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Amazon’s delivery drones are grounded in College Station, Texas

114 points by impish9208 2y ago

JKCalhoun 2y ago
I guess I just don't understand the insane degree to which business will go to deliver "toothpaste and batteries" — communities be damned. I suppose if I am being charitable to Big Corp I should instead blame the people of these various communities for placing orders for toothpaste by way of Amazon. Like a lot for things these days, a lot of the crap is in fact just what you see on the surface. You start digging at it and there are just layers and layers of it. And I know I am being a little dramatic here, but as a society I feel like we are increasingly losing (and I use that word loosely and broadly) and we're going to ultimately be the losers. I didn't mean to rant or put so fine a point on the thing, but it kind of is these little things that just boggle my mind — why they exist at all. And so often "we" seem to be without agency to forestall them. And does it seem like the public is in general gaining more or less agency with regard to billion-dollar corporations in the current climate we find ourselves in? (That was I think rhetorical.) And then of course even though small, these things just keep piling on....
- guitarlimeo 2y ago
  Have been having the same thoughts lately, and always find myself asking that am I turning into a sour conservative who doesn't like progress. But no, there's lots of progress I like, just increasing traffic (here traffic in airspace increases from zero to non-zero) is never something I like. Plus those drones are really loud, I wouldn't want to bother my neighbors by ordering with those.
  - palata 2y ago
    The thing is, somehow we all got convinced that "progress" means "profitable stuff". BigTech was not working on AR headsets because they wanted to improve our quality of life, but precisely because they want to make profit. They were aiming at "the next smartphone". SpaceX is not trying to improve our quality of life; they want to make profit by commercialising space. "Saving the species by going to mars" is completely absurd. There is a lot of progress to be done to save the species, but SpaceX is rather a negative in that sense. There is a lot of progress that can be done to improve our life (mostly to minimise the problems coming from climate change and the current mass extinction we're already observing). It's just that this progress doesn't make money. I love progress. I hate profit hidden in fake progress claims.
  - antisthenes 2y ago
    > Have been having the same thoughts lately, and always find myself asking that am I turning into a sour conservative who doesn't like progress. Unless progress involves some positive change for all parties involved, is it really progress? Change oftentimes isn't progress.
    - walls 2y ago
      By this metric, the abolition of slavery wasn't really progress.
      - lesuorac 2y ago
        Global GDP is way up since the Europeans started abolition so everybody is ahead.
  - lm28469 2y ago
    > always find myself asking that am I turning into a sour conservative who doesn't like progress You have every reason in the world to be critical of the version9s) of "progress" we're being served by a few billionaires who control medias and dip in politics more and more. Something being new doesn't automatically means "progress", and in case of workers or social progress it often means the opposite.
- wincy 2y ago
  This is such a strange take. We’re literally on the cusp of living in a Jetson’s style future where robots deliver stuff to our doors and that’s upsetting? To me this is literally the coolest thing ever. I’d much rather this than some delivery driver peeing in a Gatorade bottle to meet quotas. Automation drives prices down and makes all of our lives better.
  - nemomarx 2y ago
    Maybe try and get the noise level down to ambient traffic first, then?
  - noja 2y ago
    I don’t recall this “Jetson’s style future” being not able to open the window because it sounds like chainsaws outside.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - jkestner 2y ago
      Maybe it’s more of a Futurama-style future.
      - gs17 2y ago
        Futurama delivery drones seem to be pretty quiet, at least. Even in the recent episode mocking Amazon. I guess we need to invent whatever gently humming propulsion hovering sci-fi stuff uses.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    > Automation drives prices down and makes all of our lives better. The problem is, automation drives prices down so hard that Amazon and maaaaaybe one other large player will be the only game left in town. We'll end up being back in the era of corporate towns that were abolished barely a century ago.
- darkhorse222 2y ago
  Consume less, grow your people and community. It's a quiet, purposeful kind of rebellion. Just do anything that doesn't involve a corporation. It feels amazing and it has an immediate obvious impact.
  - guitarlimeo 2y ago
    Yes! Build meaningful connections which last even if you were broke. Money won't buy everything.
- maartenscholl 2y ago
  Businesses just rise to meet demands. Texas is the ideal place for the highly individualistic, neighbors an environmental issues be damned attitude. It's not like the cities there are designed so you can take a leisurely walk from your house to get some victuals.
- mytailorisrich 2y ago
  Amazon does this to deliver toothpaste and batteries because people want toothpaste and batteries as soon as possible after they have placed an order. So if a new technology appears that enables faster deliveries then businesses will at least experiment with it. It's as simple as that, no greedy capitalist conspiracy needed.
  - alt227 2y ago
    > no greedy capitalist conspiracy needed No, because capitalism itself IS the greedy conspiracy.
  - wat10000 2y ago
    It’s not a conspiracy, more like a force of nature. There’s a way to make a buck? Somebody will do it. It hurts other people? Doesn’t matter, still going to do it. It’s overall a net harm to society, but the costs aren’t borne by the business making the profit? Still going to do it.
- wat10000 2y ago
  Delivering toothpaste and batteries is just a means to an end. Businesses will go to any length to make money. “Community”? Does that make money? If not, don’t care. Bulldoze a nursery with the babies still inside? They’ll do it if it makes $1 more than the alternative. AI safety people talk about a hypothetical “paperclip maximizer”: a powerful AI programmed to make as many paperclips as possible. Left unchecked, it converts the universe into paperclips. But we already have them! They’re just called giant corporations, and instead of maximizing paperclips, they maximize money.
alwa 2y ago
https://archive.is/qaFhc https://archive.is/qaFhc
6stringmerc 2y ago
[flagged]
