I’ve already written one prediction about autonomous cars — that they’ll be far later to the market than most pundits and autonomous car inventors are suggesting. Today’s prediction is about a tangentially-related technology — aerial delivery drones. These drones are definitely coming just as fast as regulators will allow them, but I don’t think they’ll be implemented in the way people expect. What we’ll see, I predict, is something I call Pizza-to-the-Neighborhood or PTTN.
Aerial drones are a new type of distribution network operating in a new kind of ether. They don’t travel on roads and neither do they travel in what we conventionally think of as airspace. Flying over cities, which is where these delivery drones are going to be used, airplanes are legally restricted from operating below 1000 feet unless they are actively taking-off or landing. Helicopters get to break this rule a bit because they can claim to be taking-off or landing almost anywhere, but fixed-wing aircraft have to stay above 1000 feet, making below 1000 feet the emerging realm of autonomous drones.
At this very moment, what I am about to describe can’t legally exist in most of the USA. The current drone rules from the Federal Aviation Administration, which is the sole agency that regulates air traffic (your state or city have no real say in these things — it’s a federal jurisdiction) are that drones have to be flown by licensed pilots. But already the concept of licensing is in flux when it comes to drone pilots. We’re moving quickly toward something less than a U.S. Commercial or Private Pilot License to more of a drone pilot certificate. And as soon as autonomous systems can be shown to be as safe or safer than human pilots, they’ll take over most drone piloting duties.
Self-flying drones are coming faster than self-driving cars first because they have their own roadway, which is that airspace above structures and below 1000 feet. Autonomous drones are unlikely to run into children, pets, or moving cars, trucks, or airplanes as long as they remain above structures and below 1000 feet.
What’s still missing from this vision, however, is a drone network that makes economic sense. Yes, there’s plenty of dot-com inspired if we build it they will come, but there’s also plenty of experience to suggest that what we’ll get won’t be a drone utopia, either. For drones to work in the longer run they have to make money or allow someone else to make money. They have to pay their way.
We’ve seen this before in earlier distribution networks for electricity, natural gas, telephone, cable TV, and Internet service. Shortly it will be time to apply the lessons learned from those roll-outs to the new drone networks.
There are fundamentally two different types of distribution networks — those that deliver commodity services and those that deliver personalized services. A commodity network is electricity, natural gas, water or — in the reverse direction — sewer service. The methane molecules or electrons delivered to your home aren’t marked with your address. They are just stuffed in a pipe at the head end and other molecules or electrons come out of the pipe at your house. A modified version of a commodity network is a traditional cable TV (CATV) system where everyone gets to choose from the same menu of one-way services, just there is a filter at your house that doesn’t let you get HBO unless you paid extra for it.
Phone and Internet service is different because every electron delivered was intended solely for your house. They ought to have no value to anyone else, but a very high value to you.
Commodity networks have relatively simple designs involving pipes or wires, valves or switches, and usually a service meter of some kind along the way. Commodity networks typically offer only one way for stuff to reach you, because having more than one possible route could mean loops that actually make service slower if it works at all. So if there is an alternate route on a commodity network it is normally turned off by a switch or a valve and used only occasionally to get around construction or a network outage.
Phone networks originally had a very different way of getting around this looping problem. Here is a picture of telephone wires in New York City in 1887. Remember the telephone was invented in 1876 and phone service didn’t begin in New York until 1879 so this is what the phone network looked like when it was only eight years old. Every city was like this because most telephone connections were point-to-point. In most cases there was a physical wire connecting your phone directly to all the other phones you most often needed to reach. It’s pretty clear that such point-to-point networks couldn’t scale and that some form of switching — in this case involving human telephone operators — had to be added if everyone was going to get a phone.
For telephone networks, scaling was made possible by first adding human switches and later by making those switches electro-mechanical (eliminating most human operators) when our telephones got dials. Remember telephone dials?
As digital computer networks emerged in the 1960s, institutions connected at will with the ARPAnet and similar commercial networks like Tymshare but there was the same problem of inadvertent structural loops causing what came to be known as packet storms that could bring the whole network crashing-down. But digital nodes were smart from the very beginning so Spanning Tree Protocols could find such physical loops and functionally shut them down through modified routing tables. This allowed us to have backbone networks where architecture was less a factor than monitoring and managing whatever it was we had to work with.
Now the economic challenge of for-profit computer networks was bringing-down costs so everyone could afford to participate. This was done in two ways. Early network providers like Compuserve and The Source were true digital utilities, providing their customers with expensive retail services created specifically to be sold. The Internet changed this model to one where services were either provided for free by us to each other (analogous to telephone service where our conversations were the content) or by ad-supported businesses like Yahoo. The other way to bring down network costs was by finding the cheapest way to get the most bits-per-second from one end of the Internet to your house. Initially this involved leveraging the telephone and cable TV wire plants, but eventually we reached speed limits with those. Getting broadband speeds up in the megabits-per-second looked like it would require a whole new physical network, this time built with optical fibers.
That brought us to services like Verizon’s FiOS and Google Fiber, where smelly men would appear to dig trenches in your yard, drill holes in your walls, and pull fiber into your home. We called it Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) and it was the hot ticket in the early 2000s — a hot ticket that for the most part is no longer available. FTTH was too darned expensive to install, which limited the size of the FTTH customer base and the potential profit of the network.
Verizon’s FiOS service still operates, but it peaked at five million users and new users have not been added since 2010. Google Fiber stopped adding customers in 2016 and presently has 453,000 users.
FTTH essentially broke Metcalfe’s Law and couldn’t economically scale.
But people still wanted faster Internet service so we had to find cheaper ways to provide it, which meant eliminating smelly men, trenches, and drilling holes. We accomplished this through a modified network topology called Fiber-to-the-Neighborhood or FTTN. With FTTN the super-fast fiber links didn’t extend to every house but instead to a box in every neighborhood that could, in turn, reach all the homes using either the telephone or cable TV connections for that final mile.
FTTN was vastly cheaper than FTTH not only because it eliminated all that installation labor but because it allowed thousands of users to share a single fiber loop. Even if we’re watching 4K Netflix movies, most of the time the service to our homes is actually running far below capacity. I pay Comcast for 300 megabits-per-second yet rarely use at any moment more than a tenth of that speed. Build a little resilience into the network and/or the service and most of us can operate using just one percent of our rated capacity without even feeling it. That means 100 homes in a neighborhood can effectively share a single gigabit connection, which is why Internet service is so cheap yet still big-time profitable for your ISP.
Yeah, but what does this have to do with drones?
We are about to have nearly the same experience with our impending drone networks.
It’s too expensive to use delivery drones for Pizza-to-the-Home (PTTH) so we’ll be shifting to Pizza-to-the-Neighborhood (PTTN) instead.
Here’s the problem with Pizza-to-the-Home: where does the drone land at your house that won’t risk hitting a child, pet or vehicle and also won’t risk losing the delivery to theft or damage? We can’t economically mandate a drone landing tower for every house that’s above obstacles and with a guaranteed clear approach. This, too, would cost thousands of dollars per home, just like installing FiOS or Google Fiber.
But we CAN mandate such a landing platform on top of every pizza delivery vehicle. Using GPS, the drone and car can find each other with the drone landing only when the car is stopped and the approach is clear. So, like FTTN, the local delivery (the last mile) will use legacy technology (the pizza delivery driver) but for that driver each delivery will take five minutes or less.
Pizza is delivered faster and hotter and the driver, instead of making 2-3 deliveries per hour, can make 10-12.
This is what we’ll shortly see proposed for drone delivery, not just for pizza but for everything else. And because the actual drone flight will be between professional network nodes (if a 17 year-old pizza driver can be thought of as professional) the liability issues because much simpler.
