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Comment by hnbear | Hacker News Reader

In NYC Rsosevelt Island solved their trash problems (which plague the rest of the city) with an underground pneumatic trash network: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/suck-it-roosevelt-isla...

Buildings have a connection into which trash is sucked away to the central yard for processing. It's pretty neat and helps keep the island tidy. You don't get any of the normal huge trash piles that litter Manhattan on trash day.

Conversely, our local hospital is now using robots for deliveries. They trundle around and deliver things like meds to the nurses stations on request, and announce it with "Your delivery has arrived".

Just watching robots trundle around as though it's normal is an interesting slow creep towards what seemed so futuristic in Star Wars in the 70s and 80s. Now our local supermarkets (BJs and Stop and Shop) have robots that trundle around checking inventory as well.

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I used to live in an area with a similar system for rubbish (near Wembley Stadium, in north west London). While it worked, it suffered from a number of “quality of life” issues.

The chute terminals had quite a small aperture, with a sealed door; presumably to make it easier to create the necessary pressure differential. This happened regularly; every 30 minutes (or so) during daylight hours. It was loud. Really loud! With several terminals in a courtyard, running in a sequence, it was almost a never ending reverberation.

Of course, you can’t use them while they’re in this cycle. If anyone overfilled them — which was very easy — or ended up jamming the door open with some misshapen detritus then, try as it might, it just wouldn’t work at all. The building management were regularly seen wielding a broom, to try to force stuck loads down. Then, if you had anything that just couldn’t be made small enough for the chute, you had to use the (limited) dumpsters anyway; many did, because it was often just easier.

That’s not to say I think it wasn’t a good idea. It just needed its rough edges smoothed out a bit.

my office adjoins a factory where we produce what we engineer in the offices.

The factory has two or maybe three different types of robots delivering all sorts of things from packages to packaging to stainless steel bar.

the robots use the same walkways as the humans.

It seems more and more we are designing robots to occupy and utilize the same spaces as humans. And we're designing the robots to make the humans give way: they're slow, large, bulky, and just stop when confronted. I think it's because humans are a much better robot.

humans (generally, of course) are more agile, can route easily, and move our bodies in unexpected ways to accomplish the task (lift a box up from waist height over an obstacle for example)

though I do get a LITTLE annoyed every time I have to walk around the stupid floor mopping robot in my local stop & shop

> the robots use the same walkways as the humans.

How much of this is that the robots are far newer than the buildings? How soon till new buildings are designed with designated robotic paths?

Plenty of buildings are designed with hidden back-of-the-building areas and access routes for maintenance humans. I assume pretty soon they'll have the same for robots too. Then we'll really hit the Star Trek "time to climb through a duct to save the day/stuck robot" type situations.

It will be much cheaper, and not that hard to make the robots super safe and considerate.

And then we send them to Jupiter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Unintentional

We do that all the time, we just don't usually consider them to be robots. Car factories have all kinds of vehicles transporting car parts along tracks, ceiling mounted rails, etc. Nobody bats an eye about that. If you squint hard enough elevators are a kind of robot on a designated pathway.

But to be called a robot it has to have some human-like (or at least animal-like) quality. Which usually involves either imitating human arms (e.g. typical industrial robot arms), imitating human movement (e.g. Boston dynamics) or using infrastructure designed for humans. If you put a delivery robot on a purpose-built path it has none of those qualities and reverts back to being a normal machine.

> Plenty of buildings are designed with hidden back-of-the-building areas and access routes for maintenance humans. I assume pretty soon they'll have the same for robots too. Then we'll really hit the Star Trek "time to climb through a duct to save the day/stuck robot" type situations.

For some reason, it appears to be a major priority for people to drill tiny holes and channels all through their house so their cables can run through them, out of sight. This is a huge hassle as far as installation goes, but it makes up for it by also being a huge hassle as far as maintenance goes.

What's the problem supposed to be with running cables through clips on the wall? That you'll know they're there? That you can easily access them?

> For some reason, it appears to be a major priority for people to drill tiny holes and channels all through their house so their cables can run through them, out of sight. This is a huge hassle as far as installation goes, but it makes up for it by also being a huge hassle as far as maintenance goes.

Install flexible plastic tubes instead and you can just pull out cables when you need to replace them for whatever reason.

Appearances (which I suspect you know, but just value it less than most).

People want to see a finished wall, not cables, pipes, and ducts.

>> I do get a LITTLE annoyed every time I have to walk around the stupid floor mopping robot

I ran into one of these things late one night after checking into a hotel. Dead tired, I got off the elevator and was walking down the hall when this 3-foot high dalek started following me. "Can I get you some towels?" I retreated into my room. The next morning I almost tripped over it. It had spent the night outside my door... stalking me.

Perhaps it was simply a very big fan of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and thought that no-one should be without a towel.

There was something very Douglas Adams about that story.

Robot: can I get you some towels?

Man, confused just enters room and shuts door.

Eight hours later he emerges for breakfast.

Robot: well?