pyrale 2y ago
> The experience in College Station has highlighted another challenge: NIMBYs—or people who push for developments to be “not in my backyard”—potentially curtailing where Amazon operates. The term NIMBY seems to have been popularized to refer to people dogmatically refusing any change, doesn't seem to apply here, where the article describes a real nuisance: > His neighbors began calling the fleet flying chainsaws. Smith, a retired civil engineer, preferred a different comparison: “It was like your neighbor runs their leaf blower all day long,” he says. “It was just incessant.” > If Amazon had conducted the maximum number of flights outlined in its plans reviewed by the FAA, a drone might have buzzed by Smith’s house about every 58 seconds for 15 hours a day. > [After the end of the experiment,] Inside his house, with the double-paned windows shut and TV on, Smith could no longer hear the drones.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  “Some of the College Station residents who have complained about the noise say they still largely support the testing of drones. But many believe Amazon miscalculated by locating its depot close to so many residences.” I agree that it seems improper to characterise these complaints as NIMBYism. The criticism is thoughtful, targeted and rises as much from Amazon’s lack of communication as from its drones’ noise.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    The real question is if Amazon developers low noise drones will the people than allow them, or are they completely anti-drone.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > real question is if Amazon developers low noise drones will the people than allow them, or are they completely anti-drone Who in the article seems anti-drone? They all seemed to go out of their way to hedge complaints. Amazon shouldn’t have located a depot, which necessitates low flying and presumably lots of noisy acceleration, in a residential neighbourhood. They ought to have done what they did in the other examples: base out of residential-adjacent industrial areas.
hoseja 2y ago
Surely, given that drones can nowadays deliver heavy ordnance into distant trenches undetected, an amazon drone should be able to perform a similat feat?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > given that drones can nowadays deliver heavy ordnance into distant trenches undetected You’re baselining the noise levels in a residential neighbourhood to a literal war zone.
- perihelions 2y ago
  "Undetected" in that context means "undetected until they're nearby". They're far from quiet. They've deployed surprisingly long-range acoustic sensor nets, for tracking them by their noise: - "Zvook’s detection ranges, though much shorter than radar, are nothing to sniff at. Drones, for example, can be detected up to 5km away. For cruise missiles, the range is about 7km. To pull this off, Zvook designed curved “acoustic mirrors” half a metre in diameter. These dishes concentrate sound waves on the microphones they cup. Most listening stations have two, for a coverage arc of about 200°. Processing takes place on an adjacent computer." https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/07/24/how-ukraines-new-tech-foils-russian-aerial-attacks https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/07/24/... (2024) https://archive.is/sQcFO https://archive.is/sQcFO
- palata 2y ago
  Pretty sure an amazon drone could crash on your doorstep with your ordered toothpaste before you manage to stop it, yes. Not sure that this is what you want :).
  - UncleEntity 2y ago
    Not so much the Walmart ones... https://local12.com/news/offbeat/drone-shoot-walmart-delivery-amazon-hunt-man-and-destroys-arrested-firearm-rifle-pistol-gunshot-technology-military-aircraft-vandalism-lake-county-florida-sheriff-dennis-winn-9mm https://local12.com/news/offbeat/drone-shoot-walmart-deliver...
- 2y ago
alwa 2y ago
> “Inside his house, with the double-paned windows shut and TV on, Smith could no longer hear the drones.” Well! That’s… a relief, I guess. > If Amazon had conducted the maximum number of flights outlined in its plans reviewed by the FAA, a drone might have buzzed by Smith’s house about every 58 seconds for 15 hours a day. I guess we said the same thing when Amazon was normalizing next-day (and then same-day) delivery, but… why? When could cookies-on-demand, as Amazon’s marketing promotes, possibly be that important? Zipline’s blood deliveries in Rwanda I get [0]. But chintzy consumer conveniences? It’s like putting lights and sirens on Prime delivery vans… [0] https://time.com/rwanda-drones-zipline/ https://time.com/rwanda-drones-zipline/
- kevindamm 2y ago
  I'm not really a supporter of drone deliveries but, to me, the benefits also include fewer delivery trucks on the roads. And, I don't know how many last-mile trucks are EVs but the drones don't run on gasoline, right? There are benefits other than the immediacy of delivery, but the noise pollution is too much for me, too.
  - alt227 2y ago
    Trucks running on gasoline is a very small fraction of the climate crisis. Manufacture, maintenance, and scrappage of trucks/drones/whatever delivery device you choose (along with generating the power needed to run them) dwarfs tailpipe emissions.
    - kevindamm 2y ago
      I'm just pointing out the additional benefits besides the immediacy of delivery. Add to that list reducing the amount of tire chemicals emitted. Add reducing the congestion on the roads for commuters and emergency response vehicles. If the noise pollution had extremely low impact, these benefits would be worth mentioning whether or not it solves the climate crisis on its own (and I understand it wouldn't come close). But, admittedly, I'm taking a rather naïve view here, assuming drones would displace trucks, but in reality they would likely add to the deployment, not replace it. Some packages are likely too big, or need a signature, or exceed drone delivery capacity, etc. There is a forcing function on the business (not logistics) view, the automation of the drones mean there might be fewer trucks but there might be more deliveries ordered as a result, too.
fragmede 2y ago
And they say California is anti-business. (which it is.) If the birds and the dogs want to start paying rent and voting, they'd be called NIMBYs. Still, the answer to the problem is to redesign the drone blades so they make a different sound. Copy the wing design from barn owls. Which has been patented, so Amazon will just have to pay a licensing fee.
- cowpig 2y ago
  > And they say California is anti-business. (which it is.) If you break up the US states as countries, California is the world's 4th largest economy. source: https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/04/16/california-remains-the-worlds-5th-largest-economy/ https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/04/16/california-remains-the-wor...