Now here’s where Internet-style disintermediation comes into play. Such a drone delivery network still costs money to build but that money will be instantly available if the class of goods that can be delivered expands beyond food to anything weighing under, say, 10 pounds. This means prescription drugs and even Amazon Prime or walmart.com packages can arrive on the same car, delivered to that car by multiple drones and drone networks.
All it requires is WAAS GPS and a standardized car rooftop landing platform, which I am sure we will shortly see.
In before Mineserver/Roger hate/Bob Bashing/Jihad/House Burning/Bob’s Predictions suck/Kickstarter/condescending remarks from both sides.
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Such a messed up place this blog has become with an endless loop of bickering and hate. Can’t we just get along? And Bob, can’t you just post to Kickstarter so all of the above isn’t what we expect in each post ad nauseam? Why do you think the 5-10 minutes it would take you to do this is more valuable than all of your readers who have to sift through this? Do you care about anyone other than yourself? I used to think this was mutually beneficial but now I’m starting to think it’s all about you and always was, I was just delusional…
Another fantasy land Bob. It won’t happen in 2019. This is becoming science fiction blog.
Bob have you a calendar at home ? It is almost mid April already or this prediction was to be posted on 1st of April ?
Just like carrier on board delivery (COD) on a Navy aircraft carrier. If Elon Musk can retrieve a rocket booster on a floating barge, why not a pickup truck?
Drone delivery sounds like a fantasy to me – sure, it can work but will it be reliable and all-weather? Because if it’s limited to good weather deliveries then every storm that pops up will ground the service – it’s been raining here since this morning, not too much – only a couple of inches so far but we could get a few more over the next couple of days … and so fair-weather drones would be grounded. Nobody’s going to risk losing a $5,000+ drone delivering a $10 pizza.
“All it requires is WAAS GPS and a standardized car rooftop landing platform”
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“If we had cases we could start shipping tomorrow.”
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Hmmm, for some reason I’m not going to just take your word that this is ALL that is required. As per usual, you’re likely WAY oversimplifying and haven’t considered any number of additional issues…
For the most part, except when installing or expanding utility service, utility delivery is silent. Drones are not silent. Those wishing to create a PTTH or PTTN delivery network will have to negotiate deals with municipalities. I for one, will protest at every public hearing.
Many upscale neighborhoods have covenants baring lawn services or truck deliveries on weekends. Those folks can afford to litigate drones away from their sensitive eyes and ears.
https://youtu.be/U4foZlLnihg 🍕
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UWb2aPBFvE
What about the noise and visual pollution in the upscale neighborhoods attracting hundreds (thousands?) of drone delivery daily? Can you imagine thousands of bugs carrying pizza and god knows what else in buzzing swarms over your town? Ugh. Just. Bloody. Awful! An in-motion embodiment of all those wires in your accompanying photo.
Still to American-centric.You missed out System X not to mention Galileo. But yes robodelivery this is a given whether it’s by plane, train, or automobile. Ditto one click apps which integrate all this. There is also the issue of standards and shared infrastructure. Not every country needs or wants corporate Darwinism. We pretty much got this last year if not before so I wouldn’t call this a prediction. I also think the idea is impractical and unsafe not to mention lacking in aesthetics especially for an urban environment.
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Technology is now so pervasive and people are now so relatively well educated there are lots of innovations happening away from silicon valley and laboratories. As an example farmers giving up ploughing as a strategy to avoid soil erosion is a thing. No-till farming has a wiki page.
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Over a centry ago what is now called a “Full English breakfast” would have cost an entire weeks wages. Approximately 25% of the population were involved in agriculture. The average weekly spend on food was approximately 30% of household income. Today one person does what used to take 100. A full English breakfast is now sold in cafes for takeaway prices. Fluffing soil is a thing. (Yes, this surprised me too! What’s next? Worms on a silver plate with a flute of copper sulphate solution?) Innovators are also creatiing mass produced artisan bread at competitive prices with “agile” production lines and fail early fail often recipies. Again familiar techniques driving innovation in other industries and places. If this sounds familiar it’s because it mirrors as close as anything the cpu and tech revolution.
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What is “the last mile”? The last mile is people. Not units. Not UX. People. In the mad dash for ratings or margins and throughput this has been forgotten. I work in an industry where the product is often described as easier than ordering a pizza. Well yes and no. Singular reasoning leads to dehuminisation and ignorance and lack of a human touch. It’s important to realise this so as to avoid solutions causing more problems than they solve. It really is worth taking time to slow down and appreciate things.
So, one pizza guy driving around the neighborhood as pizza-bearing drones land on top of his car bringing 10-12 pizzas an hour? So if he’s 10 minutes from the pizza oven, that means 3-4 drones all operating simultaneously… add in the chinese place, the indian place, however many more restaurants that want to do this… and suddenly you’ve got a sky full of drones.
And then there are the kids with their slingshots or what-have-you, shooting them down for fun.
I dunno… but I think if it’s going to happen, it will likely be a UPS/Amazon truck that pulls up and a bunch of drones take off looking for landing mats on the front porch. And it will only happen in suburbia where everyone lives in a house with space around it and there are no apartment buildings.
Of course, all that doesn’t mean drone delivery won’t be ready before the Mineservers are.
Luxury is often associated with being expensive and slow and deliberate cultivation so a delicate and fragrant experience. It is not so much a thump as a gentle breeze. a whim. A delicate fancy. Aspirational. For no extra cost Cringely has shipped a virtual empty box full of dreams. Cringely got diddled for a burger by a billionaire. You got diddled for a weeks savings for something as momentary and precious as a quantum virtual particle agitated into being a photon and shot off into the eternal as fleeting and evocatively ephemeral as the kiss of an angel. Seriously guys, glancing through the perfume boutique this afternoon you got a bargain.
I wonder when we’ll see drug deliveries by drone? There’s a lot more profit in delivering an ounce of two of grass than a pound or two of pizza.
The year is 1/4 over dummy. Go retire already.
So, will those drones finally get us the MineServers?
@Edmund — Been there, done that. (Not me, personally, but you know what I mean.)
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From 2015: Drug-delivery drones are more common than you’d think
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https://www.networkworld.com/article/2874200/drug-delivery-drones-are-more-common-than-you-d-think.html
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“The year is 1/4 over dummy. Go retire already.”
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The problem, besides for the fact that Bob is a crazy person and has no basic grasp of how time and promises of deadlines work, is that his typical annual routine has been to predict the next year whereas now he’s making blanket predictions that may happen at any point into the future (2019 and beyond).
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What’s wrong here is that his picture for these articles is still of 2019 that is “mid-roll” as it replaces 2018. This is misleading and seems to imply that these predictions are coming at the cusp of 2018/2019 and are for the upcoming year.
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That said, I think Bob is a joke and agree he should retire already; I just wanted to clarify that one point, which he mentioned quickly in one post and then never spoke of again (Classic Bob).
I like Bob. I enjoy his predictions. I don’t bet the farm on them. I didn’t get into MineServer. I’ll miss Bob.
@Willey If you’re a true fan of Bob and his work you should already miss him, because he’s been mentally checked out and phoning it in for the past few years.
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He’s like the nerd-equivalent of the high school star quarterback who just wants to relive his glory days. He is stuck in the past even though he is out of shape and could never play like he once did. He’s more and more out of touch with the game, it has changed so much since his prime. He keeps coming to town, wandering the halls, but fewer and fewer people seem to recognize him/care and it’s just starting to feel sad.
A problem with automated delivery to an address is how is it located? GPS comes to mind but anyone with some experience trying to locate an address will soon find it can usually find the correct block but is often not at the exact location of the address. I’ve driven for Meals on Wheels and at Christmas time Tipsy Taxi. In both cases GPS helps but you often end up doing a bit of eyeball searching at the end. It’s extra confusing when you’re not even at the correct block.
I think this is an excellent use for https://what3words.com/ or Google’s similar offering. The ordering customer will be able to give an exact destination accurate to about 25 feet. My pizza drone will be able to land on the sidewalk leading up to my front door.
