IBM is ordering its work-from-home employees to stop working from home - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-small-business/wp/2017/03/24/ibm-is-ordering-its-work-from-home-employees-to-stop-working-from-home/ <comment><USER2> Previous:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603831](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603831)

<comment><USER3> And more recently here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13922235](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13922235).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use to think that remote work was goal I should be aiming for but after have a few friends did it and I thought more about it I've decided I would hate it. On the surface it sounds great and while I fully support working from home a few times a month I can't support any more than that.

One of my good friends that did it has an interesting take, he said that since he was more introverted he thought he was perfect for remote work when in fact it made him miserable. His dad worked remotely for a large part of his life but was an extrovert. He concluded that contrary to what may seem like common sense introverts do worse in remote work because the office is where they get a majority of their human interaction while extroverts are going to make that happen regardless of if they go into an office every day.

I have no experience with working from home for a long period of time but I know calling into meetings is the worst and that there are a TON of decisions/conversations that you get ZERO input on (most of the time you don't even know they happened) when you are remote. I have never been so happy that I didn't get a remote job I interviewed for a few years ago.

As much as I hate companies giving a perk and then taking it away I can't help but think this is the right move for IBM.

PS: Yes HipChat/Slack/Jira/GitLab/GitHub/etc/etc/etc can help with this but you are fooling yourself if you think that the people in the office are going to record every single interaction/conversation/etc of note. Remote-only teams _might_ be an exception but even then you really do lose the ability to roll over to co-workers chair and have an impromptu conversation.

<comment><USER5> So you have never tried it but think you won't like it because something your friend's dad said?

<comment><USER4> Something my friend said about his bad experience with remote work, his dad loves remote work. Also from my experience working from home on occasion and from working with remote team members.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Work from home should not be considered a perk but standard.Those who get hired in cities like hong kong where you cant afford to buy/rent close to the office have to often cope with commute times > 40min and home offices can relieve the pain. For example in my company we have home office every friday as we are not starting anything big before weekend.

</comment><comment><USER7> I agree and disagree. Workplace interaction has been critical where I work. But we all work from home a day or so each week. I struggle to mesh with those who work exclusively remotely/from home.

Like most things in life, balance works best.

<comment><USER8> I agree balance is best. With the craziness of open plan offices, I like to have a day or two at home, so I can get the non-trivial programming done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Our Team in IBM tried work from home every friday. it didn't work, i hate it. you can't grab people fast, communication is terrible.</comment>


Environment-Friendly Inexpensive Electric Airplane - <AUTHOR> http://www.dancewithshadows.com/aviation/electraflyer-c-electric-mini-plane-makes-flying-cheaper-than-driving/ <comment><USER2> Judging by the information on the Electraflyer website, much of the information at the blog seems to be wrong. The $18,385.00 price is not for the pictured Electraflyer C explerimental plane, but for this open-air frame tricycle with fabric wing:

<http://www.electraflyer.com/tech.html>

It is that tricycle that weighs only 247 lbs, not the experimental plane (the Electraflyer C), which is based on an "all metal Moni motor glider".

<http://www.electraflyer.com/electraflyerc.html>

 _The Moni was first introduced at the 1981 Oshkosh Convention. It was designed by John Monnett and sold as a complete kit including the engine and instruments. ... Approximately 380 kits were sold between 1982 and 1986. It is unknown how many Moni's have been completed and are currently flying.

The manufacturer of this neat little airplane, Monnett Experimental Aircraft, later INAV Inc., went out of business in 1986._

<http://edhlund.com/monimain.htm>

</comment><comment><USER2> _A direct drive 5 KWh (sic) electric motor ... flight time would be 1.5 to 2 hours. ... A full charge will cost you around 60 cents depending on where your power comes from._

If the energy were from wind or solar, the energy would cost around $1/kWh * 5kW * 2hrs = $1/kWh * 10kWh = $10. If that can last 140 miles, that works out to 7 cents per mile, or $5 per flight-hour.

 _The top end battery pack costs 8,500 $. So that is 1000 cycles = 1500 flying hours at a cost of 6.2 $ per hour! (cost of battery replacement divided by flying hours plus 60 cents per charging cycle)._

If flight time were 2 hours, the pack replacement cost would be $4.25/flighthour. With solar/wind electricity as $5/hr fuel, this would add up to $9.25/flighthour.

Edit: the website says the large battery pack only holds 5.6kwh. Perhaps with losses (charging, etc.), that would approach the above figure of 10kWh per flight.

<http://www.electraflyer.com/prices.html>

</comment><comment><USER2> Here is a flight report from a Moni motorglider, similar to the one erroneously pictured at dancewithshadows.com:

<http://edhlund.com/PIREP01.htm>

 _On my seventh flight I was ready for some mild aerobatics. I entered a left barrel roll at 4000 ft. and, 3/4 complete, experienced airframe vibration, loss of elevator control and nose pitchdown. I closed the throttle and held full back elevator but the pitch attitude, airspeed and vibration level all continued to increase until I was at a nearly 90 degree nosedown attitude and the airframe sounded like I was inside a garbage can being assaulted by baseball bats. About this time there was a tremendous "crack" and the airplane dissapeared from around me. I was tumbling through the air losing conciousness, but still strapped in my seat. Because of the violent motion I was unable to release the lap belt. The last thing I remember before losing conciousness was reaching for my parachute D-ring while saying goodbye to the world.

Miraculously, I regained conciousness on the ground, where I slowly realized that I was still strapped to the rear of the airframe, which had joined me in a fully unconcious parachute descent to a sitting landing in a nice plowed field. Another complete story follows where I got the seat belt released, only to be parachute dragged in a 20 knot wind with one arm and a dislocated shoulder entangled in the shroud lines, before finally shedding the chute. There were lots of broken bones and aches and pains. The NTSB investigation revealed that the starboard wing skin had debonded. The skin had departed outward, broken the spar and broken the aircraft in half at the spar box.

After some healing, and doing some research, I found that experts had been advising Monnett against this bonding method. He subsequently mandated a riveted wing, but didn't describe why as eloquently as I could have. Your editor, Carlos Emmons, and I then stripped the bonded skin from his wings (he wasn't flying yet) so easily it couldn't be believed. A little loosening with a knife at the trailing edge to get a finger hold, and a single jerk had the whole skin in our hands! We had bonded both aircraft and followed the book. ...

You do not have a certificated aircraft. The designer probably had no engineering skills, expertise or resources._

</comment><comment><USER2> These are the Moni motorglider specs:

<http://edhlund.com/monispec.htm>

It weighed 260 lbs, empty. Construction: "all aluminum bonded and riveted".

</comment><comment><USER2> _Environment-friendly ... solar or wind energy_

In what way(s) could diffuse fuels such as solar and wind be considered environment-friendly?

<comment><USER3> Here's the most obvious way: they cause essentially zero pollution compared with energy from fossil fuels. What wind- and sun-related environmental peril did you have in mind?</comment></comment>


Elon Musk: human drivers are 'too dangerous' - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-03/18/elon-musk-ai-make-better-drivers <comment><USER2> I'm a little bit confused about why there's such a negative reaction to this on HN - it seems like a pretty reasonable statement to make, no? Sure, I don't think there's any firm idea of when 'robotic' drivers will overtake humans in terms of safety. But it does seem pretty clear that it will eventually happen.

