Recag/C4_4 · Datasets at Hugging Face

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Oh course the really tricky part is how fast and reliable hand over of goods is expected to work, given Amazon already have unreliable delivery estimates, as reported by Market Oracle and experienced personally!
If this ever became a reality then how long before you would have bandits taking to the skies to hunt down and rob/destroy these motherships?
Could make quite a good haul if you hit the one in the rich neighborhoods where they are stocked with lots of nice high end goods.
Re: Jimboom Re: Sky Pirates?
"......Could make quite a good haul if you hit the one in the rich neighborhoods where they are stocked with lots of nice high end goods." Just remotely hack the controls for one hovering over Hollywood and have it land in somewhere lawless/extradition-free like Venezuala, Ecuador or Oakland.
All I got in my head from this was..
It is I, the spectaculous Don Karnage! My bloodthirsty horde is on an intercept course with you. We will be shooting you and looting you in precisely... Ten minutes. Felicitations!
Wonder if I can order a surface-2-Air from Russian Amazon for next day delivery?
No, but I hear you can get them from Syrian Hot Stocks soonish.
My long-awaited flying car turns out to be flying car(dboard).
What about that jet stream thingy, huh? Winds at 250MPH won't have any effect on a descending drone? Maybe they'll email back to you the coordinates where the drone actually landed and you can go pick it up, huh?
and the jetsream don't mix.
Perhaps Amazon are trying to out do El Reg in the Paper Airplane Altitude race?
The Jetstream begins at around 70,000 ft so at 45,000 the mother drone won't be affected, you can get hurricane force winds at 45,000 though. I once flew all the way back to London from California with 80MPH tail winds most of the way and we landed more than half an hour early.
If they do have an airship on station eventually I hope it's kitted out steampunk style.
We know that airships, besides their obvious limitations, can't lift much more than a few lorry loads. Payload on the Hindenburg, one of the biggest ever, was about 40 tonnes. It's a lot of Smarties, but not many cases of wine. You have to wonder if being able to distribute over an area of, say, 100 sq. km. could be done a lot more cheaply with some strategically placed container lorries.
On the other hand, there's the image of Les Nessman of the TV show "WKRP in Cincinnati" dropping live turkeys from a helicopter as a Thanksgiving promotion. Now that's a distribution system that doesn't even need drones!
Great WKRP reference ... however it wasn't Les Nessman dropping the Turkeys - he was doing the live commentary on the ground.describing the dots appearing in the sky descending to the earth and how any moment parachutes must open and then how turkeys were thudding into the ground all around him and ending up with (referencing the Hindenburg newsreel) "oh the humanity the humanity" - it was Mr Carlson dropping the turkeys because, he explained afterwards, "no-one told me turkeys can't fly". Clearly a great program as it must be 35 years since I saw the episode but that section remains in my memory!
"But the turkey drop thing is real:"
About the same time as the Hindenberg, the US navy was experimenting with airships (google "Akron class") that carried 60 crew, 8 machine guns, plus five aircraft weighing about a tonne each. And, presumably, it must've also carried fuel, arms and ammo for the aircraft. It's not huge, but it's considerably bigger than any truck I've ever seen.
And there's a possibility that technology may have advanced in the 80-odd years since then, and Amazon's version could be considerably larger still.
"And there's a possibility that technology may have advanced in the 80-odd years since then, and Amazon's version could be considerably larger still."
Technology has advanced a great deal, but helium or hydrogen will still give the same amount of lift as it did 100 years ago.
So your example airship can carry at most one trucks-worth of drones & goods. How many trucks already go to any large sporting event anyway to provide all the foam fingers and hotdogs? One more truck parked outside with a roof platform for drone take-off & landing isn't going to add to the congestion much is it?
And unless you are going to use hydrogen for lift (not out of the question *) the airship leaks irreplaceable helium into the atmosphere from where it escapes to space.
As others have pointed out - this is a terribly inefficient delivery platform. At best, it would be an advertising gimmick.
* Contrary to popular belief, hydrogen is not really that dangerous as lifting fluid. Recent evidence suggests for example that the Hindenburg's outer cover caught fire having been inadequately fire- and spark/lightning-proofed. When the hydrogen did catch it moved upwards as it burned. The casualties died from falling and burning wreckage, not hydrogen. Modern materials could mitigate the risks to an acceptable level. And we're not likely to run out of hydrogen any time soon whereas we have a finite - and rapidly diminishing - supply of helium unless and until we can harvest it from elsewhere in the solar system.
