True - but most such cases probably don't get public attention.

Not everyone is taking videos and publishing them. For example, if I saw such a thing happen (even if I was the only person who saw it), I wouldn't pull out my phone to make a video and then post that video anywhere. I would probably mention it in passing to my wife and maybe a friend or two in the next 48 hours - but none of them would post anything either. Also, it's not really all that novel now as it's happened often enough over the past couple of years that it's not "breaking news".

Another example.

Search engines tend to favor recent news over older news so one has to look a little harder.

There are instances in Phoenix as well. Phoenix law does allow ticketing the registered owner for a moving violation (unlike California) but apparently police don't always do so.

The news doesn't report every instance of things like this - usually just when they go viral. This is an area where murders get only passing mention if the victim isn't special in some way (hate crime victim, celebrity, rich, etc). The news media doesn't monitor the "traffic ticket blotter" carefully - let alone monitor police calls to catch the violations that don't result in an enforcement action beyond the officer shrugging their shoulders.

California should pass laws that not only report such instances to the DMV, but also laws that strongly incent robotaxi companies not to be repeat offenders - probably VERY high fines per instance are needed to do so and/or suspending their licenses across the state if that's what it takes.

Here's one example.

However, as this article notes, it turns out legislation going into effect in about six months is slated to provide a way for police to report the violation to the California DMV.

Windows is my daily driver for exactly one (well, two) reason(s) -- availability of software that is supported on Windows and not on Linux. I rely on Quicken Classic (a horrible product by the way, but the only game in town) and tax software (HR Block in my case).

Yes, both ran (slowly) on WINE when I tried them a few years ago. However neither vendor supports such use and April 15 at 23:59 is NOT a time that I want to discover that the latest HR Block fix "broke" the product on WINE (HR Block is already quite enough "broken", by my definition of "broken", on the supported Windows platforms).

The diversity of Linux desktop offerings likely makes it less likely that such software will ever be supported on Linux. If nothing else, the customer support costs of helping naive Linux users running on different distros probably insures this. Developing customer support scripts and training support personnel for multiple such environments is likely just too expensive for the relatively small gain. If 2199 actually turns out to be the year of the Linux desktop, perhaps the vendors will bite the bullet and support Linux -- but I'll be long dead before that happens.

The point is that in California there currently appears to be NO penalty or state-wide mechanism for addressing traffic violations by a robotaxi. Police apparently have little choice but to just let them go on their way without any action (at least that is what police are doing).

Perhaps it would be inappropriate to apply the current standard for human drivers to a robotaxi. Perhaps a robotaxi should be subject to higher standards as any failure to follow traffic rules is by design (it's software!) than due to limitations that humans have and can't change (such as occasional distraction/inattention as, for example, humans only can look one way at a time).

It appears that the issue was in many cases that the Waymos were so timid that they created a much worse traffic jam than humans would have - and excessively impacted hundreds of human drivers in the process. Driving too slow and impeding traffic can result in a moving violation, perhaps other irrational behavior by a human driver OR a robotaxi should as well.

This is actually going to be very interesting as robotaxis become more common and are operating during rush hour while trying to merge into freeway traffic from on-ramps. When traffic is flowing at, for example, 40 MPH, there's often little space between cars on the freeway (in some cases significantly less than the "recommended" number of "car lengths"). In such situations there's sometimes no "completely safe and legal" way to merge - one has to either "rely on the kindness of strangers" to slow down a bit to leave gaps for merging traffic OR "bully" their way in. When neither works, somehow humans (almost) always work it out using social cues and mores.

The lawyers at the robotaxi companies won't like the "bully in" approach so the robotaxis are likely to be very timid and end up not doing that. Human drivers on the freeway are likely to be much less sympathetic to the robotaxi (after all, it's just software, not human - esp. if it's "deadheading" and has no passengers).

This raises the specter of the robotaxis just giving up and stopping at the end of the merge lane (after all, that's the only completely safe thing to do). Once at a dead stop at the end of a merge lane, there's little hope they will find an opening big enough. After enough robotaxis are backing up an onramp, likely no traffic can use that onramp until rush hour ends (perhaps hours later).

Admittedly, this will be somewhat self limiting - when all the onramps are blocked, traffic on the freeway will dramatically drop and there will be room for a few "robotaxi road boulders" to "merge" onto the nearly empty freeway and perhaps the backed up cars will flood onto the freeway creating a convoy effect.

This will create interesting strategies for human (and robotaxies). In such a scenario it may make sense to drive away from your destination many miles to get on the freeway at an onramp that is "upstream" of most traffic to avoid being stuck for hours on a blocked onramp. This of course will just increase congestion yet more on surface streets due to the extra traffic.

I guess the good news is Caltrans could just eliminate metering lights - the stopped robotaxis would (very crudely) manage traffic as a side effect.

Accountability?

California seems to be far from making sure about that. In California it's still not clear who gets a ticket in case of a moving violation and who gets points on their record when autonomous cars violate the law and who pays the fines and fees - so nobody does.

Should all Waymo's lose their license to operate when, across all of them, they accumulate too many points on their record? After all they are all basically running the same software just an individual human brain is - and it is this negligent human brain that the DMV wants to get off the road.

