squaresinger

Again someone who thinks that public policies are natural laws...

NASA could do and did do what SpaceX is doing now, but they are beholden to the government and if the government says "we don't do that for ideologigal reasons" then it doesn't matter what can be done.

Thanks for the summary! That sounds freaky!

Well, the trade-off between trusting a huge corporation or a single dude on the internet.

What exactly happened there? It was the big thing, then I didn't use it for a month or so and then it was gone.

Even if you make them in large quantities, material cost alone will be at least €50k. You will need a skilled operator nearby, and constant maintainance, and if you lose even one per year, a regular underpaid human worker will be much cheaper.

These things are pure marketing devices to pacify investors, generate headlines and make unions and workers afraid.

Because it's not real. It's purely for marketing, not for actual wide-spread implementation.

Even in the best of cases, even factoring in economy of scale and all that, a robot like that will cost upwards of €50k at least, probably closer to double that, will require constant maintainance, and the risk of vandalism or accidental damage is really high. And you'll likely need a (skilled) human operator nearby anyway, because the delivery vehicle doesn't drive itself.

The purpose of projects like this is marketing and public perception.

• The company looks futuristic and future proof. That's good to get investors.
• The company looks like they could replace humans with robots at any time. That's good with negotiations with unions and workers.
• The company gets into headlines worldwide. That's advertisement they don't have to pay for.

This robot is not meant to ever go mainstream. Maybe there will be a handful of routes where they will be implemented for marketing purposes, but like drone delivery and similar gimmicks, it won't beat a criminally underpaid delivery human on price, and that's the only metric that counts for a company like Amazon.

"Prescription glasses" only mean "glasses with optical properties", so glasses that actually do anything with focus, as opposed to e.g. non-prescription sunglasses or non-prescription accessory glasses that people wear to look smart or something.

It doesn't mean you need a prescription for them.

(That said: in some countries you need a prescription for your prescription glasses if you want your health insurance to pay for them.)

Not saying it necessarily belongs there, just that I saw it there.

Then again it was in a display about the evolution of consumer tech, and there were some newer smartphones there too, so I guess it did fit well into that.

It's nature's Beast of ARRGH

I've seen a 3DS in the Technical Museum in Vienna.

90% of the things that Japan introduced according to comment sections on the internet never happened (or never made it past the prototype stage) and the rest was actually introduced in Korea, not in Japan.

The Japanophilia is strong with a lot of people on the internet.

There's this idea I've been considering for a long time.

Imagine putting a remote controlled firework smoke bomb under the tailpipe, hidden from sight. At best a really stinky one that smells like burned rubber or something.

When someone follows to closely, just fake an engine issue or something by activating the smoke bomb and fill their AC air intake with the smell of burned rubber for weeks. Just to teach them to not follow too closely again.

That's a fair assessment.