Self-driving cars have a few massive potential advantages relative to humans, such as faster reaction times, no distractions, the ability to directly communicate car-to-car, and so on. It certainly seems likely that those advantages will far outweigh the adaptability of humans – after all, aren't most accidents caused by distraction, driving too fast for the conditions and the like?

<comment><USER3> I think the reason you're confused is because you're under the impression that people are arguing against the very obvious practical benefits of having only self driving cars: congestion, safety, etc. This is obvious to everyone.

However, there are other human concerns. I personally enjoy driving. I often go on drives where I'm simply exploring, not knowing which turn I might take next. It's my personal belief that driving is not just my privilege, but my right. If you want a self driving car, you're well within your rights to do as I am to drive my self.

Moreover, there's a huge scope of privacy issues and increased amount of control being put in the government. I am one of those individuals who is inherently distrusting of government policies that can restrict us under the guise of safety, etc.

<comment><USER2> _However, there are other human concerns. I personally enjoy driving. I often go on drives where I 'm simply exploring, not knowing which turn I might take next. It's my personal belief that driving is not just my privilege, but my right. If you want a self driving car, you're well within your rights to do as I am to drive my self._

That's an interesting concern – I suppose we end up, like with most issues of public policy, trying to draw a balance. I imagine it's much like gun control: while most gun owners are going to be responsible, that damage that can be caused by those who aren't means that many jurisdictions prefer to restrict firearm ownership.

 _Moreover, there 's a huge scope of privacy issues and increased amount of control being put in the government. I am one of those individuals who is inherently distrusting of government policies that can restrict us under the guise of safety, etc._

Sure, and there's good reason for that. The privacy issue is orthogonal and must be set to one side (though it's legitimate).

How would you feel about a move to regulate non-autonomous vehicle ownership more closely? Driver licensing could become much more rigorous, for example. Combined with the essential outlawing of non-autonomous vehicles in urban centres (almost inevitable in the long run), that would ideally assuage most safety concerns while still allowing people the freedom to drive.

<comment><USER3> > How would you feel about a move to regulate non-autonomous vehicle ownership > more closely? Driver licensing could become much more rigorous, for example.

I'm very much in favor of a far more thorough _practical_ driver training programs before being licensed. The issue is less with people not knowing their theory as apposed to not being capable drivers. I think we should model our own driving training programs closer to Finland's for example.

In California, at least, the training, the theory, the test itself is a complete joke. It's the definitive example of bureaucratic incompetence.

However, I'm not in favor of a rigorous licensing program which simply aims to dissuade one from obtaining a license because of various background checks, fingerprinting, paper work, and encyclopedic knowledge of vague and obscure laws.

> Combined with the essential outlawing of non-autonomous vehicles in urban > centres (almost inevitable in the long run), that would ideally assuage most > safety concerns while still allowing people the freedom to drive.

I'm extremely skeptical and, on the whole, against this. This is exactly where lawmakers would find gray enough lines to outlaw humans drivers from the majority of road networks from laws that give the impression that only a handful of metropolitan cities would initially be effected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The thing I keep emphasizing in this conversation is how terribly good human drivers are, on average. In the US, there are three fatalities for every 10 billion passenger miles traveled. That's tremendous. A machine that is currently incapable of driving in rain and unable to see a child in the street has a long way to go to hit this mark.

Musk is here to sell his car. He'll say all sorts of bullshit to make it look sexier.

<comment><USER5> Miles per passenger depend on too many factors. I'd stick with 1 death per 6,200 driver's licenses (US, 2009)

<comment><USER6> Deaths per mile is more useful because it compares the cost (deaths) with the benefit (miles traveled per passenger). Additionally, we can compare directly against alternatives, such as buses, air travel, and self-driving cars.

Deaths per driver's license doesn't tell us the benefit we are getting, and doesn't give us a way to make comparisons with alternatives.

<comment><USER7> Self-driving cars seem to be ~1:1 with driver licenses. A licenced driver drives at most one car at a time.

<comment><USER6> There's obviously a connection between driver's licenses and miles traveled, but if you have the latter number, why use the former? It makes the benefit more obscure and reduces the accuracy (for instance, if passengers of self- driving cars drive more or less than passengers of human-driven cars).

Also, it doesn't offer a good way to compare against things like air travel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> FWIW, Elon Musk did say the following on Twitter:

> _To be clear, Tesla is strongly in favor of people being allowed to drive > their cars and always will be. Hopefully, that is obvious._

> _However, when self-driving cars become safer than human-driven cars, the > public may outlaw the latter. Hopefully not._

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/577946893646364673](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/577946893646364673)

So his goal isn't to shore up support for legislation against non-autonomous cars anytime soon.

<comment><USER3> He made that clarification because he was met with unexpectedly large audience which was critical of his statements.

He was quite obviously supporting future legislation against humans driving cars:

> In fact, in the distant future, I think it's probably going to be... people > may outlaw driving cars, because it's too dangerous.

> You can't have a person driving a two-ton death machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Heh, I have a friend who is all rah-rah for self-driving cars. He also likes to go camping. So I asked him, when you show up at the site and the farmer says, top field, past the sheep, turn left at the tractor, what's your self- driving car going to do? Hmm, he said, well it would need some sort of touch screen interface for that. Or I said, some sort of "steering wheel"...

<comment><USER10> > Heh, I have a friend who is all rah-rah for self-driving cars. He also likes > to go camping. So I asked him, when you show up at the site and the farmer > says, top field, past the sheep, turn left at the tractor, what's your self- > driving car going to do?

I don't see any problem with that, even with no direct controls. That's probably a situation that requires more detailed _navigational_ input from a driver than providing a destination for road driving and letting the system handle the routing, but doesn't necessarily require actually manual driving. And, even if it did, even fully automated cars that are designed for personal ownership and (especially) for off-road use are likely to have full-control overrides available for some time.

Of course, camp sites and other destinations that people are expected to drive to will probably also have navigation information or guides available that self-driving cars can follow when self-driving cars are common, rendering the whole hypothetical largely moot.

<comment><USER9> I can imagine the look on the average farmer's face when some city folk in their self driving car ask him to lead them up to the field himself. He'd probably just leave them there and drive off in his tractor, chuckling to himself.

<comment><USER10> > I can imagine the look on the average farmer's face when some city folk in > their self driving car ask him to lead them up to the field himself.

I think you've badly misunderstood what "nagivational information or guides" means.

<comment><USER9> And I think you've badly misunderstood what driving in the British countryside means :-p

<comment><USER10> And I think you've badly misunderstood what "when self-driving cars are common" means.

Its not a change that leaves the rest of the world the same as it is today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Humans are not going to stop needing sleep, get distracted, or react slowly. All we can really do (and have done) is mitigate. Seat belts, driver training, etc.

Whatever problems a machine has, we can improve on them gradually. We can spend loads of time looking at test cases, and improvements are ratcheting.

I can't wait for self-driving cars. It will be a massive change to be able to go to sleep in your own comfy bed and wake up in time for a meeting in another town.

I also imagine traffic will be smoother, as tolerances don't have to be so wide.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sensationalist bs. It'd take some pretty impressive programming to deal with issues like road construction, missing or faded road markings, unmarked dirt roads, and potentially outdated or incorrect maps.

<comment><USER13> They're gonna cover 98% of cases. The rest can be picked up be remote operators.

<comment><USER14> Remote operators work for flying drones, since those don't have to evade children running onto the road with sub-second reaction times.

For cars there is no way electron-based signal transmission technology can control them with an even marginally acceptable latency.