I’ll take a medium Hawaiian with onions and mushrooms please.
“Here is a picture of telephone wires in New York City in 1887”
… and of Manila, Philippines in 2019. Sigh.
Hey Bob,
I was with you up to the point of landing a drone on top of cars. You are 100% correct that landing to individual homes leads to a lot of unknowns and that’s fertile for liability lawsuits but landing drones on car top seems like a lot of work for very little return. Why can’t they just land at designated stops like the nearest post office or a designated landing spot where you can pick it up or get it delivered. To me, landing on top of cars is closer to FTTH and it would be more expensive to implement and run. You are right FTTN (nearby delivery hub) is the answer. At least during most of our lifetimes. I suppose that FTTN(car top) can eventually happen but my greatgrandchildren may see it happen. So in my view, it’s too far in the future for us to see.
Most new technologies are first adopted by businesses if they can save money or make money. So from my point of view, the delivery services would save a mint by having drones transport their mail or packages directly to a near by delivery hub. Also, regulators will be much more likely to give permission when they understand the path the drones will travel. Drones haven’t figured out how to beat gravity so it’s inevitable that some will fall from the sky.
Also, as much as I would like one of the delivery services to implement the service, that will not happen since unions will fight it. I predict that we’ll be seeing a new ventured back startup that will start it. Or Amazon will figure out how to do it.
Anyhow, I liked your analysis of networks and overall it’s a great post. Thanks….
Amazons new patent for a drone using VTOL ballon technology in quiet urban areas sounds like it will be useful for: A.) Drug deliveries to prisons and escape from prisons B.) Stealth capture/kill operations. C.) Emergency services.
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I cannot realistically see a future for this in delivery operations. There are just too many environmental planning and safety and security issues. Perhaps one day but there are a lot of Friend or Foe issues to be navigated first. Nice hack but it wll only be for rich people or corporations located outside of urban concentrations and even then I doubt it. It’s out of date like microwave towers before it was invented.
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I don’t personally believe unions give a hoot about this issue. Not every union is a dyed in the wool adversarial flatearther.
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Cringely keeps forgetting that outside of tech there is real infrastucture and people. An idea on paper may work in theory and in isolation but has to work with existing systems including the laws of thermodynamics and society and the role of government.
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Plans are easy. Plannign is hard.
https://youtu.be/v98BJMDDfFY
☀️🌴🎶
I think all drones should be required to look like Microsoft flying toasters ….
See this in 2019??
Still-enormous technical challenges involved:
1) So many drones, so few pilots
2) So many drones, no cost-effective, collision-avoidance system that will fit on them
3) People
5G technology could address some issues, but a whole new air traffic control system would need to be built for sub-1000ft airspace.
Pizza delivery drivers already use their own vehicles with silly-looking lighted, branded toppers, and you are going to need to add GPS and a landing dock to that. Mitigation could be stationing drivers at distribution points in the service area.
Still, you are talking about hundreds of thousands of drones, just for pizza.
2029, maybe.
In the future can’t we just 3D print our own pizza? Then our skies can still be pretty without metallic bugs swarming.
Forgot to include link. 3D Printed Pizza (one of many): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYB559Is9Y0
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO! NO, BOB!
Q: Why don’t pizza delivery joints use helicopters for PTTN now? If it made so much sense, they’d be doing it with human pilots now and developing drones to cut their costs as phase 2.
A: Because delivery drones are nothing but a PR STUNT! Amazon is trolling UPS, Fedex and USPS (and no doubt thousands of startups) by CLAIMING they’re working on delivery drones, trying to trick their competitors into investing R&D money to keep up. No other explanation makes sense. Say it with me: power-to-weight ratio, power-to-weight ratio, power-to-weight ratio!
If I order a $15K diamond ring that weighs 3 oz from Amazon, the weight and the money might (MIGHT) make sense for drone delivery. If I order a $20 box of diapers (10 lbs) or a $30 bag of dog food (40 lbs), no! NO! A $12 pizza (3 lbs)? NO! NO! NO!
SUPPOSEDLY drones are being used by hospitals to transfer medical samples/supplies between hospitals in the same city. That’s plausible for all the reasons PTTN is not: 1) fixed locations with known routes between them, 2) tall buildings with established helicopter approaches, 3) small payloads, 4) existing staff trained to deal with aircraft, 5) very high dollar value. Unlike PTTN, they did it with human pilots first and are testing drones to see if it cuts costs (see above). Even so, it’s only a trial and probably won’t see wide adoption.
Amazon drone delivery is only going to work in PR videos with heavy CGI editing. There’s just no other way it makes any sense at all. (Don’t get me started on Amazon’s stupid patent for a drone with a self-inflating balloon — I think they’ve just given up on any pretensions of serious intent.)
PS: I had a lot of caffeine this morning, sorry.
@Chris Rampson – Microsoft didn’t have flying toasters. That was from a company called After Dark. Ahh, the memories of Windows 3.1 screen savers. (Johnny Castaway, anyone?)
I don’t really see the drones bringing down cost in this scenario. I feel like the last mile is where the drones will really shine in suburbia where the front lawns and driveways are large enough to provide a space for landing. In more urban conditions it is more likely to be sidewalk robots.
This my fave prediction so far. NOT because Bob is “right” but because he strikes out into the realm of possibility and gets other people like you guys to chip in their own ideas and viewpoints.
I Do Not Care About Mineservers – great comment, and more in line with my thoughts too.
Small businesses who need local same day delivery in town would pay handsomely for this type of service.
If done reliably, you cut their cost of obtaining urgent supplies. Or, skim the cream off today’s courier services, which all suck.
Here’s what I like about this. Bob isn’t afraid to publish a so-so idea, knowing that it will inspire better ideas to come from it. This is what some of the best brainstorming is made of.
Right now there are drivers who drive for Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, PostMates, simultaneously. It’s not easy, and may require 4+ mobile devices in your car, but if your brain has the processing power to do this without getting in an accident, it … well, let’s just say, it can be done.
Keep that in mind for later on.
Down the street from my in-laws’ house, a young man works for UPS, with an interesting setup during peak season (i.e. November – January). Here’s how it works:
1) UPS rents his garage of his house from him, for a nominal fee, and leaves 1-2 golf carts there with chargers
2) Several times per day a UPS truck stops at his house to drop off dozens of packages for delivery
3) UPS employees (those who aren’t driving UPS trucks) use the golf carts to deliver the packages from his garage to addresses in his neighborhood
All while this man busily works in a “traditional” UPS distribution facility 5 miles away. In a sense, his home’s garage has become a hyper-local “hub” (a micro-hub or nano-hub, if you will) in the UPS delivery network, saving efficiency for the trucks and sprinter vans (fewer stops) and giving greater delivery efficiency in this neighborhood.
All this while – did you notice? – UPS does not own the house.
I’ve gotta say – if this is in my in laws’ neighborhood (30 miles north of the 4th largest city in the USA), then it’s probably happening in thousands of other neighborhoods. I know for a fact that in some neighborhoods, UPS doesn’t rent a garage but half of a driveway, where they park a small container (like PODS – portable on-demand storage), again with golf cart and used in the exact same fashion.
I’m not saying the future is golf carts (though it may be). I’m saying, like Bob is, the future is neighborhood hubs as part of the delivery network – whether that be packages (FedEx, UPS, Amazon, Walmart), food (pizza, chinese, tacos, you name it), or something else. Call it DTTN (delivery to the neighborhood), for any delivery service out there.
The notion of drones approaching a stopped car on a street seems iffy, especially if that car is often in motion … but if there’s a house (fixed location) in the neighborhood whose resident works for Pizza Hut, I see some possibility there. Even more if it’s not Pizza Hut per se, but an amalgamation of delivery services (such as: Pizza Hut, Door Dash, UPS, FedEx, Favor). Now you have drones from several companies leveraging one address (or two) per neighborhood, and then one or two employees (one at the home and one in the last-mile delivery vehicle) managing arrivals and departures, now that sounds very do-able.
