Should companies start using drones for common tasks, like package delivery?
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Interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
As awesome as a future with robotic delivery drones would be, I can't help but see the many problem with it. I'm sure if it becomes widespread getting killed by a failed drone will happen at least a few times, as will having your stuff stolen by a thief's drone. Not to mention how easy it would be to mount a camera on the delivery drone for easy surveillance. These are all things that come up with every new development, though, so I have faith that we'll find a way around the shortfalls.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
getting killed by a failed drone will happen at least a few times
One of the really depressing things about American media is that hundreds of people could be killed by delivery drivers each year and it wouldn't make local news but the first time one person anywhere gets killed by a delivery drone it's going to be an international headline and the idiot public will be in arms about Amazon's deadly attack drones.
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
If I had mod points, you'd get 'em all.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
you know what pairs well with drones? shotguns.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Funny)
you know what pairs well with drones? shotguns.
I don't think an Amazon 'copter could lift a shotgun...
Re: (Score:2)
I was thinking along the lines of how to greet an approaching drone. Although I recall a vid of a hovering drone shooting a shotgun while handling the recoil
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If a single pellet leaves you property, are you prepared to take full responsibility?
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Damn. I guess I'll cancel my shotgun order then. Or maybe downgrade to glock.
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"you know what pairs well with drones? shotguns."
I guess as long as they are both blue tooth that'll work.
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false comparison (Score:3, Insightful)
Im not claiming that "public perception" of safety issues is proper, but neither is your understanding of it
The two situations you compare **are not equivalent**
Delivery trucks are drive live, in real time, but a **human driver** who can be held responsible for any negligence.
A drone failure has no ac
Re:false comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
"tolerance" (Score:2)
yes...
you don't seem to understand the idea of "tolerance"
we all know we could die any time we get in a car, but we don't **feel** that way b/c we know that there are myriad safeguards in place, including seatbelts, speed laws, criminal record keeping, rules about who can drive, rules about insurance, air bag regulations...
plus, and this is the key here for 'drones'... if it is NOT a real accident of mechanical failure, and a person is negligent...they can be *personally* held accountable
*all those things*
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know why mechanical failure is any more of a "real" accident than software failure? If the drone is properly designed and maintained, then an accident due to mechanical failure should be less common than mechanical failure in properly maintained aircraft. The design of quad/hex/whatever drones is simpler and has more redundancy than any aircraft designed to carry people. The only accidents outside of human control would be things like bird strikes.
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Re:"tolerance" (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's not about tolerating the fact that you have a broken back: it's about reducing your risk to a tolerable level. In a car you have brakes, you have airbags and you drive cautiously so that you feel as though you're safe enough. With a drone falling out of the sky onto your head, you really don't know who's flying the drone, or why, if it's maintained, how heavy it is, if it's fully charged. With so many unknowns it's hard to feel as though you're in enough control of the situation to feel safe.
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Ex: a Drunk Driver, then they can be held accountable.
A drone improperly programmed is not the same.
Just wait 'till the drones figure out the route to the liquor store
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Re:false comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
Those laws already exist. If I shoot a gun at somebody's head, the police don't put the bullet on trial. It doesn't matter if the bullet has firmware and wings.
If Amazon's drone hits somebody, Amazon--not the drone--will be sued in court by the injured party. If the people controlling the drone--the software engineer, the CEO, whomever--intentionally or recklessly caused the person to be hit, those people would be criminally charged by the state.
Are all you people still in a Thanksgiving stupor? You don't need a law degree to understand this stuff.
No new laws are needed to "regulate" something like Prime Air. Like, literally. Anything that could go wrong is already accounted for, mostly by the 500+ year common law, but also by state and local ordinances which are smart and flexible enough to handle this kind of thing. The only thing that needs to change are federal laws which prohibit any activity of this kind whatsoever.
Re: (Score:3)
A good point. People like to cry that corporations are considered people but that very mechanism is what protects the employees and management. It may be a problem but imagine if you as a developer were held liable for a persons death which was caused by a system you worked on. If you work for a corp then you are not liable and the plaintiff cannot try to sue you for compensation. Sure you can be fired or the company can be sued into oblivion but at least your assets are safe and you aren't in jail.
Re:false comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
If the people controlling the drone--the software engineer, the CEO, whomever--intentionally or recklessly caused the person to be hit, those people would be criminally charged by the state.