  - fragmede 2y ago
    That's despite how hard it is to start a business there, not because of it. Try and start a factory and see how far you get before regulations and environmental studies bankrupt you. Try building anything and die on the permitting table, or skip the permits and try and bribe the regulatory commision. Either way that's overhead. The Bay Area's housing crisis is a problem of its own making. NIMBYs everywhere. They even tried to develop Solano county and got shit all over. It could be a global industrial epicenter like Shenzhen, except for that one tree frog. Businesses are moving to Austin and elsewhere because of how hard it is to do business in California. Whatever you think of Elon, he moved a shitton of Tesla jobs out of state because of the obstacles in creating them.
    - cowpig 2y ago
      Is it possible that "speed of opening a factory" is not equivalent to "best conditions for businesses in general"
      - fragmede 2y ago
        businesses operate on money, and time is money, so speed of opening a factory is very much about the best condition for business. It's not the only one, mind you, but if it costs an extra million dollars in lost revenue to start a business because the permitting process took an extra year, then why would you not start the business somewhere else that didn't cost you that extra million?
Ensorceled 2y ago
The term "NIMBY" is usually used for projects that the NIMBY supports, or at least acknowledges the need for, but just doesn't want in their back yard: power plants, halfway houses, low income housing, etc. Using NIMBY for people that don't want the equivalent of a privately owned airport dropped into their neighbourhood seems an abuse of the word.
- fragmede 2y ago
  Who doesn't want their Amazon packages delivered sooner? If I could get my packages today, instead of two days later, and there's just this humming noise outside because of it? Some people would prefer the package sooner. NIMBYs are anti-progress because of impacts to their lives and their neighborhood. The power plant needs to exist, but arguably does it? What's wrong with the old one? Why do they need to build a new one? Halfway houses and low income housing doesn't need to exist any more than a warehouse does. This one happens to be owned by Amazon, but where you want the distribution center for goods to exist, and who do you want to have own it? That this Amazon warehouse makes more noise than other warehouses and they don't want it there is definition NIMBYism.
  - TheRealQueequeg 2y ago
    gotta believe you're playing devil's advocate and not in genuine belief that an amazon warehouse > low income housing
    - fragmede 2y ago
      I didn't say that amazon warehouses > low income housing, but I've edited my comment to make it more clear. Warehouses and distribution centers need to exist, even if they don't use drones.
      - toomuchtodo 2y ago
        This is your opinion, not fact. Local communities can disallow them through zoning and planning, regardless of what consumers want. YIMBY for housing, NIMBY for whatever the Amazon paperclip maximizer wants.
thrill 2y ago
The modern version of "The horses are no longer frightened by the uncivilized attempts to introduce motorized vehicles to the roadways".
- alt227 2y ago
  I guess the difference is horses and cars travel on roads. You can choose to stay away from roads if you wish , meaning you are not subject to the noise. Unfortunately drones can fly anywhere, and so there is no choice in having to hear the noise pollution.
xnx 2y ago
Google/Alphabet's Wing operates in Texas too, but I haven't read about any noise complaints there. There were some complaints years ago in Texas: https://evtolinsights.com/2022/09/wing-drone-delivery-noise-australians-complain-its-gone-too-far/ https://evtolinsights.com/2022/09/wing-drone-delivery-noise-...
- ticulatedspline 2y ago
  I've been subject to Wing flyovers, when they first started it was bad, really bad. Like giant mosquitos you could hear clearly from half a mile away. On one particularly bad afternoon we got 6 (highly invasive) flyovers directly over us in less than 30 minutes while working in the garden. I would get "drone tinnitus" , the high pitch noise was very noticeable but would fade out to the border of perception on each flight such that after so much exposure I would begin to hear drones when there were none. It was awful. We considered selling the house and wondered if there would even be anywhere safe to move to. It's better now for 3 reasons: 1) I think they have newer models that are quieter so more distant deliveries can't be heard. 2) they altered delivery path such that they don't fly directly back over a house reducing the double tap you would get being on the flight path. And most importantly: 3) I don't think they do much business anymore, they reduced their offerings and I think they hardly do any deliveries. good riddance.
  - kevindamm 2y ago
    The Wing team did some optimization passes on the blade design to reduce the noise and direct the sound away from the ground, some time after their initial experiments.
    - chasd00 2y ago
      > The Wing team did some optimization passes on the blade design to reduce the noise i was about to say, just make the drones quieter. That tech exists and surely a company like Amazon can spend some effort on reducing noise. Now how much to reduce has to be defined by a regulatory agency like the city/county/state government or whatever. Seems like a pretty standard noise issue that can be solved
palata 2y ago
Drone delivery is a fundamentally bad idea. That is, except for the exceptional cases where it matters (like a medical emergency). Drones won't replace trucks; they are aiming at the last mile. There is already a perfect way to deliver a small payload over a mile: take a bike. That's healthy, that's economical, that's ecological, that's quiet. Why isn't Amazon working on that? Because it doesn't bring them profit.
- throwway120385 2y ago
  Amazon isn't working on that because they have a bunch of software developers and they need to justify their existence with something other than making AWS better or fixing the bugs with their shopping website. Drone delivery is probably a "sexy" project some EVP or C-level is pushing because they want to add it to their resume.
  - alt227 2y ago
    No, this is all wrong. Amazon are piling money into this because being able to deliver a small package over the last mile with zero people involved is a massive win to them. People are lazy, unreliable, hard to manage, and demand luxuries like toilets and water. The sooner they can get rid of them the better.
    - datadrivenangel 2y ago