Remember how I talked earlier about drivers who work for Uber, Lyft, and others simultaneously? Instead of these being the fringe (possibly breaking the TOS), start a new business where this is the model from the get-go.
Sounds like a business opportunity: a new business that partners with not only Door Dash, Pizza Hut, and your favorite taco truck down the way, but also the likes of Walgreens, Walmart, and Amazon. Maybe even FedEx and UPS. Maybe not. All in order to receive deliveries in a neighborhood, and take care of the last mile using car, golf cart, or even plain ol’ feet.
In the end, there would be two sides to this ecosystem: drones for DTTN, and humans for the last mile. The drones may even be operated by Dominoes or UPS, but the network of neighborhood hubs and final deliver-ers would be 100% the new business.
… and there’s nothing to say this has to be 1 business, only. I suspect 2 or 3 businesses, each with their own address and manpower in each neighborhood, with the contracts and partnerships changing from year to year – just like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu have ever-shifting libraries.
Sand Hill, are you listening? Gimme a billion bucks and I’ll make you a trillion.
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@Edmund – well damn. Yes, if it’s a fair-weather-only network (with drones it would have to be), that’s a big problem. But you know what? With what I described above, what if you take out the drones, and leave in the current delivery networks’ vehicles? The big company (FedEx, Papa John’s, CVS) delivers to the neighborhood hub, and the neighborhood workers take it from there.
Still works.
Now, bring the drones back in during good weather. After all, if the neighborhood hubs and last mile are the new business, it doesn’t care as much where the items come from or how.
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Predictions meta – lots of people piling on criticism over the fact that it’s April. Equal critiques that this sounds too sci-fi / fantasy, not going to happen in 2019. You need to remember, Bob said: this is likely his last year of predicting, and these predictions are less for 2019 and more for the next 2-5 years.
Mineservers – Bob has been mum since January, and I think that’s on purpose. I choose to believe he has plenty he wishes to say, but doesn’t want to muddy his prediction posts with it … and that when he releases his final prediction (June, at this rate, fine by me), he’ll be ready to come back with his Mineserver debriefing. Here I’ll repeat what I’ve said before: Mineserver likely has no future. It was a fine idea whose time came and went, just like the time came and went for the Team Cringely moonshot. So I’m content to wait until after the predictions are passed, before expecting anything new about Mineservers.
(but don’t let that stop you from buying pitchforks at my aforementioned emporium!)
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PSA: use this character → ← for spacing between paragraphs.
“For drones to work in the longer run they have to make money or allow someone else to make money. They have to pay their way.”
So, like all inventions that take time to catch on, how do we get the porn industry to embrace drones?
https://youtu.be/Hq6pWE2oz38
And there are lots of variations on this for delivery to the single-family house or even to an apartment.
I’ve been getting coupons in the mail for Zume Pizza, a company that has delivery trucks that are also robotic pizza ovens. The truck arrives at your door the moment your pizza is finished baking. They claim avoiding the cost of storefronts saves them money making delivered pizza as cheap as dine-in or take-out. From a fresh hot pizza point of view, this would seem even better than drone delivery.
I wonder if this model (food prep in central warehouse, cook in delivery truck on the way to customer) could be adopted to other types of food.
@Ross I was pretty sure you were just describing Crocodile from Black Mirror; Then I googled it and apparently it’s becoming real: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VePQRSLos8
@Howard — “I choose to believe he has plenty he wishes to say, but doesn’t want to muddy his prediction posts with it … and that when he releases his final prediction (June, at this rate, fine by me), he’ll be ready to come back with his Mineserver debriefing.”
That would make sense if not for two things:
1) He could have done his debrief at any time outside the predictions window during the last couple of years. So why would anyone think this year will be any different?
2) More importantly, you’re assuming that this is the only place where such a debrief would happen. In fact quite the opposite is true; this is absolutely not the place for it. I suspect a rather small percentage of his backers (y’know, those folks who gave him money?) have ever been to this site, let alone visit it regularly. (Be very glad that that’s true!) Crookely is legally obligated to post on the Kickstarter page; anything posted here doesn’t count.
So there’s no reason he can’t continue to post his predictions here even as he posts something there. He could then, if he so desires, post here about having saved the day for his loyal readers by posting on Kickstarter and thus ending the “Mineserver jihad” (as he describes it), freeing up this comment section for his name dropping and pizza deliveries.
Personally, I choose to believe that the billionaire cousin I never knew about is out there somewhere looking for me so he can share his wealth and good fortune with me.
Both scenarios seem equally likely.
My local Kroger grocery store is starting delivery with self driving cars this month. I’ve been talking to the store manager and plan to start receiving deliveries as soon as the service is available.
I think Bob is correct that drones will fit into the delivery scheme – and, obviously doorstep delivery for drones does seem unrealistic.
My family has been evaluating self-flying drones for security surveillance at our 320 acre farm. This technology is not quite there – but, I think it will be within 5 to 10 years. It doesn’t seem to be that difficult of a thing to do – but, for whatever reason, this use of self flying drones doe not seem to be developing like I would think it could be.
The thing about predicting the evolution of technology is that it seems to take a lot longer than I would think.
“Michael April 5, 2019 at 7:40 am – In the future can’t we just 3D print our own pizza?” Thinking outside the box!
Where this idea breaks down is the last mile concept. In my area, delivery drivers are terrible. Food delivery drivers are not held to a universal standard. This is why you hear horror stories like drivers eating people’s food, deliveries never happening. Will these pizzas come from one standard kitchen miles away? What happens to the pizza when it’s in the air? Food delivery has mostly done away with owning the cars and relying on the drivers car, motorcycle, bike.
In addition, the DOT has been trying for years to make all delivery drivers have a commercial drivers license. There are pushing to make a CDL require 2,000 hours of training before taking a drivers test. Spending 3/4 of a year just to get a CDL should just kill anyone’s desire to wish to drive and put a serious dent in the availability of drivers.
Drop the pizza from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Clearly there is an opportunity in this technology. Thanks to Bob for some interesting thinking about how drone use might be made viable.
This will become viable if deliveries can take place in winter. Much of North America is under several cm of snow, with very gusty winds, and temperatures well below the freezing point for at least a third of the year.
Why is a drone delivering to a hub better than just filling up a UPS truck? It’s not. Delivery services already use optimization software to get the packages into a single truck for an efficient route. Having a drone go back and forth all day with one package at a time from central hub to delivery hub will never be efficient.
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In other words, back and forth and back and forth with one small package will always be too expensive. You still have the expense of the delivery driver and his vehicle. So no cost is eliminated, and you added the cost of the drone to a system that already works.
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The faster delivery time and increased cost will only work for small, high value products, where time is the most important variable. Unless something is needed in an emergency, people faced with a high deliver cost will opt to just wait for the UPS guy.
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As usual with Cringely, common sense strikes out badly. This is not like peer to peer phone lines, which can be replaced with digital routing. The delivery services already use hub/spoke routing. And the drone will always be expensive because fighting gravity is harder than rolling wheels.
@Chris Rampson, @Robert Bertrand
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Seconds_Over_Winterland
If you like Jefferson Airplane this is a great live album.
Cringely doesn’t understand networks. Networks are used in a number of fields because they are compatible models and they are very useful tools for guiding an analysis in a way people understand clearly. The problem is Cringely has imposed his point of view rather than understanding the model and trying to examine and explain via this model. I have already listed a number of items which much be taken into account with an discussion which Cringely by and large ignored. In the previous topic I also linked to a comprehensive Youtube which stepped through almost all the areas relevant to robocar development and deployment which Cringely also ignored.
