Before going too far, people who use flamethrowers against others, especially in t-word usage deserve being terminated with extreme prejudice. At least in my estimation.

But this pretend doggo with a flamethrower on top is aimed at a practical market. firefighting and controlled burning. As a tactical weapon, it is pretty lame. Simple to take out.

For all of that, it has pretty much the same possibilities that all of the flamethrowers of the past had. The question is why would one with the form factor of a canine suddenly cause people to use them as a tool against people in a never before thought of way? And it is not designed for an environment in which others are trying to destroy it. Sneak up on it from behind, grab it and whack it with a hammer. Or carry a shield and encroach it, then whack it.

But these other possibilities...Organic farming, a worthwhile endeavor uses flamethrowers as devices to "weed" fields. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... I can imagine anti -personnel uses for that.

And if you want to really get scared, WD-40 makes a pretty decent short-range flamethrower.

In the end, it isn't that this might be used for nefarious purposes. It's that darn near everything can be used for evil.

When BattleBots escape

Courts may rule evidence is needed before "punishing" Tik Tok, otherwise could be considered unequal treatment.

All true. It "walks" like a dog, and has that doggish look. The awkward thing is that yes, the doggone thing is kind of cute. Until it spits at you, of course.

That's assuming it is a weapon. It isn't.

Aside from fear culture writ large, these things have very practical uses. Firebreaks, control burns that are hella less dangerous for the humans already putting themselves deep in harms way.

Here in the US at least, we have a lot of land that is prone to fires, so firebreaks and control burns are really important.

So the cute little robodog with the tiny flamethrower mounted on it is not remotely set up for weapons use. It has zero armoring, and if people are trying to fight it, it would be simple to disable.

But not too lazy to post wildly offtopic. ;^)

Robot flamethrowers have existed for a long, long time, and arson even longer.

The only thing different about this is the somewhat cute robodog. But if a person is nasty enough to want to kill others in this heinous way, the old standby molatov cocktail will suffice.

We probably don't see that too much because those who might use it know what is likely to happen if they do.

Most will be used by the forest service for controlled burns and fighting forest fires. Limited liability for controlled burns, and all bets are off in the event of forest fires.

The insurance risk will be for any used for entertainment. At least here in verdant Pennsylvania, we take our forests pretty seriously. If you are burning trash and it turns into a wildfire, you are going to jail. So this flame-spittin' doggobot is probably not going to be used too often for entertainment. At base, insurance will be hella expensive, and there is a fine line to be crossed that turns using it into a crime.

Perhaps the emotional reaction to this is the so called "robot dog". Because civilian flamethrowers are and have been in use for a long time, largely used as firebreaks these days. The US has a lot of area prone to wildfires. In addition to fighting fires with firebreaks to limit their spread, we have a lot of controlled burns. The controlled burn is a weird but successful concept that since an area simply will burn at some point from natural causes, you do a controlled burn during a time when it is least likely to spread. clears the litter and even enriches the soil.

This flame throwing robot makes it hella safer on humans fighting fires or control burning. Monkin' about with a tank of gasoline on your back is kind of scary and dangerous.

The fact that it is freaking awesome is just a side effect to its utilitarian uses.

What are you even on about with this 100k nonsense? 4K OLED TVs are cheap. TVs around 60" can be had for $1,500 if you want some of the best quality as far as consumer products are concerned. If you just want a cheap consumer OLED 4K television, those can be had for well under $1,000 even at the same 60" size category. If you don't need a display that large and just want to pay as little as possible, there are usually Black Friday deals that venture into the unbelievably cheap (as in under $200 for a ~40" 4K OLED) territory.

Even a few years ago I paid slightly more (which is actually substantially less once adjusting for inflation) for one of the best ~60" 4K OLED TVs on the market than I had for a 1080p 46" plasma TV I had purchased over a decade prior.

I've been told the models start to go to shit when they start consuming their own output. Apparently it's akin to a feedback loop that the model can't deal with because it doesn't have any real understanding of what it's doing. I suppose even humans are susceptible to that as well to a degree, but humanity as a whole seems to be able to correct for it over time. I suppose humanity will also apply selective pressure on AIs, but that's over a much longer time period.

China doesn't spend much of its GDP on military expenditures. It's about half of the US (and below many European countries) but because they're such a large country the raw amount is a lot higher than any other country. China's economic issues have almost nothing to do with their military spending and one could argue their ability to project strength has in many ways enabled their economy. The CCP finds utterly stupid ways to waste money that make even the most egregiously idiotic pork in the US seem at least somewhat reasonable.

The US spends a shit ton of money on military, to the point that it's about one-third of the entire world spending. Of course we're also extremely wealthy, so while the percentage as a part of GDP is higher than most countries, it's not too far out of line. Some of the spending towards better ways of killing everyone else occasionally turns out to be beneficial in the civilian sector more so than the killing everyone else sector, so it's not all just bombs and bullets. Our financial issues also have little to do with our military spending, although cutting back on it would let us waste the money elsewhere. The same arguments about power projection and profitability also apply.

> They can't [handle?] any base load under many, many conditions

I know there are limits, but when we know the power is out, we could avoid certain activities such as doing laundry (unless everything else is off).

> Or you can buy an ICE generator (gas/diesel/natgas) at a fraction of the cost and have it working as long as you need, under any conditions.

Those are noisy and smelly.

I once was asked to use data scraped from a competitor ecommerce site without asking. And at another company to use MS-Access as the app's database but claim it was MS-Sql-Server to a potential client. (We were working on the conversion, but it wasn't ready yet.)

And another time the software wasn't finished yet, so they sent a coder to the client's site under the guise of "monitoring the roll-out", when in fact the coder was finishing it then and there.

I took these as a sign it was time to leave those companies, but during the dot-com slump that often took a while.

Someone justified it by saying, "if one doesn't lie, they will lose to those who do".