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Comment by dsrguru | Hacker News Reader

This is terrifying. If they successfully lobby to legalize commercial drones in low-flying airspace, the peaceful sky will be polluted with flying robots (we've destroyed the terrestrial environment already, seriously don't need to destroy the sky too), businesses would have access to terrifying surveillance, criminals/terrorists could remotely break into drones or fly their own disguised to look like commercial ones (and load them with cameras or weapons), etc. All so Amazon could be slightly faster than Instacart?

FYI I'm not a luddite and I recognize the increased convenience that faster shipping would provide and the potential other gains that would come of commercial drones. But the tradeoff just doesn't seem worth it here at all.

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Flying drones would offset the number of cars and trucks that are roaming around our streets, highways, and bridge by putting them into the sky. Would it be better or worse to replace all of those cars that come in/out of a Wal-mart, Target, and Safeway with drones? I have no idea, but I'm excited to find out.

Regarding your other concerns, there was an interesting episode of Freakonomics with Clay Shirky about the Internet, and how it gets regulated (or doesn't) by the fears of what it could do. A relevant exchange with the host starts here [1] at 20:08. The audio transcript is also available and Ctrl-F to "Let me ask you this kind of more." Shirky says:

"... there’s a large class of problems that you don’t solve until you have them. Right? You hear all of the ethicists saying oh the technology is outrunning ethics, to which the pragmatist answer is that’s exactly what we want. If you and I were to sit down right now and say well let’s draw up regulations for time travel and telekinesis we would, it’s a ridiculous question."

[1] http://freakonomics.com/2013/11/14/who-runs-the-internet-a-n...

>FYI I'm not a luddite

yes, man, have you read about mid 19th century auto laws in England?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locomotive_Act

"The 1865 act required all road locomotives, which included automobiles, to travel at a maximum of 4 mph (6 km/h) in the country and 2 mph (3 km/h) in towns and have a crew of three travel, one of whom should carry a red flag walking 60 yards (55 m) ahead of each vehicle. "

"In addition to any concerns about the state of the roads, by the 1860s, there was concern that the widespread use of traction engines, such as road locomotives and agricultural engines, would endanger the safety of the public. It was feared that engines and their trailers might cause fatal accidents, scare horses, block narrow lanes, and disturb the locals by operating at night. "

My terrestrial environment is not destroyed at all. In fact it is quite pleasant.

The occasional buzzing quadra-copter would be sweet music compared to the infernal leaf blowers and lawn-care equipment that gets a frequent workout.

These aren't going to end the world. Especially if it saves lots of people making lots of small trips to the shops for single items. In fact I would say they would make a positive contribution to quality of life.

>FYI I'm not a luddite But you are talking like one.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. But if you really are serious, criminals can already use drones and there is no profitable reason any private business would want to track you with drones (and if it did become an issue we could outlaw that specifically without stopping legitimate uses of drones.)

As far as "polluting the sky" that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Flying robots delivering packages everywhere sounds incredibly awesome to me, and if not, well we can't please everyone's aesthetic preference. Our current infrastructure of cars and pavement everywhere isn't particularly beautiful as it is. Electric drones flying back and forth don't require any new infrastructure or "destroy the sky".

I also doubt there would be drone's everywhere. Maybe, but I'm guessing it'd just be something you occasionally see. You might not notice it at all depending how high they fly.

It seems like such a massive optimization over the driver-and-gas-truck-around-town solution, that when I think more long-term, it just feels inevitable that this technology will be everywhere, even though I had the same reaction as you. "Terrifying".

>WAAA WAAA NIMBY NIMBY WAAAA

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