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The Almighty Buck

Kiva Systems Co-Founder: Drone Delivery Could Be As Low As 20 Cents Per Package 92

Hallie Siegel writes A year ago, Amazon announced its plans for Prime Air — a drone delivery service. Recently Amazon has been posting job ads, saying they are looking for drone pilots. Whatever the regulatory issues, is drone delivery financially feasible? ETH Zurich professor Raffaello D'Andrea thinks it is economically feasible to deliver small packages by drone. D'Andrea is responsible for the Flying Machine Arena ("a space where flying robots live and learn") and is co-founder of Kiva Systems, the company acquired by Amazon for $775 million in cash that innovated the robotic fulfillment system that Amazon is now implementing in many of its warehouse facilities.

Comment Re:and yet Amazon is raising prices now (Score 0) 383

The NYT article is about dead tree books. The whole case is baffling though, given the unchallenged dominance Amazon enjoyed in the ebook market at the time, which Apple, B&N, etc have barely chipped into since. Also, most people who even casually follow developments in the field would tell you Amazon intends to run the publishing industry into the ground as soon as its convenient.

Comment Re:Streisand Effect (Score 1) 131

Thing is the only people who care (PRC) have their own satellites, probably more of them than anyone but the US and Russia. And you can bet they've photographed every inch of Taiwan. China's problem, then, is NOT to get images but to identify locations worthy of further attention. It could save them a lot of time to go on google maps and scan for areas with blurring or just suspiciously low resolution. Note that this is a different situation from not wanting to let non-state actors i.e. terrorists get a look at what's on the roof of the White House. That may be misguided as well, but it's probable that Al-Qaeda has no other way to get that information. Also, it's no secret at this point that there's SOMETHING up there poised to shoot down any incoming plane, so we're not giving anything away by hiding it.
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NASA's Space Balloon Smashes Car In Australia Screenshot-sm 174

Humunculus writes "Of more worldly issues, NASA's latest multimillion-dollar stratosphere-bound balloon launch has gone horribly wrong and crashed into a car, turning it over and narrowly missing two elderly people who were observing the launch. The payload fared worse, reportedly being smashed into a 'thousand pieces.'"

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