So...the programmer that wrote the code, or the QA guy who signed off on it, or the software engineer who designed it, or the platform guy who deployed it, or the product manager who owned it, or the CEO who ordered it, or the hardware engineer who designed the drone, or the factory worker who assembled it, or...all of them? Criminal liability in an autonomous system is not as clear-cut as you make it seem. Now, this isn't new - some percentage of cars fail catastrophically and kill people (not because of driver error) and some of those may be because of errors of people at $car_company - but that isn't to say that we have it totally under control.
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I think the OP meant anyone who was being criminally negligent or just malicious. If a security guard shoots a random person for no reason, he should be just as liable as the company he works for, if not moreso. Or if a software engineer puts a backdoor into his company's software so he can steal stuff from customers, then that software engineer should go to jail. I've never seen any insinuation that a random accidental bug should lead to developer jail time.
Re:false comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
As a Software Engineer, ...
If you want to call yourself an engineer you'll have to take responsibility for your work. Just like all the other engineers do [nspe.org]. Otherwise you're just a code monkey.
Re: (Score:2)
A drone falls from the sky and kills someone, imprison DroneCorp's CEO for manslaughter. I'd like that.
Really? Do you have any idea how idiotic that idea actually is? Should the CEO of GM go to jail when you run your Chevy over a pothole, blow out a tire, lose some steering control, and cause an accident? Do you really think that?
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
> the first time one person anywhere gets killed by a delivery drone it's going to be an international headline
The CIA would like you to define "delivery", since they may have some headline examples to provide.
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Why place the blame only on the American media? It's broadcast news in general. You said as much yourself since it would become an international headline. Broadcas
Re:Interesting (Score:4)
I have two young children. With delivery trucks, I have a certain amount of security. I can make rules like: "no playing in the street, only in the yard". I can feel reasonably confident that the chain of events that would result in a delivery truck or generally any vehicle ending up in my yard on my sleepy little street when my kids are playing are extremely unlikely.
(flying) Drones inspire much less confidence. They are far more susceptible to nature. There would be huge cost and time incentives to have them do direct line-of-sight flyovers to their destinations. Even if the plan initially wasn't to do this, it'd be pitting public safety vs corporate cost savings. Which one do you think would eventually win? I'd have little confidence that my yard or any outdoor space potentially could be a crash site. instead of worrying about danger on a 2D plane, there would now be a full half sphere to worry about.
I want to make it clear that I'm not totally against drones for delivery or other uses as there are real cost savings and benefits to society, but there are huge downsides that need to be taken into consideration too. I don't think we are ready just yet.
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Re: Interesting (Score:3, Informative)
USA child deaths 2007:
Firearms 2,324
Drowning 1,056
Glad you got that stat wrong by 200x in a post about risk perception.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, do you know an instance where such an accident happened and didin't make to local news.
OF course it would make local news if Little Johnny got killed because he wandered behind a backing-up UPS truck in the street. Tragic accident, negligent parents, etc. But if a 20-pound drone gets clobbered by a Canada Goose and falls onto Johnny's head, making him exactly as dead as the UPS truck would have, it would be front and center in countless national/international news outlets. You know this is true.
Re: (Score:3)
Hundreds of car fires every year, some of them deadly, and they rarely make the news. However, a few Tesla fires with no injury make national news.
Likewise, how many people every year are electrocuted worldwide due to faulty consumer electrical devices? Probably tens of thousands. But make one due to a cheap clone iPhone charger, and it's international news.
Drugs? (Score:2)
Imagine a world where one buys drugs on Silk Road's successor; and instead of addresses delivery is by drone to some GPS coordinate.
The drones are cheap enough compared to the product, you don't even need to worry about recovery.
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I'm not bothered by delivery itself... (Score:2)
I'm not bothered by the idea of delivery robots themselves so much as I am by the prospect of making normal the idea that we will be overflown at all times by a panoply of drones at all times. It makes it very hard to pick out the surveillance drones, assuming there will even be a division between the two.
It's probably inevitable, though. I think the only thing that's going to stop that is if there's a drone-based assassination someday.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When there are thousands of cars driving around all the time it will be impossible to tell which is a good car and which is a bad car. Sure, the police may know, but we won't. Hell, even the police may not be able to tell the difference.
Imagine a few hundred cars filled with explosives driving from a mile away from the Super Bowl. How are you going to stop them in the short time it would take for them to get to the stadium?
Get my point?
I love technology as much as anyone here
But you love ludditism more.
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I disagree with the Super Bowl idea since you could very easily claim the area around it to be a no-fly zone for drones or everyone unless approved before hand. Then whoever is in charge of checking that the drones flying are authorized has it a lot easier since anything that isn't is a potential threat and should be disabled.