It must be a Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

It was probably waiting for a tip you cretin! :]

Here in the 3rd world we still often use people instead of robots mainly due to cost, but it's definitely changing. Why struggle with government rules, unions and individuals if a machine can do it?

Jobs are already really hard to come by on all the unskilled levels, it's a bit grim to be honest.

>Just watching robots trundle around as though it's normal is an interesting slow creep towards what seemed so futuristic in Star Wars in the 70s and 80s.

My nostalgic reference for this is R.A.L.F. from Flight of the Navigator - https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/R.A.L.F.

Your link is missing the trailing period so it goes to a non-existent page.

The correct link is: <https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/R.A.L.F.>

TIL a new (to me) word. No wonder I did poorly on the GRE language section.

trun·dled, trun·dling. to cause (a circular object) to roll along; roll. to convey or move in a wagon, cart, or other wheeled vehicle; wheel: The farmer trundled his produce to market in a rickety wagon. Archaic. to cause to rotate; twirl; spin.

>roll

>wheel

>rotate

Trundle sounds vaguely treadmill, which also has something to do with rotation :)

Wonder if the two words are etymologically related.

The word made sense, I was just surprised there was a special word for rolling robot movement, hopefully it gets more use in the future as robots become more common.

Yes, I did know that the word trundle made sense, because I have come across it before in books, as a kid, in stories for children. E.g. "The gardener trundled his wheelbarrow along the (garden) path."

(The word is not use much nowadays; archaic, as the dictionary entry says.)

I was only speculating about the connection between the two words (trundle and treadmill), because they sound vaguely similar. Maybe they have a common Latin or Old English or Old German root, as many English words do.

Update: I checked, and it seems I may have been partly / loosely correct about the etymological connection:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trundle

Etymology

Noun and Verb

from trundle small wheel, alteration of earlier trendle, from Middle English, circle, ring, wheel, from Old English trendel; akin to Old English trendan to revolve

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/treadmill

c : a mill worked by persons treading on steps on the periphery of a wide wheel having a horizontal axis

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tread

tread 2 of 2 noun 1 a(1) : the part of a wheel or tire that makes contact with a road or rail

Italics mine.

This sounds more like convergent evolution rather than a shared root.

Tread derives from Middle English treden; the difference here is to step vs to roll. The latter definition you cite is a newer usage (from the 20th century) which is more directly analogous to the tread on the bottom of one's shoe.

The use of a wheel in a treadmill seems more like an implementation detail; the obvious tie-in (IMO) is "persons treading on steps".

>vaguely treadmill

I meant to write:

vaguely like treadmill

”Type in haste, correct at leisure" - Me.

Like the quote: "Marry in haste, repent at leisure".

never heard that quote before, thanks for sharing!

Welcome.

If you liked that, you must read the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, if not already read.

He was a polymath: a businessman, a scientist, a diplomat, and much more.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Autobiography_of_Benjami...

>The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the traditional name for the unfinished record of his own life written by Benjamin Franklin from 1771 to 1790; however, Franklin appears to have called the work his Memoirs. Although it had a tortuous publication history after Franklin's death, this work has become one of the most famous and influential examples of an autobiography ever written.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

>Benjamin Franklin FRS FRSA FRSE (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705][Note 1] – April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a leading writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher.[1] Among the most influential intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States; a drafter and signer of the Declaration of Independence; and the first postmaster general.[2]

> Marry in haste, repent at leisure

"regret" at leisure would make more sense, because "repent" doesn't really have the right meaning (is more about wrongdoing/sin).

https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/married-in-haste.html

Phrases are sometimes literally meaningless.

> Marry in haste, repent at leisure

>"regret" at leisure would make more sense, because "repent" doesn't really have the right meaning (is more about wrongdoing/sin).

Makes sense, now that I read you say it, though I had not thought of that before.

> "regret" at leisure would make more sense

That wouldn't work at all; "regret" doesn't have an intransitive use. You have to be regretting something.

You also have to marry something. Maybe there's a pattern, or maybe poetry does not always follow the same grammatical specificity as prose, or maybe both.

you are right on both points.

there is a term for your latter point:

poetic licence:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artistic_license

aside: I realize i also kind of applied artistic licence in my comment here :), by not capitalizing the first words of my sentences, partly because feeling a bit lazy (on my mobile, typing is tedious and slow enough, even without switching case), and partly because I think single case (no concept of upper and lower case) is a better option.

sanskrit, for example, does not have upper and lower case, just one case, or maybe none.

go figure, er, i mean, go letter ;)

> You also have to marry something.

What? Where'd you learn English?

Take a look at the first two senses listed in wiktionary ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/marry#Etymology_1 ):

> 1. (intransitive) To enter into the conjugal or connubial state

> 2. (intransitive) To enter into marriage with one another.

Does the following sentence make sense? "I marry."

It's a transitive verb.

There's also "I walk", "I eat", "I run", and many more like those.

That's not an issue of the verb being obligatorily transitive, since it isn't. You really should look at some usage examples; this isn't a difficult or tricky question.

The problem in your sentence is that the plain form of a verb is used for states, not activities, and marrying is an activity.

"I am marrying today" is just as intransitive, but without the artificially induced grammatical error.

