Humans just got on the board!

Wow, uh, chalk one up for the organics, I guess:

I'm suddenly feeling slightly better about our chances
in the upcoming War Against the Machines.

Yeah, my view's pretty lack-luster too, but 
almost certainly more interesting than a blog.

What you're looking at--ok, what I presume you're looking at, I mean, maybe something interesting just went buy the window--but if you're looking at the photo above, you're looking at the charred and melted remains of one of Bay Area Tech Company Waymo's autonomous cars. A robot-taxi, if you will. It was just minding its own business in San Francisco's Chinatown last night when an angry mob descended. First they spray painted it, and smashed the windows before ultimately setting a firework off inside of it. Because Lunar New Year. Can you believe it?

That's weird because while it runs on a slightly different cycle to the one we're used to, that is, 354.37 days as opposed to the 365.25 days of the calendar most of us are familiar with, it's still pretty regular, and I mean, they're celebrations all over the world. It's a pretty big--oh, you thought I meant the car thing.

This is the Year of the Wood Dragon. And while I'm not one to argue with 
thousands of years of tradition, but numbers seem a lot easier to keep track of.

Pictured: the victim, seen here creating value for
Waymo's shareholders at the expense of people
living in a city where the average rent is $3,200.

Right. And I did fail to mention that the business the car was minding was the systematic destruction of ride share jobs? And sure, ride share jobs are themselves the thing killing the taxi industry, but at least ride share drivers are, you know, people. People classified as independent contractors in order to ensure that companies Uber and Lyft can collect a cut of the drivers's earnings without taking on any of the responsibilities of being an employer, so exploited people. They basically just sell you an app and that little sign for your windshield for 25% of your fares.

"These robo-taxis are a menace, you hear me?!"

-J. Jonah Jameson, weighing in

Regardless, I'm sure the crowd wasn't just standing up for the gig economy like victims of some kind of collective Stockholm Syndrome, they were also upset about the dangers these things pose to pedestrians. Back in October, a pedestrian who'd been hit by another car and thrown into the path of one of Waymo's vehicles became pinned underneath when it stopped. Yeah, it basically parked on her. More recently, a cyclist was hit. They weren't seriously hurt, but I mean, the damn robot hit a person, so I can understand why people are upset.

Look, I'm not pro-vandalism. There should be better avenues for protesting something and there probably are. City officials don't think autonomous car technology is there yet, emergency services are concerned that they can block their vehicles from getting to calls, and clearly regular people on the street turn go V for Vendetta on sight and yet they're still rolling around hitting dogs. Yeah, one of them killed a dog. So again, I'm not defending the angry mob, but what did Waymo think was going to happen?

"Why do people hate our driverless cars so much? I mean, sure, we're rendering
workers obsolete, causing traffic jams in an already difficult to navigate city and
we killed that dog, but don't they realize how profitable this could be? For us?"

-Waymo's PR department