      It adds a very low cost per-package low-package no person required option to their delivery options. A truck with a human will almost always be cheaper, but if you have a single package that will take a 10 minute detour for a driver due to a fluke of purchasing patterns, being able to drone deliver it could reduce the cost of that specific package delivery significantly, thus reducing overall system costs especially if that truck can now spend more time delivering goods in denser areas.
      - alt227 2y ago
        You are forgetting about the fact that the truck, and the industry behind it, already exist. How many new factories, mining operations, flights and ships will be required to start providing Amazon with the millions of new drones per year it will need to achieve this? This is not just a quick and easy way to replace a 10 minute detour. It is a new multi billion dollar industry which uses countless tons of materials and more energy to create millions more new plastic 'things' which will cost lots in energy and materials whilst simultaneously causing lots more waste on the planet.
avar 2y ago
> A parent said their teenage daughter > feared using the swimming pool because > of the drone’s camera. A clear failure of parenting in the modern world. They should be encouraging their daughter to bathe topless whenever a drone flies overhead. Just imagine the size of the settlement if the photos ever leaked.
outside1234 2y ago
This seems like primarily an indictment of zoning in Texas, which famously, doesn't exist and allows storage depots to be right next to residential areas. They are getting what they voted for in other words.
- jeffbee 2y ago
  Texas doesn't have statewide zoning but cities in Texas may. College Station has typically restrictive American zoning where virtually the entire city consists of either "rural", "restricted suburban", or "general suburban" designations. These permit, at most, 1-8 dwellings per acre, which is an order of magnitude below what anyone would consider a city.
- 34679 2y ago
  Do yourself a favor and type "zoning in Texas" into your favorite search engine before repeating this nonsense again.
- gs17 2y ago
  https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/north-texas-community-says-crypto-mining-facility-never-ending-noise-declining-health/ https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/north-texas-community-say... is another example, even if it might not exactly the fault of state-wide laws.
34679 2y ago
"Amazon’s Stephenson says that the demonstrations weren’t possible, because the FAA didn’t approve the drones to take flight until the end of the year when commercial operations began." Lie detected. It would've only required a pilot be onsite who is licensed for that class of UAV. As long as the demo flight adhered to published FAA rules, no FAA exemption or approval is needed. The permission is needed when you do things like fly without maintaining line of sight or fly over people.
mcgrath_sh 2y ago
I don't blame residents at all. FIFTEEN hours a day is incredibly long. That would be from 6am to 9pm. Imagine having a drone buzzing by your house 930 times a day during all waking hours. Want to sleep in? Go to bed early? Best of luck. I lived across from a neighbor who blasted their music. I could never crack a window and had to blast the TV. Even on the back side of the house, I had to use headphones to drown out the noise. Maybe I am overly sensitive to noise pollution due to this experience, but I'd absolutely throw a fit if I had to live like that because of Amazon.
- y-c-o-m-b 2y ago
  Even half of that time is unacceptable in my opinion. I use my backyard as a sanctuary from all the chaos going on in life. It's a place where I want to sit, relax, and listen to the wind or birds. I find leaf blowers and the noise of power tools somewhat annoying too (tbf, I also use them from time to time), but if it were happening for hours and every single day, I might actually snap.
TaurenHunter 2y ago
I read the comments and see an overuse of "NIMBY". It’s become a catch-all label that can oversimplify complex debates. People slap it on anyone opposing local projects, and it shuts down discussion implying selfishness without digging into the actual concerns. What is wrong with residents concerned about noise, privacy, and safety? Those are real issues worth wrestling with, not just knee-jerk "not here" whining. Maybe folks repeat it because it’s a quick way to sound clever online without saying much.
conductr 2y ago
It’s funny to see my home town mentioned here in this context after over a decade of quipping online that the noise will always be an issue for drone delivery. I live in a more noisy urban area now and yet, I still can’t fathom the noise of drones buzzing over my house every day all day, or as often as I see Amazon trucks passing by. It would be awful. I think people like the idea of this, but have never actually witnessed what the sound of these devices is like. It’s loud. And fwiw, college station is no quiet place. We have trains and they can be heard for miles. My house was a couple miles away from the tracks and I could hear the vibrations and horns all throughout the night as a kid. I still remember the cadence exactly even a few decades later.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
marysaslow 2y ago
I live in College Station. Drones did not fly over my house, but the people who lived in neighborhoods with Amazon drone service were out of their minds. First off, it is illogical to deliver little itty bitty items to one person, while profoundly disturbing all the neighbors and everyone on the flying chainsaw's rout: a very unbalanced social interaction. Great – now they are moving to Austin to try this, moving from a conservative town to a liberal one. I don't think they will do any better. Is it OK to lasso them? Shoot them out of the air? btw it is legal in Texas to shoot bothersome wild pigs anytime....
marysaslow 2y ago
I live in College Station. Drones did not fly over my house, but the people who lived in neighborhoods with Amazon drone service were out of their minds. First off, it is illogical to deliver little itty bitty items to one person, while profoundly disturbing all the neighbors and everyone on the flying chainsaw's route: a very unbalanced social interaction. Great – now they are moving to Austin to try this, moving from a more conservative town to a more liberal one. I don't think they will do any better. Is it OK to lasso them? Shoot them out of the air? btw it is legal in Texas to shoot bothersome wild pigs anytime....
insane_dreamer 2y ago
> a drone might have buzzed by Smith’s house about every 58 seconds for 15 hours a day that's like living near an airport; property values are definitely affected by the presence of airports and you'll find that in most cities large residential neighborhoods do not spring up around airports for that reason. It's also why new airports are usually built quite a ways outside of urban areas.