"Les Nessman of the TV show "WKRP in Cincinnati" dropping live turkeys from a helicopter as a Thanksgiving promotion."
Big thumbs up for that. Once of the funniest moments ever on TV!
the actual drop starts at about 19 mins.
Phish a large group of induhviduals before said induhviduals go to a stadium.
Sooner or later something like this will happen, trolling by drone.
I'm all for a fantastic future. I'd personally be very happy if Amazon could deliver to me by drone but I just can't see how it will faster or cheaper than using a human on a moped.
Sshh! Don't let Amazon hear you, or they will corner the flying pizza market as well.
"It works for pizzas (which are heavy, delicate and time sensitive). We'd need significant improvements in power storage density and AI before a drone would be a better solution than a human on a moped"
All ready got that covered: orbital pizzas!
Still a few bugs in the system though.
They stare at the order on their screen for two days.
Then it's being shipped for two days.
Then it's 'Out For Delivery' for two days.
Then it's 'Delayed by weather' for two days.
That's what '2 Day' shipping means. Over a week.
At least 'The Grand Tour' car show is worth it.
Not my experience. Two day shipping usually means two day delivery in my neck of the woods. Rarely it has taken as much as five. And I get deliveries on Sundays.
But two day shipping does not mean two day order fulfillment, and it says that in the ToS.
It was noted that, "...two day shipping does not mean two day order fulfillment..."
Historically, before signing up for Prime, Amazon would ship the order within hours after placing the order. I'd typically receive items in three or four days by regular mail.
Now with Prime, it takes a week. Because they faff about for several days before even beginning the "fulfillment" process.
One recent example was crystal clear. Their predicted "2 day" delivery, as shown on the order summary, was a full week. Before any further delays.
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Because it's been Xmas lately.
Point remains valid. "2 days" is B.S. YMMV.
Two days plus one half day for fulfillment if I order at night is usual from key click to ripping open the box for me (if it is a prime deal). It is why I re-upped and re-upped again, even when the price for doing so went up. If they couldn't live up to the promise I wouldn't pay miller fer privilege.
Including an order that went in on the evening of Wednesday the 21st and the box was in my hands on Christmas Eve. And three orders for stuff that were put in on the previous Monday morning and were in my hands by that Wednesday night.
I admit that when I ordered that "home NAS" thing the Reg writer de jour was frothing over they told me that it would take weeks to deliver on account of them not actually having any in stock yet - so I cancelled the order and Amazon were happy to let me do that.
I also had one order listed as prime that took five days to deliver, but that one was NOT shipped by Amazon, but by the vendor. Can't blame Amazon for that. That ball is squarely in the vendor's court (though they did deliver within the terms of service, even so, so there were no formal grounds for complaint).
Returns, in the rare event I've had to make them (I think four times in as many years), have been a dream to conduct too. When I contrast this experience with what I went through when I lived and shopped in the UK I laugh 'till I cry. Yeah, "unfair" practice is what is killing the high street vendor.
Amazon, right here, right now = toasted bacon sandwich with HP sauce good.
A few months back, I put in an order at about 8pm on a Friday evening. The box was delivered about noon the following day. I was most chuffed.
Especially as I'd gone for the free delivery option. And because it was a case of wine.
Stevie suggested "You're living in the wrong place..."
As I've explained, they're taking several days to accomplish the so-called "fulfillment" step (an internal process that occurs wholly within the walls of their warehouse).
This step has nothing to do with where I live (beyond being in Canada, in case that matters).
Historically, this step used to require mere hours. Ever since I've signed up to Prime, it now requires several days. I've got ten orders since mid-December, and they're all about the same. Several days from ordering to 'Shipped'.
Based on my experience, Prime "2 day" shipping is a bit slower than regular shipping. In part, because they're slower to "fulfill" the order. And in part perhaps due to Xmas.
Perhaps it was not wise of Amazon to release 'The Grand Tour' to Prime Video (in Canada and elsewhere) just two weeks before Xmas?
