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Amazon Prime Air

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Re: Amazon Prime Air

#301

Post by hnriot »

esusatyo wrote: post #233
jmduke wrote: post #176

(Disclaimer: I work for Amazon, but not for anything related to this. This is the first time I'm learning of Prime Air.) I'm somewhat disheartened by the skepticism of a lot of comments from HN, Reddit, and Twitter. Not stuff like "I wonder how they'll handle adverse weather" (which I think is intellectually interesting) but stuff like "As soon as one of these kills a dog it's done for". What merit is there in rootin…

Hacker News on Dropbox: Why would anyone want this? I can do this already with my home PC, all I need to do is install package xyz and let it run in the background. How does this handle duplicates, this is doomed to fail.

Dropbox is for people that can't use rsync+git. For the unix-competent, it's not particularly difficult and we managed for many years with the previous tools, rsync+svn or even rsync+cvs

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#302

Post by rch »

vertr07 wrote: post #237
rch wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, $165 isn't bad for a cashmere sweater (though to be honest I don't know anything about the quality of the stuff on this site). I took note because I don't know of a custom shirt place in Boulder, and I miss the 3 or 4 that were near my place in Houston. I hear professional women really appreciate having nice custom shirts as well.

The cashmere sweaters aren't custom though.

Correct, but hopefully they'd fit. I have a couple of yak wool sweaters from Khunu, and they run really small. Luckily my first one ended up fitting my girlfriend well enough for her to keep it. The replacement I got fits very well, and is generally amazing (as sweaters go). Now I office out of the same space as one of the co-founders too :)

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#304

Post by Volscio »

mpyne wrote: post #289
crusso wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does skepticism equal rooting for failure?

cynicism is not skepticism. A lot of people seem to get these mixed up nowadays.

Cynicism is not very constructive, interesting, or challenging, so rarely does it make for high signal-to-noise ratio in comments, which hackernews was so appealing in the past for.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#306

Post by Plasmoid »

snogglethorpe wrote: post #60

It doesn't seem like the battery density exists for anything except fairly short distances with very small packages. For the vast majority of deliveries, this could only be a "last mile" mechanism, with the bulk of each delivery happening via more traditional transport. 30-minute delivery from the warehouse? Not going to be possible for 99% of purchases, even those that are under the weight limits. Moreover, you can'…

Actually, contention for air space wouldn't be that bad.

Modern airplanes have a pressure transponder which announces your flight id and the air pressure at your location. From which you can determine a direction, id, and altitude.

Create an automated ATC, some simple separation rules (100' vertical, 500' horizontal), and order that drones flying east are on odd multiples of 100', westbound flights on even multiples. You know where thing is and where it's going. Maybe add in some prohibited zones around airports or tall buildings and you are pretty much done.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#307

Post by MWil »

icambron wrote: post #296
MWil wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Law students (most) take a class called Criminal Procedure that heavily covers 4th, 5th, and (to a smaller extent) 6th amendment jurisprudence. I took it in 2011 when drones were really heavy in the news cycle. Our final exam was solely on drones and how their adoption would effect/be effected by 4th amendment considerations. So with all that said, I really really hate the idea of drones. They get places humans canno…

I can already buy a little quadcopter, attach a camera to it, and fly it around; the relevant regulations here are just about commercial use, right? That's actually a minor quibble with your argument, though. My real problem is this: you're skeptical that they won't be regulated enough, so you want them regulated out of existence? Your solution is a bit like saying, "well, the NSA will be able to spy on our network c…

Yes, the relevant regulations are about commercial use which is COMPLETELY backwards from a privacy standpoint.

To answer your question, no, I don't want drones to not exist and it would not be worthwhile if I did. Since they obviously do and will continue to exist, we should be thinking about the privacy considerations first with regards to how you would restrict the government's use of drones and THEN go on to the commercial considerations with those same restrictions in mind.

There's a little known set of 4th amendment jurisprudence attached to technology that says something along the lines of "if the public can't generally take advantage of the technology (have it be readily accessible to them), neither can law enforcement when executing a 'search'" - think super-accurate heat sensors that can essentially x-ray the interior of homes, etc...Well we are about to just hand an entire domain to them!

In short: law enforcement is salivating at the thought of commercial drone use because they won't have any regulations applicable to them.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#308

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

markdown wrote: post #267
bigtunacan wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a good idea. http://nypost.com/2013/09/05/man-decapitated-by-remote-contr...

This is not a toy helicopter. This is a delivery vehicle equipped with the best collision detection technology Amazon can find, approved by some of the best profit-motivated, liability-averse lawyers in the world.

> ...approved by some of the best profit-motivated, liability-averse lawyers in the world.

You can be sure that on the other side of the equation, if and when a delivery drone causes damage to property or causes bodily harm or death, some of the best profit-motivated, liability-sniffing lawyers in the world will be eying the bank accounts of Amazon and its insurance carriers.

By the way: attorneys don't "approve" anything. They advise clients on risk and can try to help clients mitigate risk to the greatest extent possible based on the courses of action clients pursue. Companies do stupid things that create liabilities, some huge, all the time. The attorneys make just as much (if not more) cleaning up messes as they do trying to prevent them.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#309

Post by jessriedel »

throwaway092834 wrote: post #238
jmduke wrote: post #176

(Disclaimer: I work for Amazon, but not for anything related to this. This is the first time I'm learning of Prime Air.) I'm somewhat disheartened by the skepticism of a lot of comments from HN, Reddit, and Twitter. Not stuff like "I wonder how they'll handle adverse weather" (which I think is intellectually interesting) but stuff like "As soon as one of these kills a dog it's done for". What merit is there in rootin…

Human-driven delivery trucks hit and kill dogs, cats, men, women and children every day. On average, 16 people will die in any given day in a truck related crash. One in eight traffic fatalities involves a large cargo truck. Driving vehicles on roads is incredibly dangerous. I don't think it's possible for drones to do a worse job.

That's not the point being made by the people who say a single killed dog could nix the program, in fact, it's the opposite. The point is that the public responds irrationally to new minute dangers like this. Commenters pointing this out aren't rooting for failure, and they're not making an argument about the danger. They're just observing that this thing has failure modes because people are dumb.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#310

Post by chongli »

jmduke wrote: post #176

(Disclaimer: I work for Amazon, but not for anything related to this. This is the first time I'm learning of Prime Air.) I'm somewhat disheartened by the skepticism of a lot of comments from HN, Reddit, and Twitter. Not stuff like "I wonder how they'll handle adverse weather" (which I think is intellectually interesting) but stuff like "As soon as one of these kills a dog it's done for". What merit is there in rootin…

What merit is there in rooting for failure for failure's sake?

I don't think everyone that expresses skepticism is rooting for failure. I think there's a very strong feeling of cynicism about the bureaucratic, anti-intellectual, regressive culture of the established corporatocracy.

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