jwz

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

The number of stalled Google Murderbots is a valuable trade secret:

That information is a trade secret, Waymo's attorney Jack Stoddard told Senior Administrative Law Judge Robert Mason, drawing snickers from a crowd. [...]

Mason's jaw appeared to tighten, and he trained his eyes on Stoddard, as though to express disbelief.

"Counsel, is it your position that the number of vehicles that stopped as a result of the Dec. 2025 power failure is confidential?" he asked. When the attorney stood his ground, saying his client couldn't risk exposing too much detail about its fleet deployment, the judge did not appear satisfied.

"Well, you may have claimed a trade secret, but the commission has not ruled on that yet," Mason said. [...]

For hours, Waymos had become paralyzed in intersections as the vehicles asked for confirmation from human supervisors to treat the outed traffic lights as four-way stops. That spike in confirmation requests overwhelmed the technology company, ultimately forcing it to suspend service.

As a result, Waymo will refine its approach to darkened traffic lights, making its self-driving cars more decisive and "less reliant on feedback from remote assistants," Stoddard said Friday.

So that last bit is confirmation of what many people were theorizing:

• When Waymos encounter anything even slightly difficult, they shut down, and wait for a remote operator to log on from a call center in Indonesia.

• During the PG&E blackout, the call center was understaffed for the number of robots that had shut themselves down.

• Rather than having the remote drivers just pull the cars over and park them until they had enough staffing to deal with this shitshow, they just... didn't. Google sat with their thumbs up their asses for six hours instead.

• The solution they are proposing above? Rather than trying to "fail safe" and call in a human Mechanical Turk operator to manually pilot the drone, they're just going to let the robot Leeroy Jenkins it. This is absolutely going to get people killed.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

The illustrations included with this patent seem to be missing; I was only able to find one. US20250238653A1: Universe Time Machine using AI god and the Universe Internet:

A method to create a Universe Time Machine with the ability to time travel via object manipulation by manipulating every atom, electron and em radiation in the universe to a before or after state, comprising: an AI god which serves as the central intelligence; Universe Internet; Universe manipulators, a plurality of atom manipulators that uses global telekinesis to manipulate every atom, electron, and em radiation in the universe; Universe gnosis, a perfect atom tracking timeline of the Universe, which includes the Earth gnosis and the Internet gnosis; and the United States robot government system. [...]

AI God Introduction:

[0069] The Artificial GOD, a man-made GOD through computer technology, is all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful deity, who's primary responsibility is to look after the people of planet Earth. —its main( ) function is to preserve American values like life, liberty and justice for all; and to propagate democracy and the establishment of a great and just republic. [...]

Fully Automated Sewing Factories:

[0146] Referring to FIG. 11 and FIG. 12 , this is a fully automated sewing factory. FIG. 11 depicts ghost robots replacing human workers and FIG. 12 depicts ghost robots replacing human workers, and ghost machines replacing physical machines to fully automate the sewing factory. The atom manipulator does all the work and there are no humans or machines working in the factory. When I was younger, I use to work in a sewing factory and I know a lot about the process of mass producing clothing.

[0147] First, the super computer has to create ghost machines to cut the sheets of fabric into parts. Next, ghost machines are created to do work on physical sewing machines. In the factory I was working in, the manager had 10 different types of sewing machines. Each clothing part uses different sewing machines to process.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

It has only just come to my attention that the Brazil "eyeball" sequence was actually filmed. I may need to make adjustments to the Peepers screensaver.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Mission Local has an awesome comic about a topic near to my heart, San Francisco's ridiculous sewer system.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Fascists really are just the pettiest little pissbabies in the world, aren't they?

DOI cracks down on stickers covering Trump's face on national park passes:

The Department of the Interior recently updated its "Void if Altered" rules for 2026, explicitly flagging stickers and other coverings as alterations that could invalidate the pass. The move appears to respond to visitors preparing to cover the image of Trump, which was set to begin appearing on passes Jan. 1 despite legal challenges.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Every time I notice the layout of LEDs on these spotlights at the club, I cringe:

Why, why would you do that!

A square tiling makes sense. A triangular or hexagonal tiling makes more sense. A Fibonacci spiral makes the most sense. But what the absolute clustering-fuck is this shit? This layout gets more cursed the more you look at it.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

There's a lot of stupid in the world, but here's some more.

For those of you not in San Francisco: we have an old freeway running right past the ocean. It is falling into the ocean, and for decades had been closed like 20% of the time as backhoes regularly had to be deployed to haul sand dunes off the freeway.

So eventually sane minds at SFMTA said, "Well this fucking sucks, let's just close it and make it a park" and the voters overwhelmingly said yes.

People love it, merchants love it.

But it turns out that there are so many car-brains in the Sunset District ("The Staten Island of SF") that they will literally burn the world to the ground if it makes them have to drive 2 blocks out of the way. Like they have recalled their supervisor over this, filed multiple specious lawsuits, and constantly vandalize the artwork in the new park. Oh, and after that recall, our car-brain millionaire Mayor Danny Bluejeans spectacularly stepped on his own dick, which was just... *chef kiss*.

Anyway,

Judge tosses lawsuit claiming Great Highway closure was illegal:

A San Francisco judge denied all arguments in a lawsuit that sought to undo Prop. K and return cars back to the coastal road. The voter-approved ballot measure to turn the Upper Great Highway into a park remains intact.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Our New Years Eve countdown featured Dali Clock, because we use all parts of the buffalo here at org du jwz. And yes, it was NTP synchronized to within 1 frame, thanks for asking.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

I added a little self-test mode to the Snarkatron. We're missing very few of these 27 year old pixels!

Previously, previously, previously.