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It’s this mode of reasoning which leads to issues like Intels CPU design flaws, and scandals in the public policy arena. As Cringely is aware of the tech industry and with a peripheral and small role in the Three Mile Island scandal he should be aware of this but then again he didn’t acquire a legitimate PhD either.
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This is a bit sad. I feel Cringely is stuck in a 1980s narrative. Triumph of the nerds was great for its day but fundamentally a lie and not at all what the reality is today. So much has changed and Cringely has a massive blind spot for this whether its schoolkids hacking smartphone kernels or women playing a creater role in the tech and other industries or reshaping of the regulatory and political environment a large part is being led outside of the US with the US playing tag along.
Re: drop the pizza from orbit- bonus is that re-entry heat will do the cooking for you!
Come on, Bob. The TacoCopter (drone) was delivering food in San Francisco (55 miles from your longtime residence) in 2013, until blocked by FAA injunction. London auto-parts suppliers figured out TWENTY YEARS AGO that it was (more) optimal to store their parts on constantly-moving panel trucks, orbiting the ring roads, rather than in a static warehouse. At this point you are re-reporting previous century ‘innovations’ as your own.
I miss the rants about IBM
The UK situation is more complex. After big bang (city deregulation) and privatisation selling off static warehouse became a thing. JIT is nice in theory but this and other cost cutting has made services less responsive for customers. There has also been a larger economic sqeeze and transfer of wealth as well as lack of investment in infrastructure and reducing quality of life thresholds to make housing more profitable for developers. The Thatcher boom mostly fuelled by the North sea oil boom going on tax cuts instead of investment caused car owning households to effectively double car ownership.
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Orbiting vans is nice on paper but was a quick fix solution to Londons sprawl and traffic problem. The problem wasn’t warehousing but getting from point to point. The point to point problem was caused by too much traffic. Orbiting vans are essentially cheating the system because it’s easier to travel in and out of London than across London.
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The UK still has a productivity gap.
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Speaking of code exploits one of my clients informed my that special needs education was being savagely cut by careerists and he explained how and also explained how other people in the system were fighting back. This was all hush hush because it was a career ending decision to support special needs education until the news broke within the past few weeks that special needs education had suffered from a 20% cut. It’s almost like there are two policies. On the surface the government is rah rah rah special needs and so forth. In private there is a dirty fight by careerists not over how much money is being spent but who gets it. Careerists are putting empire building before the vulnerable children they are supposed to provide provision for. This isn’t the only area of public services where dirty fights like this are happening.
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Basically, bullshit only gets you so far. Pigeons always come home to roost.
Bob’s prediction may become true. But in this year! No way. Already one-fourth of the year has been finished. But yes, drones can be used in many explosive ways that we are not thinking today. I am reading many articles on the safe use of drones for years. Here many scientists warned about it that drones may be used in many melafade intentions in the future. When I research for writing an article for essayontime.com.au, I noticed such a prediction several times. So I don’t think that Bob’s prediction is totally lame. Anyways, Thank you for sharing this post.
The fascinating thing is that FTTH is still expanding, sometimes. FiOS and Google Fiber are shutting down, but here in the Bay Area, Sonic.net is building fiber in the denser cities instead of deploying in their own home town of Santa Rosa.
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What’s more, AT&T was spooked by the competition, and is building fiber more quickly than Sonic can. Thus, I now finally have gigabit fiber in a single-family home (SFH) in the suburban fringe of San Francisco, at a higher cost than what Sonic would have charged, but still cheaper than comparable service from Comcast.
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I think one of the key things here is density. San Francisco is one of the densest cities in the country, and due to the housing crisis even SFH are more dense than what the General Plan specifies. This allows expensive services, like adding fiber to a neighborhood, to be profitable. Too bad so much of the San Francisco electorate are NIMBYs that prevent the city from being even denser and more full of great urban amenities. The NIMBYs are even reducing the current level of service. YIMBY Action is working to fix it, but we need everyone’s help.
On the sixth day of Christmas the six prediction for 2019 came to me… HURRY UP!
So, a few comments here to shoot this one down.
1. It’s much cooler at 1000 feet then at the ground, usually. So how much more thermal insulation do you need to keep 10 pizzas warm.
2 . There are 10 pizza places within 5 miles of my home already, and I live 31 miles from downtown. An average driver takes 20-30 minutes to delivery my pizza most nights and manages to deliver 3-5 pizzas on each “run”. Most don’t take orders, or already re-direct them if they are more than 5 miles away (out of delivery area).
3. The first time a drone hits a child or elderly person, or significantly damages property then there’s a 7-8 figure lawsuit that immediately makes this idea infeasible.
4. Your teenage kids think this is cool, and they are selling the idea to you.
5. Paying a licensed drone operator will cost a lot more than paying a licensed pizza driver, there are just more licensed drivers available. I doubt that a drone operator can handle more than 2 drones at once, and in “key phases” like takeoff and landing, she can only handle one. If the operator is paying attention to one drone, what happens with the other one? You would need some AI to avoid obstacles and such, and then the company has to decide when the AI messed up vs the drone operator. You can’t yell at AI and call it stupid.
Places where drones are effective:
1. Property assessments after damage (tornado, wind, hail, hurricane, typhoon). Although, we had a hail storm 2 weeks ago, and they sent a small guy to go on the roof and another to walk the perimeter. The small guy covered a LOT more detail than a drone would, typically. A drone “might be” able to do the job.
2. Landscaping and or crop assessment and pest control. I know this is already being done. I’m sure someone is adding the equipment as well to potentially “spot treat” trees in a home and/or crops in a large field where bugs, disease, or weeks are interfering with crop growth. I like this better than generalized “crop dusting”.
3. Other situations where it might be difficult or dangerous to assess a situation, or take action.
I was working the yard in the fall, and a drone was flying behind me. It turned out it was a relative of a neighbor, who was trying to convince her real-estate friend that having the drone take pictures of the home was valuable and useful for the “right perspective”. It was just annoying to me. After an hour of listening to it, I was ready to shoot it down for the constant buzzing. If 3-4-5 of those were flying on my block at once, I would probably move out to the country, away from such noise pollution.
As we wait, why don’t we vote on what his next predictions could be? I’ll seed some ideas:
* Gen IV nuclear power will get fast-tracked due to its high TRL compared to other ideas
* Crisper-cas9 is the end of the world as we know it, and I don’t feel fine
* DNA extended as additional bases (more than just A, C, G, T) are added
(I mention Gen IV nuclear because it’s a path Bob has trod down before, and because I’d really like to hear his take on where it’s going now)
@FormerTXIBMer
Start a blog man so we can move on from Bob.
Bob goes in the same group with candles, walkman, floppy drive and boob tv – obsolete.
You are most qualified guy to do it.
@wwwpirate
boob tv – obsolete? Say it ain’t so! (o)(o)
@pervy teenager – yep, username checks out
@Howard
I think his next prediction will be AI again. Can’t wait to make fun of him again.
Kung-fu guy from Carnegie-Mellon who was fired from any company he ever worked for probably sent him few bucks to write how AI will start changing the world starting tomorrow morning.
@Rocio Kaitlyn “melafade” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3fZXNR4nIE
So… Google has just set up the world’s first drone delivery system in Canberra, Australia.
Deliveries from a dozen local businesses to only 100 ‘qualifying’ homes.
There were major complaints about the noise in an earlier trial – “Imagine 40 lawnmowers flying overhead all day.”
Only allowed to operate in daylight hours.
Banned from crossing major roads.
Must maintain a minimum distance from people on the ground.
I’m interested to see how it goes.
It’s telling that a big American social media company with shady military connections is poking its nose in. The failure to consider noise pollution leapt off the page when I read about this. They really have no ethics or empathy and are way out of touch runnign this experiment.
