
Amazon details its plan for how drones can fly safely over U.S. skies - mhb
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2015/07/28/amazon-details-its-plan-for-how-drones-can-fly-safely-over-u-s-skies/?tid=HP_national?tid=HP_national
======
analog31
In my view, if industry wants such a lavish public gift as the privileged use
of airspace, it should come with plenty of strings attached.

Drones should be licensed and carry liability insurance. They should emit an
ID signal that includes their GPS coordinates. They should respond to a
"scram" signal that clears an area for things like rescue helicopters and
firefighting aircraft. They should not carry advertising banners or emit noise
pollution. There are already analogous rules for cars in most of these areas.

There's also a laundry list of items regarding data privacy that should apply
to drones.

~~~
dspillett
_> They should respond to a "scram" signal that clears an area for things like
rescue helicopters and firefighting aircraft._

This is a massive thing.

An issue I see though it whether everyone will play by such safety rules. Yes
Amazon and the like will, but once the site of a delivery drone is commonplace
other drones will be around either for publicised purposes (such as event
recording, or people like Google updating their aerial maps) or "hiding in
plain site" (i.e. those recording without permission or delivering less legal
cargo). Who will be able to regulate those to make sure that they confirm to
such safety standards (quick answer: nobody). Also the scram signal itself
could be open to abuse.

~~~
sudhirj
A lot of these problems already apply to people walking around, cars,
helicopters and private aircraft.

~~~
dspillett
Yes, but a drone can cause some forms of damage that a person walking around
can't (in places inaccessible to a person just walking around), and the
barriers for entry (which to a large extent will come down to costs) is (or
will soon be) a lot lower than that for the other things you mention.

------
rockyleal
Everyone should remember that the Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos while
reading this article. Even the title is propagandistic in style "...can fly
safely over U.S. skies"

~~~
Retra
That's a good point, but if you left 'safely' out of the title, the meaning
changes significantly.

~~~
ridgeguy
And that - a single word change - is why editorial control matters.

~~~
cpeterso
And what does it mean to "fly over US skies"? The drones are flying over
cities, not skies. The article might get different response if it read "Amazon
details its plan for how drones can fly safely over _your children 's
school!_" :)

------
Johnny555
They didn't address the _other_ part of safety -- some percentage of those
hundreds (or thousands) of 15+ kg drones flying over a city are going to have
an unavoidable collision or a catastrophic hardware failure and come crashing
down to the ground, which could easily be deadly if it lands on someone, or
cause a car accident if it lands on a car or on the road. At the very least
it's going to cause property damage - who do I call when one punches a hole
through my roof or I see one hanging in my tree?

Has anyone done an analysis of the crash rate for large drones and likely
casualty rate on the ground?

~~~
function_seven
You're right that they need to address those concerns. I'd like to see that
analysis also include any possible reduced injury/death from fewer delivery
truck miles and fewer consumer car trips to the local store.

I have no idea if it will offset or not, but I could see—even with a few
thousand drones crashing every year—that a net benefit could still be realized
because people are not driving to the store for some of their shopping.

~~~
Johnny555
Sure, using drones instead of trucks could be a net win in safety if it means
less drivers on the road, but this seems unlikely -- one driver in a UPS truck
can deliver hundreds of packages on his route, but since the drone has such
limited payload capacity, it might need to make a round trip per package so it
would take hundreds of drone trips to replace one driver with a truck. And,
since heavy packages aren't realistic for a drone, the truck is still going to
drive much of his delivery route to deliver the heavy packages.

~~~
unprepare
What if a drone costs 100x less than a delivery driver? You can have 100
drones out delivery packages for the same cost of one delivery driver
delivering one package at a time.

It would be interesting to see data on what % of amazon purchases are above
the payload of a drone - i imagine they crunched the numbers themselves and
determined it was low enough to justify continuing to push this issue (even
after the FAA tried to ban[1] drone deliveries altogether)

Theyll look at $/package and time/package for drones and delivery drivers.

I imagine once you account for driver salary and benefits, cost of vehicles,
cost of fuel and maintenance, cost of insurance for drivers and vehicles, cost
of management structure to maintain drivers, schedules, routes, etc - the
$/package for drones likely make up for any disadvantage they currently have
in time/package

Also, drones can deliver packages 24/7/365, no reason you cant wake up to a
package delivered overnight (maybe even your morning kindle (tm) e-ink
newspaper)

[1][http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/24/faa-bans-the-use-of-
drones-...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/24/faa-bans-the-use-of-drones-to-
deliver-packages/)

~~~
ams6110
As drones and other autonomous machine/robots start to replace human
employees, I expect to hear calls to tax them to recoup the social
externalities. If they are taxed enough, then there is no longer an advantage
to using them over human employees.