USA and UK likely didn't experience the same Xmas aligned Prime spike, as TGT was released to Prime in the USA and UK a month earlier. That timing may be the explanation for the obviously differing experience.
I assume all the comments about 2-day Prime delivery must be from US readers as in the UK it's 1-day delivery and in my experience over last couple of years it's almost 100% reliable (only one problem when Amazon emailed me to apologize that they'd lost one of my orders in transit and were resending it). Many times I've placed orders in middle of one day and picked it up from an Amazon locker on my way home from work the next day.
"almost 100% reliable" --- agreed.
Son told me at 16:40 on the 27th that he had "not yet got round" to purchasing a secret santa gift for a visit to the family the following evening. 10 minutes later we had ordered it, 1 hour later it was dispatched and it arrived in Middlesbrough the next morning, about 12 hours before we did.
Next day delivery of in stock Prime items is nearly always 100% reliable in my experience --- so much so we didn't even bother buying a back up gift in case it hadn't arrived.
>Where the heck do you live it takes that long to ship to?
How about to UK postcode TDCU 1ZZ?
Y'can't put Amazon in the frame for postal delivery rates that rival continental drift in speed. That's down to The Usual Suspects.
TDCU 1ZZ is a perfectly good British Post Code it is for the overseas territory of Tristan da Cunha it was assigned in 2005 so Amazon should have managed to find it by now.
On sequential days, I ordered three items. The first item ordered on the first day was shipped "Two-Day", the next two items ordered on the second were shipped "Regular" (Canada Post).
Canada Post delivered their two items today. In just less than two business days.
I'm still waiting for the "Two-Day" item which was ordered a day before the others.
Lesson learned. "Two-Day" is, in my case, bogus. It's slower than Regular. YMMV.
I'll stick to "Regular" shipping from now on.
Rather than concentrating on all the minutiae of how this could work I think its probably simpler to see this as a "defensive" patent ... Amazon probably remembered how they managed to prevent anyone else from doing "1-Click" ordering and as they brainstormed drone ideas came up with the possibility of delivering from flying warehouses so dropped off a patent so that if competitors came up with the same idea they could release the lawyers to stop them.
Those sort of patents should have a maximum life of 12 months after which it must be clearly demonstrated that the patent holder is taking it seriously and actually working on producing the patented item or they lose it.
That's already in patent law. They must actually produce the product or a competitor can challenge it on inactivity grounds.
[Citation needed], because if you were right, we would never have a problem with submarine patents.
AFAIK, The only inactivity that matters is a failure to take action against known infringers of a patent - which can reduce or remove the damages paid by the infringer if the court believes that inactivity was intended to lure the defendant into further infringement.
I believe that Vic is correct. I've never seen anything about patents requiring 'activity' to remain valid. It doesn't even make sense.
Submarine Patents were diminished by release of the Patent Applications. Essentially, forcing the submarines to the surface.
"I've never seen anything about patents requiring 'activity' to remain valid. It doesn't even make sense."
Just to clarify, this is a proposal, not a declaration of existing processes. What I'm proposing would not affect the purchasing of active patents for existing products by patent licensing companies (or trolls), but would be intended to torpedo the likes of Amazon filing for patents in advance of a "discovery" such as the one the article is about because they are purely trying to prohibit future development by anyone just in case they can make a business case for some, currently, pie in the sky theory.
Our responses were to Chas 9 where he offered, "That's already in patent law... Etc."
From 45000 ft all it would need is a simple plain wing to get a bit of range. a guidance system and a parachute for braking. Attach to the packaging and drop.
No need for a powered drone.
I would be a bit concerned about the reliability of the parachute deployment as I do not relish having to use a JCB to retrieve my delivery.
So, Amazon is really SkyNET?
Laws would have to be written to allow this. How likely is that to happen without bribes?
Re: So, Amazon is really SkyNET?
There's nothing to say but "Launch Angel Interceptors".
"they can navigate horizontally toward a user specified delivery location using little to no power, other than to stabilize the UAV and/or guide the direction of descent,"
I bet the patent will run out before such a product delivery system is viable or wanted.
This would be easy to drive out of business.
Just order a bunch of stuff and refuse delivery or return to vendor when the tme comes.

