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from the building-a-more-robotic-tomorrow dept.
Hadrian is not the first large-scale industrial robot that can complete a whole build from start to finish. It's not even the first outdoor construction robot.
What's remarkable is it's both. As Mike told me, "Anything you can build inside a factory ... we're getting really, really good at. Trouble is, nothing's happening outdoors."
That's because environmental factors like wind and temperature variations can make life difficult for robots outdoors.
Most robots can't adjust to small, quick changes in wind or temperature fast enough to keep up.
That's fine if little wobbles won't make a big difference. But when you're working on something as large-scale as building a house and a light breeze could lead to bricks being laid way out of position, it can get very dangerous.
So up till now, any robot building on such large scales had to be indoors in minutely controlled environments.
Hadrian has overcome this problem using the precision technology Dynamic Stabilisation Technology (DST). DST was developed in Perth by Mike's cousin, Mark Pivac, back in the early 2000s. The computer program measures environmental factors an astounding 2000 times per second, then accounts for them in real time.
If robots replace the construction workers, who then will wolf whistle?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 24 2018, @05:02PM (6 children)
So what? Why should I care what you think?
Trivially true. More than 99% of the wealth is concentrated in the wealthiest 99%. Check that box.
But perhaps you meant the other way around? The poorest 99% can never have greater than 99% of the wealth, else they wouldn't be the poorest 99%. It's a genuine mathematical impossibility.
And of course, there is this unwarranted assumption that the inequality matters.
Ok, so what? Not even seeing a reason to care here.
While I can see the obvious nuisance (in the legal sense here, a nuisance can be a crippling problem on a large scale to neighbors) problems with drilling right off the coast of a hot tourist spot, the actual prohibition is for the entire Eastern coast not just the touristy spots. And should climate change prove to be a greater problem than our other problems, then that too would be a large negative to drilling. But OTOH, we do a lot with oil. It's foolish to dismiss oil drilling just because it's the current thoughtcrime.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 24 2018, @05:08PM (4 children)
Sorry, my editor is taking the day off. Though I thought you'd recognize the old saw: greater than 99% of the wealth into less than 1% of the people.... I suspect the HTML interpreter made a mess of that.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 24 2018, @05:19PM (3 children)
Not true. Let us keep in mind that these measures of wealth don't count earning potential as wealth. That's why the poorest people are in developed world countries and someone without a penny to their name owns more than the bottom 30% of the world's population.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 24 2018, @06:04PM (2 children)
Switching focus global vs domestic will certainly confuse the issues.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday January 24 2018, @06:27PM (1 child)
Point is that current measures of wealth lead to ignoring a huge source of wealth and treating people with high debt as if they were just as poor as someone who is too poor to borrow any money at all.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 24 2018, @07:16PM
Very good point. Nevertheless, regardless of what you think of government statistics, there is still the observable phenomenon in my part of the world: hundreds of thousands of people living in the city, working full-time and exhibiting relatively modest means, thousands more in apparent poverty, and then, in smaller numbers than the visible poor, but still in their thousands: empty mansions on the waterfront - part-time (often less than 5%) occupied by people who own many similarly extravagant houses spread around the world - and their houses don't even represent the bulk of their wealth. They're great for the local property tax base, but I think they are representative of a problem that needs addressing.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 24 2018, @05:38PM
Inequality of outcome is a good thing. Inequality of opportunity to the extent that it reduces the chances for equal outcome to less than one in millions? That's grounds for readjustment, or eventually revolution.
🌻🌻 [google.com]