114 points by impish9208 2y ago

I guess I just don't understand the insane degree to which business will go to deliver "toothpaste and batteries" — communities be damned. I suppose if I am being charitable to Big Corp I should instead blame the people of these various communities for placing orders for toothpaste by way of Amazon. Like a lot for things these days, a lot of the crap is in fact just what you see on the surface. You start digging at it and there are just layers and layers of it. And I know I am being a little dramatic here, but as a society I feel like we are increasingly losing (and I use that word loosely and broadly) and we're going to ultimately be the losers. I didn't mean to rant or put so fine a point on the thing, but it kind of is these little things that just boggle my mind — why they exist at all. And so often "we" seem to be without agency to forestall them. And does it seem like the public is in general gaining more or less agency with regard to billion-dollar corporations in the current climate we find ourselves in? (That was I think rhetorical.) And then of course even though small, these things just keep piling on....

guitarlimeo 2y ago
Have been having the same thoughts lately, and always find myself asking that am I turning into a sour conservative who doesn't like progress. But no, there's lots of progress I like, just increasing traffic (here traffic in airspace increases from zero to non-zero) is never something I like. Plus those drones are really loud, I wouldn't want to bother my neighbors by ordering with those.
- palata 2y ago
  The thing is, somehow we all got convinced that "progress" means "profitable stuff". BigTech was not working on AR headsets because they wanted to improve our quality of life, but precisely because they want to make profit. They were aiming at "the next smartphone". SpaceX is not trying to improve our quality of life; they want to make profit by commercialising space. "Saving the species by going to mars" is completely absurd. There is a lot of progress to be done to save the species, but SpaceX is rather a negative in that sense. There is a lot of progress that can be done to improve our life (mostly to minimise the problems coming from climate change and the current mass extinction we're already observing). It's just that this progress doesn't make money. I love progress. I hate profit hidden in fake progress claims.
- antisthenes 2y ago
  > Have been having the same thoughts lately, and always find myself asking that am I turning into a sour conservative who doesn't like progress. Unless progress involves some positive change for all parties involved, is it really progress? Change oftentimes isn't progress.
  - walls 2y ago
    By this metric, the abolition of slavery wasn't really progress.
    - lesuorac 2y ago
      Global GDP is way up since the Europeans started abolition so everybody is ahead.
- lm28469 2y ago
  > always find myself asking that am I turning into a sour conservative who doesn't like progress You have every reason in the world to be critical of the version9s) of "progress" we're being served by a few billionaires who control medias and dip in politics more and more. Something being new doesn't automatically means "progress", and in case of workers or social progress it often means the opposite.
wincy 2y ago
This is such a strange take. We’re literally on the cusp of living in a Jetson’s style future where robots deliver stuff to our doors and that’s upsetting? To me this is literally the coolest thing ever. I’d much rather this than some delivery driver peeing in a Gatorade bottle to meet quotas. Automation drives prices down and makes all of our lives better.
- nemomarx 2y ago
  Maybe try and get the noise level down to ambient traffic first, then?
- noja 2y ago
  I don’t recall this “Jetson’s style future” being not able to open the window because it sounds like chainsaws outside.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - jkestner 2y ago
    Maybe it’s more of a Futurama-style future.
    - gs17 2y ago
      Futurama delivery drones seem to be pretty quiet, at least. Even in the recent episode mocking Amazon. I guess we need to invent whatever gently humming propulsion hovering sci-fi stuff uses.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > Automation drives prices down and makes all of our lives better. The problem is, automation drives prices down so hard that Amazon and maaaaaybe one other large player will be the only game left in town. We'll end up being back in the era of corporate towns that were abolished barely a century ago.
darkhorse222 2y ago
Consume less, grow your people and community. It's a quiet, purposeful kind of rebellion. Just do anything that doesn't involve a corporation. It feels amazing and it has an immediate obvious impact.
- guitarlimeo 2y ago
  Yes! Build meaningful connections which last even if you were broke. Money won't buy everything.
maartenscholl 2y ago
Businesses just rise to meet demands. Texas is the ideal place for the highly individualistic, neighbors an environmental issues be damned attitude. It's not like the cities there are designed so you can take a leisurely walk from your house to get some victuals.
mytailorisrich 2y ago
Amazon does this to deliver toothpaste and batteries because people want toothpaste and batteries as soon as possible after they have placed an order. So if a new technology appears that enables faster deliveries then businesses will at least experiment with it. It's as simple as that, no greedy capitalist conspiracy needed.
- alt227 2y ago
  > no greedy capitalist conspiracy needed No, because capitalism itself IS the greedy conspiracy.
- wat10000 2y ago
  It’s not a conspiracy, more like a force of nature. There’s a way to make a buck? Somebody will do it. It hurts other people? Doesn’t matter, still going to do it. It’s overall a net harm to society, but the costs aren’t borne by the business making the profit? Still going to do it.
wat10000 2y ago
Delivering toothpaste and batteries is just a means to an end. Businesses will go to any length to make money. “Community”? Does that make money? If not, don’t care. Bulldoze a nursery with the babies still inside? They’ll do it if it makes $1 more than the alternative. AI safety people talk about a hypothetical “paperclip maximizer”: a powerful AI programmed to make as many paperclips as possible. Left unchecked, it converts the universe into paperclips. But we already have them! They’re just called giant corporations, and instead of maximizing paperclips, they maximize money.

