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Comment by pontusrehula | Hacker News Reader

Where I live we can get deliveries by starships https://www.starship.xyz/. The vehicles are kind of cute when you see them in action.

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They've been working on those things in Tallinn for years, and I've only ever seen them operate in a very limited area, and even then it's not unusual to see them seemingly stuck at the nearby rail crossing. Meanwhile a human on a Bolt scooter ate their and their investor's lunch IMO.

They do look cute, I remember being completely taken-aback the first time I saw one in the wild - I had to resist the temptation to stand in front of it, to see what would happen.

Though I did wonder how they'll cope in winter-weather. I can't imagine they'd do so well on snow/ice.

But there are plenty of places that don't have much snow and ice where they should be perfectly practical. Ice shouldn't be a problem, they could swap to studded tyres in the winter just like we do for cars here in Norway. Snow would be a much bigger problem though I agree!

I'd encourage you to stand in front of it. Commercializing public walkways like this is fine, I guess, but as a human walking around for non-commercial reasons, I feel like you have the right to do whatever you want (within reason) that doesn't impact other humans.

They've been using them in Milton Keynes too: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/12/robots-deliv...

Also DPD piloted something similar in Milton Keynes and is now going to do it i ten towns in the UK: https://green.dpd.co.uk/news/16

Ok that seems like far more practical idea

They seem practical until you realize how easy it is to steal one.

The starships on the road are free you can just take them I have 458 starships.

Those wheels look moderately impractical- larger wheels might have more clearance.

Reminds me that we had pneumatic tubes and miniature railways between buildings a century ago.

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