<comment><USER15> What do you mean by electron-based signal transmission technology? If you're talking remote control, those signals will be photon based. If you're talking internal control, electrons on wires move pretty fast and many cars already utilize them. Is there much latency difference between mechanically closing the throttle with your foot and signaling a servo to close the throttle? Presumably some situations can be analyzed by a processor and trigger the servo before the human controller has even been able to consciously perceive a scene.

<comment><USER14> One question:

How do you plan to remote control a moving car with photons?

Edit: Huh, ok. I didn't know radio signals are also photons. Still, the speed of light is significant with sub-second decisions. So even for photon transmission remote control of a moving car in live traffic is not feasible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I remain extremely skeptical that 95 % will be good enough and its the edge cases that really matter. It doesn't matter that they're better most of the time because the failure modes are different.

However since Elon is a really smart guy who has mastered multiple disciplines , I'll take his word. I'm waiting for my self driving car.

</comment><comment><USER17> The way I see it - it's hard to "transfer" all the learnings we get from our everyday driving experiences to other fellow drivers but a machine can do that. It's going to be a sum total of all of its learnings and its neighbours (all over the world). I like the idea of it.

</comment><comment><USER18> He's right. Driving a car is something like 1000 times riskier than commercial aviation. We still have about 30,000 vehicle fatalities per year.

<comment><USER19> 1000 times more risky as measure by what? People drive a car far more often than fly in a plane. I'm sure flying is still safer, but the comparison should take into account the differences.

<comment><USER18> The comparisons I've seen are usually on a person-mile basis. Commercial aviation can move more people a further distance with fewer fatalities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Musk is pretty self-serving here. He writes about how advanced AI will "destroy humanity" to keep interest in manned space and to discredit robot and science missions. Now he's cheerleading automotive AI because Tesla wants to sell it.

I really am starting to see him as an empty suit. He just does PR for his companies' current projects. That's fine, but he's not a visionary. He's salesman. I can't wait for his celebrity to wind down. Its more than a bit over the top now. Tesla seems like a failure to launch an affordable electric or an electric with realistic range at a sane pricepoint. SpaceX is doing well, but LEO theatrics are boring considering the SLS is geared to take us way past that.

I wish he'd buy into causes that don't personally enrich him once in a while. I'd love to see someone of his caliber stump for a radio telescope on the far side of the moon or on replacing cars with more efficient tram systems powered by electric wires instead of the unsolved and perhaps unsolvable problem of batteries that can compete with the convienance of gasoline.

<comment><USER2> This just seems needlessly picky, and I can't help but feel that you're expecting a little much.

Of course Elon Musk is self-serving, in the sense that he's talking about and promoting the benefits of projects that he's working on.

They're more impressive than you seem to be implying; Tesla's approach to tackling the existing automotive industry and introducing affordable vehicles is a long-term project, and considering we're about 11 or 12 years in, they seem to be making good progress. It's not something that many other companies have had the vision and drive to execute.

Likewise with SpaceX. There's a long-term plan to colonise Mars – that does seem pretty visionary, no?

And in terms of other projects, look at something like Hyperloop. You seem to imply that "efficient tram systems powered by electric wires" (a technology used everywhere throughout the world) would be more 'visionary' or something? That seems like an odd claim to make.

People treat Musk like a bit of a celebrity because he talks unashamedly of large-scale, long-term visions for things he wants his projects to achieve. That's amazingly attractive in a world where there is so much focus on the short term, and what _can 't_ be achieved. I'm not sure why you react so badly to that.

<comment><USER20> The problem is that you're not a visionary if you're selling yesterdays solutions just sexed up a bit. An electric car is like selling a robotic horse. Urban areas need public trans solutions, not more cars.

SpaceX's offerings are underwhelming unless your goal is to stick to LEO forever.

The problem is, people just keep thinking of yesterdays problems (better cars, more LEO theatrics) and think better versions of that is "visionary." Its not. Its practically archaic. His flip-flopping on AI just cements his reputation as marketing entity who only exists to provide PR for his companies, some of which are just trying to solve yeterday's problems instead of todays.

<comment><USER2> I'll repeat - SpaceX literally has a goal of colonising Mars. The technology to get there requires small steps, and I have to think of that goal as pretty visionary.

You seem to be defining 'visionary' in a way I don't quite understand. What's 'visionary' about better public transport solutions? There are comprehensive public transport networks across the world, for example. We could definitely improve them, but it would hardly be visionary to do so.

<comment><USER20> >I'll repeat - SpaceX literally has a goal of colonising Mars.

This is like saying that Facebook's goal is to give the 3rd world free internet. Its lofty PR speak. SpaceX only exist as a COTS beneficiary from NASA welfare to build rockets to LEO. It is literally incapable of doing anything else as it doesnt have the customers (who is paying $200 billion for that on way ticket to Mars exactly)?

Again, this is the marketing sci-fi smokescream Musk is good at. He fanservices what manboys wants to hear and they delightfully repeat his marketing for him as he sells luxury electric cars with poor range to the 1% and does the occasional LEO lift.

Years from now there will be a lot research into Muskmania. Why people bought into such a self-promoter and how well marketing works, especially on people who think they're immune to it is going to spill a lot of ink. It won't matter, we'll just move onto the next guy who promises things we refuse to cast a critical eye towards.

<comment><USER2> You are really overstating the degree to which 'Muskmania' exists.

It's pretty much just that people are excited about someone who appears to be genuinely interested in putting his money into some long-term, pie-in-the-sky projects. In a rather short-term-focused world, that's a refreshing thing. It's totally understandable that people want to hear about that, and certainly it looks pretty encouraging to me (free nationwide network of car chargers? re-usable rockets? Hyperloop? All pretty cool. Maybe not the salvation of humanity, but a nice change.)

However, I can see you clearly have an intense dislike of Musk for some reason, and won't be convinced by that. Probably better to leave it at that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here are some facts and figures about driving versus flying for travel safety per passenger mile over a time period carefully measured by official statistics. "In absolute numbers, driving is more dangerous, with more than 5 million accidents compared to 20 accidents in flying. A more direct comparison per 100 million miles pits driving's 1.27 fatalities and 80 injuries against flying's lack of deaths and almost no injuries, which again shows air travel to be safer."[1] I thought everybody knew that airline travel is by far the safest form of travel.[2]

The basic issue about self-driving cars is that setting the standard of performance at "better than most human drivers most of the time" is a moderately low technical bar to clear, but would still result in a HUGE reduction of deaths, injuries, and damage to vehicles and roadside property. But I'm still not sure how soon self-driving cars will be good enough to drive on snowy roads (Google's self-driving cars have never been tested in snowy conditions, as of the last time I checked) or even in rain.[3] The story posted today is more nuanced than a story posted yesterday about Elon Musk's predictions, and reports, "He said he believed that we're still 20 years out from the roads being full of autonomous cars."

[1] [http://traveltips.usatoday.com/air-travel-safer-car- travel-1...](http://traveltips.usatoday.com/air-travel-safer-car- travel-1581.html)

[2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/flying-is-still-the-safest- wa...](http://www.businessinsider.com/flying-is-still-the-safest-way-to- travel-2013-7)

[3] [http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that- think/transportation/adva...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that- think/transportation/advanced-cars/japan-competition-shows-weather-still-a- challenge-for-autonomous-cars)

<comment><USER22> We're largely talking about only the US market here -- in which only (and I say that word relatively) 32,000 people died in any sort of automobile related accident last year.