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Uber put up Raquel Urtasun, chief scientist at Uber Advanced Technologies Group, to front their corporate spin and claim robocars are up to a decade away. I read everything with a sceptical eye as Uber are a vested interest pushing for market domination. Uber are not the only company pursuing robocars and are certainly not owners of any supply chain or regulators of any market. It’s all spin.Uber will be up to their earsin it and playing dirty and throwing money around like confetti away from the front pages to muscle, twist, and bribe their way to owning the market. All I can sayis we don’t want their sort around here.
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The EU has launched a new AI ethics programme to test the following goals:
* Human agency and oversight: “AI systems should enable equitable societies by supporting human agency and fundamental rights, and not decrease, limit or misguide human autonomy.”
* Robustness and safety: “Trustworthy AI requires algorithms to be secure, reliable and robust enough to deal with errors or inconsistencies during all life cycle phases of AI systems.”
* Privacy and data governance: “Citizens should have full control over their own data, while data concerning them will not be used to harm or discriminate against them.”
* Transparency: “The traceability of AI systems should be ensured.”
* Diversity, non-discrimination and fairness: “AI systems should consider the whole range of human abilities, skills and requirements, and ensure accessibility.”
* Societal and environmental well-being: “AI systems should be used to enhance positive social change and enhance sustainability and ecological responsibility.”
* Accountability: “Mechanisms should be put in place to ensure responsibility and accountability for AI systems and their outcomes.”
“Smelly men?” I presume this was meant to be funny, I just don’t see using negative terms to describe people doing honest work for a living as amusing. There are a lot of people out there doing “dirty jobs” that make a very good living and that our society depends on..in this case, bringing high-speed internet to people’s houses.
@Chuck — Crookely has a history of denigrating those who, well, aren’t like him. Witness his spiel for the Mineserver where he intimates that women are barely able to work a stove; networks are way out of their league (but the Mineserver will be so easy that even Mom can do it!)
So the notion that those who work with their hands are somehow less than someone who sits in front of a computer seems completely on brand for him.
@chuck – I read “smelly men” as humor and nothing else. All men smell for one reason or other, even Bob. Roger would happily tell you how and why Bob stinks. 😎
@chuck “smelly men would appear to dig trenches in your yard, drill holes in your walls, and pull fiber into your home.”
Please go dig trenches in my yard and tell me how nice you smell when it’s all done. Smelly is not a derogatory insult, I would argue, but instead a chemical reaction and byproduct of hard work and labor, especially under the heat of the sun. I believe you’re taking offence and making a big deal out of nothing, as others before me seem to be hinting at.
Now if you showed up at 8am before the day began and were smelly already, that may be another situation entirely, but even so I would not equate someone’s natural chemical fragrance as being something insult worthy. Some cultures don’t deodorize and this can, by definition, be smelly, but I don’t think less of them as a result. This is just a natural process and their personal choice.
Re: “Some cultures don’t deodorize”, true, but in the US, we strive for cleanliness. I once worked in a small, 2 or 3 desk, office, shared with someone from another culture. I simply ignored it, until others, who worked with him in other areas, decided it was my duty, as the office mate, to let him know. After I mentioned it to him, like magic, no more odor. Perhaps he just needed an excuse to “waste” a little more water and energy.
I have a professional as well as academic interest in this topic. There is definately a difference between fresh sweat on a gym bunny versus sweat on a short fat soap dodger. The stunned look on the face of one thankfully rare client when I showed him the shower was a sight to behold. Providing services on a hot day is another topic too. Heat tends to destroy performance which is why positions which minimise points of contact are better on hot days
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I love deliveries and am lazy as the next person but we need to exercise and blow the cobwebs out. I advise all my clients if need be to eat quality food, drink plenty of water, and walk it off. Lots of men need their emotional wellbeing catered for not just the headline USP I provide. It’s all part and parcel of being fitter and healthier and sexier.
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Also, guys? Ditch the jeans.
Why? Purely out of, um, academic curiosity.
@Chuck: “‘Smelly men?’ I presume this was meant to be funny, I just don’t see using negative terms to describe people doing honest work for a living as amusing. There are a lot of people out there doing ‘dirty jobs'”
You have to keep in mind that Cringely has spent most of his career trying to appear to be more important than he is. If you take the lies and bluster out of him, there’s almost nothing left. The common thread between the PhD, the exaggerated role he gave himself on the Three Mile Island commission and easy adoption of the Cringely persona to imply an insider knowledge that vanished long ago and was an accident of proximity, not qualifications or intelligence.
I wrote a fairly pithy reply then wondered why I was doing mens thinking for them so deleted it. As things happend an article was just published by Suzanne Moore in the Guardian covering the same topic areas: “Sorry, guys, you can’t be an actor and moan about body image”, 10th April. I don’t personally fancy fat slouches. Even Carlos Slim with all his billions is a tough sell not thatI fancy Lachlan Murdoch either.
I realize we’re hijacking this comment thread, but since people aren’t staying on-topic anyway… The hilarity of that article by Suzanne Moore is how impossible it would be for a man to write exactly this same article about women. Moore even acknowledges that this is exactly the same problem of objectification which women have been complaining about for years, but because the topic happens to be about men in this case, Moore casually dismisses this concern, saying “Part of these actors’ job is to be lusted after and objectified”. Imagine the reaction if a man were to write about actresses and say “An actress’ job is to be a sex object on the screen”. He would lose his job and probably never be able to work as a writer again. But because this is a woman commenting on men, it’s simply accepted. If it’s not okay for men to make such remarks about women, why should it be okay for women to make such remarks about men?
And as far as “doing men’s thinking for them” goes: In my mind (and, I think, most people’s minds), jeans are a perfectly acceptable choice of casual wear. If you want to claim otherwise, you need to justify why you are disavowing one of the most commonly-worn items of clothing in the world. You’re not going to convince many people by dismissing your need to substantiate your claims as “doing other people’s thinking for them”.
Woosh.
@trashtalk: If that means that your comment was meant to be taken as a joke, you probably should’ve stuck with the fairly pithy one which you deleted. 🙂
@trashtalk “I wrote a fairly pithy reply then wondered why I was doing mens thinking for them so deleted it.”
For someone who was bothered with someone mansplained, you don’t seem to be above the problem yourself. You could explain your opinion rather than being condescending and appearing like it’s such an obvious answer that we’re idiots for not realizing it ourselves.
Like our host, trashtalk sometimes likes to tease that more info is coming, when really it isn’t.
It’s time to finally say what I’ve suspected for many, many months now: she’s Bob … trashtalk is another one of Mark Stephens’ pen names.
In the early Info World days, Bob Cringely had a female counterpart, right? If I’m not mistaken, he wrote both characters. Or, if he didn’t, he at least wrote with the knowledge that both characters were interacting in the pages of the magazine. @trashtalk is a far juicier character – as is possible in a 2010s blog compared to a 1980s ‘zine – and is a character many here would say is one of the highlights of this blog.
@Howard I’m all about discovering the truth and any possible alter egos he may have, I’ve certainly suspected some posters could be him in the past, but I personally don’t think @trashtalk is one of them.
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She was so aggressive to Bob early on, making very distasteful hints to him, plus she seems to disagree with and call him into question at the drop of a hat and keeps going at him demanding answers. So unless it is all part of some long con and meant to throw people off the scent, I’m not really convinced. If that’s Bob, he’d have the weirdest angle.
@trashtalk FYI, I had to keep finding synonyms to a lot of words in my post above because I was getting spam blocked. I personally don’t like a lot of the word swaps I had to do, as it slightly changed the meaning/intention of what I wanted to say and I believe painted you in a lesser light than I would have liked. Apologies for that. Don’t blame me, blame whatever Spam blocker exists here (and Bob, always blame Bob!)
