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The Hitchbot, a hitchhiking robot which was planned to tour the US has apparently failed to make it out of Philadelphia.
When hitchBOT the hitchhiking robot started his journey in Boston two weeks ago he wanted to see the entire country. Unfortunately, he never made it out of the Northeast. The researchers who built hitchBOT announced today that they need to stop the experiment because hitchBOT was vandalized in Philadelphia.
...
The goal of the hitchhiking trip was to see how humans would interact with hitchBOT. And apparently the answer was "not well." HitchBOT has been around the world, including trips across the entirety of Canada and Germany without major incident. But America is clearly a hard land for our robot brothers and sisters.
Originally spotted at io9.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Sunday August 02 2015, @11:16PM
back in the late '70s-early 80's I remember reading about how someone had put a plywood cut out painted to look like a guy with a big thumb held out by the side of a highway somewhere in the South East (I think it was Georgia) with a note asking for it to catch a ride heading West to California and a request that anyone who picked it up send the creator a letter or postcard saying where they had found it and where they dropped it off.
Over the next 5-6 months the creator got dozens of postcards and letters with photos of the cutout standing beside state line signs, various national/state/local monuments and other famous road side stops. Eventually he received a photo showing it standing on Venice Beach, CA. looking not much the worse for its travels.
Far cry from what happened to this one. Maybe it was that it was interacting with the driver/passengers, or maybe the USA just has more assholes than it did.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2015, @11:43PM
Far cry from what happened to this one. Maybe it was that it was interacting with the driver/passengers, or maybe the USA just has more assholes than it did.
It was neither. All it takes is one asshole to fuck it up. Bet whoever did it was drunk too. This sort of endeavor is very brittle, you can't draw any general conclusions based on such a tiny sample size. It's like throwing a single rubber duck in the ocean off Japan and expecting it to make to California.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday August 03 2015, @01:14AM
Nothing new. See the Easy rider [wikipedia.org] doco.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @02:15AM
My 1st thought was also small minds with big guns. [google.com]
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @04:02AM
I see a fair amount of those in Europe too.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Wednesday August 05 2015, @07:22AM
Let me counter your anecdotal evidence with mine:
Malta, Belgium, France, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, UK, Switzerland, Italy, Poland, Vatican City, San Marino, Sweden, Norway: nowhere near "a fair amount" of bullethole-ridden signs.
If your anecdotal evidence is correct, maybe this is a eastern-europe thing. It's definitely not common to the whole continent at any rate.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @08:18AM
Eastern Europe? Neven seen a single bullet hole in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, or Estonia. Ditto Finland, ditto Russia, depending on what you want to include in "eastern Europe". Only got 2 decades of experience of the region though.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Monday August 03 2015, @12:15AM
(Score: 5, Funny) by Gaaark on Monday August 03 2015, @01:30AM
AS a Canadian, i'd like to apologize for our NOT destroying the robot first, and leaving it to you poor Americans to show that only you have the wherewithal to destroy something nice; something that could have been treasured.
George Bush asked "why does the world hate Americans so much?". I'm sorry to say that it is because we Canadians are too nice, and can't see the value in destroying a defenseless anthropic 'being'. (Yeah, i probably used anthropic wrong. Sorry again.)
Sorry.
Sorry.
Maybe next time.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Interesting) by tathra on Monday August 03 2015, @03:20AM
the answer to this question is extremely obvious - americans are the biggest assholes on the planet. it becomes painfully visible when you're around people from other countries along with americans - the americans will go out of their way to be dicks. when i was part of the coalition forces in Afghanistan, everyone from every other country was as nice and polite as could be, including the people trying to kill us; my fellow Americans, on the other hand, were the biggest fucking pricks you could imagine for no reason whatsoever.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @03:55AM
Don't confuse Americans that choose to have "must murder other human beings" in their job description with the ones that actually are nice and saw through the nonsense of military action in the middle-east. Just by doing that you certainly showed you were a dick amongst dicks while all the decent human beings stayed at home in frustration at not being able to stop the wars.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @07:47AM
Well, from his post I conclude the other people he was talking about had the very same job description as those Americans. Therefore the comparison is valid.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Monday August 03 2015, @08:04PM
not all american troops were infantry, and MOS had no bearing on whether one was an asshole or not; some US infantry were decent people, and some US non-infantry were bigger assholes than any infantrymen i've ever met. non-US soldiers, on the other hand, were polite and equitable regardless of their military occupation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:20AM
As someone who was in the service as well, it's a mixed bag indeed. You get some of the finest humans and some of the dregs. I knew soldiers who went out of their way to make sure no one went hungry on holidays and invited homeless to eat with them, and I knew those that literally bragged about torturing and murdering animals. I can certainly tell you it's far from just an American thing though as I know some terrible Europeans who were more racist than any good ole boy I ever met. Can't say as I've met an impolite Canadian aside from the entire province of Quebec.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @03:52AM
Assume the percentage of assholes within a population is the same between populations. The US has a higher population, therefore more assholes. Simple really.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @05:40AM
"why does the world hate Americans so much?"
Bombings and control.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @03:19AM
Or maybe with all the sinister ways the government and corporations attempt to spy on us whoever picked up this bot figured it was just another sinister plot to somehow invade our privacy and so they figured, 'I'll show them!!!"