
Uber Ambitiously Eyes 2021 for Food-Delivery Drones - prostoalex
https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-ambitiously-eyes-2021-for-food-delivery-drones-launch-1540163425
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tcoff91
The idea of a world where beehive-esque drone noise is ubiquitous is
terrifying to me. That sounds like a truly awful future.

It's going to be real shitty to be outside once there are hundreds of drones
flying around all over the damn place. Road noise is bad enough.

~~~
anoncoward111
Yeah I do agree. Road noise is really bad and leafblowers are even worse.

If there are hundreds of leafblowers buzzing around outside my house, I'm
going to be really really angry because I signed a social contract that
basically says I can't do anything crazy, but suddenly big corps can?

~~~
rightbyte
A sudden strike from the wind and they will cut your throat or cut out your
eyes. Imagine the paranoia walking on the street.

~~~
screye
I get where you are coming from, but this is an non-factor.

Drones can be built to be very safe with jet-engine like enclosures. Also,
Their power will mostly likely be nowhere enough to cause significant damage
to a human.

A heavy object falling on a head and causing real damage.... now that's a more
likely event.

__________

If drones are sufficiently regulated :

1\. Can't fly over private property, regions with many kids. 2\. Prefer to be
flown above roads 3\. Drone owner liable for damages

Then I can see them being a great replacement humans in food delivery.

I don't think they will be louder than a car or a motor-bike any way.

~~~
vkou
> 1\. Can't fly over private property, regions with many kids.

Most private property has much lower persons/square meter then public
property.

If a drone falling out of the sky is a factor, I'd much rather see it happen
into a back yard, or onto a rooftop, as opposed to a city street.

~~~
ghaff
If drones raining down on public property is an issue I would certainly hope
that shifting that and other costs to private property is not considered
remotely acceptable.

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decebalus1
Ambitiously solving such a hard problem: the convenience of having food
brought up to your house. Hot dang! Next up, the drone will drop the food
right into your mouth. Premium customers will have the drone chew the food on
its way to your house.

I wonder how far we will go in the interest of convenience. There are such
hard and pressing problems right now in the world and a company wasting money
trying to fill the sky with buzzing drones delivering food to fat lazy
assholes is being labeled as ambitious. Is this the near future we want? Do we
really _need_ a beehive of buzzing drones because we're so busy we can't just
go out and fucking buy food?

Give me a break...

~~~
natrik
"for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls,
because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external
written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have
discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your
disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of
many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient
and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the
show of wisdom without the reality."

\- Socrates on writing/reading

The existence of hard and pressing problems does not mean all resources should
be diverted to them - capitalism.

I feel you're exaggerating a bit much, though I get what you're trying to say.

~~~
throw11a
To put this in context [1], Socrates is repeating a story about an Egyptian
king responding to an Egyptian god who invented writing. Socrates does mostly
agree with the king. I disagree with Socrates that wise teachers would only
put their thoughts down in writing for amusement, but his general point is
that you can't ask books questions and they can't defend themselves, and that
they aren't the best way of transferring knowledge from person to person. If
you ever read a book critically, or if you appreciate a lecture or a live
teacher to understand material instead of a textbook, you agree with him in
ways. Also, the entire world has had oral traditions outside of writing for
the millennia since Socrates that have only been recently stamped down by
radio and TV.

[1]
[http://www.units.miamioh.edu/technologyandhumanities/plato.h...](http://www.units.miamioh.edu/technologyandhumanities/plato.htm)

edit: There was more time between the invention of Egyptian writing (which the
Greek alphabet was ultimately derived from) and Socrates than between the
death of Socrates and today, so it's not like he didn't understand the use of
writing, or thought it was some new-fangled thing.

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aeternus
Hopefully the FAA holds Uber to a higher standard than the Arizona DOT did.

Uber's history and culture of skirting regulation is concerning when it comes
to aviation.

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harry8
Uber pulls the drone announcement con, yet again, for free coverage in th WSJ.
Nobody is delivering anything by drone anytime soon. WSJ were conned by it,
were you?

A more interesting questions is: What is your estimate of how much this is
worth in uber advertising?

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softwarefounder
Trying to be first at a game no one wants to play.

~~~
chrisseaton
Uber want to play it. That's what the entire article is about. Amazon also
want to play it - they've done several public demos of the concept.

~~~
ProAm
Uber wants to play at anything that will make them profitable and give them an
exit.

~~~
softwarefounder
Yes - this is clearly a bad idea that fails the common sense test. But it will
add more assets, higher value, etc.

And another reason they may get bought

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kerng
Curious. What will the details look like? Is this for countryside or houses
with yard, or condos also?

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ArcticCelt
I really wonder how the full delivery scenario is envisioned. Where do the
Drone deliver the package? In front of my home? Do I have to go climb on top
of roof? Does it call me or send me and SMS once it's there or do I need to
stand outside?

~~~
ghaff
One of the challenges here would seem to be that the places where this could
most obviously work (where you have standalone houses with space around them)
simultaneously tend to have a lot fewer takeout delivery options today. Maybe
this hypothetical delivery service would increase the delivery range but it's
not obvious why it would.

Conversely, this would be very challenging in a city and there are tons of
cheap delivery options already.

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rayvy
At this point it seems like Uber's strategy is the following:

1\. Gather a bunch of PMs 2\. Put them all in a room and have them put wacky
ideas into a large hat 3\. Pull ideas out of the hat, and go with the first
one that sounds decent

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opportune
This is basically every large company that overhires PMs

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stevecalifornia
Why do delivery drones need to fly? Why can't we have small, autonomous, road-
based delivery drones?

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chongli
Because as complicated as flight is, it's much easier for a computer to handle
than navigating roads around cars and pedestrians.

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bennettfeely
Will be fun to see the inevitable YouTube videos of these as clay pigeons.

~~~
crooked-v
...followed by various arrests for self-documented destruction of property.

~~~
bdcravens
Probably more likely to be charged with unlawful discharge than property
destruction, especially if their property crosses my property without my
explicit consent. Though by then there will likely be FAA protections in
place.

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crooked-v
"Your property" ends at 500 feet up.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rights#United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rights#United_States)

~~~
ghaff
There's a lot of ambiguity about air rights and it's never been precisely
defined by either the legislature or the judiciary. It wasn't a big deal
before drones (outside of a real estate context). And under current FAA rules
drones typically have to stay under 400 ft.

It will be "interesting" to see this plays out. It _seems_ obvious that
regulations won't allow routine and widespread drone delivery flights to fly a
few hundred feet over personal property--given that I suspect a lot of people
would be really unhappy about this.

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bdcravens
I think people in general are freaked out about drones; there's been too many
stories of hovering drones with cameras while children play in the pool. FUD
or not, it's a concern.

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lechiffre10
Providing the solution to a problem that doesn't exist

~~~
mdonahoe
“We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas;
but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate...”

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