@Trashtalk, speaking of @Howard’s claims, I’ve always been curious, and maybe this is the time to share (if you feel so inclined), but what exactly brought you to this blog? As far as I’ve been able to tell, there are 3 camps:
1.) Bob Loyalists from his PBS days
2.) KickStarter Backers who want answers
3.) People who heard about this site from the KS backers and are chomping on popcorn and enjoying the show.
I’ve always been curious what brought YOU here. You don’t really seem to be in any of these categories (unless you are in the 3rd), but you have always appeared like you have a chip on your shoulder against Bob. There have even been times where people from the 1st and 2nd camps have come to a truce/mutual understanding and you have chimed in and more or less said “No, not acceptable! I’m not content with this resolution!” and continued to call out Bob further.
It feels very akin to if Bob was playing with a ball in the playground and said we could have a turn with the ball if we shared some of our lunch with him at recess. So we did, but he never let us play with his ball (jerk, I know!). One of Bob’s friends tried to mediate and Bob continued to play with said ball and ignored both of us. Eventually Bob’s friends and us (at least some of us) became friends and decided Bob stinks a bit, but we’re ready to talk about something else until Bob stops being a selfish brat. But you, who were not involved as far as I can tell, came over to us both and are like “no, this will not stand!” and march over to Bob and start yelling at him in the wake of our truce and it just doesn’t really feel like your place. (reference in this post: https://www.cringely.com/2019/03/19/prediction-4-self-driving-cars-wont-happen-this-year-no-matter-what-elon-says/)
So I ask again, what is your stake in this? Are you just someone who cannot stand for injustice or did Bob irk you in some way in the past and you are here for blood? I’m legitimately curious.
Sounds like exactly the sort of thing a writer would do. Especially items he publishes but knows are imperfect, this is his way of kinda correcting the record, while having some amusing theater. It also allows Bob to write more casually. Because if he’s wrong, so what? She can correct the record, boosting her own credibility here.
@KS Backer – I love your allegory here. Spot on. Obviously I’m in camp # 1, with the caveat that I agree Bob’s not perfect and the Mineserver mess is a snafu that he let get out of hand.
With that in mind, I find it telling that the people in the various camps remain here. Clearly, we all care about Bob enough to stick around, rather than walk away.
I’ll also say – I love @tt’s perspective. Even when she surprises or annoys me, it still usually expands my comprehension of what’s going on.
(Spam blocked, so one second please while I try to suss it out again. Post 1 of x)
@Howard I agree that @trashtalk (@TT – didn’t make the connection til now who that was in other posts, zOops) correcting his work would make sense and be an interesting way for Bob to not only restate himself but be able to participate in the conversation without people swarming him, but @trashtalk constantly calls into question Bob’s lack of receipts, his house burning down, and other non-article related matters; She essentially is flashing a light on lots of things that Bob seems to be trying to sweep under the rug and hope people will forget about. It would be such a strange push/pull dichotomy to play both of those roles just in an effort to keep people off the scent that it’s him.
I can’t get anything through, so I give up. F these filters! @Howard is Bob, game over.
@Howard amazed that went through. Please see this for how I really feel. This may be the only way to get through my true thoughts.
I found the filter doesn’t like posts less than a minute apart. Aside from that, it’s tough to know what will pass and what won’t.
Regarding our community here, this xkcd comic comes to mind.
@Howard, that was beautiful! ♡
@trashtalk
What about cargo shorts?
What about jean shorts? 🤣
Trashtalk is not Bob. In reading TT’s earliest posts, TT used words peculiar to England, which would simply be unnatural for a native American like Bob. Also, when Bob commented in the past, they were almost always limited to the first or second day after publication, no matter how many weeks or months the rest of us continued to add comments. Bob values his time, so instead of reviewing old comments, he’s busy making predictions, writing new columns, and building mineservers. 🙂
Thoughts everyone?
https://wing.com/australia/canberra/
Nice cover story.
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Um, excuse me but when did people become so lazy they throw out a who knwos what URL and expect everyone to do their work for them? There are times when i really don’t want to know what grizzled unkempt low economic value is on the other side of the screen.
@Howard – Crisper-cas9 is the end of the world as we know it, and I don’t feel fine
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Um. What? Isn’t this the gene editing technique promising a revolution in medicine? Rather melodramatic to call it the end of the world.
@katie_dimples, I don’t claim to speak for @Howard, but just wanted to point out that:
“the end of the world” is NOT equivalent to “the end of the world as we know it“.
This could simply be taken as – Crisper-cas9 is going to revolution the world as we know it and it may never be the same again. As for the not feeling fine, there are A LOT of people who have reservations about this technology and the possible “darker” routes it could go, so I don’t think there is anything melodramatic about being hesitant to embrace this. It COULD very well change the world [as we know it] if it is allowed to.
I personally embrace this technology, but I’m a little crazy and welcome the great unknowns and like to dabble in chaos a bit…
Chuck et al., It’s also worth pointing out that his comment is clearly a play on words to be a reference to the R.E.M. song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0GFRcFm-aY You probably shouldn’t read into it much beyond that.
trashtalk you appear to have gone abnormally silent, especially considering you have presumably read the comments since you posted afterwards. This makes me more suspicious of you and now I’m curious too. To take a page out of your own book – Show me the receipts! Why are you here?
Clever, but … @tt can choose to talk or not, as she pleases. Her silence on a topic is its own message in a way, and I’m content with it.
Good job catching the REM reference. I was absolutely channeling that song, with the twist that no, I don’t feel fine. While I didn’t call it the end of the world per se, the danger is far worse than anybody lets on. It could be the end of the biosphere … and not in the “global warming” sense, where it’s a mass extinction but some remnant of life should carry on, and not in the “nuclear winter” sense, where it’s, well, ditto. I mean this could end life. That’s how bloody dangerous it is.
Humanity is a fallen race. Some like to believe we are progressing, and becoming better, nicer, more peaceful than centuries past, but it’s an illusion. I’m more like Malcom Reynolds, and his creator Joss Whedon – humanity hasn’t changed, and isn’t going to. The future will bring us wonderful delights and terrific sorrows, and we’ll be the same people with the same kinds of problems, just in a different environment (assuming we do make the interplanetary leap). And anyone who thinks they can make people better, is someone you should be afraid of and never elect to higher office.
DNA-editing does indeed have the potential for great improvements to life. It also has the potential for weapons the likes of which the world has never seen … we came close a few centuries ago, with the succession of plagues in Europe, but at least those germs were natural; they weren’t designed for the purpose of extermination.
We got lucky with fission. It’s tough to do right, and the great powers did a good job of getting a lock down on materials, equipment, and knowledge to do it. The genie didn’t go back into the bottle, but nor did it get into the hands of the Mullahs, or ISIS, or al Queda, or Hamas. So far the world has been pretty safe from nuclear shenanigans. Not perfect, but at least the nightmares stayed in fiction.
I think this made us complacent, because CRISPR-CAS9 is freaking everywhere. Every continent. Big companies, small startups, venture capitalists, Wall Street, universities, Hong Kong, you name it. Everybody is working on it. That’s a lot of sharing, before the politicians caught on and it’s too late to make a non-proliferation treaty.
Why am I terrified? Because I’ve read Stephen King. Maybe you remember, The Stand. They made a decent epic movie about 30 years back, Gary Sinise, Rob Lowe, Laura San Giacomo, Molly Ringwald. I hear they’re remaking it. I hope to God they do, in time. People need a warning.
I have a pretty good imagination. People with evil intent do, too. I see no reason not to believe there’s a lab in Pyongyang, or Tehran, devising ways of using CRISPR-CAS9 on some known diseases in an effort to call forth one of the four horsemen (pestilence) … but only after a suitable vaccine is developed for the select few. Sadly, I would neither be surprised if the same sort of thing weren’t happening in somehwere in the USA, or Paris, or Moscow, or Beijing. And then … it doesn’t have to be unleashed as a weapon. There simply needs to be a minor accident, a door left open, an M.P. who escapes the perimeter with his family …
Nope, humanity isn’t ready for this sort of thing. We probably never will be. The reason Michael Chrichton’s Sphere had a happy ending was because, the very few superpowered humans used their power to deliberately forget they had it, because they understood it would be abused. Absolute power and all that.