To put this in perspective, the common Flu (a totally vaccinatable, preventable, and treatable illness) killed more than 52,000 people in the US last year alone.

In reality, automobiles in the US are the safest they have ever been since 1949, and automobile related deaths have dropped more than 26% since 2005 alone. According to the CDC, automobile related deaths are not even in the top 10 leading causes of death in the US.

Last year, heart disease was responsible for 596,577 US deaths last year alone. Stroke claimed 128,932 US lives. Diabetes took 73,831 american lives. Suicide robbed 39,518 people their life last year -- in excess of 7,000 more than died by automobile related accidents.

In 2009, approximately a grand total of 2,436,652 died in the US of all causes (including natural causes). Of that number, automobile related deaths only accounts for 1%. Of the entire US population, we're talking about 0.0096%...

According to the CDC, in 2012, 10,322 people (or 31%) of all automobile related deaths were alcohol-related deaths. Another 18% of automobile related deaths are attributed to drugs other than alcohol in the same year. That accounts for just about 50% of all vehicle related deaths, leaving the true automobile related deaths due to accident at a shockingly low number (relatively) of about 15,000 people per year.

All of this is to say, relatively speaking, automobile related deaths are not a significant concern. It does not make sense to spend significant effort in this sector while ignoring or not increasing efforts in these other much more problematic areas.

Sources:

[1] [http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of- death.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm)

[2] [http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/09/guns- tr...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/09/guns-traffic- deaths-rates/1784595/)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year)

[4] [http://www.businessinsider.com/top-causes-of-death-united- st...](http://www.businessinsider.com/top-causes-of-death-united- states-2011-11)

[5] [http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general- statistics/fatalit...](http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general- statistics/fatalityfacts/state-by-state-overview)

[6] [http://www.cdc.gov/Motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impai...](http://www.cdc.gov/Motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired- drv_factsheet.html)

<comment><USER23> Automobile-related deaths are the number one killer of healthy adults in the US, and the number one killer, period, of Americans between the ages of 5 and 34. (sources: [http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_speck_the_walkable_city](http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_speck_the_walkable_city) and [http://www.cdc.gov/injury/overview/data.html](http://www.cdc.gov/injury/overview/data.html) respectively). They're not insignificant, especially when you look at their value in terms of dollars per life saved for prevention, or (even moreso) years of life lost per death, as automobile deaths disproportionately affect young people, as compared to, e.g., stroke.

Also, I have no idea why you exclude alcohol- and drug-related deaths from "true" automobile deaths. Humans are fallible. They get tired, get distracted, see poorly at night, misjudge speed, and make stupid decisions like texting while driving, and, yes, drinking and driving. Mitigating that fallibility is the entire value proposition of the self-driving car. Deaths due to drunk driving are absolutely among those that self-driving car advocates aim to prevent.

<comment><USER22> > Deaths due to drunk driving are absolutely among those that self-driving car > advocates aim to prevent.

Instead of proposing legislation that everyone must own a self-driving vehicle (the path self-driving vehicle advocates seem to be heading towards), wouldn't a more reasonable, less expensive, and less obtrusive solution be to mandate breathalyzers in every vehicle? (I don't support this either, but it's less expensive and less of a burden).

Self-driving cars won't last as long due to the sheer amount of technology required to be in the vehicle. So instead of getting 5-20 years of out of your "dumb car" you'll get closer to 2-5 years before the electronics inside degrade to an unsafe state.

Can the electronics be upgraded/replaced when they become unsafe? Sure, but this is a significant cost burden on the consumer... The precision and reliability the electronics must provide has to be absolute. To achieve this level, they'll have to be better than military-grade sensors -- heck, military helicopters with some of the best sensors, ai, and electronics crash routinely... and they get regular maintenance before and after every flight. How long do we really expect the average consumer's self-driving vehicle to last when most drivers don't even change their oil once every year?

> Automobile-related deaths are the number one killer of healthy adults in the > US, and the number one killer, period,

That's a disingenuous statement. People were healthy until they contracted the flu. They were healthy until they suffered a sudden heart attack. Those are the true leading killers of all Americans... healthy and not.

<comment><USER23> > Instead of proposing legislation that everyone must own a self-driving > vehicle (the path self-driving vehicle advocates seem to be heading towards)

I think the path many advocates are headed towards is actually more radical: largely eliminating personal vehicle ownership entirely, with rides available as a service, Uber-like, as part of most people's multimodal transportation mix that might also include transit, more walking, etc. I don't expect either direction to occur via a mandate, though, but the economics of the more aggressive plan are interesting. Most cars sit unused for 22 hours a day, and there are enormous economies to be gained from improved utilization if cars are a shareable asset, especially with the labor taken out of the equation (as compared to current Uber), and I think the shift may well happen on its own, at least in part and in some places. And to be clear, it's not an all-or- nothing proposition; replacing some drivers still potentially improves everyone's safety.

As for the second bit: if you think my first stat is disingenuous, pay attention to my second, which you cut off halfway through. In that age bracket, automobiles are the top killer overall, including health-related causes. The flu disproportionately kills infants and the elderly (and for what it's worth, you vastly overstated the efficacy of the flu vaccine in your original post; it's totally worth getting, but still only decreased recipients' chances of contracting the flu by a bit more than half; "totally vaccinatable [and] preventable" it is not).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What about public transportation? We can make improvements to public transportation today.

</comment><comment><USER25> Actually, human pilots are too dangerous as well. Analysis of airplane disasters consistently shows that human errors are responsible for majority of crashes.

I would feel much more comfortable flying in a completely automated airplane.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm glad they are working on this in general, however unfortunately the Model S is not able to slow or stop when encountering a car stopped in front of it.

I was quite disappointed when I found out they don't have this important technology, in a car packed to the hilt with it. [http://my.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/collision- avoidance](http://my.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/collision-avoidance)

</comment><comment><USER27> No question, if robot cars will obey speed limits and not blow through red lights. The biggest safety improvements will come from convincing motorists/passengers that it's OK to travel just a bit slower.</comment>


Developing a productivity tool for Remote work and online meetings - <AUTHOR> http://www.rechord.ai <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys,

I am the co-founder of ReChord. We started this journey 4 months back with our own problems. We were frustrated with taking notes and wasting time. So thought of a solution that can automate the notes for online meetings.

After 4 months of day and night work we have our first Beta version and would love to get your feedback.

This is what ReChord can do for you- 1\. Join online meetings like Google Meet, Zoom, Teams and ReChord the entire call. 2\. Give you the transcript along with speaker information. 3\. Action items + decision points. 4\. Highlights, Questions and Metrics. 5\. Abstractive summary + minutes of meetings. 6\. Google Calendar Sync.

We are onboarding private Beta users and will give FREE hours for users to test our product and in return we are just looking for feedback.

Here is the link to book a 30 mins call with us, where we will show you the tool and also setup the account for you. [https://rechord- ai.netlify.app](https://rechord-ai.netlify.app)

If you want to check out the Beta application here is the link - www.rechord.ai</comment>


CKAN - The CPAN of data - <AUTHOR> http://ckan.net/

<comment><USER2> Every time something interesting that I want to read shows up on the front page, and clicking on it yields a spinning tab while the other end flaps about in agony, I can't help but wonder how many administrators know how to use ab(8). The rate of dead sites on HN is really a shocker, since commodity cloud that can stand up to HN's load -- as opposed to the shared hosting of yesterdecade -- is so widely available. I would have thought that Slashdotting would be a historical problem by now...