The fallacy in that thinking is left as an exercise for the reader.

~~~
eru
The externalities might be smaller than the profit. Ie even with all
externalities internalized via taxes, it might still beat humans.

------
CPLX
This is uncompelling. Just having layers of airspace like that doesn't really
address the main issue, which is that in order to get to any layer you have to
transit the layer below. Even giant commercial flights end up below 500 feet
all the time of course, well at least twice for every flight.

It also has some real issues in that it's glossing over the challenges of
steep terrain and obstacles. Most of our air navigation takes place by
reference to MSL altitude (i.e. relative to sea level), but this is
exclusively based on AGL (i.e. relative to ground level). Not an
insurmountable challenge of course but it seems like they are skipping a lot
of important parts. Same impression of the "real time data" plan, which sounds
extremely complex in the context of aviation.

The overall impression is that nobody has really thought this through
particularly, that this is more of a conversation starter at best.

(Relevant: I have a pilot's license)

~~~
grecy
It never ceases to amaze me how negative the HN community is to new ideas,
technology and generally "trying new stuff" that has never been attempted
before.

Drone Delivery - never going to work. Lots of solar power - too expensive.
Autonomous cars - too risky

This is supposed to be a community of "Hackers" making cool stuff, and here we
have a company talking about making cool stuff, and every single comment,
without exception, is negative.

Yes, this is a very difficult problem to solve. Yes, there are many things
they have not addressed yet. Yes, this needs a lot of work. No, they shouldn't
just start doing this and see how many crashes happen. But yes, they need to
keep talking, testing, learning and working towards a future where this is
possible.

Does anyone in their right mind honestly think that in less than 150 years
there will still be a single human-controlled vehicle (plane or automobile)?

Of course it's coming, and these guys are starting it. Now.

The same negativity could be said of the Wright brothers when they told people
they were going to fly, or Henry Ford when he set out to mass-produce the
automobile, or the people that said we'd have a global computer network and a
computer in every home.

I honestly don't understand why the community here isn't more open to new
ideas. Even ideas that never come to fruition are still worth analyzing. There
is always something to be learned.

We should be talking about the interesting parts of this challenge and how
they could be overcome, not saying "Not safe enough" Every. Single. Time.

</rant>

~~~
sombremesa
"Does anyone in their right mind honestly think that in less than 150 years
there will still be a single human-controlled vehicle (plane or automobile)?"

You do realize that we don't even have clean water on a global scale?

~~~
xirdstl
JFK, 1962: We're going to go to the moon.

You: You do realize that we don't even have clean water on a global scale?

~~~
tizzdogg
Right, but still only twleve of us have been to the moon.

I think the parent commenter's point was that it's pretty naive to think that
there will be no more human-driven vehicles at all. Change will happen quickly
in some parts of the world, and other parts will take a long, long time to
catch up.

~~~
__d
Gotta sell all those old manual vehicles to _someone_ ...

------
mercurialshark
I like the idea of rivers serving as a natural drone highway. They weave
through most cities/towns, provide insulation from populations on the ground
and relatively easy recoverability (as opposed to being destroyed on impact).

~~~
VLM
Also consider railroad tracks, at least normally you'd only have one property
owner making claims (the railroad), and the local residents are already used
to 9000 HP worth of coal train rumbling thru at 3am so a tiny little quiet
drone is no real issue. Also in an accident, I think its pretty obvious who
"wins" when a ten million pound train hits a ten pound drone, so other than
glass and paint claims I think you're pretty safe. I don't envision a drone
ever causing a coal train to derail, LOL.

------
stevecalifornia
I still don't understand how an autonomous delivery drone is better than an
autonomous delivery car.

I feel like a delivery drone is the absolute most complicated way to solve
this problem other than somehow involving rockets.

Drone limitations: \- Needs great weather. \- Package size and weight
exceptionally confined. \- Exceptionally limited range. \- How to actually get
package from drone to human? Drop? \- Night flight? Yes / no? Probably not.

Car limitations: \- Traffic.

