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Really? You think society has devolved in the last three years? A backlash against robots? Maybe you watched Interstellar too many times. A more likely scenari

Really? You think society has devolved in the last three years? A backlash against robots? Maybe you watched Interstellar too many times. A more likely scenario is a bunch of teenagers saw it (it does look kind of dumb after all) and kicked the crap out of it, all the while laughing. This isn't a reflection on our society, robots, or anything else. It was most likely a few people having fun. What I do see as a reflection of our changing society is everyone's hypersensitivity to nearly everything. Let's all go back to our unoffensive, algo-curated safezones.

danso 9y ago
> What I do see as a reflection of our changing society is everyone's hypersensitivity to nearly everything I agree that society, including the Internet, has become too hypersensitive. To the point where a comment in (January) 2018 feigning ignorance of how things were in 2015 is taken at face value instead of rhetorically :). edit: I think you are right though, that it probably was pranksters/drunken idiots. Someone who dropped it off claimed to have early-morning surveillance footage of it being attacked in a touristy part of town. http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20150804_Can_hitchBOT_be_saved__Philly_tech_sector_rallies_around_battered__bot.html http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20150804_Can_hitchBOT_be_s... > The video was posted by Jesse Wellens, the Philadelphian who said he found the robot while driving around early Saturday. He said he held on to the robot for a couple of hours, then dropped it off on a bench on Second Street at Elfreth's Alley between 4:30 and 5 a.m. The footage shows a man kicking hitchBOT on the bench around 5:45 a.m., according to a date tag on the video. The assailant is wearing a No. 12 Eagles jersey, the number worn by Randall Cunningham. My 2018 mindset pictured a "bot" as something that had some kind of autonomous movement/behavior but it was for all intents and purposes a box with a camera. I think Hitchbot's survival chances were extremely low if left unattended late at night near a bar scene, Philadelphia or elsewhere.
dang 9y ago
Would you please keep snark and personal swipes out of your comments here? Your first paragraph breaks the HN guidelines. If you'd read them and take the spirit of this site to heart, we'd appreciate it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

danso 9y ago

> What I do see as a reflection of our changing society is everyone's hypersensitivity to nearly everything I agree that society, including the Internet, has become too hypersensitive. To the point where a comment in (January) 2018 feigning ignorance of how things were in 2015 is taken at face value instead of rhetorically :). edit: I think you are right though, that it probably was pranksters/drunken idiots. Someone who dropped it off claimed to have early-morning surveillance footage of it being attacked in a touristy part of town. http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20150804_Can_hitchBOT_be_saved__Philly_tech_sector_rallies_around_battered__bot.html http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20150804_Can_hitchBOT_be_s... > The video was posted by Jesse Wellens, the Philadelphian who said he found the robot while driving around early Saturday. He said he held on to the robot for a couple of hours, then dropped it off on a bench on Second Street at Elfreth's Alley between 4:30 and 5 a.m. The footage shows a man kicking hitchBOT on the bench around 5:45 a.m., according to a date tag on the video. The assailant is wearing a No. 12 Eagles jersey, the number worn by Randall Cunningham. My 2018 mindset pictured a "bot" as something that had some kind of autonomous movement/behavior but it was for all intents and purposes a box with a camera. I think Hitchbot's survival chances were extremely low if left unattended late at night near a bar scene, Philadelphia or elsewhere.

dang 9y ago

Would you please keep snark and personal swipes out of your comments here? Your first paragraph breaks the HN guidelines. If you'd read them and take the spirit of this site to heart, we'd appreciate it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html