That could just be, and seems to be in some cases at least, because Waymo doesn't behave like a human would, and people gets tripped up.
I don't doubt Waymos are very safe, but I always irk at these comparisons. Majority of human accidents are due to gross negligence and/or driving under some influence or serious fatigue. A system incapable of alcohol etc. is better than that? Well that is a substantially lower bar than you can possibly imagine. Add to that that all systems have constraints on how and where they are able to go. Combined even Tesla can be made to look good.
Depending on the context and question it might still be the question to pose. But people often make the leap to assume that a typical Waymo is x better than a typical human driver which is an entirely different question entirely.
Waymo is for sure one of the (if not the only) good players out there though, gives me some hope.
> could just be, and seems to be in some cases at least, because Waymo doesn't behave like a human would, and people gets tripped up
Driving conventions vary wildly across states and even within them. And foreign drivers are a thing. A human who gets tripped up by a Waymo acting unusually will also get confused by someone getting used to no turns on right in Manhattan, driving on the right side of the road if coming in from the Commonwealth or adapting from California's protected left turners can turn into any lane, not just the leftmost. They'll also get confused by children and pets, who aren't bound by social custom, and deer, who aren't bound by physics.
... no? That children, animals etc. acts differently everyone knows. But what about a self-driving car that looks the same as every other car?
Anyway, it was Waymos own findings when they started out. They got into more accidents, none of which where their own fault, than expected and realized that they had to make it behave more like a human to not confuse human drivers.
> what about a self-driving car that looks the same as every other car?
My Aussie friends, when they visit America, don't put up a sign in their window saying they're Aussie and will occasionally try to turn left at a red.
> They got into more accidents, none of which where their own fault, than expected and realized that they had to make it behave more like a human to not confuse human drivers
Sure. I'm still filing this in the nothingburger file. If anything, it screams that we have a lot of people on the road who should not be.
I think the other way to think about it is that Waymo is probably in the 99th percentile for not being distracted and 99th percentile for reaction time, always, just from a pure sensor and computation standpoint.
Regardless one of the conditions surely is giving them permissions to sell this to starlink as and everyone else. So whether the information is the same is probably irrelevant, how they are using it is.
At some point it itself becomes a target. It has to be able to get almost 100% kills, otherwise the enemy can swarm it with cheap drones, destroy the expensive installation, then continue as before.
Many times more is about what it comes out to. There are some companies selling laser defense systems but they are many times more than cheap FPV drones with grenades attached.
How do you re-evaluate your approach? I'm asking because the landscape, at least from my lens, was completely different a year ago. So I fear that as the foundation shifts whatever learnings, approaches and mental models I have risk being obsolete and starts to work against me.
The problem of evaluating is hard enough as it is without layers of indirection built on top of it.
Longevity! The headphones I have on me are 15 years old. Batteries degrade quickly, especially in consumer products that does everything in their power to boost the spec sheet but sacrifice longevity.
I have an older 8GB MacBook Air. This is false. I routinely have Slack, Chrome, iTerm, Visual Studio Code, and more open on it. It’s fine.
Those apps don’t need every single byte of memory you see in Activity Monitor to be active in RAM all of the time. The OS swaps out unused parts to the very fast SSD. If you push it so far that active pages are constantly being swapped out as apps compete then you start to notice, but the threshold for that is a lot higher than HN comments seem to think.
It really isn't. It is a capable machine but modern software has made it a lemon. And that is the only reason apple sells it. So that whoever buys it needs to buy another one prematurely, generating another sale.
Everything from apple to modern software is rotten to its core.
…in reply to someone who just said their experience is fine, and included details. If you just want to rant about Apple, have at it, but you’re going to have to do better than “nuh, uh” if you want to be convincing.
Well I could say that it isn't enough for vscode alone. And I'd be right. It all depends on how and what you use vscode for.
8GB really shouldn't be an option in 2026, it is just shortsighted and an insanely uneven build.
I could rant about Dell too. Or most other manufacturers (surprise, greed isn't apple exclusive). But Apple at least tries to keep the appearance of a higher profile.
Well I could say that it isn't enough for vscode alone. And I'd be right. It all depends on how and what you use vscode for.
Fair enough; though experience says 8Gb will run VScode, it would very much depend on the use case, I agree. OTOH, I would argue that anyone working VScode that hard probably isn’t buying 8Gb machines, but OP did say they’re running it so it’s up for discussion.
I’m sick to death of this. It’s so devoid from reality in 2026 that I see it as a lowest common denominator populist political catchphrase more than any legitimate contributor to any conversation. My min spec MacBook Pro from 6 years ago doesn’t flinch at this, and it barely flinches at a whole lot more.
Can we please just move on? Maybe get your hardware checked if you’re legitimately still having these issues.
I've been finding it hard to wean myself off the standalone app but another major reason to do so is opening threads in separate tabs. I find as soon as I'm involved in two or more conversations on there it's super easy to start losing track of things.
I am talking from experience with an M1 & 8GB RAM. I had to restart either the browser or the YouTube browser processes at least once every couple days to stop the whole system from lagging.
I could have two browser windows open in the late 1990s. I have about a thousand times as much RAM now. So even with 10x more bloat in the pages, I should be able to open 200 tabs just fine.
I don't doubt Waymos are very safe, but I always irk at these comparisons. Majority of human accidents are due to gross negligence and/or driving under some influence or serious fatigue. A system incapable of alcohol etc. is better than that? Well that is a substantially lower bar than you can possibly imagine. Add to that that all systems have constraints on how and where they are able to go. Combined even Tesla can be made to look good.
Depending on the context and question it might still be the question to pose. But people often make the leap to assume that a typical Waymo is x better than a typical human driver which is an entirely different question entirely.
Waymo is for sure one of the (if not the only) good players out there though, gives me some hope.
reply