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.
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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: 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.