Oh course the really tricky part is how fast and reliable hand over of goods is expected to work, given Amazon already have unreliable delivery estimates, as reported by Market Oracle and experienced personally!

If this ever became a reality then how long before you would have bandits taking to the skies to hunt down and rob/destroy these motherships?

Could make quite a good haul if you hit the one in the rich neighborhoods where they are stocked with lots of nice high end goods.

Re: Jimboom Re: Sky Pirates?

"......Could make quite a good haul if you hit the one in the rich neighborhoods where they are stocked with lots of nice high end goods." Just remotely hack the controls for one hovering over Hollywood and have it land in somewhere lawless/extradition-free like Venezuala, Ecuador or Oakland.

All I got in my head from this was..

It is I, the spectaculous Don Karnage! My bloodthirsty horde is on an intercept course with you. We will be shooting you and looting you in precisely... Ten minutes. Felicitations!

Wonder if I can order a surface-2-Air from Russian Amazon for next day delivery?

No, but I hear you can get them from Syrian Hot Stocks soonish.

My long-awaited flying car turns out to be flying car(dboard).

What about that jet stream thingy, huh? Winds at 250MPH won't have any effect on a descending drone? Maybe they'll email back to you the coordinates where the drone actually landed and you can go pick it up, huh?

and the jetsream don't mix.

Perhaps Amazon are trying to out do El Reg in the Paper Airplane Altitude race?

The Jetstream begins at around 70,000 ft so at 45,000 the mother drone won't be affected, you can get hurricane force winds at 45,000 though. I once flew all the way back to London from California with 80MPH tail winds most of the way and we landed more than half an hour early.

If they do have an airship on station eventually I hope it's kitted out steampunk style.

We know that airships, besides their obvious limitations, can't lift much more than a few lorry loads. Payload on the Hindenburg, one of the biggest ever, was about 40 tonnes. It's a lot of Smarties, but not many cases of wine. You have to wonder if being able to distribute over an area of, say, 100 sq. km. could be done a lot more cheaply with some strategically placed container lorries.

On the other hand, there's the image of Les Nessman of the TV show "WKRP in Cincinnati" dropping live turkeys from a helicopter as a Thanksgiving promotion. Now that's a distribution system that doesn't even need drones!

Great WKRP reference ... however it wasn't Les Nessman dropping the Turkeys - he was doing the live commentary on the ground.describing the dots appearing in the sky descending to the earth and how any moment parachutes must open and then how turkeys were thudding into the ground all around him and ending up with (referencing the Hindenburg newsreel) "oh the humanity the humanity" - it was Mr Carlson dropping the turkeys because, he explained afterwards, "no-one told me turkeys can't fly". Clearly a great program as it must be 35 years since I saw the episode but that section remains in my memory!

"But the turkey drop thing is real:"

About the same time as the Hindenberg, the US navy was experimenting with airships (google "Akron class") that carried 60 crew, 8 machine guns, plus five aircraft weighing about a tonne each. And, presumably, it must've also carried fuel, arms and ammo for the aircraft. It's not huge, but it's considerably bigger than any truck I've ever seen.

And there's a possibility that technology may have advanced in the 80-odd years since then, and Amazon's version could be considerably larger still.

"And there's a possibility that technology may have advanced in the 80-odd years since then, and Amazon's version could be considerably larger still."

Technology has advanced a great deal, but helium or hydrogen will still give the same amount of lift as it did 100 years ago.

So your example airship can carry at most one trucks-worth of drones & goods. How many trucks already go to any large sporting event anyway to provide all the foam fingers and hotdogs? One more truck parked outside with a roof platform for drone take-off & landing isn't going to add to the congestion much is it?

And unless you are going to use hydrogen for lift (not out of the question *) the airship leaks irreplaceable helium into the atmosphere from where it escapes to space.

As others have pointed out - this is a terribly inefficient delivery platform. At best, it would be an advertising gimmick.

* Contrary to popular belief, hydrogen is not really that dangerous as lifting fluid. Recent evidence suggests for example that the Hindenburg's outer cover caught fire having been inadequately fire- and spark/lightning-proofed. When the hydrogen did catch it moved upwards as it burned. The casualties died from falling and burning wreckage, not hydrogen. Modern materials could mitigate the risks to an acceptable level. And we're not likely to run out of hydrogen any time soon whereas we have a finite - and rapidly diminishing - supply of helium unless and until we can harvest it from elsewhere in the solar system.

