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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

“Some of the College Station residents who have complained about the noise say they still largely support the testing of drones. But many believe Amazon miscalculated by locating its depot close to so many residences.”

I agree that it seems improper to characterise these complaints as NIMBYism. The criticism is thoughtful, targeted and rises as much from Amazon’s lack of communication as from its drones’ noise.

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That quote shows that "NIMBY" is especially proper and fitting! They support the idea in theory, but don't want it to be close to them. Like it should be in someone else's backyard.

The real question is if Amazon developers low noise drones will the people than allow them, or are they completely anti-drone.

> real question is if Amazon developers low noise drones will the people than allow them, or are they completely anti-drone

Who in the article seems anti-drone? They all seemed to go out of their way to hedge complaints.

Amazon shouldn’t have located a depot, which necessitates low flying and presumably lots of noisy acceleration, in a residential neighbourhood. They ought to have done what they did in the other examples: base out of residential-adjacent industrial areas.

There's a reason that so many airports are outside of cities, or in areas where not-so-rich people live.

Intermodals are similar. We had one that tried to set up in an area where the residents aren't so well-off, but they were able to shoot it down, anyway. People are getting better at organizing.

Almost all airports start out outside the city, even the smaller ones.

Cities grow around them.

NIMBY is a reality that has to be taken into account; but often the problems associated with it are "small enough" that money solves it - who would complain about the Amazon drone-depot behind them if Amazon was paying their property tax to have it there?

> Who in the article seems anti-drone? They all seemed to go out of their way to hedge complaints.

Dunno about them being completely anti-drone, but at least one person was worried about the drones camera:-

> A parent said their teenage daughter feared using the swimming pool because of the drone’s camera. (Amazon says it faces forward, not down).

But Amazon (and to be "fair" to Amazon, pretty much every large tech company) has had issues with data processed by their devices which the users of those devices wouldn't want handled by humans. Pretty much every smart speaker has had incidents with their reviewers being given access to voice recordings not intended for the speaker, in some cases it being recordings of kids. Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars.

So yeah, I too would be wary of what imagery drones flying over my private space would be taking. Sure Amazon says the camera(s) only point forward, but at this point I'm not surprised people trust tech companies as far as they can throw them.

EDIT: My follow up question to Amazon about the camera(s) on the drone would have been "If the camera only points forward, how does the drone determine that the drop off spot for any delivery is safe at the time of drop off without "looking" down?"

Ring (an amazon-owned company) had to pay a fine for allowing employees unfettered access to people's footage. [1] No need to "be fair" to Amazon here by pointing out other tech companies.

[1]: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/05/...

"Fair" did fell like the wrong wording, but it was the best I could articulate at the time. But yeah your right. It doesn't make Amazon any less of a scumbag just because everyone else is being just as scummy too.

> how does the drone determine that the drop off spot for any delivery is safe at the time of drop off without "looking" down?

I couldn't get the question out of my head, so I went digging, and thought I would reply to myself with the answer in case anyone was wondering.

It seems to be that the drone changes orientation by 90 degrees during travel then the orientation it uses for take off and landing. there are not only forward facing cameras, but camera mounted on the left and right sides of the drone and a camera facing backwards.

So during its "travel phase" of flight no camera is pointing at the ground, but when the drone plans to drop off a package, it rotates its orientation 90 degrees so the camera that would be facing the rear during travel would now be looking at the ground.

The prospect of having drones flying over my backyard for any reason is undesirable even if they are completely silent.

For me it depends on altitude. If they're at the height of the average Cessna, then I'm cool with it. I don't want drones buzzing 100ft above my head though.

Can either one of you elaborate why? Supposed they were absolutely silent, why would it bother you if they fly 100 feet over your backyard?

I don't like seeing them in general as an aesthetic matter. I would be disappointed if I was under a drone highway.

Same reason why I oppose mass billboards in the sky.

None of these things will ever be 100% safe, so a steady stream of one per minute as described in the article poses an actual safety risk.

I'm also not a fan of corporations having what amounts to realtime surveillance video of me any time I'm outside of my house.

The numbers I saw were about 400 feet. The bigger issue is that they aren't manned and are presumably flying at a greater frequency than conventional planes. My concern would be that they fail and fly into the side of my house at full speed. I also don't trust Amazon not to be using these drones for surveillance.

This is one of those things where knowledge makes it bad. As a personal example, having coyotes in my literal backyard on a daily basis is not something I would want. That it happens pretty much every day without me realizing it, though, shows it really shouldn't be a concern of mine. Other than making sure I have protection for any backyard chickens...

I'd be fine with Amazon drones flying over my house, as long as Amazon pays a fair usage fee. Usually it'd be pay-per-use, but for companies of their size I'm thinking of introducing monthly enterprise subscriptions. Contact my sales team for further information!

Oh, and SSO is obviously enterprise only.

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