Is it not common sense to test the hell out of something before someone who would submit it to HN is even aware of its existence? WordPress is pretty bad for this (since most admins follow the directions and don't bother tweaking), and I've heard that Drupal can be too. Without tweaking and caching stuff, you'll fall over quick in front of this many eyeballs.

I know, easy for me to say.

<comment><USER3> Hi, I'm one of the CKAN devs. Just wanted to say the site is fully functional again (we've up the cached to be a bit more aggressive).

As a side note we have indeed tested with ab :) Our problem is we continue to find the AWS instances we use somewhat unpredictable in their response to load (largely due, we believe, to the fluctuations in CPU "stealing" as load varies across the other instances that share the same physical box).

Anyway, if you want to know more about ckan have a look on <http://ckan.org/about>.

<comment><USER2> I have a bit of experience with Xen. If you're actually seeing a whole lot of steal (how much?), that's a bad sign because it means you're on a box with a lot of contention. In an ideal world, Xen should steal very little from you. I'm burning all four cores available to me on one of my personal Linodes, and the platform is barely stealing anything. Here's vmstat -s and uptime from that Linode for comparison:

           409198 non-nice user cpu ticks
         60878563 nice user cpu ticks
           166987 system cpu ticks
        811571786 idle cpu ticks
          4486779 IO-wait cpu ticks
               25 IRQ cpu ticks
            15388 softirq cpu ticks
           766577 stolen cpu ticks

        12:06:10 up 13 days, 14:11,  3 users,  load average: 4.00, 4.01, 4.05

I've had the pedal to the floor for a couple of days on the CPU, and only 766 kticks have been stolen (total) since I booted. If you're seeing a lot more steal than that, your host is working pretty hard to schedule the domUs fairly.

Wouldn't dare to assume that I know better how to run operation than you do, just sharing my experiences with Xen. Netflix had a solution to this -- unfortunate that it was necessary, but a solution nonetheless -- which was to monitor steal closely and spin up a new instance if it skyrocketed: [http://blog.sciencelogic.com/netflix-steals-time-in-the- clou...](http://blog.sciencelogic.com/netflix-steals-time-in-the-cloud-and- from-users/03/2011)

Given the opportunity, I'd like to point out that I meant no disrespect in my original comment, if it wasn't clear. I was speaking more from a generality and not about CKAN specifically, a fact lost on those mindlessly downvoting me.

<comment><USER3> No disrespect was taken. The hacker news coverage came as a big surprise. We like to turn any caching mostly off and we know this is a risk. This is because we do not want the possibility of any stale data as this annoying to the type of users we have. We are working on a better cache invalidation scheme but this has not been a big priority.

Your feedback is appreciated, thank you.

Edit: Our amount of steal was much much higher than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting side note. CPAN was itself a copy of CTAN (TeX's repository).

CPAN - The CTAN of Perl.

</comment><comment><USER5> We actually started using the Czech instantion of CKAN: <http://cz.ckan.net/> to publish information about datasets of Government data that are available.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is this just a rival to Infochimps or is there something different with CKAN that I've missed?

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish the tags page actually included frequency counts. And coud be sorted by frequency.</comment>


CoinGecko Introduces "Trust Score" to Combat Fake Exchange Volume Data - <AUTHOR> https://blog.coingecko.com/trust-score/ <comment><USER2> Sounds like a personal rating score to me</comment>


Pizza robot makes 300 pizzas per hour - <AUTHOR> https://www.geekwire.com/2019/secretive-seattle-startup-picnic-unveils-pizza-making-robot-heres-delivers-300-pies-hour/ <comment><USER3> While this iteration of the product seems like it is not ready for prime time, a couple more years of improvements and you could have a machine able to reliably do the work of 2- 3 employees. There are many other industries where the current version of automation is clumsy such as in trucking or fast food but could look completely different in 5 years.

We are rapidly approaching a future where the entry level jobs like fast food / picking crops / warehouses can be automated away and even well paying ones such as truck driving / taxis could disappear or scale down drastically. We really should be having an urgent conversation on how to handle this and what the responsibility of those that own the means of production will be (if any) when this occurs.

Yang is obviously speaking about this and suggesting a BI as a band-aid / solution but I do think this should be getting a lot more attention that it is.

<comment><USER4> you do know we've been replacing humans with machines since the Industrial revolution, right? These people that were replaced didn't just go off and die. They found other more advanced work, allowing our civilization to produce more wealth allowing all of us to be richer. The same will continue.

<comment><USER5> Except good chunks _did_ go off and die because they couldn't adapt, or because they were easy to exploit. (E.g. child workers). Or lived in subpar housing due to urbanization, which made perfect breeding grounds for typhoid, cholera and assorted fun.

You can't just handwave those changes away by saying "ultimately, they found other jobs". They didn't. There were entire generations that suffered. At _some_ point there was an equilibrium, but it was far from instant, and "advanced" work doesn't help the person displaced.

<comment><USER6> How did you come to the conclusion that children died out...

The role disappear children instead stayed children for longer and continued education.

<comment><USER5> They didn't die out, but they died in much larger numbers, because the industrial revolution lead to an exploitation of child labor. Combined with non-existent protections, a lot of them _did_ die on the job.

Children started to be children for longer because labor unions helped end the practice. That was a good chunk of time after those jobs changed, and it wouldn't have happened without active pushback. (The AFL pushed for an end for child labor under 14 in 1881, and it took until 1938 to get the Fair Labor Standards Act)

The idea that paradigm-shifting transitions somehow don't affect anybody because "there will be new jobs" shows a stunning unawareness of historical precedent, or how capitalism in general works.

<comment><USER7> "because the industrial revolution lead to an exploitation of child labor"

I'm skeptical of the idea that before factories, farms didn't use child labor. Isn't the practice of closing school during the summer kind of suggestive?

Anyway, you seem to be arguing the opposite of the previous post, that there were more jobs and this was bad. I thought the issue was there were fewer jobs and that was bad.

<comment><USER8> > Isn't the practice of closing school during the summer kind of suggestive?

I don't think that's the case since education wasn't a given for the poor.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=why+does+school+close+for+su...](https://www.google.com/search?q=why+does+school+close+for+summer)

<comment><USER7> What does "education wasn't a given for the poor" mean? That's such a vague statement I don't see how you can link it to anything. Education can mean grammar school, high school, college...people in the past, who were farmers, were generally poorer and less educated. However, less educated doesn't mean no education. My grandfather was a farmer in the 19th (and early 20th) century, and no, he didn't have a college degree, but that doesn't mean he never went to school or was illiterate.

Linking to a google query like that is a step below even Wikipedia. If you have a source you consider authoritative, why don't you provide that. I'm not going to read the clickbait garbage in those hits.

<comment><USER8> "Journal of Inquiry & Action in Education, 5(1), 2012" was a top link for me, apologies for not picking that, but I figured Google has something for every bias.

[https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1134242.pdf](https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1134242.pdf)

There are a variety of factors, but farm work didn't appear to be it, especially given that summer probably isn't the biggest time crunch.

