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Amazon Prime Air

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Re: Amazon Prime Air

#521

Post by jamesrcole »

crusso wrote: post #242
harryh wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Scylla and Charybdis of innovation. Open your mind too far and you accept too many wacky ideas. Close it to much and you'll never see what's possible.

Sure, but if I could turn the societal dial a few clicks toward critical thinking vs day dreaming, I'd do it. The unquestionable success of the Scientific Method has shown that careful analysis and requirement of experimental proof far outstrip bumbling about with our own natural human level of random thoughts that we label "creativity".

The scientific method is about testing ideas.

Generating ideas another matter.

Innovation often requires ideas that sound 'crazy' (because they don't fit with established ideas).

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#522

Post by Dylan16807 »

hnriot wrote: post #301
esusatyo wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Rsync is one-way. Git stores all files twice, and is a pain to purge old versions from. Both require scanning every file per sync, leading to wasted power and minutes of latency.

They do not do what dropbox does.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#524

Post by navait »

MaysonL wrote: post #345
esusatyo wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hell, CmdrTaco on iPod...

To be fair, I don't really remember the first generation of the ipod being that successful. It wasn't until the ipod mini came out, a vastly superior product to the original ipod, that it became a must have gadget.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#525

Post by throwaway092834 »

chongli wrote: post #315
throwaway092834 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Human-driven delivery trucks hit and kill dogs, cats, men, women and children every day And gasoline-powered vehicles of all sorts catch on fire all the time in collisions, yet one or two of Tesla's catch on fire and all hell breaks loose. Our mass media has an extremely regressive, anti-intellectual, pro- status quo bent.

It's true, and Tesla appears to survive as a company regardless.

I think the dynamic is a bit different for Amazon. The so-called risk wouldn't even potentially be borne by the user, which is much different from the Tesla case.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#526

Post by onebaddude »

chongli wrote: post #315
throwaway092834 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Human-driven delivery trucks hit and kill dogs, cats, men, women and children every day And gasoline-powered vehicles of all sorts catch on fire all the time in collisions, yet one or two of Tesla's catch on fire and all hell breaks loose. Our mass media has an extremely regressive, anti-intellectual, pro- status quo bent.

>And gasoline-powered vehicles of all sorts catch on fire all the time in collisions

Gasoline cars do not "catch on fire all the time in collisions". Not remotely.

It's unlikely the Teslas do, either. But Tesla's vehicles are both relatively novel, and real-world-untested and hence are both a news story and deserved of scrutiny.

Just like these drones.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#527

Post by joshaidan »

Regarding the whole dog thing. I guess if you're ordering something by drone, it will arrive within 30 minutes. So why not just keep the dog inside or in the kennel for 30 minutes?

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#528

Post by gallerytungsten »

A couple comments have addressed the issue of people potentially shooting down the drones. I think this is very likely, as it appears even a decent slingshot or arrow could take one down if the shooter was close enough.

But another scenario I didn't see mentioned is the potential for the drones to be captured. Let's say a carder orders a delivery to an unoccupied house. When the drone lands, the carder tosses a big net over the drone. Once it's disabled, the control unit can disconnected and either replaced or re-programmed.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#529

Post by foobarqux »

brc wrote: post #361
nh wrote: post #184

The real surprising thing is that Amazon is accelerating the post industrial age. The economy is growing but wages are stagnant. A demand for human labor is declining while corporations are making massive profits. These drones are an example where machines are replacing jobs that were once done by humans. As we pull out of the recession in the US, the fastest growing job market is the low wage/retail jobs. Walmart wi…

It's a common but incorrect assumption to think that replacing repetitive human tasks with machines leads to wide-scale unemployment. Of course the delivery person who is replaced by drones is out of a job initially, but this doesn't doom everyone to unemployment. Higher productivity through mechanisation leads to lower prices, which means more cash available for other purchases, which leads to jobs growth in other a…

In the long term yes. In the short term (the rest of an adult worker's life) there is widespread, chronic unemployment and reduction of quality of life.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#530

Post by latkecopter »

michaelt wrote: post #440
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…

Textbook drone delivery: http://pandodaily.com/2013/10/14/zookal-starts-world-first-d... Cake drone delivery: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/1020621... Pizza drone delivery: http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/dominos-tests-delivery-pizza-r... Parcel delivery drones: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57601531-76/drones-in-chin... Beer delivery drones: http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/brandin…

Latke delivery drones: http://www.latkecopter.com/ https://www.facebook.com/LatkeCopter
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