241–250 of 280 posts
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>I believe they wirelessly communicate with the elevator control system. That sounds hilariously abusable.
The robots are operated by the building, for what it's worth. The delivery drivers drop the deliveries off to the robots in the lobby, and the robots take it from there to the individual rooms.
I'm confused. The paper is about something called "Restaurant Productivity", but it's not defined up-front, or any place close to up-front. Maybe, it's defined by page 9, but it's hard to tell. It all might be completely correct, but for God's sake write a paper that a reasonably intelligent person can follow. What are we talking about? What do we know? What you think we know, but isn't true. What we now believe, hav…
>Figure 1 shows the remarkable shift in restaurant productivity after years of stagnation. It plots monthly real sales per employee in the industry from the beginning of 1992 to the present (in annualized terms).2
I wonder if there are also cultural/regulatory differences here. I'm in the EU, and of course we had the forced shift to takeout as well, during covid. But while homeoffice as a concept stayed, restaurants very quickly went back to in-house dining when it was over. Seeing a takeout-only restaurant with a repurposed dine-in area here in 2025 would be beyond weird and would probably just give everyone covid flashbacks.…
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Pneumatic tubes
I'm disappointed society hasn't revisited pneumatic tube networks since we got good at packet switching and RFIDs and computing in general.
Separately, there's a very cool startup called Pipedream that does autonomous underground delivery robots that are kind of the next iteration of the concept.
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Depends on what you value. If all you value are calories, then sure, there are much cheaper ways of getting the calories you need. But if you value time, or novelty, or the dining experience, or conversation with a neighbor or even just the bartender then there are plenty of places that cater to your values.
I can justify spending $25 to $50 a week eating at restaurants with friends. But eating fast food every single day is just pissing money away.
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I think the move away from cash coincided with COVID but was not related much. The convenience of digital simply made cash useless (mostly).
> The convenience of digital simply made cash useless (mostly). Useless? Wait until your digital transactions fail or your bank or your state decides to block your access to your payment system. And believe me, it's not a "if", this is a real threat that will be waged against people. When it's technically possible, it always ends up becoming a reality. And by that time, "going back to cash" may not be an option in ce…
I'm confused. The paper is about something called "Restaurant Productivity", but it's not defined up-front, or any place close to up-front. Maybe, it's defined by page 9, but it's hard to tell. It all might be completely correct, but for God's sake write a paper that a reasonably intelligent person can follow. What are we talking about? What do we know? What you think we know, but isn't true. What we now believe, hav…
Page 2: >Figure 1 shows the remarkable shift in restaurant productivity after years of stagnation. It plots monthly real sales per employee in the industry from the beginning of 1992 to the present (in annualized terms).2
People switched away from cash during COVID. Lots of people who might have been unbanked or lightly banked went all-in as everything went digital. Now restaurants (historically a pretty cash-heavy industry) have fewer cash transactions. Possibly related?
If a chicken and a half, layed an egg and a half in a day and a half, how much productivity is gained by the chicken with a cell phone? A smidgen?
The premise is of course completely preposterous.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/opinion/krugman-robots-an...
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Do we really need to define it? In America and Britain a sit down restaurant is defined as one where you are seated by a host and order via waitstaff.
I guess we do, because I am not familiar with that specific definition What about those "sit down" places where you load up a QR code, order from that site, pay from that site, but have a server bring your food? are they still a "sit down" place?
You may be overthinking this way too hard. It’s simply the level of service being received. There are some definite shades of gray here but throwing qr codes into the mix is pedantic. You could have fast food QR code ordering, fast casual and even sit down experiences. The QR code does not really factor too much into it.