The fact that Waymo cars, both individually and collectively, may drive more miles in California per year than the "typical" driver seems irrelevant. A driver who accumulates 12 points in a year while driving only 1000 miles in the year suffers the same restrictions that a driver who accumulates 12 points in a year while driving 30,000 miles.

The California legislature still has much to work out on this and, apparently, they really don't care to address the issue.

Should moderators here be liable for posts they upvote if those posts are libelous? Should /. (whoever owns them now) also be subject to being held liable for allowing those upvotes? Should /. be held liable for allowing users to set thresholds for what they see based on the moderator's mods? Liability is far clearer in these cases than in AI driven algorithms.

It's about $350/password.

While the summary (and of course I didn't RTFA) doesn't give much detail, that's not a ridiculous amount if each of the affected individuals were delayed in some way by a couple hours in accomplishing their work. It's not just their salaries, it's scheduling of work, customer satisfaction, overhead (such as benefits, SS taxes, etc) related to those couple of hours.

If the work needs to get done in a timely fashion regardless of the disruption, it may require paying the affected employees overtime to get the work done by the deadline so the calculation could easily reflect 1.5x the time lost.

Yet, still not a single citation. That's telling. You claim that a "cursory lookup" would produce the evidence, but you don't provide a cite to a court case or a law even though you claim all it requires is a "cursory lookup".

Repeating claims without substantiation does not make the claims more credible and, in fact, makes the claims less credible to most intelligent and informed people.

Yes, I know that a guy got elected to be the President of the United States doing this - but that's because on the average voters are ignorant and prioritize emotion over facts and logic. Perhaps you should stick to preaching to the ignorant if you wish to convince anyone.

(Maybe you should also read the article to understand what it actually said - hint, the /. headline is clearly misleading.)

I noticed that you don't cite precedence relevant to _this_ case - which is interesting as you seem to be claiming it exists. If I had to make a bet, I'd be pretty comfortable betting that you can't cite any or else you would have.

Note that people are free to leave this store at any time without a receipt and without purchasing anything, they just can't use any exit they happen to desire to use at any moment in time. There is of course an exception if they conducted themselves in a way that allowed management to invoke shopkeepers' privilege and detain the person for shoplifting - but that's true no matter how many exits are available.

Do you think you've been "kidnapped" when you drive into a parking lot and the barrier closes behind you and you have to proceed to another location to exit rather than simply backing up to leave?

So when an elevator door closes on you the building owner has "kidnapped" you?

Did the subway operator "kidnap" you when the doors closed and locked behind you as the subway left the station?

Or when a business locks their entrance doors at closing time and leaves one "exit only" door open for customers leaving the business has "kidnapped" you?

It's not being "kidnapped" to voluntarily walk into a business where you can't exit through the same door you entered through.

As well, since this is a well known corporate store, they almost certainly comply with fire code at least to the extent of having emergency exits which must be unlocked an operable at virtually all times. Yes, they will set off an alarm, but if you're really being "kidnapped" that's an "emergency" and their use is justified.

Some of these ISP charges ARE like Sales Tax - and a home on one side of the street in a different city will pay a different "telecommunications tax" rate than a home directly on the other side of the street. In some cases, crossing the street even puts you in a different state with very different taxes. Since people generally don't share the precise coordinates of their service address when visiting a web site, an ISP has no idea what fees will be when they advertise a price even in a targeted ad. For "broadcast" ads, it's obviously impossible for them to do so.

They now have a store in Santa Clara just a few feet from the San Jose city line on north side of Stevens Creek just a few hundred feet east of Lawrence Expressway.

I wonder how many people have no idea it there even though it's now been open for several months. It's not terribly visible as it's tucked into a strip mall type environment with a shared parking lot where a Bed Bath & Beyond used to be.

Years ago they closed their store that was in north Santa Clara - likely because of competition from Fry's which was still pretty good at that time.

There used to be a Micro Center in Santa Clara, CA but they had to compete with Fry's sprinkled around the area and closed. Then Fry's died a slow and painful death and we had a void in that space. There were businesses like Central Computer on the one side of the market and like Best Buy on the other side, but a void in between. Fortunately Micro Center recently opened a new store in Santa Clara and it addresses some of that void (and more of if one only considers the portion of that void that Fry's filled in the last couple years of its existence as a terminal patient).

Unfortunately, Micro Center seems to have commissioned sales people who are there primarily to sell you stuff rather than help you.

I found it slightly annoying when I purchased a cheap laptop there shortly after they opened the new store and the sales lady had to make sure that I met her manager who could "thank me" for the sale - which added several minutes to my purchase as she went to fetch the manager who then came over and said something along the lines of "Hello, I'm Joe - thank you for your purchase today" and shook my hand with zero enthusiasm -- adding zero value and measurable cost to me. This was reminiscent of Fry's which alarmed me a bit. Oh, and trying to sell me an extended warranty on a $10 mouse at the checkout was rather annoying.

Aside from that, it's nice to have something in that market segment now.

Maybe there is hope for you as Micro Center takes advantage of the Fry's void.