Ouch, a bit harsh, but my first question after reading this was: why are Hubspot and its CEO so upset about the CBS piece?
Hubspot has a lot of small ecommerce retailers as customers who compete with Amazon.
First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes
131–140 of 200 posts
Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes
#132Bezos attempting to be the next great master product revealer, but a barnums style gag and prank won't have lasting media staying power like jobs. That and he could improve his speaking ability. I would have been more impressed if he showed off a fleet of electric/autonomous self driven deliver robot trucks, because that is more realistic to amazon.
End customers don't care about your CEO's speaking ability.
Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
A startup in Australia, Flirtey,† has partnered with a university textbook seller to deliver books via hexacopter on/near campus. They are hoping to begin operation next March. When the drone arrives, the customer presses a button on their smartphone app, and the package is lowered down to them. † http://www.damngeeky.com/2013/10/16/14713/parcel-drone-will-... Video: http://vimeo.com/76606906
Yeah, that makes sense to me. Organising something like this in a controlled area like a campus must be a few orders of magnitude simpler than organising something like this across the US. it is a fantastic use of technology, I genuinely hope amazon manages to deliver.
> Organising something like this in a controlled area like a campus must be a few orders of magnitude simpler than organising something like this across the US.
Not necessarily. When a new address comes up, a human operator might takes a look at a satellite image of the address and give the drone an appropriate location to land on the property. That data would then be stored. 15 seconds with a human, one time only, is all it would take to make this easy in most neighborhoods.
Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes
#134This is almost exactly how I felt when I saw that Google was "taking on death".
Some of these SV companies are better than others at this kind of thing. Amazon, Google, and Apple have this ability to make otherwise skeptical journalists just turn their brains off...Google's "death stunt" was the cover of Newsweek for god's sake.
Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes
#135In all of the criticism, I haven't seen anything remarking on the energy cost for this. I can hear a strawman in the audience saying "But drones are tiny/electric/cheap!" Not at these scales. Consider the (lack of) efficiency of quadcopters, the weights and distances involved, and the total sales volume for this service in even a small test market. I'd buy that flight itself is a viable option over wheeled vehicles w…
What I wonder is why nobody is pointing out that delivering less than 2kg in 30 min in a radius of 10 km can be done freely on a cheap pizza using plain old human labour. I fail to imagine at what stage Amazon drone become cheaper considering the reliability of drone and the complexity of navigating a dense urban environment (I assume it is to be used there) Also, if it can be done cheaply enough, takeaways will even…
While the pizza delivery will be cheap now but given time for the technology to mature and then the scale of the operation will make drone technology more cheaper. Obviously it will take a quite a time before it adds to profit line. As usual Amazon will keep absorbing the losses for that time and it is well equipped to that, if amazon history tells us anything.
Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
A startup in Australia, Flirtey,† has partnered with a university textbook seller to deliver books via hexacopter on/near campus. They are hoping to begin operation next March. When the drone arrives, the customer presses a button on their smartphone app, and the package is lowered down to them. † http://www.damngeeky.com/2013/10/16/14713/parcel-drone-will-... Video: http://vimeo.com/76606906
Yeah, that makes sense to me. Organising something like this in a controlled area like a campus must be a few orders of magnitude simpler than organising something like this across the US. it is a fantastic use of technology, I genuinely hope amazon manages to deliver.
If everyone has to go to a certain place to get these items, we could invent a revolutionary new idea.
The shop.
Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've already seen what supporting Walmart has done to our country Have you ever shopped there? Or do you just repeat what you read all the time? Wall mart typically only exists in rural poor areas, and I doubt a drive-by HN commenter has any sense of proportion on the real issues at play. Wall-mart migh mean more competition for mom & pop stores, but they also bring reliable and affordable access to otherwise unaffor…
> Wall mart typically only exists in rural poor areas This is factually wrong. Walmart (note the spelling) follows suburbs and population centers. They may have been mostly rural one or two decades ago, but they are now most likely to be found near an intersection of freeways within 10 miles of a downtown. See http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/4330486 for a map. As for the rest of your screed... it's possible to be down on…
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Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Positive book reviews have little to do with accuracy. The overwhelming majority of people that are reading the book have no way of knowing what the truth is.
The reviews I'm talking about aren't the reviews on the Amazon book listing but reviews that address the investigative quality of the book and its sourcing. Critical reviews, not reviews by the average Joe.
Fair enough. Could you perhaps link to some of the reviews that you found?
Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes
#139People say that there's usually about a 10 year lag before tech from the military enters civilian use. Since drones showed up roughly 2003, it stands to reason that 2013 is when we should first starting seeing the tech become civilian viable. In fact that seems to be true, there's a whole lot of DIY material out there, and that's from people who don't have real world experience. I wouldn't be surprised if as military…
You're confusing huge ridiculously expensive military drones, which are essentially small planes, with what Amazon is showing us, which are essentially small helicopters. There's no way in the world these tiny drones can fly 10 miles each way, carry 5lbs of payload, deliver the package perfectly on the driveway/doorstep, and cost low enough to not be a financial nightmare. That's not even accounting for dealing with…
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Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes
#140It seems obvious to me that Bezos took this one public so early to garner public support so that the FAA can't just sit on it forever. All of Amazon's other initiatives didn't need some federal regulator to OK it before they could start selling it. I think this is an effective solution to getting a notoriously slow agency to move on an item. No one wants to be seen as stopping innovation, not even the FAA.
I agree. Even if Amazon doesn't end up launching its own drones, you can be sure that Fedex and UPS will eventually. That helps Amazon too.
Fedex and UPS suffer from the innovator's dilemma which will make it hard for them to build the best drone service with the right business model because it means they'll lose money, sunk investments and jobs relative to their old business model.
Anyway, this is probably a field rich with patents and amazon with their acquisition of kiva robotics and their attraction as an employer in this field with this PR, will grab quite a few patents and make it quite hard for other companies to compete.