~~~
jonnycowboy
Actually drone delivery is much more simple than autonomous driving.
Algorithm: grab package, fly up, fly directly to delivery point, drop package,
all faster than driving. Compare to autonomous driving which needs to take
into account road users (non-autonomous), traffic laws, visualization, etc and
it's obvious why drones are more efficient and easier to program.

~~~
brlewis
Assuming empty airspace, it's obvious why drones are easier to program.
Assuming a single package it's obvious why drones are more efficient. Take
away either of those assumptions and things get less obvious.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Those are very wrong assumptions. If a serious drone delivery program (or
multiple competing ones) starts, airspace will suddenly become congested and
you'll have to do heavy air traffic coordination to avoid mid-air collisions.
And when you comapre with cars, you need to compare one delivery car with a
hundred drones. Suddenly you see that drones are not efficient at all, which
is kind of obvious, as it takes a lot of energy to keep stuff in the air with
active propulsion.

~~~
xur17
I always pictured trucks driving from distribution centers, and deploying
drones that cover an area. That way the drones only have to cover a small
distance, reducing the number of drones that have to fly over a given area.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Mobile drone hubs seems like a very interesting solution, which could even be
more energy-efficient than just trucks or just drones. Somehow I never thought
of that, thanks!

------
digitalsushi
It will be interesting to watch how over the next decade the airspace is
forced to get split up and reassigned. We're on chapter:fairy tale and we will
eventually get to chapter:mundane. The tech exists, the money exists, the
demand exists. There are clearly some huge obstacles, the same magnitude
plaguing self driving cars. Both fascinating worlds unfurling before us.

------
mo1ok
There's a lot of negativity in this thread. I'm really excited about this.

Even on an aesthetic level, it will be amazing to look at the city sky and see
hundreds of lights buzzing about, blade-runner style.

~~~
elchief
Bunch of negative nellies up in here. Stuff like this would drive me nuts if I
was trying to invent the future.

------
nostromo
I'm surprised the Washington Post doesn't include any disclaimers regarding
their ownership by Bezos in their coverage of Amazon.

~~~
lemevi
I don't really understand this process of declaring conflicts of interests.
The declaration of a conflict of interest seems like at best a bare minimum
requirement and one that is abused.

I see posts sometimes where they write about how great X is and then have a
disclaimer of (we're owned by creators of X) as if that was good enough. I
just think if you have a conflict of interest, unless the value of the news is
significant, writing about X should be avoided altogether especially if it's
heavy on speculation, analysis or opinion.

~~~
skybrian
That's excluding a lot of people from the conversation who might have
something interesting to say. For example, are you going to exclude pilots
from a conversation about aviation because they have an obvious conflict of
interest?

If you're an expert in a certain area, it's quite likely that it's because
it's part of your job. There aren't that many people who are both impartial
and knowledgeable.

~~~
function_seven
I think you're misunderstanding the concept of "conflict of interest". In this
case, the news story was written _by the same company_ that the news story is
about. They have a direct financial stake in the public's perception of them,
and are writing the story that helps shape that same perception. That's the
conflict.

If the story was about American Airlines' employee compensation practices, and
it was published by the Air Line Pilots Association, then the same conflict
would arise. But if the story is about aviation in general, then the conflict
goes away and the pilot is a good source of expert knowledge.

~~~
icebraining
_In this case, the news story was written by the same company that the news
story is about._

Well, not exactly, just by a company with the same majority owner.

------
clumsysmurf
I am not looking forward to all the noise pollution flying drones will
contribute.

~~~
crocal
Thanks for that comment. I felt I was the only one thinking that these drones
in the sky constitute a major pollution and visual agression. In my case, it
triggers the exact same revulsion I have when I discover a big spider walking
on my ceiling. Yuck.