I descend from Arkansas farmers, not at all suggesting they were illiterate; more that they weren't in the driver's seat on the issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Back in the 1930s there was pancake-making-robot outside the diner across the street from the apartment where my dad grew up on 72nd St in Manhattan. My dad loved to watch the thing work. He'd put in a penny and a mechanical arm would come out and pour some batter on a hot grill, then a few moments later another arm came out and flipped the pancake, then a few moments later an arm would come out and move the pancake to a paper plate, which then got shunted out to my dad. Sometimes my dad would put in a penny when he wasn't even hungry, he just loved the elegance of watching the robot move.

I often wonder why there are no such robots in Manhattan now? I have to assume this is simply a matter of fashion. Robots seemed very futuristic in the 1930s, and even something as simple as a pancake making robot helped a little boy feel in touch with the future.

<comment><USER10> Not saying this is the reason NYC doesn't have pancake robots anymore, but it seems like New York in general has banned certain types of automation in order to preserve jobs. For example, that's why you still see - in 2019 - <USER2> toll booth workers sitting in glass boxes in NY instead of automated tolls like every other state has.

<comment><USER11> Something about that seems wrong. I definitely respect the fact that someone will do the job, but isn't that basically the equivalent of a universal basic income except you're forcing the person to waste half their day doing trivial work?

(FWIW I support a UBI)

<comment><USER12> It's worse than that -- you're making them suck exhaust fumes all day.

<comment><USER13> Plot twist, their real job is to be a human air filter /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nit: unless the video is running at a reduced speed, the claim is false. You can clearly see that the pizza takes 18 seconds to pass over a single location. If you were to run then pizzas through edge-to-edge, then the fastest production rate would be (3,600 seconds per hour) / 18 seconds = 200 pizzas per hour. But that would risk having the dough from one pizza get stuck to the dough of the next. Adding a sensible 2 second gap between each pizza would reduce the throughput to 150 pizzas per hour.

Also, that sauce depositing methodology is just not right. This robot does it much better: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=cc- ClpymK_Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=cc-ClpymK_Q)

<comment><USER15> It's kind of a ridiculous metric anyway. There's probably only a handful of pizza shops in the world, at their peak times, that sell 300 pizzas an hour.

<comment><USER16> It also doesn't bake the pizzas. What would an oven look like that can bake 300 pizzas per hr? That's one every 12s.

<comment><USER17> I make lots of pizza for fun with some friends at hacker events. We've managed to do ~120 portions (not individual pizzas) an hour with an entry-level pizza oven (2 levels, 60x90cm² area), the kind you see at kebab shops, and the oven was quite far from being the limiting factor (rolling the dough is hard work). From a quick web search, conveyor ovens can do up to 150 pizzas per hour, and you can typically stack them three high. So shouldn't be a problem.

The trick is that pizza is baked at a _very_ high temperature. Our oven goes up to 500°C (900°F). Baking time is 90s-2min if you put the pizza on the fire stones directly, or ~3mins if you use a screen (tray).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I feel a bit stupid, but does the product look really bad? Why are they hyping it? I thought it would compete with restaurants, but it really looks like a frozen pizza. Weird distribution of ingredients, weird dough without a real crust and not properly baked (compared to for example a pizza baked in real a wood oven or from from a electrical pizza oven). It certainly doesn't look like a normal pizza.

<comment><USER19> You touched on a pretty good point there. It's highly likely that this startup just reinvented the wheel, and people like DiGiorno already operate a superior version of this machine.

<comment><USER20> I remember seeing several videos from different companies with their own version of a "pizza robot". Just look at this ad for a pizza vending machine from 2012 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyrav_9Pbsc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyrav_9Pbsc)

<comment><USER21> That vending machine pizza maker doesn't get it right either. It mixes the dough "fresh"... but that's actually not ideal. The dough needs time to absorb all the water and time to sit out and be proofed before made into pizza.

Pizza seems simple... until you want something that tastes really good...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's just adding toppings to pizza (and too much sauce!)... I was hoping to see how the dough preparation would be automated. I'm sure it could be done, but I would prefer a hand-made pizza. I enjoy making my own pizzas, and the dough/crust is what makes the biggest difference in a pie, and is the most interesting/fun to learn and experiment with.

this robot to me is just the next level up from the skittles sorting robots.

<comment><USER23> I also have questions about what makes this a robot, because to me this looks like regular factory machinery.

<comment><USER24> I mean, maybe it uses blockchain technology and _definitely_ deserves a crazy valuation?

<comment><USER23> Pizza on the blockchain! Tired of your orders getting made wrong? Just put them in an immutable, distributed database, and you're guaranteed perfect pizza every time! But don't eat that flawless pie, because our upcoming SausageCoin™ ICO guarantees its value will only go up, up, up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > More than a third of restaurant owners are having trouble filling jobs... > And more than 80 percent of workers will change jobs each year, requiring > employers to constantly train recruits.

Maybe pay people more and treat them better?

But I can see the appeal of restaurant automation. Machines can work 24/7, don't need health insurance, don't fight for higher wages, don't need to be trusted around cash registers, etc.

<comment><USER26> > _Maybe pay people more and treat them better?_

How very un-American of you. /s

One thing that always staggers me in endless discussion is that nobody ever, _ever_ talks about decreasing profits as a way to fix societies problems.

I mean, in 2018 McDonald's returned $8.5 billion to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends, it announced a 15% increase in its quarterly dividend to $1.16 per share. [1]

I bet the workers would like some of that.

[1] [https://news.mcdonalds.com/news-releases/news-release- detail...](https://news.mcdonalds.com/news-releases/news-release- details/mcdonalds-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2018-results-and)

<comment><USER27> What have the workers done to "earn" this? They literally signed an agreement to work X hours for Y amount of dollars. They said yes to that. If they wanted a piece of the equity -- the profits, they should have negotiated for that in their contract.

<comment><USER28> McDonald's and other similar companies are having a hard time convincing potential employees to sign the existing agreement. If they want to convince more people to agree to work for them, one option is to offer more money, which McDonald's at least can certainly afford.

Or, more snarkily, what have the investors done to "earn" this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The video is missing the stretching the dough part, which IMO is the most time consuming part. Spreading the sauce / cheese and putting toppings is definitely the "easy" part of the job in my experience.

If I had infinite time to invent my ideal automatic pizza machine... I'd personally like to see the full high-quality bread cycle done on the dough. That is: ~1 hour for the bread to rise, punching down the dough, stretch the dough out onto its final form, ~1-hour for proofing the dough (maybe 20 minutes at 90F, since yeast reacts faster at that temperature), and THEN automatically spreading cheese on it.

Most of this time is just waiting by the way. But maybe some kind of "jukebox" design where a robot can work on a Pizza, automatically put it on a shelf somewhere (for the ~1 hour rise / proofing steps) and come back to it automatically would be great.

At least, when I manually make pizza, getting high-quality bread dough techniques on the pizza dough makes a difference in texture (chewiness and "evenness" of internal air bubbles).

A lot of Pizza shops don't care about the consistency of the dough however. They just pull the dough out of the frige and immediately make a pizza on it without the punchdown or proofing steps. And you can tell because of the "air bubbles" that often grow huge and break the consistency of the dough.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>

EDIT: What is going on here, is that yeast is a living organism. Pull that dough out of storage, and the different yeast will reactivate at different times. The edges probably will have more active yeast, as it warms up faster).

When the dough enters the oven, it rises to ~110F or so first. The yeast highly accelerates and starts to produce carbon dioxide as it eats the sugars. But the "pockets" of highly-active yeast will make more CO2 than other areas of the dough.

