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Aug 5 – 100000 robotic lawn mowers can sing Happy Birthday to Curiosity
- divbzero 4y agoCan Curiosity really claim the title of “loneliest robot in the universe”?
- machinerychorus 4y agoYeah, mars is getting pretty crowded at this point! I guess the voyager probes might be lonelier, if you count them as robots.
- Banana699 4y agoNo, because a robot cannot feel loneliness yet.
- sandworm101 4y agoI'd put the voyager probes as more lonely. Not to mention any number of defunct spacecraft that are still operating out there. They don't have off switches. Somewhere out there is a space probe periodically trying to phone home only to discover we are no longer listening. https://www.npr.org/2020/04/24/843493304/long-lost-u-s-military-satellite-found-by-amateur-radio-operator https://www.npr.org/2020/04/24/843493304/long-lost-u-s-milit... ""The oldest one I've seen is Transit 5B-5. And it launched in 1965," he says, referring to a nuclear-powered U.S. Navy navigation satellite that still circles the Earth in a polar orbit, long forgotten by all but a few amateurs interested in hearing it "sing" as it passes overhead."
- samschooler 4y agoThis reminds me of the article "What football will look like in 17776?" a short story about football from the perspective of space probes. https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football
- adjagu 4y agoThanks for the link. I hadn't seen this before and enjoyed it very much.
- athenot 4y agoAt least as lonely as WALL-E...
- happyopossum 4y agoThere's absolutely no reason to do this, and yet it's awesome and I'm glad Husqvarna is doing it. Now I want to look at a new robomower!
- munk-a 4y agoThere is indeed absolutely no reason to do this - and I'm personally anti-lawn (I prefer a nice naturally overgrown green space outside my home). But even I can get on the "this is awesome" train.
- micromacrofoot 4y agoThe reason is marketing
- netsharc 4y agoHaha, yeah, just look at the second line of the grandparent comment...
- rootusrootus 4y ago> Now I want to look at a new robomower! Me too. And then I saw the price (of the higher end Husqvarna at least). Ha! Nevermind.
- _Adam 4y agoFortunately this is opt-in. Imagine being that guy managing a fleet of these things mowing a giant golf course and three times a day just stop for no reason and start singing.
- sandworm101 4y agoIf they are automated, how would you know?
- james_in_the_uk 4y agoIf a tree falls in a forest ...
- stuff4ben 4y agoRelevant xkcd... https://xkcd.com/695/ https://xkcd.com/695/
- numbers 4y agothis is the sorta thing that makes you realize we're all human and maybe we like all these cool toys b/c they're fun
- zachruss92 4y agoI absolutely love this.
- ck2 4y agoHa feels worthy of a minor plot-line out of (future) Futurama
- butz 4y agoSounds fun and all, but mark my words - after a year or two we will see some bug reports about lawn mowers randomly singing "Happy Birthday", and no one will know why.
- valleyer 4y agoSee also: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-man-print-gimme-gimme-gimme-at-0030 https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-man...
- Archelaos 4y ago> the loneliest robot in the universe No. This was and will always be Marvin the Paranoid Android getting stuck on Sqornshellous Zeta for 1.5 million years.
- drewzero1 4y agoI'll be very concerned if Curiosity finds any mattresses up there to converse with.
- squarefoot 4y agoAlso, Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity and a few others may disagree. (Would Viking 1 and 2 qualify as robots?)
- DonHopkins 4y ago
- mlyle 4y agoIs it just me or is your comment completely off-topic? Is there some connection that I missed? Is it just because there's "lawnmower" in some past offtopic comment quoting a video that you felt the need to try and derail conversation here? That's 10 minutes I'm not going to get back.
- blamazon 4y agoI'm not that commenter but I'm also prone to tangential dot connecting in situations like this. The only explicit connection in that comment to this post is the word lawnmower, yes. The implicit assumed connection is that we all know what Oracle is, and who Larry Ellison is, and the behavior of those two parties, and that further we may be amused by an anecdote about them containing the word lawnmower that the commenter remembered. My understanding is that this type of tangential comment is in general tolerated, or even celebrated on HN in the spirit of being open to intellectual spontaneity, especially when the article is "light" in content and there's not much folks want to discuss about it. This is kind of a fluff-y marketing piece by Husqvarna so, might as well share general lawnmower related content of amusement.
- mlyle 4y agoOK. My own personal take is, it confused me-- did I click on the wrong article? Does Ellison have some connection to this vendor? Then, I find out it's just a joke bringing up a topic that annoys me (and evidently annoys the person posting) in what would otherwise be an innocuous fluff piece. I like tangents, but this is an awful tenuous excuse to inject an 11 year old rant about Ellison into the discussion.
- jakupovic 4y agoI disagree and think that the comment was funny and on topic.
- qohen 4y agoWas anyone else expecting a lawn-mower-based version of the Floppotron[0]? (E.g. here's the Star Wars theme[1] played by the Floppotron, from the inventor's YouTube channel[2]). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppotron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppotron [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KS02q0BUnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KS02q0BUnY [2] https://www.youtube.com/user/sh4dowww90/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/sh4dowww90/videos