At least with trains, roads and airports, we can move away from the source of
pollution. With drones, great, nowhere to hide. Pollution comes to you. Not to
mention that I am sure soon we will have ads displayed on the side of the said
drones. Did I hear "Blade Runner"?

~~~
icebraining
_At least with trains, roads and airports, we can move away from the source of
pollution. With drones, great, nowhere to hide. Pollution comes to you. Not to
mention that I am sure soon we will have ads displayed on the side of the said
drones._

So, just like cars?

~~~
crocal
Worst than cars. Cars don't drive over your garden...

------
nd1
I've always seen these Amazon drone delivery stories as an elaborate PR stunt
(I'd say an extremely successful one if it is...). But every time the story
comes up on here everyone seems to take it very seriously. Am I just being
really cynical or do we actually think this is going to happen in the next
5-10 years?

~~~
nandhp
It's not a question of drone deliveries coming in 5-10 years, it's already
happening in some places: for example, DHL has a drone in service (albeit as a
research project) shuttling urgent pharmacy orders to an island 10 km off the
German coast.

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/25/german-
dhl...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/25/german-dhl-launches-
first-commercial-drone-delivery-service)

[http://www.dhl.com/en/press/releases/releases_2014/group/dhl...](http://www.dhl.com/en/press/releases/releases_2014/group/dhl_parcelcopter_launches_initial_operations_for_research_purposes.html)

The question for the next 5-10 years really if the economics and regulations
can change or have changed to make it practical to do this on an ongoing basis
for small and larger payloads.

------
tomohawk
Current law holds that flying within 500 feet of someone's land is
trespassing. I'd be happy to lease my property for each use by a drone
operator for a modest fee. Perhaps they could credit my Prime account for each
use.

Also, since sound dissipates by the inverse square of the distance, the
difference in sound between a drone flying at 100 feet vs 500 feet is quite a
lot. I'd expect any fee charged by me to use the space above my property to
vary by that formula.

However, it looks like they're going to try to take my property rights away
from me by paying off some people in Washington. This would have the
convenient effect of nullifying my ability to seek redress for noise and other
polution, or loss of use of my property.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Someone here must be working on domestic anti-drone self-targeting weapons as
we type? Surely firing potatoes/beanbags above your own property is legal, if
a drone just happened to be passing and got hit then wouldn't that be a shame.

Or perhaps we'll have patrolling sentry drones that physically tackle and
enforce domestic airspace?

Will be interesting to see how sophisticated lawmakers get in pre-empting such
actions.

------
sandworm101
> Amazon Prime Air engineers have largely kept a low profile as they test
> their technology overseas.

Canada, specifically British Columbia, is hardly "overseas".

[http://www.thecanadianpress.com/english/online/OnlineFullSto...](http://www.thecanadianpress.com/english/online/OnlineFullStory.aspx?filename=DOR-
MNN-
CP.c756149ac89240cead9200c597688014.CPKEY2008111303&newsitemid=32503812&languageid=1)

~~~
giaour
Well, you might have to cross a tiny bit of ocean water if it's on Vancouver
Island.

------
CodeSheikh
“Imagine the Internet without HTTP and TCP/IP” That's quite an absurd analogy
to push forward Amazon's drone program.

Even though I am quite fascinated by the innovation of this idea, not so much
about the practicality of it. I believe it is good for rural areas where
highway system is not streamlined and major shipping carriers don't encourage
frequent routes.

------
sarwechshar
It would be interesting how they plan on detecting smaller moving objects like
birds, which would be more of a challenge than a helicopter or a construction
crane. Perhaps lasers and radar similar to how Google's driverless cars detect
potential hazards?

~~~
caskance
I wonder if detecting them is even really a problem. They move, emit heat, and
most are naturally inclined to avoid drones already. I'm really curious about
whether birds of prey might start hunting drones.

~~~
jordanthoms
It's a possibility if the drones are delivering food for Amazon Fresh... That
would be so awesome!

------
2anon4this1
This is all wrong.

Small underground tunnels covering entire cities with autonomous delivery bots
on wheels which automatically take the fastest route from any given A to B
with a generic size/shaped payload are the real solution to this issue.

Horizontal drilling technologies mean that we can bore a 30 metre long tunnel
while only digging up the first 3 metres.

Imagine all the industries this would revolutionise. All shopping and food
ordering would become completely price and quality-driven, as realestate
prices and premium spots are no longer relevant. last 10 mile package delivery
would cost tens of cents.

