been leaving strategically placed pallets of bricks around the rioting areas."
Some of that sort of thing gets made up. There was a photo of a couple of pallets of breeze blocks near what looked like a Home Depot sitting outside of a bar-gate. You'd need to be pretty buff to lob those around. The handier size is the classic red brick or cobbles, not cinder blocks.
I do not remember it being fire bombed. I know there were all sorts of crazy claims from the Democrats and their friends in the media but nothing with any actual evidence.
There were the two mysterious 'pipe bombs' that didn't really seem to get much investigation at the time. Now, those might.
Ah the pipe bombs where the police just sat in their car nearby after being told about them :) They can track down grandmas who wandered onto the grass outside the capitol but they can't find the pipe bomb person...
I was more referring to things like the 'poop on the walls' claim. It was a 'someone close to' claim. If there really had been poop on the walls where are the photos?
Interesting how the media in the UK is spinning the protests in Ballymena as like the worst thing ever and that everyone involved are bad people and the authorities are brave for standing up to the nasty protestors.
Yet somehow in LA the rioters are the justified ones and that the law enforcement are evil bad people doing bad things for daring to stop cars being set on fire or shops being looted.
The people in our country illegally very likely possess some type of "documents" from their own country (a drivers license or national ID, for example) - so we never make the presumption that they are "undocumented". That would constitute false reporting.
Because they have no legal authorization to be in our country, we refer to them as illegal immigrants. That is the term that is accurate.
Please stop contributing to the politicization of what is a clearly delineated legal matter, and use the correct term - illegal immigrants.
Thank you.
"Because they have no legal authorization to be in our country, we refer to them as illegal immigrants."
And there are people that protest that they are "law-abiding citizens" glossing over that they are in the country contrary to immigration laws so are not "law-abiding" by that and certainly not citizens. It's not like there isn't a proper path to applying for residency and citizenship. It's even biased for larger numbers of people coming from south of the border. Even when I have all day with nothing planned, I'm not pleased with queue jumpers at the shops/bank. Why would that be ok for something more important?
I might be able to argue legacy preference to obtain Scottish citizenship and have always had that at the back of my mind. It would take time and if I were to make up my mind to retire in Scotland, I'd do it properly. I'd not just move over and enter the country on a stated visitor visa/entry and then just stay. I could keep my US driving license so if I were ever pulled over, I'd just claim I was on holiday. How many coppers are going to demand a passport and make checks to see if I've overstayed? It's been at least a decade since I've been pulled over on a traffic stop. To top it off, I sorta speak the language.
How many coppers are going to demand a passport and make checks to see if I've overstayed? It's been at least a decade since I've been pulled over on a traffic stop. To top it off, I sorta speak the language.
Currently there's no such thing as Scottish citizenship, and won't be until Scotland gains independence. But your passport and visa status would go into the system on entry to the UK. Clock would start ticking. Then if visa expires and there's no record of you leaving the UK, your name would go onto the naughty list. Renting or buying property needs ID, as does working. So police or border officers could just rock up at your address or place of work, detain and deport you.
So it's in theory easy to catch 'legal' illegal immigrants. But the ones that sneak into the country as fully illegal then can end up caught in the 'black economy' and sweat shops or the sex trade with very little legal protections.
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