Of course, the yeast dies by ~160F and the "puffiness" of the bread is then solidified by the heat of the oven.

That's why you punch down dough: so that all the (reactivated) yeast creates CO2 bubbles at an even rate across the dough.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>

In practice, the Pizza is going to be limited by the speed + space of your Oven. I'm not sure if people need "faster" low quality pizzas, but improving the automation to create higher-quality pizzas should be the focus.

<comment><USER30> I worked in a Costco, making pizzas all day. The stretching part was achieved via an oiled hydraulic press. Two big ol' plates of metal squished the dough out to pizza shape.

You'd transfer it to a metal grate and then sauce, cheese, and top it. Operation was pretty quick, as long as the dough was in the right condition.

<comment><USER31> Costco now has sauce machines as well, basically a big turntable with a dispenser arm.

[https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/how-costco-makes-its- pi...](https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/how-costco-makes-its-pizza)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> >For starters, the dough preparation, sauce making and baking — the real art of pizza — is left in the capable, five-fingered hands of people.

So all of the stuff that actually takes time is still manual. All this thing does is throw down some toppings. And then takes all the time and more it "saves" to clean it properly and reload it.

Want to see how pizza making is actually automated? Try Totinos. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqULgulLq3Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqULgulLq3Q)

<comment><USER33> You have to wonder why we really need pizza to be round in shape but then they package it into a rectangular cardboard box. Like there is a whole part of the machine that takes the leftover dough after cutting the circular shapes. Seems inefficient.

<comment><USER34> Its commercially taking subconscious advantage of the consumer who sees "big box which seems full" but actually gets "circular portion less some". If you went efficient, your product would be square and look smaller than the competition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This reminds me of a previous post for the dishwashing robot.

It is automating the easy part. All they are doing is putting toppings and sauce on. An experienced human can do it perhaps a little slower.

Essentially this big piece of equipment saves the business owner 2 minutes of an employee making $13 an hour, about 50 cents. At full capacity, 60 an hour, theoretically it might save $30 an hour. (Practically that won't happen for lots of logistical reasons).

It better be quite inexpensive to justify that minor savings.

<comment><USER36> A pizza employee makes much more than 13 hr. There are sick days, holidays, taxes, fees and lawsuits. For 13/hr employee you're probably looking at 20/hr at least in costs.

<comment><USER37> > sick days, holidays

There might be some fancy pizza restaraunts where the staff isn't hourly, but I don't know of any. Taxes and fees are pretty minimal on a minimum wage employee, so that leaves lawsuits which I have no idea how to quantize.

<comment><USER38> Plenty of hourly employees have holidays and paid time off. Pretty much anyone that is paid hourly and in a union, for instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> One big downside to this is that every topping you add requires yet another sliding conveyor belt. The demo here can only make cheese, pepperoni, ham/sausage, and meat lovers pizza.

And just my personal opinion that the pizza that comes out looks pretty damn sloppy. Those sausage chunks roll around too much. If this were my machine I'd probably have it only make cheese and pepperoni and have a person on hand to make other kinds of pizza. Assuming I use this contraption at all.

<comment><USER39> I would bet you're right - even just doing sauce/cheese/pepperoni is probably 70% of pizzas though.

And you can throw fresh toppings on top of that as a manual last step in 30 seconds before it goes in the oven.

Still seems kinda ridiculous. Watching people in pizza places... seems like most of the time is spent stretching the dough to be pizza shaped and appropriate thickness without tears, which this contraption doesn't solve.

Once that's done, people sauce, cheese and top pizzas about as fast as their ovens seem to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> How many frozen pizzas does a pizza factory make, per hour? Is that the real competition?

<comment><USER41> "G. Mondini pizza assembly lines feature the highest cycle speeds in the industry - up to 7,200 pizzas per hour." ([https://www.refrigeratedfrozenfood.com/articles/83570-pizza-...](https://www.refrigeratedfrozenfood.com/articles/83570-pizza- processing-spotlight))

Judging from [https://youtu.be/Do7qLGiVbwY?t=164](https://youtu.be/Do7qLGiVbwY?t=164), the advantage is that they have 3 pizzas in each row rather than just one, and that the pizzas move much faster along the conveyor. It's also not clear from the article but the Seattle system might only support 1 pizza in the system at a time.

The dough is still hand-made, which is an advantage over frozen pizza dough which pretty much sucks, so I'd guess they're primarily interested in selling to delivery pizza chains as a more upscale pizza. Domino's peak is 160 pizzas/hour and they open stores until the average is <100\. ([https://www.quora.com/How-many-pizzas-does-a-Manhattan- pizze...](https://www.quora.com/How-many-pizzas-does-a-Manhattan-pizzeria- sell-each-hour))

<comment><USER42> Sorry to say this but pizzas in that youtube video look disgusting.

<comment><USER41> Yeah, typically the details of high-quality manufacturing processes are considered trade secrets and so there aren't videos of them.

I'm not sure if it's the same pizza as the packaging doesn't quite match but the pizza is similar to this box: [https://i.redd.it/hrizyz9gnmdz.jpg](https://i.redd.it/hrizyz9gnmdz.jpg)

Here is some cheap Italian brand of frozen pizza, probably higher quality: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM4n4upANvQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM4n4upANvQ)

<comment><USER42> Well the Italian brand looks at least a million times better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> How are frozen pizzas currently assembled? I'd have assumed machines with similar speed. They're only missing the oven.

Am I incorrect? Frozen pizza factories don't use 'robots'?

EDIT: According to videos on YouTube, humans still place the toppings on frozen pizzas.

<comment><USER44> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do7qLGiVbwY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do7qLGiVbwY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> > There are a few details that may save Picnic's pizzas from tasting as if a > robot made them. For starters, the dough preparation, sauce making and > baking — the real art of pizza — is left in the capable, five-fingered hands > of people.

So it's fundamentally just a sauce and topping sprinkler?

Costco's been using sauce robots for years: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q0vk_fKDEo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q0vk_fKDEo)

</comment><comment><USER46> This seems slower than the manual speeds I observe at the place I go for lunch slices (Big Mario's, on Pike in Seattle), cooks there just use the back of a ladle to spread the sauce in a couple seconds. Per the video the robot takes 10 seconds, plus it leaves the sauce in lumps.

Video of Mario's process (they don't show spreading the whole pizza but they do at least half in the second or so they do show: [https://youtu.be/tXMz- DxC_dk?t=163](https://youtu.be/tXMz-DxC_dk?t=163)

</comment><comment><USER47> I might have missed it from the article but it doesn't seem like the machine "spins" the dough to get air bubbles into the sides and make a proper crust.

The product on the photo looks like a frozen pizza from a factory tbh..

What is the innovation here? The fact that it is inside a restaurant?

</comment><comment><USER48> I wonder what are the social implications of these types of machinery.

On the one hand, cheaper means more people can afford it, thus more inclusion.

On the other hand, pizza making is not such a harmful job, comparing to let's say mining in which a robot actually saves lives, to justify substituting hand labor. Is it actually leaving people unemployed?

I guess places where cheap food is sold will continue to sell cheap food, so instead of underpaying someone to do the job, a robot does this, leaving people free to do more intellectually demanding jobs.

I guess the real question is then, how can we reallocate people and give them better, more meaningful jobs and not leave them helpless.

Don't get me wrong. Any form of job is respectable. There is always going to be demand for higher quality versions of the same product, where, hopefully people are not underpaid. I mean better job in comparing to poor working conditions.