"Les Nessman of the TV show "WKRP in Cincinnati" dropping live turkeys from a helicopter as a Thanksgiving promotion."

Big thumbs up for that. Once of the funniest moments ever on TV!

the actual drop starts at about 19 mins.

Phish a large group of induhviduals before said induhviduals go to a stadium.

Sooner or later something like this will happen, trolling by drone.

I'm all for a fantastic future. I'd personally be very happy if Amazon could deliver to me by drone but I just can't see how it will faster or cheaper than using a human on a moped.

Sshh! Don't let Amazon hear you, or they will corner the flying pizza market as well.

"It works for pizzas (which are heavy, delicate and time sensitive). We'd need significant improvements in power storage density and AI before a drone would be a better solution than a human on a moped"

All ready got that covered: orbital pizzas!

Still a few bugs in the system though.

They stare at the order on their screen for two days.

Then it's being shipped for two days.

Then it's 'Out For Delivery' for two days.

Then it's 'Delayed by weather' for two days.

That's what '2 Day' shipping means. Over a week.

At least 'The Grand Tour' car show is worth it.

Not my experience. Two day shipping usually means two day delivery in my neck of the woods. Rarely it has taken as much as five. And I get deliveries on Sundays.

But two day shipping does not mean two day order fulfillment, and it says that in the ToS.

It was noted that, "...two day shipping does not mean two day order fulfillment..."

Historically, before signing up for Prime, Amazon would ship the order within *hours* after placing the order. I'd typically receive items in three or four days by regular mail.

Now with Prime, it takes a week. Because they faff about for several days before even beginning the "fulfillment" process.

One recent example was crystal clear. Their predicted "2 day" delivery, as shown on the order summary, was a full week. Before any further delays.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Because it's been Xmas lately.

Point remains valid. "2 days" is B.S. YMMV.

Two days plus one half day for fulfillment if I order at night is usual from key click to ripping open the box for me (if it is a prime deal). It is why I re-upped and re-upped again, even when the price for doing so went up. If they couldn't live up to the promise I wouldn't pay miller fer privilege.

Including an order that went in on the evening of Wednesday the 21st and the box was in my hands on Christmas Eve. And three orders for stuff that were put in on the previous Monday morning and were in my hands by that Wednesday night.

I admit that when I ordered that "home NAS" thing the Reg writer de jour was frothing over they told me that it would take weeks to deliver on account of them not actually having any in stock yet - so I cancelled the order and Amazon were happy to let me do that.

I also had one order listed as prime that took five days to deliver, but that one was NOT shipped by Amazon, but by the vendor. Can't blame *Amazon* for that. That ball is squarely in the vendor's court (though they did deliver within the terms of service, even so, so there were no formal grounds for complaint).

Returns, in the rare event I've had to make them (I think four times in as many years), have been a dream to conduct too. When I contrast this experience with what I went through when I lived and shopped in the UK I laugh 'till I cry. Yeah, "unfair" practice is what is killing the high street vendor.

Amazon, right here, right now = toasted bacon sandwich with HP sauce good.

A few months back, I put in an order at about 8pm on a Friday evening. The box was delivered about noon the following day. I was most chuffed.

Especially as I'd gone for the free delivery option. And because it was a case of wine.

Stevie suggested "You're living in the wrong place..."

As I've explained, they're taking several days to accomplish the so-called "fulfillment" step (an internal process that occurs wholly within the walls of their warehouse).

This step has nothing to do with where I live (beyond being in Canada, in case that matters).

Historically, this step used to require mere hours. Ever since I've signed up to Prime, it now requires several days. I've got ten orders since mid-December, and they're all about the same. Several days from ordering to 'Shipped'.

Based on my experience, Prime "2 day" shipping is a bit slower than regular shipping. In part, because they're slower to "fulfill" the order. And in part perhaps due to Xmas.

Perhaps it was not wise of Amazon to release 'The Grand Tour' to Prime Video (in Canada and elsewhere) just two weeks before Xmas?

