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I am shaking my head. Is this the future we are entering? Drones delivering coffee? Super-annoying sound to further drown any hope of tranquility in the morning

• jacquesm 5y ago
  Agreed. Medication to inaccessible spots: fine. Coffee to spoiled yuppies: really not the way to go.
  • BigJono 5y ago
    Those spoiled yuppies paying a 50%+ markup on coffee just to have it delivered by drone are the ones subsidising the research and engineering efforts that go towards delivering medicine to inacessible spots. If the market isn't there then the investment isn't either.
    • elliekelly 5y ago
      > If the market isn't there then the investment isn't either. This is probably news to a lot of VCs who regularly make investments in hope of an eventual market.
    • IgorPartola 5y ago
      This feels like one of those feel good bullshit quips that is probably technically sort of true but only partially or some such. But I haven’t had my coffee delivered so I am not all there yet to figure out what the fallacy is.
      • samhw 5y ago
        The response to this is normally the same as the response to trophy hunting subsidising conservation: namely, "yeah, that's true, but reality shouldn't be that way". I don't find that a very compelling argument, but apparently some people do.
      • lotsofpulp 5y ago
        The fallacy is that there are other ways of society to “subsidize” the research, e.g. via taxes. There is no need for the yuppie and the coffee.
        • skinkestek 5y ago
          Norway tried this with carbon capture. It ended up with a big payday for big oil IIRC. Now that we are getting the socialists back in power (they was the ones behind the last attempt) they've promised to have companies buy into it too instead of just using taxes.
          • skinkestek 5y ago
            It would be interesting to know why this is downvoted: I consider myself fluent in Norwegian, did I still miss something? Edit: to be clear, I don't care at all about those stupid point. For that matter dang should be free to reset them every day like he seems to do with his own. I only care about them as an indication of whether what I said came across as wrong or something.
            • shkkmo 5y ago
              It seems to be bringing up an relatively off topic political dispute without doing the work to justify the relevance or the claims being made. This makes it easy for people to see nothing more than anti carbon tax, anti socialist political baiting. This doesn't tend to lead to productive conversations and thus is likely to get downvoted on a political basis. A more productive comment would have talked about how the Norwegian carbon tax was intended to fund research and how exactly it failed to do that and instead just created profits for oil companies.
              • skinkestek 5y ago
                Ok, I see, thanks. I don't have time to fix it now, but yes, this is my point: I'm not against taxing pollution or using tax income to fund research, only against the part where we (Norway) literally gave money to companies without demanding results.
      • hellbannedguy 5y ago
        I can see the ads now. We at .com are delivering medicines to poor people in this unfortunate country that has no infrastructure. (baby crying, dog being kicked away from table with flies on the food, and sad music playing) Disclaimer: This was done one time for advertising purposes, and is not indicative of how our whirlybirds will be used. (Off topic, but here goes. You know those drug commercials that state if you can't afford the medications, we a Whizzerbio will help out with costs because we are there for Everyone. This is how it worked when I looked into it. You, and your doctor have to fill out a bunch of forms. The meds are only sent to the doctors office. So you will need to go there to pick the medication up, and I imagine setting up another appointment. I have no idea why they don't deliver to the patient, or reimburse the pharmacy. I imagine they want it delivered to the office so the pharmaceutical rep can have a real reason to talk with doc? Only one patient per doctor are allowed to participate in this promotion. Doc has 1000 patients, but only one poor guy gets the free med. I looked into this ten years ago, so things might have changed?
      • cochne 5y ago
        I think this argument is true and it is easily demonstrated with GPUs. They were able to be financially successful products largely because consumers wanted them to play video games. Now they are necessary for academic research in deep learning and other fields, which would not have gotten GPUs as advanced as they are without the market boost. Of course that’s just a theory and it’s never possible to go back and see what would have happened. But it seems reasonable to me.
        • mirker 5y ago
          I mean it’s a bit murkier than that: 1. GPUs used to be much less programmable and had fixed-function graphics pipelines. 2. General purpose GPU computing was demonstrated a decade before the 2012 deep learning craze. OpenCL/CUDA was quite mature in 2012 and used by high performance computing. 3. Transistor scaling (Moore’s law) has been speeding everything up exponentially. 4. There are a lot of non-GPU solutions now. If GPUs didn’t exist, someone still could have trained a deep model on a cluster of CPU, and then we’d end up with GPUs (or similar hardware) again. So it’s not necessarily true that gaming->GPU->deep learning implies that GPUs couldn’t be used for deep learning without gaming, because you could have had CPU->deep learning->GPU. I think this was much more of a case of the stars magically aligning than some preset goal by Nvidia/AMD. In fact, there are plenty of cases where you had CPU->research->HW accelerator. One example (on top of gaming/rendering) is compression or parity coding, which was slow initially and then had add-on cards and/or CPU extensions.
    • matthewmorgan 5y ago
      Trickle down coffee, heard it all now
      • hef19898 5y ago
        Once raven get more experience, it will no more like splashdown coffee.
