Who Watches the Waymos? I do [video]

(youtube.com)

81 points | by notgloating 3 hours ago

12 comments

  • dllu 1 hour 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 51 minutes ago
      How did you get in?
      • dllu 44 minutes ago
        These were parked on Hudson Ave, which is a public street, and not inside the fenced area of the depot. So I just walked up to them.
  • 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.
    • polyomino 40 minutes ago
      Looks like it's GAIA by Marco Cochrane, I remember seeing it out in the desert. It looks like it might not be related to Waymo and just on the adjacent property
      • schoen 34 minutes ago
        Thanks, I was assuming it was the same artist as the one at the Embarcadero, and that seems to be right.
    • ramraj07 1 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.
  • netsharc 1 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)

  • MarioMan 1 hour ago
    Very interesting to see the workers in yellow presumably cleaning and manually plugging in the cars to charge.
  • balaji1 24 minutes ago
    Great clips and editing. New perspective on the scale of self driving cars deployed currently.
  • Sophira 1 hour ago
    If anybody is wondering, the music in this video appears to be "Alonia" by Valante. Very soothing.
    • fabiensanglard 1 hour ago
      Thank you, I was about to start searching for it :) !
  • Fricken 1 hour ago
    Getting Bladerunner vibes from several things but mostly that giant translucent synthwave Marco Cochrane statue.
  • clemo_ra 2 hours ago
    This is cool and soothing. Merry xmas
  • transitorykris 1 hour ago
    Watch the Zoox test vehicles please. They do absolutely terrifying things, _in every encounter_.
  • lateforwork 2 hours 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 1 hour 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 2 hours 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 3 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • akanet 3 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.
      • Animats 44 minutes ago
        If you like that sort of thing, see "AGV Garden".[1]

        (This is the port of Rotterdam, ten years ago. Sped up about 3x. Most big ports look like that now. Automated driving works really well when all those pesky humans are out of the way.)

        [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm_rlLyelQo&

    • nullc 2 hours ago
      It isn't what you were expecting-- but it's really good. Give it another look with no expectations.