Re: (Score:3)
Bah. That's easy [ietf.org]
Re:I'm not bothered by delivery itself... (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine a few hundred drones filled with explosives launched from a mile away from the Super Bowl. How are you going to stop them in the short time it would take for them to get to the stadium?
Imagine a few hundred helium balloons with baskets filled with explosives launched a mile away from the Super Bowl. How will you stop them? What about airplanes? Home made morters? Suicide bombers? Timed bombs? There are a ton of different things that could cause that sort of carnage.
I'm not sold on drones either, but suggesting that they would usher in an era of easy, quick terrorism strikes me as a slightly paranoid argument.
There is no society on earth that can prevent someone sufficiently motivated from causing mass carnage. Our error since 9/11 is believing that somehow, with the right mix of intrusion, paranoia and technology, we could stop it all.
Today more than ever we have nothing to fear but fear itself.
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How are you going to stop them now? How are you even going to detect them now?
I assume eventually, we're going to see nets for this sort of thing.
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So now that we don't have delivery drones yet. How would you stop a drone attack? Is it more easy?
Yes. Because just spotting a drone is easier than to tell "is it a good drone or a bad drone"?
Just see here how quickly drones can be dealt with: German Pirate Party Uses Drone to Crash Angela Merkel Event [slate.com]. An arrest was made in no time.
Just image the same thing 10 years from now, and everybody would just go "don't worry, it's just somebody in the audience who ordered a pizza to his lap" until it is too late, and the chancellor would have something gooee and red on her face which isn't ketchup...
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I'm bothered because the "panoply of drones" may not have the same regulations that airlines have to go through, before they put stuff over my head which may be occasionally subjected to more gravity than it can handle.
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come on, think of the fun. put on a mask and go skeet shooting. or try your hand with a crossbow shooting a bolt wrapped with weighted net. your imagination is the limit.
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I think the only thing that's going to stop that is if there's a drone-based assassination someday.
There's already no-fly rules around the president and important federal buildings and suchlike. When it comes to drones I should expect the Secret Service to take a very strong shoot first ask later policy regarding unauthorized drones in the space anywhere near to the president or other high ranking politico.
Obligatary pvp (Score:5, Funny)
http://pvponline.com/comic/2013/12/03/last-minute-shopping [pvponline.com]
who wants to go huntin'?
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
I welcome our flying robotic overlords.
Cheers,
Dave
Just Waiting (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Just Waiting (Score:5, Funny)
When I visited Alaska, I was astounded by the number of bullet holes found in pretty much every road sign. I imagine Alaskans will order cheap stuff from Amazon in order to hold shooting parties.
Re: (Score:3)
It's comin' right at us!
missing option = not economically viable (Score:5, Insightful)
"I'm ok with it but it is not economically viable as a replacement"
I can't help but think the question is worded in the same way as Amazon's whole "60 Minutes" story.
We've had "remote control" helicopters since the 60s at least.
"drones" in this context mean mini-copters that are programmed to fly themselves.
again, "autopilot" is not a new concept at all
We've had this technology for years. Just because it is marginally cheaper to make, and significantly easier to program doesn't mean that the ***other*** reasons the tech wasn't viable will not still be in play.
This /. Poll assumes that "drone deliver" is not hype.
Unfortunately, that's all Amazon's drone delivery is....it's Marketing to advertise their "cutting edgeness"
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We've had this technology for years. Just because it is marginally cheaper to make, and significantly easier to program doesn't mean that the ***other*** reasons the tech wasn't viable will not still be in play.
You mean the technology to reliably deliver a payload to any specified location within a range of tens of miles, fully autonomously?
Yeah, we've had some of the precursor technologies for a while, but I don't think we've been able to put them together for all that long, if we even really have that capability now. The closest thing I can think of is military drones, but even those aren't fully autonomous. A person is in the loop to ensure the correct target is identified at the very least and routing at alt
yes i mean that tech... (Score:2)
yes that exactly...we've been **theoretically able** to do that for at least 30 years.
why haven't we???
**its not economically viable enough to justify the R&D to take it from the drawing board to demo**
that's all that's in play here...the $cost to take a theoretical capability to a funcitoning *prototype* is dramatically less now...we've had remote control copters and 'auto
Re:yes i mean that tech... (Score:4, Insightful)
We haven't had the capability theoretically or otherwise to design small, affordable and relatively capable autonomous vehicles that can navigate arbitrary landscapes with collision avoidance to keep pedestrians safe until now.