    • path411 5y ago
      Except time has shown that companies aren't taking on their real cost to their communities. How are people chuckling about this video when this is clear signs this will have real environmental effects and costs that if we are,"lucky" might be a taking point to politicians/CEOs in a couple of decades after irreversible damage is done
      • samhw 5y ago
        What's the environmental effect? It seems like a clear improvement over current delivery mechanisms, since it's lighter and can be powered with electricity. Is your argument based on some assumption of induced demand, i.e. that it will encourage people to get more deliveries?
    • Loic 5y ago
      This "delivering medicine in inaccessible spots" is simply not true. We can already deliver Coca-Cola everywhere on Earth reliably.
      • rewq4321 5y ago
        > This "delivering medicine in inaccessible spots" is simply not true. We can already deliver Coca-Cola everywhere on Earth reliably. Your comment is so profoundly wrong, and yet so confidently written. You're comparing Coke, a long-shelf-life mass market product, with (often) emergency/low-latency delivery of products which would be impractical to stockpile in every remote village, even if they could affort it (e.g. certain types of medicine and consumable medical products, blood, etc.) Coke doesn't need low-latency delivery - they can use high-bandwidth + warehousing. This isn't possible/practical for some types of products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delivery_drone#Healthcare_delivery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delivery_drone#Healthcare_deli...
        • hef19898 5y ago
          And still there is a way to reliably reach even the remotest areas where people live. Getting medicine there can, at least to a degree, piggy bag on that. Unless it is a AI powered blockchain drone, that would be unbeatable!
          • samhw 5y ago
            Like the comment said to which you are replying, there isn't a fast enough supply chain for deliveries which 'go stale' far more quickly than Coca-Cola does. Therefore, no, they can't piggyback on that existing supply chain.
            • hef19898 5y ago
              Given that cooling is a thing, yes they can. Unless stuff goes shale within minutes, in which case even a drone won't help you.
    • ravendroneguy 5y ago
      The coffee is the same price as at a cafe. About $7, which is standard for a large with two extra shots which is about standard here.
    • mc32 5y ago
      Most of it gets funded by BigCos with too much money, VCs looking for the next unicorn or things like DARPA. 50% markups may make it viable if it gets off the ground and becomes and ind operation but that’s not footing R&D.
    • throwawaylinux 5y ago
      Are you sure? It doesn't seem believable that drone advancements have been significantly subsidized by coffee delivery, not even right now let alone over the past 10-20 years where huge advancements were made.
      • CydeWeys 5y ago
        It's about the service existing going forward. If all these are gonna be used for is remote medicine delivery, then that's hardly any missions, thus hardly any money in it, and thus it wouldn't attract investments. The only reason these autonomous drone delivery companies exist is in anticipation of high demand, being as commonly used as Uber/Amazon/GrubHub.
        • lolc 5y ago
          Well these guys say they've delivered quite a few packages with their drones. To hospitals. https://flyzipline.com/ https://flyzipline.com/ Coffee wasn't on the agenda it seems.
        • throwawaylinux 5y ago
          What is about that? I find it difficult to believe coffee delivery even now or "going forward" significantly subsidizes drone technology development. Even if you expand that to delivery of other frivolities. Do you have any numbers? Or reasoning? Drones have already long had the capability to do all this, lift and endurance, auto flying and navigation, GPS, even cameras and some autonomous visual recognition. What drone technologies are being subsidized by coffee delivery?
          • BigJono 5y ago
            You've literally stumbled into the answer yourself here. > Drones have already long had the capability to do all this, lift and endurance, auto flying and navigation, GPS, even cameras and some autonomous visual recognition. If that's the case (which it is, you're right), then why are we not already delivering medicine to remote areas with drones?
    • cabalamat 5y ago
      > Those spoiled yuppies paying a 50%+ markup on coffee just to have it delivered by drone are the ones subsidising the research and engineering efforts that go towards delivering medicine to inacessible spots Really? Are spoiled yuppies ordering coffee a significant fraction of projected drone deliveries? I doubt it.
• dzhiurgis 5y ago
  > Super-annoying sound drones are quieter than cars > delivering coffee is not one of them perfect item to master the skill tho
  • samhw 5y ago
    Annoyingness is not the same thing as volume. Nails on a chalkboard is also quieter than a car, or an orchestra playing Mahler's Fifth.
    • dzhiurgis 5y ago
      How about lawnmower?
      • aix1 5y ago
        There are no lawnmowers in the airspace above, or near, my house.
        • andrekandre 5y ago
          for now...
        • analognoise 5y ago
          Invest in my aerial lawnmower drone company. We use Blockchain based tokens for lawns mowed. The mining pays for your lawn mowing with our drones. We'll get an aerial lawnmower to you real quick, just sign up on our page.
    • wiz21c 5y ago
      This 100% ! I live not far from an airport (airplanes are like very big drones is you will :-)). And although the number of decibels is probably inferior to the one of the cars passing by my street, I can assure you it's a hell of a lot more annoying. First there are much more infra bass, second it lasts much longer than a car passing by, third, they like to fly at 5 or 6 in the morning where most of the car drivers sleep (side note: according to city's rule, they can't fly at that time but they just pay the fine to do so...)