alwa 2y ago

https://archive.is/qaFhc https://archive.is/qaFhc

6stringmerc 2y ago

[flagged]

pyrale 2y ago

> The experience in College Station has highlighted another challenge: NIMBYs—or people who push for developments to be “not in my backyard”—potentially curtailing where Amazon operates. The term NIMBY seems to have been popularized to refer to people dogmatically refusing any change, doesn't seem to apply here, where the article describes a real nuisance: > His neighbors began calling the fleet flying chainsaws. Smith, a retired civil engineer, preferred a different comparison: “It was like your neighbor runs their leaf blower all day long,” he says. “It was just incessant.” > If Amazon had conducted the maximum number of flights outlined in its plans reviewed by the FAA, a drone might have buzzed by Smith’s house about every 58 seconds for 15 hours a day. > [After the end of the experiment,] Inside his house, with the double-paned windows shut and TV on, Smith could no longer hear the drones.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
“Some of the College Station residents who have complained about the noise say they still largely support the testing of drones. But many believe Amazon miscalculated by locating its depot close to so many residences.” I agree that it seems improper to characterise these complaints as NIMBYism. The criticism is thoughtful, targeted and rises as much from Amazon’s lack of communication as from its drones’ noise.
- bluGill 2y ago
  The real question is if Amazon developers low noise drones will the people than allow them, or are they completely anti-drone.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > real question is if Amazon developers low noise drones will the people than allow them, or are they completely anti-drone Who in the article seems anti-drone? They all seemed to go out of their way to hedge complaints. Amazon shouldn’t have located a depot, which necessitates low flying and presumably lots of noisy acceleration, in a residential neighbourhood. They ought to have done what they did in the other examples: base out of residential-adjacent industrial areas.

hoseja 2y ago

Surely, given that drones can nowadays deliver heavy ordnance into distant trenches undetected, an amazon drone should be able to perform a similat feat?

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> given that drones can nowadays deliver heavy ordnance into distant trenches undetected You’re baselining the noise levels in a residential neighbourhood to a literal war zone.
perihelions 2y ago
"Undetected" in that context means "undetected until they're nearby". They're far from quiet. They've deployed surprisingly long-range acoustic sensor nets, for tracking them by their noise: - "Zvook’s detection ranges, though much shorter than radar, are nothing to sniff at. Drones, for example, can be detected up to 5km away. For cruise missiles, the range is about 7km. To pull this off, Zvook designed curved “acoustic mirrors” half a metre in diameter. These dishes concentrate sound waves on the microphones they cup. Most listening stations have two, for a coverage arc of about 200°. Processing takes place on an adjacent computer." https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/07/24/how-ukraines-new-tech-foils-russian-aerial-attacks https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/07/24/... (2024) https://archive.is/sQcFO https://archive.is/sQcFO
palata 2y ago
Pretty sure an amazon drone could crash on your doorstep with your ordered toothpaste before you manage to stop it, yes. Not sure that this is what you want :).
- UncleEntity 2y ago
  Not so much the Walmart ones... https://local12.com/news/offbeat/drone-shoot-walmart-delivery-amazon-hunt-man-and-destroys-arrested-firearm-rifle-pistol-gunshot-technology-military-aircraft-vandalism-lake-county-florida-sheriff-dennis-winn-9mm https://local12.com/news/offbeat/drone-shoot-walmart-deliver...
2y ago

alwa 2y ago

> “Inside his house, with the double-paned windows shut and TV on, Smith could no longer hear the drones.” Well! That’s… a relief, I guess. > If Amazon had conducted the maximum number of flights outlined in its plans reviewed by the FAA, a drone might have buzzed by Smith’s house about every 58 seconds for 15 hours a day. I guess we said the same thing when Amazon was normalizing next-day (and then same-day) delivery, but… why? When could cookies-on-demand, as Amazon’s marketing promotes, possibly be that important? Zipline’s blood deliveries in Rwanda I get [0]. But chintzy consumer conveniences? It’s like putting lights and sirens on Prime delivery vans… [0] https://time.com/rwanda-drones-zipline/ https://time.com/rwanda-drones-zipline/

kevindamm 2y ago
I'm not really a supporter of drone deliveries but, to me, the benefits also include fewer delivery trucks on the roads. And, I don't know how many last-mile trucks are EVs but the drones don't run on gasoline, right? There are benefits other than the immediacy of delivery, but the noise pollution is too much for me, too.
- alt227 2y ago
  Trucks running on gasoline is a very small fraction of the climate crisis. Manufacture, maintenance, and scrappage of trucks/drones/whatever delivery device you choose (along with generating the power needed to run them) dwarfs tailpipe emissions.
  - kevindamm 2y ago
    I'm just pointing out the additional benefits besides the immediacy of delivery. Add to that list reducing the amount of tire chemicals emitted. Add reducing the congestion on the roads for commuters and emergency response vehicles. If the noise pollution had extremely low impact, these benefits would be worth mentioning whether or not it solves the climate crisis on its own (and I understand it wouldn't come close). But, admittedly, I'm taking a rather naïve view here, assuming drones would displace trucks, but in reality they would likely add to the deployment, not replace it. Some packages are likely too big, or need a signature, or exceed drone delivery capacity, etc. There is a forcing function on the business (not logistics) view, the automation of the drones mean there might be fewer trucks but there might be more deliveries ordered as a result, too.

fragmede 2y ago

And they say California is anti-business. (which it is.) If the birds and the dogs want to start paying rent and voting, they'd be called NIMBYs. Still, the answer to the problem is to redesign the drone blades so they make a different sound. Copy the wing design from barn owls. Which has been patented, so Amazon will just have to pay a licensing fee.