<comment><USER49> In the end all the "manual/hand labour" will/should be replaced by robots. Which one are automated first depends by the difficulty of the job and economics. Unfortunately there will always be low skilled and high skilled jobs. We already have low skill jobs in the IT(i.e data entry)

<comment><USER50> This probably also applies to cognitive jobs.

Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll be left with jobs that require interpersonal skills.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> At first I scoffed, because making good pizza is essentially the same as making good bread, which is more of an art than a science.

After reading through, it became apparent that this isn't geared at good pizza, it's focused on bad pizza where none of that matters, like cafeterias, gas stations, and football stadiums.

<comment><USER52> You know, I completely disagree with the your first sentence. Of all cooking techniques, baking seems to me to be the most scientific. You must carefully control temperature and moisture in order to get a decent loaf. It's practically an exercise in chemical engineering once you start adding things like chemical leaveners.

<comment><USER53> Chemical engineering? Isn't mixing chemicals just chemistry?

Regardless, there is no standard for baking, each little extra bit of yeast, sugar, etc. you add in can make it an entirely different product. This gives it its own personal craft aspect, hence why it can be an art.

<comment><USER54> Those are different recipes, but I'm not sure that's where the "art" comes in.

The challenge of baking is that the components aren't very standardized. You won't get a consistently good result by robotically mixing 1000.0g flour with 7.00 g yeast and 650 mL distilled 35˚C water, and mixing for 400 seconds. The flour varies from bag to bag, even of the same brand. Yeast is alive and responds differently depending on the temperature and other conditions; sourdough cultures are even more finicky.

As a result, there's an "art" to knowing when to add more water/flour or deciding when the bread is ready to shape and bake. I would bet you could get this _more_ under control in a commercial/industrial setting, where you've got proofing cabinets that control the ambient temp/humidity and other specialized equipment. At home though, you've more or less got to do it by feel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Something tells me the machines at the frozen pizza factory have been making more than 300 pizzas an hour for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER56> It doesn't roll out the dough which is probably the most labor intensive step.

<comment><USER57> As well as cleaning out this monstrosity every day

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> How is it different from the manufacturing of pizzas you buy frozen in the grocery stores?

</comment><comment><USER59> I wish someone automated electricians and plumbers instead. Most of those guys charge an arm and a leg and are booked months in advance. I spent a month trying to get someone to come in and install a NEMA 14-50 outlet in my garage. Automating $15/hr jobs is just weird. The people who work in those jobs usually also man the cash registers, make the dough, clean up, take calls, etc. You aren't going to replace something like that with a glorified frozen pizza maker, even if your investors think otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER60> I was in the SF airport the other day and I tried an automated coffee dispensing machine that actually tasted really good. Way better than the old machines. I think it was called Briggo. You connected to it with your phone, and you made your own custom "barista" style coffee profile.

I can imagine this sort of thing replacing drive-through coffee shops, especially here in Canada where drive-through coffee is ridiculously popular, and the lines are notoriously long.

</comment><comment><USER61> 300 pizzas an hour sounds like quite an achievement. But are they any good?

The quality of pizza varies so much from one restaurant to another that it doesn't matter how many pizzas it makes of they're not any better than human- made pizzas.

Sure, robots may lower the cost of a pizza. But the majority of pizza consumers will choose to pay a little more for better pizza. Little Caesar's tried the uber-cheap but garbage pizza model years ago and eventually had to improve its product.

<comment><USER62> Don't forget the food factories (Elios, Tombstone etc) turn out many thousands of pizzas an hour.

This is distributed, just-in-time, made to order manufacturing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> The challenge is not to build a machine that makes pizzas but more:

\- individual toppings

\- small enough to fit in a pizza shop

\- not too expensive

everything else seems solved by frozen pizza manufacturers (though there is a suprising ammount of hand-tossing ingridients involved, morzarella seems to be especially hard :) ) [https://youtu.be/DTnevo7XPqA?t=90](https://youtu.be/DTnevo7XPqA?t=90)

</comment><comment><USER64> I want a robot that can make arbitrary meals, not one which can only make one type of dish (these already exist in factories in various forms and are nothing new).

And when you think about it, a robot cook would save more time per day than a self-driving car.

</comment><comment><USER65> One cool thing you can do here (old idea of mine) is that you can allow customers to fully customize their pizza's toppings. Imagine an app where you can "draw" your pizza and then get exactly what you ordered.

</comment><comment><USER66> > We were using frozen dough and an electric oven for the demonstration

The main reason I go to a pizza restaurant is for the fresh ingredients. A lot of the reason I hate frozen pizza is because the crust tastes like cardboard.

<comment><USER67> I imagine this is for people who frequent McDonalds, Taco Bell, et al.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> What comes to mind is [https://rotimatic.com/home/](https://rotimatic.com/home/). They have been shipping roti/pizza makers for a few years now.

</comment><comment><USER69> Is there a place where people discuss societal theories about (in an ideal future) entirely workless life ? Not that I'm for it or even convinced it will hold but I'm curious about the subject.

</comment><comment><USER70> This is hilarious: automating the creation of crappy pizza. Seriously, we can't even build a decent auto-espresso machine.

</comment><comment><USER71> I hope he's cutting them each into 6 slices because I'm not hungry enough to eat 2400 per hour.

</comment><comment><USER72> This is for the deliveroo/just eat market, not artisanal wood-fired places.

</comment><comment><USER73> Why doesn't it also drop the ingredients when the arm is coming back in?

<comment> kube-system Probably to keep the momentum of the ingredients at zero in the x/y axes

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> These machines will be perfect for places that sell via delivery apps.

</comment><comment><USER74> I've long dreamed of taco robots. Please someone work on that!

</comment><comment><USER75> Not to sound too critical, but isn't this just digiorno?

</comment><comment><USER76> What a nice invention. It reminds me of an smt line

</comment><comment><USER77> Not a machine for the Italian market for sure.

</comment><comment><USER78> The New York robots make a better pizza.

</comment><comment><USER79> in the video, does each little conveyor do one ingredient? what about food allergies and special dietary requirements where you can't use tools for e.g. dairy/meat to process vegetables

</comment><comment><USER80> The best part is that it tastes exactly like fast food because the robot, like fast food workers, also doesn't want to be making shitty pizza for you.

</comment><comment><USER81> I hate to delve into this controversial area in such a throwaway story -- but...

The cost of labor (and living) in this country (California in particular), is making everything terrible. And at the root of it, it's driven by people with good intentions piling on restrictive regulation after restrictive regulation about housing, safety, liability, etc.

Everything that you might choose to complain about stems from the high cost of employing anyone -- and related to that (I genuinely lament), how much it costs to barely live around here.

BART and buses suck? It's because we cannot hire enough station agents, police officers, maintenance staff, etc to properly man the system.

Your commute sucks? Because you have to live so far away to afford anything reasonable in rent or mortgage.

Restaurants suck? It's because again, labor is expensive, land is artificially expensive because of restricted supply.

Pizza sucks? It's because you can't open a pizza place (except staffed by underpaid immigrants) at any reasonable cost, and instead have to resort to robots that can't get a crust right.

This is a major problem -- our country is not getting so much older like some countries, yet our costs are in runaway mode. Something is wrong with this picture.

<comment><USER82> Labor costs more in the UK, France, and Germany for those roles and they're all doing fine.</comment></comment>