"I am marrying today."

That's not a valid sentence, unless the person you are to wed is named "Today". Such is stuff as Abbott and Costello cashed in on.

Of course, taken in context there may be implied antecedents in spoken dialog. Spoken dialog is often incomplete and rife with implied antecedents and frequently does not follow the rules of grammer. Sentence fragments and one-word sentences can about because of that.

It is valid and maybe easier to see with a comma. “I am marrying, today.” “Today, I will be marrying.” It is valid in the context of “i will be engaging in marriage, today (“today, i am entering into a covenant of marriage”)” but it wouldn’t be something that would be heard very often. it’s a more archaic usage.

Nope. The vowel changes significantly for both, but the presence/absence of "n" remains fixed.

"trundle" is related to "trend", also German "trent" and "entrinnen".

"tread" is related to "trot" and "trade".

how is tread related to trade?

It looks like "trade" changed meaning significantly between Middle English and now, even though they only converge all the way back in Proto-Indo-European.

ModE tread < MidE treden < OE tredan < PWG *tredan < PG *trudaną < PIE *dreh₂

ModE trade < MidE trade (meaning "track") < MLG trade < OSax trada < PG *tradō < PIE *dreh₂

Also possibly related, assuming we merge the PID *dre_ variants which all have similar meanings:

  tramp[le]
  trap (something that gets stepped on)
  dromedary
  palindrome (run back again)
  ? troll
  ? dorm (allegedly there's an old "sleep" meaning with the same spelling - this is unrelated to "dream, draugr" which means "deceive" though!)

To add, it is more "to move heavily" - it has a negative correlation to agility and speed.

Cars don't trundle, overloaded trucks do.

And beds!

Yes, and most of the robots I've seen tend to have a certain heavyweight chunkiness to them. I assume to keep them firmly planted and stable when around humans, lest they be knocked down and left unable to move.

Trundle seemed appropriate.

Fun piece of trivia, in the UK those (distance) measuring wheels are called "Trundle Wheels", which is a little redundant:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveyor%27s_wheel

I have a strong sense that modern use of this word is nearly all wiktionary's sense 5: "to move, heavily or clumsily". Wheels don't enter into it.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/trundle#Verb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33R6eoPoczs

They “trundle?” That’s a cool word.

I too like learning new words. Seems like a synonym for 'lumbering' minus the awkward part.

I don't understand why they don't enforce dumpsters like any other big city. Then again if there is perpetual incompetence in nyc, it probably means corrupted parties and individuals benefit from the situation somehow.

They’re starting to roll out trash containers in the city, should have been done years ago. There’s a bunch of interconnected factors: all residential buildings in NYC get municipal trash pickup (most other cities require private trash service for large apartment buildings), Manhattan doesn’t have many alleys so trash has to go out front, on-street parking blocks larger curbside bins and using exclusively wheeled cans would crowd the sidewalks. They finally decided to remove some parking spaces to allow for large curbside bins.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/p1ohd...

Ok that's clever. I suspect if would be difficult in many places to find enough pavement slots without re-routing a lot of cables and pipes. And yet, the Dutch must have introduced this solution relatively recently - I guess they already run all their cables and pipes below the road, not the pavement? I know that while in my street the gas, water, and drains run under the road, the electricity supply is under the pavement.

You know what crowds the sidewalks worse than wheel bins? Having that same volume of trash bagged and leaking all over the place sustaining local rat populations. Honestly everything you mentioned as a potential con sounds like an improvement to the existing state of affairs.

Lack of space. A trash pile that is gone in 24 to 48 hours isn't permanent - whereas a dumpster is. Not to mention, access to that dumpster by a truck would be difficult.

Hypothetical, but when you have a single block of 10 buildings, each housing 500 people - the trash generated is a lot and if each were to have their own dumpster parked outside, where would cars or delivery trucks park? If parking is allowed between the dumpsters, how would the trucks access those dumpsters? There's no room to park them off-street because the buildings typically abut next to each other without alleys in between.

That's without even mentioning that even if multiple buildings share a dumpster - then you run into the question of how do you deal with illegal dumping? How do you bill each building for trash removal? See: "The Absurd Problem of New York City Trash" by NY Times (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/02/upshot/nyc-tr...)

No paywall version: https://archive.ph/XFAFg

Discussion on that article: https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/1b5i1xk/the_...

A study: https://manhattan.institute/article/innovative-waste-managem...

What I'm trying to get at is that the trash problem in NYC, and any proposed solution, raises a lot more questions than anything else.

I for one, would love to see Amsterdam inspired under-sidewalk bins (https://www.core77.com/posts/102208/Amsterdams-Smart-System-...)

Its permanent if the pile is renewed daily by business owners who refuse to contract sufficient trash service. Somehow big cities around the world have solved dumpsters and not having trash for the rats to go through on the street. No clue why theres always excuses for this issue for nyc.

Isn’t it because they don’t have alleys?

You don’t need an alley for trash you just need to be slightly less greedy and plan for it in your building plans over more leasable space. This is somehow only an intractable issue for nyc.

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