cowpig 2y ago
> And they say California is anti-business. (which it is.) If you break up the US states as countries, California is the world's 4th largest economy. source: https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/04/16/california-remains-the-worlds-5th-largest-economy/ https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/04/16/california-remains-the-wor...
- fragmede 2y ago
  That's despite how hard it is to start a business there, not because of it. Try and start a factory and see how far you get before regulations and environmental studies bankrupt you. Try building anything and die on the permitting table, or skip the permits and try and bribe the regulatory commision. Either way that's overhead. The Bay Area's housing crisis is a problem of its own making. NIMBYs everywhere. They even tried to develop Solano county and got shit all over. It could be a global industrial epicenter like Shenzhen, except for that one tree frog. Businesses are moving to Austin and elsewhere because of how hard it is to do business in California. Whatever you think of Elon, he moved a shitton of Tesla jobs out of state because of the obstacles in creating them.
  - cowpig 2y ago
    Is it possible that "speed of opening a factory" is not equivalent to "best conditions for businesses in general"
    - fragmede 2y ago
      businesses operate on money, and time is money, so speed of opening a factory is very much about the best condition for business. It's not the only one, mind you, but if it costs an extra million dollars in lost revenue to start a business because the permitting process took an extra year, then why would you not start the business somewhere else that didn't cost you that extra million?

Ensorceled 2y ago

The term "NIMBY" is usually used for projects that the NIMBY supports, or at least acknowledges the need for, but just doesn't want in their back yard: power plants, halfway houses, low income housing, etc. Using NIMBY for people that don't want the equivalent of a privately owned airport dropped into their neighbourhood seems an abuse of the word.

fragmede 2y ago
Who doesn't want their Amazon packages delivered sooner? If I could get my packages today, instead of two days later, and there's just this humming noise outside because of it? Some people would prefer the package sooner. NIMBYs are anti-progress because of impacts to their lives and their neighborhood. The power plant needs to exist, but arguably does it? What's wrong with the old one? Why do they need to build a new one? Halfway houses and low income housing doesn't need to exist any more than a warehouse does. This one happens to be owned by Amazon, but where you want the distribution center for goods to exist, and who do you want to have own it? That this Amazon warehouse makes more noise than other warehouses and they don't want it there is definition NIMBYism.
- TheRealQueequeg 2y ago
  gotta believe you're playing devil's advocate and not in genuine belief that an amazon warehouse > low income housing
  - fragmede 2y ago
    I didn't say that amazon warehouses > low income housing, but I've edited my comment to make it more clear. Warehouses and distribution centers need to exist, even if they don't use drones.
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      This is your opinion, not fact. Local communities can disallow them through zoning and planning, regardless of what consumers want. YIMBY for housing, NIMBY for whatever the Amazon paperclip maximizer wants.

thrill 2y ago

The modern version of "The horses are no longer frightened by the uncivilized attempts to introduce motorized vehicles to the roadways".

alt227 2y ago
I guess the difference is horses and cars travel on roads. You can choose to stay away from roads if you wish , meaning you are not subject to the noise. Unfortunately drones can fly anywhere, and so there is no choice in having to hear the noise pollution.

xnx 2y ago

Google/Alphabet's Wing operates in Texas too, but I haven't read about any noise complaints there. There were some complaints years ago in Texas: https://evtolinsights.com/2022/09/wing-drone-delivery-noise-australians-complain-its-gone-too-far/ https://evtolinsights.com/2022/09/wing-drone-delivery-noise-...

ticulatedspline 2y ago
I've been subject to Wing flyovers, when they first started it was bad, really bad. Like giant mosquitos you could hear clearly from half a mile away. On one particularly bad afternoon we got 6 (highly invasive) flyovers directly over us in less than 30 minutes while working in the garden. I would get "drone tinnitus" , the high pitch noise was very noticeable but would fade out to the border of perception on each flight such that after so much exposure I would begin to hear drones when there were none. It was awful. We considered selling the house and wondered if there would even be anywhere safe to move to. It's better now for 3 reasons: 1) I think they have newer models that are quieter so more distant deliveries can't be heard. 2) they altered delivery path such that they don't fly directly back over a house reducing the double tap you would get being on the flight path. And most importantly: 3) I don't think they do much business anymore, they reduced their offerings and I think they hardly do any deliveries. good riddance.
- kevindamm 2y ago
  The Wing team did some optimization passes on the blade design to reduce the noise and direct the sound away from the ground, some time after their initial experiments.
  - chasd00 2y ago
    > The Wing team did some optimization passes on the blade design to reduce the noise i was about to say, just make the drones quieter. That tech exists and surely a company like Amazon can spend some effort on reducing noise. Now how much to reduce has to be defined by a regulatory agency like the city/county/state government or whatever. Seems like a pretty standard noise issue that can be solved

palata 2y ago

Drone delivery is a fundamentally bad idea. That is, except for the exceptional cases where it matters (like a medical emergency). Drones won't replace trucks; they are aiming at the last mile. There is already a perfect way to deliver a small payload over a mile: take a bike. That's healthy, that's economical, that's ecological, that's quiet. Why isn't Amazon working on that? Because it doesn't bring them profit.