Automated subterranean transport is the REAL future of automated delivery.

~~~
madaxe_again
You say this, but plenty of cities (Chicago, London) have small gauge
underground railroads which used to be used variously for mail and coal -
they're all now abandoned.

------
legohead
can't wait to see hundreds of drones flying around the city. the future
is...loud

~~~
BinaryIdiot
Since there will be so many flying at once you're going to have the occasional
failure. That's going to make walking around in the city interesting for sure.

~~~
toomuchtodo
It should be straightforward to design corridors for drones where, if they
were to fail, they land on structures instead of people. Amazon could design
this as an additional OpenStreetMap layer, using existing satellite mapping
data to create areas to avoid where people are likely to be.

Avoid roads and sidewalks.

~~~
rpcope1
You know even if they don't land on people, I sure don't want an Amazon drone
falling on my house, or out in my pasture, or on top of my shop. Will Amazon
pay up in full if it punches a hole in my barn, harms livestock, or destroys a
car I have sitting outside? If they're going to have a non-zero number of
these drop from the sky, they better know they're not getting that drone back,
for starters.

~~~
function_seven
> Will Amazon pay up in full if it punches a hole in my barn, harms livestock,
> or destroys a car I have sitting outside?

Of course they will. Why wouldn't they? You have their drone and a photo of a
gaping hole in your roof.

> If they're going to have a non-zero number of these drop from the sky, they
> better know they're not getting that drone back, for starters.

Well, they'll probably make damage reimbursement contingent upon your return
the drone.

~~~
eru
I assume the law will compel them to pay for the damage. And the law might or
might not compel you to return the drone.

(If the law doesn't compel you, Amazon might pay extra for return.)

------
larrys
"Kimchi also laid out his thinking on how autonomous drones could safely fly
in the same locations as helicopters. Helicopters are much more problematic
than planes for drones because of low-altitude flying."

I wonder what size drones they are envisioning. For example with a typical
prosumer drone out there now, it would be completely obliterated by a large
helicopter when coming in contact with the moving blades or hitting the
windshield or other parts. Likewise the downdraft of the heli would force down
anything of that size in it's path.

After all if a drone is such a threat to a heli then what kind of threat is it
to a person that it comes into contact with by accident?

~~~
falcolas
Watching the latest Mythbuster episode is enlightening, particularly if you
take the weights of the crafts they're testing into account.

THe TL;DR of the episode is - carbon fiber blades directly connected to motors
(likely the setup for commercial UAVs) is capable of slicing deeply enough to
hit your jugular, others are not (unless the motor is being held solidly and
used as a form of saw).

I'm more concerned with UAVs and payloads in excess of 10 lbs falling from 400
feet up onto my head because a wiring connection came loose and cut power to
the UAV (happened to me recently, minus the head).

In short, don't fly UAVs around people, or in no-fly zones.

~~~
larrys
Of interest:

[http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2013/09/05/remote-control-
he...](http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2013/09/05/remote-control-helicopter-
kills-man-in-brooklyn/)

"A 19-year-old model helicopter enthusiast was killed Thursday when a toy
helicopter he was flying struck him in the head, a law-enforcement official
said."

------
zkhalique
The trouble with drones, even more than self-driving cars, is that soon, lots
of manufacturers will be able to make them. When no-name unaccountable
manufacturers make drones for people who buy and fly them anonymously, we
won't be able to prevent the havoc that occurs, with laws.

Previously, this was hardly a problem, because very few machines operated
autonomously outside of a building. Cars had occupants. Helicopters and planes
had occupants. Now, many won't. If a rogue drone with mounted guns starts
shooting up a public square, we won't know who launched it unless the
manufacturer played by the rules.

That's a serious problem for our society that's coming up. Terrorism has
always been a problem of technology, and we're about to make more technology
available to the masses, where some fraction of a percent of wackos is going
to use it for nefarious purposes. The trouble with unmanned robots which are
easily manufactured is that we can't trace who made it, sold it, or launched
it. And therefore can't enforce the law on everybody.