• walrus01 5y ago
  there's a reason many municipalities have banned small gasoline engine leaf blowers. I'd be willing to bet the decibel level from a wing drone delivering coffee, two houses away, and a leaf blower might be similar.
  • CydeWeys 5y ago
    Leaf blowers are also banned because they emit an outrageous amount of pollution. These electric drones at least don't have that problem.
    • ansible 5y ago
      Typical gas-powered leaf blowers use a 2-cycle engine. These in general are not efficient, and need oil combined with the gas to lubricate the motor. This oil is of course burned as part of the combustion, which generates a lot more pollutants than an efficient 4-cycle internal combustion engine (such as in your car). These leaf blowers also don't have much of a muffler system (due to size / weight) and of course no exhaust gas recirculation or catalytic converter to further reduce emissions by-products.
      • OJFord 5y ago
        For some reason this confused me more than normal (just not the usual context I'm familiar with it in I suppose) - so just to be clear, you mean the same 'gas' that goes in your car right? Not that you can get, I don't know, propane leaf blowers or something? They are noisy and smelly as hell, there was some going on just outside my window (not that I'd hired) recently, the operators wearing ear protection of course, but I was barely any further away. Do wish they'd use electric - can do it from a battery even these days. (And mitre saws etc. too, quite incredible.)
        • shkkmo 5y ago
          The 2-cycle vs 4-cycle engine distinction applies to gasoline engines used for a wide variety of applications.
• akudha 5y ago
  Except in rich areas probably, they will find a way to still do it, but without disturbing the residents somehow
  • dnautics 5y ago
    electric blowers are pretty quiet (not that i would ever use one, I prefer the mark 0 rake)
• ravendroneguy 5y ago
  Mate we have been in lockdown for a month, covid exposure sites are everywhere in my city, and we are in lockdown for another month yet. This is better than venturing out - and it is less carbon emissions than a car.
  • dkdbejwi383 5y ago
    We have had several extended lockdowns of more than a month in the UK. I just ordered ground coffee beans and made it at home. Yeah, not as nice as real espresso, but it's not the end of the world.
    • ehnto 5y ago
      We have a big espresso culture in Australia, so a lot of people have espresso machines at home anyway. Compared to coffee from the shops every day it's pretty cheap to buy and run a consumer espresso machine at home. That said, part of the fun of coffee is the cafe experience; covid willing, I still go out to cafes as well. Best not to optimize all of the fun out of life.
      • throwaway210222 5y ago
        > a lot of people have espresso machines at home anyway. The Australian-designed/made Breville espresso machine is a gem. I have no idea how I lived without it.
  • Voloskaya 5y ago
    The entire world has been in lockdown for months, we have all survived without drones delivering one mug of coffee at a time.
    • Rebelgecko 5y ago
      We haven't all survived, somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 million people have been killed by COVID. Obviously not all of them died from contracting COVID at a restaurant or coffee shop, but I suspect the number of deaths from trips to get coffee is significantly higher than zero (and that's before you take into account other factors like traffic accidents)
• loudmax 5y ago
  To be clear, the issue here is noise pollution, right? If the deliveries were silent, we generally wouldn't care how our neighbors were getting their coffee. I think the distinction is important because that points us in the direction of the type of policy we want to focus on. We shouldn't aim for laws to ban drone delivery. Instead we should have rules to limit the amount of noise you can make in residential areas.
  • burkaman 5y ago
    Noise pollution, disturbing the wildlife, light pollution at night, inevitable accidents.
    • blacksmith_tb 5y ago
      All legitimate concerns, but presumably delivery trucks / lorries are guilty of all of those right now? I would be unhappy if drone delivery made things worse, but there's also the possibility it could make them better (I'd rather be hit by a drone than a truck, for example).
      • burkaman 5y ago
        Yes, but I'm thinking about what happens if a single UPS truck delivering 500 packages is replaced with 500 individual drone trips. One drone is probably better than one truck, but that's not the right tradeoff to consider.
      • mattmanser 5y ago
        The laws around noise pollution are surprisingly pathetic here in the UK, I imagine almost all countries are too. It's perfectly legal to deconstruct scaffolding, with power tools and chucking metal poles in the back of the van at 8am on a Sunday morning for example. Right next to multiple residential block of flats with hundreds of residents. And the number one issue if you poll residents of almost any large town is usually noise issues. If you want to see one of the big disconnects between government and the people, it's a big one. Saying it's already an issue that's under legislated doesn't mean we should allow it to get worse.
• biesnecker 5y ago
  Though tbh nothing sounds more relaxing than a warm cup of homemade coffee and some net gun target practice in the morning :-D
  • trident5000 5y ago
    shotgun would be way more satisfying
• throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >I am shaking my head. Is this the future we are entering? Drones delivering coffee? Like it or not as wages creep up relative to "things" these sorts of business models will become economically viable.
• cronix 5y ago
  At least they won't be winning any lawsuits over coffee that is hot enough to cause burns.
• exporectomy 5y ago
  Wow. The amount of people here who would have wanted to ban cars when they were first invented is incredible. Luckily the world has plenty of inspired people actually doing novel things and these stuck-in-the-muds don't have much power.