throwway120385 2y ago
Amazon isn't working on that because they have a bunch of software developers and they need to justify their existence with something other than making AWS better or fixing the bugs with their shopping website. Drone delivery is probably a "sexy" project some EVP or C-level is pushing because they want to add it to their resume.
- alt227 2y ago
  No, this is all wrong. Amazon are piling money into this because being able to deliver a small package over the last mile with zero people involved is a massive win to them. People are lazy, unreliable, hard to manage, and demand luxuries like toilets and water. The sooner they can get rid of them the better.
  - datadrivenangel 2y ago
    It adds a very low cost per-package low-package no person required option to their delivery options. A truck with a human will almost always be cheaper, but if you have a single package that will take a 10 minute detour for a driver due to a fluke of purchasing patterns, being able to drone deliver it could reduce the cost of that specific package delivery significantly, thus reducing overall system costs especially if that truck can now spend more time delivering goods in denser areas.
    - alt227 2y ago
      You are forgetting about the fact that the truck, and the industry behind it, already exist. How many new factories, mining operations, flights and ships will be required to start providing Amazon with the millions of new drones per year it will need to achieve this? This is not just a quick and easy way to replace a 10 minute detour. It is a new multi billion dollar industry which uses countless tons of materials and more energy to create millions more new plastic 'things' which will cost lots in energy and materials whilst simultaneously causing lots more waste on the planet.

avar 2y ago

> A parent said their teenage daughter > feared using the swimming pool because > of the drone’s camera. A clear failure of parenting in the modern world. They should be encouraging their daughter to bathe topless whenever a drone flies overhead. Just imagine the size of the settlement if the photos ever leaked.

outside1234 2y ago

This seems like primarily an indictment of zoning in Texas, which famously, doesn't exist and allows storage depots to be right next to residential areas. They are getting what they voted for in other words.

jeffbee 2y ago
Texas doesn't have statewide zoning but cities in Texas may. College Station has typically restrictive American zoning where virtually the entire city consists of either "rural", "restricted suburban", or "general suburban" designations. These permit, at most, 1-8 dwellings per acre, which is an order of magnitude below what anyone would consider a city.
34679 2y ago
Do yourself a favor and type "zoning in Texas" into your favorite search engine before repeating this nonsense again.
gs17 2y ago
https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/north-texas-community-says-crypto-mining-facility-never-ending-noise-declining-health/ https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/north-texas-community-say... is another example, even if it might not exactly the fault of state-wide laws.

34679 2y ago

"Amazon’s Stephenson says that the demonstrations weren’t possible, because the FAA didn’t approve the drones to take flight until the end of the year when commercial operations began." Lie detected. It would've only required a pilot be onsite who is licensed for that class of UAV. As long as the demo flight adhered to published FAA rules, no FAA exemption or approval is needed. The permission is needed when you do things like fly without maintaining line of sight or fly over people.

mcgrath_sh 2y ago

I don't blame residents at all. FIFTEEN hours a day is incredibly long. That would be from 6am to 9pm. Imagine having a drone buzzing by your house 930 times a day during all waking hours. Want to sleep in? Go to bed early? Best of luck. I lived across from a neighbor who blasted their music. I could never crack a window and had to blast the TV. Even on the back side of the house, I had to use headphones to drown out the noise. Maybe I am overly sensitive to noise pollution due to this experience, but I'd absolutely throw a fit if I had to live like that because of Amazon.

y-c-o-m-b 2y ago
Even half of that time is unacceptable in my opinion. I use my backyard as a sanctuary from all the chaos going on in life. It's a place where I want to sit, relax, and listen to the wind or birds. I find leaf blowers and the noise of power tools somewhat annoying too (tbf, I also use them from time to time), but if it were happening for hours and every single day, I might actually snap.

TaurenHunter 2y ago

I read the comments and see an overuse of "NIMBY". It’s become a catch-all label that can oversimplify complex debates. People slap it on anyone opposing local projects, and it shuts down discussion implying selfishness without digging into the actual concerns. What is wrong with residents concerned about noise, privacy, and safety? Those are real issues worth wrestling with, not just knee-jerk "not here" whining. Maybe folks repeat it because it’s a quick way to sound clever online without saying much.

conductr 2y ago

It’s funny to see my home town mentioned here in this context after over a decade of quipping online that the noise will always be an issue for drone delivery. I live in a more noisy urban area now and yet, I still can’t fathom the noise of drones buzzing over my house every day all day, or as often as I see Amazon trucks passing by. It would be awful. I think people like the idea of this, but have never actually witnessed what the sound of these devices is like. It’s loud. And fwiw, college station is no quiet place. We have trains and they can be heard for miles. My house was a couple miles away from the tracks and I could hear the vibrations and horns all throughout the night as a kid. I still remember the cadence exactly even a few decades later.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

marysaslow 2y ago

I live in College Station. Drones did not fly over my house, but the people who lived in neighborhoods with Amazon drone service were out of their minds. First off, it is illogical to deliver little itty bitty items to one person, while profoundly disturbing all the neighbors and everyone on the flying chainsaw's rout: a very unbalanced social interaction. Great – now they are moving to Austin to try this, moving from a conservative town to a liberal one. I don't think they will do any better. Is it OK to lasso them? Shoot them out of the air? btw it is legal in Texas to shoot bothersome wild pigs anytime....

marysaslow 2y ago

I live in College Station. Drones did not fly over my house, but the people who lived in neighborhoods with Amazon drone service were out of their minds. First off, it is illogical to deliver little itty bitty items to one person, while profoundly disturbing all the neighbors and everyone on the flying chainsaw's route: a very unbalanced social interaction. Great – now they are moving to Austin to try this, moving from a more conservative town to a more liberal one. I don't think they will do any better. Is it OK to lasso them? Shoot them out of the air? btw it is legal in Texas to shoot bothersome wild pigs anytime....

insane_dreamer 2y ago

> a drone might have buzzed by Smith’s house about every 58 seconds for 15 hours a day that's like living near an airport; property values are definitely affected by the presence of airports and you'll find that in most cities large residential neighborhoods do not spring up around airports for that reason. It's also why new airports are usually built quite a ways outside of urban areas.