Packaging the necessary computing capability, sensors and navigation equipment to accomplish this is more than just a bit easier than it was 30 yes ago. It wasn't possible or the military would have been using automated surveilance drones then instead of just the last decade or so. If it was just a matter of a bit of R&D why did we have spy satellites and planes like the SR-71 before such simple craft as a Predator drone?
I'm an aerospace engineer not just some random dolt who jabbers on about flying cars and jet packs. If you really think that these types of autonomous drones didn't exist because there's no economic or strategic value to them, you don't have much of an imagination. Amazon sees them as the ability to deliver things anywhere in a city in minutes without needing to pay for a fleet of trucks and the necessary personnel on standby. The military and (unfortunately) the police and intelligence organizations see them as a way to cheaply monitor an area and gather data to more efficiently direct their forces. If you don't see that, it doesn't really matter. The technology will progress and drag you along with it, even if you don't recognize that it's happening.
Re:SR-71 Drone (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, exactly like that. If you'd actually read that Wikipedia article you would have noticed the program failed because it wasn't reliable and it was easier to launch it with rockets from a B52 than to improve the control systems to safely handle separation.
Thanks for proving my point.
Re: (Score:2)
Saying your point is made won't make it automatically true.
You're saying that they had the tech to deliver cargo in cities by drone because there was a military drone in the 70s which flew at high altitude, couldn't take off and couldn't land?
If you think about it, I think you'll notice that drone was missing more than a few capabilities needed for cargo delivery.
weak threshold (Score:2)
I'm saying they could have developed it if they put the R&D money into it...
The threshold isn't a deployed working delivery bot, but the **capability**....which was there if we developed it
I proved you wrong. You said that if I was right, then we would have had drones back when we had the SR-71...
and we DID have a DRONE specifically on the SR-71....and if you read the fscking wikipedia you'd see that the SR-71 drone was **programmable** to follow a specified course
I linked to it...you said yourself...if
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I'm saying they could have developed it if they put the R&D money into it...
That's only true in the meaningless sense that any theoretically possible technology just takes some time and resources to develop. What you've missed is that we have been actively researching and developing the necessary technologies all along.
The D-21 drone was the state of the art technology at that time and all it could do was maintain heading and altitude and make a few pre-defined course changes. The difference in complexity between that and what Amazon wants to do is like the difference between a p
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WE HAD AN SR-71 DRONE THAT WAS PROGRAMMED TO FLY AUTONOMOUSLY
Calm down, man. Whatever way this stuff works, it's not worth SCREAMING and swearing about.
Also, your post is a reply to my post above, yet you're addressing the sibling poster. If you don't have the time to check who you are replying to, you're probably in too much of a hurry to post.
to the mods (Score:2)
whoever is modding me down is an asshole...
at best **both** of us are trolling...but only one of us, in this discussion has bothered presenting any concrete evidence...that's me
this is ridiculous
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We've had this technology for years. Just because it is marginally cheaper to make, and significantly easier to program doesn't mean that the ***other*** reasons the tech wasn't viable will not still be in play.
RC aircraft and civilian drones have recently gained the capability to reliably use electric engines. This is due to brushless engines, excellent lithium batteries and vastly superior computer control.
Flying electrically in the past would have meant heavy nickel cadmium or *maybe* NiMH cells, powering electricity-hogging older electric motors.
Your statement is literally correct, just because of programming things will not change. However, other technologies have also developed, changing things completely. B
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The economically viable part was beyond question a decade ago.
Nowadays tech has moved on a lot. Not just the programming and programmatic capabilities. We have reliable and accurate GPS receivers for the required navigation. More efficient electric motors, and vastly more efficient batteries (more power, less weight) making these things now capable of actually lifting a significant payload and transporting it over a significant distance (some 16 km or 10 miles iirc - still not far but such a range can easil
New BS tale: (Score:5, Funny)
"Honest officer. It just fell off a drone that flew by!"
No Way (Score:4, Interesting)
Est. 750,000 people have light truck delivery jobs, with this and self driving cars we are looking at a potential huge boost in the number of unemployed.
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Before long we're going to have to accept that with robotics and automation approaching full-blown AI, our economy needs to transform to something very different, or we're going to end up with most people out of work and only the people who own the robots will have any money at all.
Eventually, we'll get into some kind of energy credit post-scarcity thing where humans no longer need to labor at all and just have a basic right to a fraction of the total robotic output, but it's going to be a very messy transi
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This.
