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Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

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Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No lol, it's the other people responsibility not to be a nuisance. But I agree throwing them aside is not the optimal solution. Municipality looking for money could get some large cash influx from ticketing improperly parked scooters, the owning company can decide to eat the loss or flip the ticket on the user, either way people will get educated fast. It would only take for the law enforcement to enforce rules that…

A fine doesn't help the person actually "inconvenienced" by the scooter(s). It just gives the city more money. Seems like the company might eat the fine, the city will take the money, and the problem persists, but now the city is happy too.

They could impound the scooters, only to release them when the fines are paid; this prevents (some of) the inconvenience.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#222

It's so disappointing to see people going on tirades against these things for no good reason other than seemingly to fit in with the trendy new "anti-techbro" luddite mindset. Automatic delivery robots and e-scooters are awesome. The future is awesome and we're living it and these people just want to be downers about it.

Why should scooter companies and robots be allowed to be rude to humans? We live in civil society and electronic things made by companies have no more right to the sidewalk than anyone else.

Is it an 'anti-techbro luddite mindset' or are unattended electronic devices being bad citizens?

I would treat any other jerk on the street the same way.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#223

It's so disappointing to see people going on tirades against these things for no good reason other than seemingly to fit in with the trendy new "anti-techbro" luddite mindset. Automatic delivery robots and e-scooters are awesome. The future is awesome and we're living it and these people just want to be downers about it.

The food delivery robots don't look that awesome, in fact they look really shitty compared to their human counterparts. E-scooters are good at what they do at least, but they can also be a major pain in the ass, as we can see here where they are discarded carelessly because parking them is evidently not the techbros' problem.

It's awesome that technological progress is made, but that doesn't mean everything with a circuit board is awesome or we can't complain about technology when it causes stupid problems like these.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#224
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funniest/strangest/saddest angle I've encountered on this thread so far is regarding disabled people potentially not getting their food... as if human delivery was somehow not an option.

Humans can also perform manual arithmetic, but we still prefer to let the computer do that for us.

Surely whether or not you chose to use a computer to achieve something depends on its capability. Computers are better at humans when it comes to arithmetic. They're worse than humans at delivering food (hence the tweet). It makes sense to use computers for one of these things, and not for the other.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#225

It's so disappointing to see people going on tirades against these things for no good reason other than seemingly to fit in with the trendy new "anti-techbro" luddite mindset. Automatic delivery robots and e-scooters are awesome. The future is awesome and we're living it and these people just want to be downers about it.

Ignorance is bliss I guess.

Private companies using public infrastructure to earn money (and usually not pay tax in said country) rubs me the wrong way to be honest. Not talking about the fact that users don't give two shits about where they park: in front of my building door, in the middle of the sidewalk used by old people / pregnant women, in the middle of the bicycle path

Then we can talk about the newspeak term we use for this new trend, "sharing economy", which is as much about "sharing" as renting my flat to my landlord is "sharing" (ie. it's not, it's renting)

We can also talk about the digitalisation of every single aspect of our lives. Want to move ? use your phone, want food ? use your phone, want to be distracted ? use your phone, want to date ? use your phone, you ran out of toilet paper ? use your phone, uncle Bezos got you covered

Food delivery robots ? I don't even see the point to be honest. Sounds like a solution looking for a problem, just how lazier can we get ?

If the future is half assed dumb pizza delivery toy cars being stuck behind badly parked glorified kids transportation devices idk what's awesome about it. It kind of sound like a comedy version of black mirror. I guess if you just stop your reasoning early enough all these new fancy/cheap/disrupting services are indeed awesome. You can trade money for convenience and forget about everything else. Just don't think about who profit from it, how it is rapidly and deeply reshaping our societies, &c.

It's all about merchandising every single aspect of your life, but consume away, we're in Paradise !

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#226
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good idea. Innovation sometimes requires some additional provision of public goods. Seems like a good way to solve the problem!

Designated parking spaces are a good idea, but they should be paid for by companies that make a profit by renting out scooters. Not taxpayers. Public funding might be justified if the majority of scooters were owned by individual citizens with the right to vote on city affairs. Most rideshare companies, on the other hand, will simply siphon off public subsidies as additional profit to be taxed (or not) somewhere else…

But why? These are same parking spots I would park my car in.

A parking spot for cars is useful to only one person at a time, if converted to a scooter parking space with some paint it can serve vastly more people.

Straight up donating parking spaces to private scooter share companies is probably a net positive for the public.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#227
post #97
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I think there has been a general increase in antisociality in the last few years (especially since the pandemic, which has traumatized society) It makes sense that people who feel that they’ve been unfairly imprisoned in their homes by the rest of society would feel rather bitter about that. To restore faith societies could take steps to compensate those worst hit by pandemic measures (i.e young people), so far…

Your claim is that it is all right wing people becoming anti-social in unrelated areas?

Why right wing? I’m rather left leaning, even by European standards. I’m not some crazy antivaxxer either, plenty of those on both sides.

Nevertheless the pandemic responses by various governments I have to interact with have done much to deepen my distrust of them and the society around me.

Various governments have deployed drastic measures such as lockdowns in an effort to control the pandemic, but they’ve released little evidence to demonstrate the usefulness of these measures.

Research is increasingly showing that the lockdowns were not worth it. If that is really true their victims should be lavishly compensated and those responsible actually held responsible.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ijcp.13674

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7499782/

Of course I personally am not qualified to judge whether or not the lockdowns were a mistake, but the evidence seems to be piling up against them. The governments could alleviate these concerns by showing solid research confirming that they didn’t fuck up.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#228

Absolutely hate these scooters from an ADA prospective. My neighborhood is a mostly quiet one near the center of a large city, where there are a lot of mothers who push their kids in strollers, older folks with canes, and some people even in wheelchairs. On the weekends -- sometimes the weekdays as well depending on the time of the year -- the city gets flooded with both tourists, and suburbanites who want to go to a…

Sadly the problem is not the scooters themselves. They don't park themselves at random. The problem is the people.

If, in general, people were just at tiny bit more respectful of others around them - the world would be a lot better off.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#229

Absolutely hate these scooters from an ADA prospective. My neighborhood is a mostly quiet one near the center of a large city, where there are a lot of mothers who push their kids in strollers, older folks with canes, and some people even in wheelchairs. On the weekends -- sometimes the weekdays as well depending on the time of the year -- the city gets flooded with both tourists, and suburbanites who want to go to a…

The scooter rental companies in my city have a rule in their contacts specifically prohibiting parking such that it would block the sidewalk. And you have to take a picture of the scooter when you end your rent.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone, who for legal reasons is not me, has the idea to make stickers with strong glue and cheap paper (so they can't be ripped off in one go) to stick on top of the QR codes to these things. The sticker would have text that says "Sorry you can't use this scooter because the last rider parked like an idiot."

So "someone" thinks it's okay to vandalize other people's property just because the last person to use it didn't put it away right?

since when is a corporation a person? if they leave their crap in public then I personally couldn't give more of a fuck to what happens to it
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