USA and UK likely didn't experience the same Xmas aligned Prime spike, as TGT was released to Prime in the USA and UK a month earlier. That timing may be the explanation for the obviously differing experience.

I assume all the comments about 2-day Prime delivery must be from US readers as in the UK it's 1-day delivery and in my experience over last couple of years it's almost 100% reliable (only one problem when Amazon emailed me to apologize that they'd lost one of my orders in transit and were resending it). Many times I've placed orders in middle of one day and picked it up from an Amazon locker on my way home from work the next day.

"almost 100% reliable" --- agreed.

Son told me at 16:40 on the 27th that he had "not yet got round" to purchasing a secret santa gift for a visit to the family the following evening. 10 minutes later we had ordered it, 1 hour later it was dispatched and it arrived in Middlesbrough the next morning, about 12 hours before we did.

Next day delivery of in stock Prime items is nearly always 100% reliable in my experience --- so much so we didn't even bother buying a back up gift in case it hadn't arrived.

>Where the heck do you live it takes that long to ship to?

How about to UK postcode TDCU 1ZZ?

Y'can't put Amazon in the frame for postal delivery rates that rival continental drift in speed. That's down to The Usual Suspects.

TDCU 1ZZ is a perfectly good British Post Code it is for the overseas territory of Tristan da Cunha it was assigned in 2005 so Amazon should have managed to find it by now.

On sequential days, I ordered three items. The first item ordered on the first day was shipped "Two-Day", the next two items ordered on the second were shipped "Regular" (Canada Post).

Canada Post delivered their two items today. In just less than two business days.

I'm still waiting for the "Two-Day" item which was ordered a day before the others.

Lesson learned. "Two-Day" is, in my case, bogus. It's slower than Regular. YMMV.

I'll stick to "Regular" shipping from now on.

Rather than concentrating on all the minutiae of how this could work I think its probably simpler to see this as a "defensive" patent ... Amazon probably remembered how they managed to prevent anyone else from doing "1-Click" ordering and as they brainstormed drone ideas came up with the possibility of delivering from flying warehouses so dropped off a patent so that if competitors came up with the same idea they could release the lawyers to stop them.

Those sort of patents should have a maximum life of 12 months after which it must be clearly demonstrated that the patent holder is taking it seriously and actually working on producing the patented item or they lose it.

That's already in patent law. They must actually produce the product or a competitor can challenge it on inactivity grounds.

[Citation needed], because if you were right, we would never have a problem with submarine patents.

AFAIK, The only inactivity that matters is a failure to take action against known infringers of a patent - which can reduce or remove the damages paid by the infringer if the court believes that inactivity was intended to lure the defendant into further infringement.

I believe that Vic is correct. I've never seen anything about patents requiring 'activity' to remain valid. It doesn't even make sense.

Submarine Patents were diminished by release of the Patent Applications. Essentially, forcing the submarines to the surface.

"I've never seen anything about patents requiring 'activity' to remain valid. It doesn't even make sense."

Just to clarify, this is a proposal, not a declaration of existing processes. What I'm proposing would not affect the purchasing of active patents for existing products by patent licensing companies (or trolls), but would be intended to torpedo the likes of Amazon filing for patents in advance of a "discovery" such as the one the article is about because they are purely trying to prohibit future development by *anyone* just in case they can make a business case for some, currently, pie in the sky theory.

Our responses were to Chas 9 where he offered, "That's already in patent law... Etc."

From 45000 ft all it would need is a simple plain wing to get a bit of range. a guidance system and a parachute for braking. Attach to the packaging and drop.

No need for a powered drone.

I would be a bit concerned about the reliability of the parachute deployment as I do not relish having to use a JCB to retrieve my delivery.

So, Amazon is really SkyNET?

Laws would have to be written to allow this. How likely is that to happen without bribes?

Re: So, Amazon is really SkyNET?

There's nothing to say but "Launch Angel Interceptors".

"they can navigate horizontally toward a user specified delivery location using little to no power, other than to stabilize the UAV and/or guide the direction of descent,"

I bet the patent will run out before such a product delivery system is viable or wanted.

This would be easy to drive out of business.

Just order a bunch of stuff and refuse delivery or return to vendor when the tme comes.