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If your angle is that of the guy in China who produces these things, you should be OK. The drones will not be serviceable at a reasonable cost by anyone in developed countries. The drones will be replaced rather than repaired, just like what happens with so many other gadgets.
The drivers' jobs will be lost all over the world and the manufacturing jobs will be created in China. If we can all live comfortably without having to have jobs, it's all fine.
Re:No Way (Score:4, Insightful)
In a not too far past, we needed about 100 times the people to run the farms, now a harvest is done by a single guy on a single huge machine.
In a more recent past, we needed about 100 times the people to operate the factories. Now they've been replaced by robots.
Yet unemployment rates are well below the 90% you might expect considering all those farm hands and factory workers that have been made obsolete.
Somehow cutting menial jobs and replacing them by machines has done a pretty good job in improving the overall livelihoods of the people in developed countries. It may hurt those delivery drivers in the short run, soon enough they'll move on and find other jobs.
The best thing about this... (Score:3)
will be all the free drones I get.
Stupid idea, publicity stunt. (Score:2)
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Once again: let's remember that an idea does not have to be completely perfect to be rolled out. Well, a nuclear power plant maybe does, but not this. It would still be an improvement to the risks of human drivers being attacked instead, or the human carriers being hurt in driving accidents or while carrying packages.
I bet someone will think that they are surveillance drones. I bet someone will try and steal a drone. Those problems can still be ironed out. People will learn that they are not surveillance dr
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Missing option (Score:2)
Let us know when they work in the rain
Package Delivery? (Score:3)
They should have used Planet Express!
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Where I work I could order one right now (Score:2)
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Theft and vandalism (Score:2)
This is going to be fun to watch... (Score:2)
I can't imagine this actually working, particularly once the drones exit dense urban spaces for the suburbs. The first kid with a BB gun is going to figure out he can get a free drone and a surprise present. Unless the drones are sending back continuous 360 degree spherical video so the perps can be caught, this scheme is just ready for a stealin'.
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Can drones fly in snowstorms? (Score:2)
Can drones fly in snowstorms?
Probably not, so it isn't going to improve delivery times in the winter
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Probably not, so it isn't going to improve delivery times in the winter
You're right. The whole idea should be completely scrapped.
Missing Option. (Score:4, Insightful)
No. They can't do it realistically.
it's all BS except free advertising for Amazon (Score:2)
Delivery drones are an incredibly dumb idea... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
try 1000 dollar to build, cheap to maintain. These aren't military Drones with a weapons payload.
and it's already being tested by other companies:
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-09/chinese-company-tests-drone-couriers [popsci.com]
People lime you are why I have the sig I have.
I look forward to (Score:2)
The time when we have drones delivering our items, which are in turn delivered from the factory by robotic cars. They are in turn manufactured by robots, using resources brought by automatically driven cars from mines/factories also run by robots.
At this point, Humans will no long be necessary, and I can instruct the robot to shoot me, and replace me with a robot buyer. It will undoubtedly be much more efficient.
Been there, done that (Score:2)
The technology to autonomously deliver payloads with high accuracy has been around for a long time [wikipedia.org]. I remember years ago people staring wide-eyed when I pointed out that the same technology that delivers bombs could be adapted to deliver more useful things like food and medical supplies. And now goodies from Amazon & Co.
As a pilot I wonder about the aeronautical issues. The authorities are clearly up in the air on the subject (pun intended... :-) as well. I hope they can find some good answers.
...la
Re:Gonna buy me an air rifle (Score:5, Insightful)
You are why we can't have nice thing.
Look, it's something cool!
I'm gunna' shoot it.
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There are going to have to be anti-theft measures on these drones, which will inevitably result in a loss of privacy. Every drone will have multiple cameras and other sensors on it constantly active and relaying back to Amazon as they fly over your backyard and skylights. Even if Amazon takes measures to, say, auto-delete these recordings as soon as the drone returns home, who's to say every Amazon employee is trustworthy enough not to tap into the feed, or that the next company to launch a fleet of drones
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So do birds. And yet, hunters manage.
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On the upside they will all become really good at playing tennis!
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it'll demonstrate more fairness than a regulatory agency
Only if the "injured" party has either a lot of money or the lawyer is an experienced ambulance chaser. Maintaining public safety through financial jurisprudence is about as effective as asking insurance corporations to look after your health. You either need luck money or to know the right people. If you have all three, you are onto a winner.
usually all I find is bloody animal parts... (Score:2)