Blackouts Take Waymo Out

Welcome to the Tech Vu ride home for Monday, 12/22/2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, turns out when the lights go out, Waymos don't handle that well. Larry Ellison actually puts his money on the line. Somebody is pirating music like it's 1999 and two deep dive looks at to whether or not Google's TPUs really are a threat to NVIDIA and OpenAI. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. You may have noticed that your CRM system has become crazy with bots and agents at the Tech Brew ride home. We love AI, but not when it's used to commit fraud or launch ransomware. Fortunately, Momoto, the creator of Continuous Verification, now offers the next generation of Continuous Captcha. Momoto Continuous Captcha diverts only the agents and bots attempting to gain access to your CRM through registration forms. With Momoto, good agents can do what agents do best, enable your customers to have more productive experiences on your website or app while stopping bad agents from defrauding you or your customers. It's a win for for everyone except the cyber criminals. Right now, our listeners can purchase a year of Memoto Continuous Capture for $5,000, a 20% discount on their lowest price plan. To learn more, head to memoto.ai/ridehome. That's memoto.ai/ridehome. Waymo has resumed its robotaxi service in San Francisco after suspending it during a recent power blackout, but they say most trips did finish before vehicles returned to depots or pulled over, quoting CNBC. Yesterday's power outage was a widespread event that caused gridlock across San Francisco with nonfunctioning traffic signals and transit disruptions, a Waymo spokesperson, Suzanne Fillion, told CNBC in an emailed statement Sunday afternoon. While the failure of the utility infrastructure was significant, we are committed to ensuring our technology adjusts to traffic flow during such events, she added. As power outages spread yesterday, videos shared on social media appeared to show multiple Waymo vehicles stalled in traffic in different parts of the city. San Francisco resident Matt Schoolfield said he saw at least three Waymo autonomous vehicles stopped in traffic Saturday around 09:45PM local time, including one he photographed on Turk Boulevard near Parker Avenue. They were just stopping in the middle of the street, Schoolfield said. The power outages began around 01:09PM Saturday and peaked roughly two hours later affecting about a 130,000 customers according to Pacific Gas and Electric. As of Sunday morning, about 2,100 customers remained without power mainly in the Presidio, the Richmond District, Golden State Park, and parts of Downtown San Francisco. While the Waymo Driver is designed to treat nonfunctional signals as four way stops, the sheer scale of the outage led to instances where vehicles remained stationary longer than usual to confirm the state of the affected intersections. Waymo's fill in also told CNBC this contributed to traffic friction during the height of the congestion. Waymo quote closely coordinated with San Francisco city officials, she said, and proactively paused its service as of Saturday evening …