I am more concerned about this than governments using the technology.

~~~
trhway
>If a rogue drone with mounted guns starts shooting up a public square, we
won't know who launched it unless the manufacturer played by the rules.

a bomb hidden in a thrash bin or a stolen car parked on the public square. A
bullet from sniper rifle from a mile away. No drones necessary. And just
imagine what kind of, including chemical or nuclear, havoc can any engineer
wreck with tech available today.

>Terrorism has always been a problem of technology.

centuries ago Church tried to outlaw crossbows:

[http://militaryhistorynow.com/2012/05/23/the-crossbow-a-
medi...](http://militaryhistorynow.com/2012/05/23/the-crossbow-a-medieval-
wmd/)

Safety through obscurity works only for very cutting edge technologies and
only for the very short time.

~~~
zkhalique
These things aren't able to follow instructions, target people, etc.

Go ahead and tell me what we will actually do when these things appear.

You can poo-pooh security through obscurity but we're all relying on the
"infeasibility" of defeating various systems. Just as one example,
reputational attacks followed systematically without rest or hesitation can
subvert entire communities and make them not trust each other. You only don't
realize what dedicated technology can do to subvert human systems because you
haven't had to face it yet.

If every time you launched your startup, an automated process would find, hack
in and bring your network down or make a thousand sleeper accounts which will
bring it down later, when you couldn't rely on them "just not finding you long
enough for you to secure your network", then you'd have a different attitude.

~~~
trhway
there is a difference between doomsday declaration on every technological
advancement and just reasonable basic safety measures.

Specifically for drones - having millions of them in the sky would naturally
lead to 2 things - automated traffic control with ground and airborne AESA
radar systems that even military would envy (after all an Aegis destroyer have
to track only several hundreds objects simultaneously where is drone traffic
control over Bay Area would have to track a million) and the second thing -
"license plate transponders" similar to car. Any drone without registered
transponder will be taken off the sky by a police drone similar like an
unregistered car from highway today.

So, yes, somebody would use the drones for crimes like today they can use
planes or cars. So what? The drone flight will be recorded in radar and
various visual systems. And like in any other case investigation will trace
the stuff back to perpetrators. And sometimes not successfully.

And yes, machine guns plus cars did produce the Dillinger gang and the like
for some short time. And it resulted in FBI. The way of progress...

~~~
zkhalique
So what? So right now when they use planes and cars you can see who was
driving it, who made the car, who purchased it.

With drones, you won't be able to see any of that. The criminals who
programmed the drones would be free from the law. And not only that, the
"police drone" as you say might arrive too late, the drone might already have
shot up some people. And then there's always the possibility that despite your
best efforts, some drones are gonna fall from the sky on people.

------
ams6110
I think a very real problem with package-delivering drones will be thieves or
bored kids shooting them down.

------
bra-ket
It looks like a surveillance network.

~~~
josu
>While the Supreme Court hasn't explicitly accepted that as the upper limit of
property ownership, it's a useful guideline in trespass cases. Therefore,
unless you own some very tall buildings, your private airspace probably ends
somewhere between 80 and 500 feet above the ground.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2013/07/photographer_george_steinmetz_arrest_how_much_airspace_do_you_own.html)

------
golemotron
I want a rule that limits drones to flying over roads when they fly in non-
rural areas.

~~~
lucb1e
Why?

~~~
golemotron
Because there are fewer exposed heads on roadways.

------
rpedela
Has there been much discussion about hundreds or thousands of drones filling
the sky and how much of an eyesore that would likely be to many people, then
the political fight that is likely to ensue?

------
88e282102ae2e5b
I would love to see how they plan to address theft. Surely it would be super
easy to steal the drones and harvest them for parts.

~~~
MichaelGG
I'd guess it simply won't be that big an issue. They'll know where they are
all the time, and they'll file theft reports and get police involved. They
could add video, too, if they felt the need. In the US, it doesn't seem like
organised bands are going to risk criminally attacking autonomous devices to
steal parts.

------
fredland
just want to point out the obvious here: the VP of Amazon Prime Air's name is
Gur Kimchi.

Godspeed, brother.

Korean-Americanly yours, F

------
comrh
No plans on if they fall out of their special zone and onto my roof or my head
though?

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
Can other companies do this or just Amazon?

------
arde
Cue pirate drones stealing cargo.

------
ck2
[http://i.imgur.com/SLZeCmS.png](http://i.imgur.com/SLZeCmS.png)