… and if you think I might be crazy, I’ll remove all doubt by simply saying: Ted Kaczynski had a point, about technology being oppressive and how once a thing is invented we can never go back.
This is just random history of some technologies spliced together with no real point, followed by a prediction that’s dumber than Apple IPods will become the delivery mechanism for Blockbuster.
Howard “@tt can choose to talk or not, as she pleases. Her silence on a topic is its own message in a way,…”
I agree with you, but I also believe she would be labeling herself a hypocrite to hold Bob to these standards but feel she, herself, is exempt. Yes, Bob’s supposed allegations far outweigh her’s, which are minimal at best, but she keeps asking him to answer her questions and blasts him for ignoring them and being silent, so it just feels one-sided to then do the same herself but feel exempt for whatever reason. I may live on a cloud (very likely), but I don’t believe you should ever ask/expect others to do what you yourself are not willing to.
Trashtalk, as a sign of good faith, I will say why I am here – a good friend of mine signed up for the Kickstarter and ended up actually just paying to rent a server when this all hit the fan, so he doesn’t really care anymore (in fact doesn’t play it anymore, this was all years ago). He told me the tale of what was happening so I went backwards, read all of the posts on KS and here, and now I chime in where I see fit. Occasionally I find an article interesting and even post on the main topic. I have no skin in the game other than my own personal curiosity [for any sort of a resolution] and amusement [from watching both sides argue]. As for my receipts, I have none to show because my house did not burn down (thank goodness) and I never purchased a Mineserver.
@Steven — “… but I also believe she would be labeling herself a hypocrite to hold Bob to these standards but feel she, herself, is exempt.”
Except that Crookely has a legal and, dare I say it, moral obligation to the people from whom he accepted money. Trashtalk has no such obligation. She never promised anything to anyone (afaik) and certainly has not accepted money or anything else in exchange for a promise of communication. She does not owe anyone here anything. So there is absolutely no hypocrisy if she decides to stay mum.
I will, however, note that I pretty much only wear jeans shorts (and pride shirts). But then, I don’t really care what people think of me. Also, jeans can be totally hot. As they say, Wrangler butts drive me nuts.
@howard – that’s scary enough I’d rather not think about it.
@trashtalk has promised nothing and owes us nothing, though I do enjoy the part she’s playing here. I’m more curious when the next prediction will come … maybe we can set up a betting pool?
Let’s look at 2019 so far:
– Jan 28, the “two thirds done” meta post, also giving an eye to Mineserver
– Feb 19, the 2018 grading post
– Feb 25, the description of why 2019 will be different
– Feb 27, prediction # 1
– March 7, predictions # 2 and # 3
– March 19, prediction # 4
– April 4, prediction # 5
The longest span between posts has been 22 days; between “prediction” posts the longest has been 16 days and the shortest was 9 days.
So far it’s been 12 days since the last prediction. I expect # 6 should drop before the 20th, maybe a day or two later (20th would be 16 days, already the high end of the bell curve).
My money is on tomorrow. Any takers?
@Roger fair enough. Can I at least call her a hypocrite for the reason Richard pointed out?
Richard “For someone who was bothered with someone mansplained, you don’t seem to be above the problem yourself. You could explain your opinion rather than being condescending and appearing like it’s such an obvious answer that we’re idiots for not realizing it ourselves.”
Welcome to polymorphism.
That’s what she said.
I said nothing of the sort! When you two have finished squabbling? I don’t know about you but the world seems frantic lately. I must be getting old because this makes me feel sleepy.
Weirdly enough I did not say either of those things, though an attempt at my voice is clear and fairly well done. Both flattered and annoyed. What little sanctity this blog had is unraveling before my eyes and it may be time to take my anecdotes else where. Bob, can you hurry up and confess your crimes so I can move on from these childish antics?
Comment by “trashtalk” April 17, 2019 at 7:36 am is a copycat/imposter. Obviously they are a heavy breather or have the hots for me or are jealous or whatever.
Now this is interesting. In these blog comments, a name can be copied, and even an avatar image can be re-used by someone else. But what’s unique is the email address. While we can’t know it, the image URL provides a unique hash and that’s plenty enough.
@trashtalk has fallen victim to this, and the proof is in the HTML. Right-click on the avatars, and choose Inspect element. Here’s what you’ll find:
• 15 comments in this post with the username “trashtalk”
• the first 14 of them all have the hash 904ac1e23853c5cbb21fecc7b5146313
• the last comment has a different hash, 19bb2c880f56f7f13bf3fe4b0ebd17ce
I see two people talking as “trashtalk” (two people trash-talking?), and the evidence indicates ***17ce is the impostor. Which is odd, because they sure sound like trashtalk, and it would be weird for an impostor to call attention to such things.
I wonder if previous blog threads had more than one “trashtalk” speaking up. Hmm.
Alternate explanation: @trashtalk has two email addresses.
Less-likely explanation: I don’t know what I’m talking about. But I tend to think this is not the case.
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PSA: use this character → ← for spacing between paragraphs.
As you can see, the April 17, 2019 at 8:01 am comment has the ***6313 hash, which I will call the “true” @trashtalk
Ugh, I should probably explain … when I said, “15 comments and the last one is different”, at that point I had not seen the 8:01 am comment. Really wish there was a feature in place, based on IP address, to allow comment-editing for a limited time.
@Howard, that’s an amazing find, inspecting the element like that. Thanks for sharing, very interesting.
@Howard — Less-likely explanation: I don’t know what I’m talking about. But I tend to think this is not the case.
Be careful, lest you fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect! 8^)
@Roger – Thanks for the warning. No worries – I’m sure if I wasn’t a genius, I would know it by now. 8-P
(and yes, I am joking)
@Howard I echo @Bored’s praise. Great find! A good way to suss out the trolls vs. the OG’s.
Also FYI, this blog DID used to have the ability to edit posts. You had 5 minutes (iirc) to edit them before they were LOCKED in. About a year or so after the mineserver backers arrived Bob also started getting more spam. I’m not sure which the culprit was (I assume spam but maybe was an attempt to strike down the backers, who knows).
Either way, the Blog Admin, Jennie (you can see her contact info in the sidebar: jennie@weblamb.com) closed that feature and we had a few cases shortly after where the blog comments section was breaking and not letting people post for a day or so (you could even see a test post from Jennie, though I just Google Searched and couldn’t find it, so may have since been deleted or is just further down).
All that to say, if you want that feature back, hit up Jennie and see what she says (or doesn’t if she responds as often as Bob). If you do, please share her thoughts if you would be so kind. I, too, miss the edit feature.
@Howard
Wow. I never knew this. I checked the element myself and you are correct. The “April 17, 2019 at 7:36 am” comment as I claimed is an imposter. In previous topics I have actually used three different email addresses on this blog to navigate glitches but have stuck to the main one I use throughout this entire topic. This whole authentication thing is a pretty interesting topic in itself. Another authenticator is linguistic analysis. Reading the fake comment it’s not something I would say. The word use is a bit off even if broad meanings may be similar. From something I read this week client side typing habits such as speed and editing and suchlike can be another authenticator which a website can detect via scripts.
@Howard, thoughts? First US Patients Treated With CRISPR
I was discussing with a friend who wanted to know my thoughts since I tend to be all about technology, but I found I had some reservations, more than normal. With most technology/sci-fi related things, I definitely think it’s cool but that doesn’t mean I don’t have cautions about how it could go horribly wrong. I think the hard part is that unless you can get the entire globe on board (and you can’t, even if every country agrees there will be private entities that still try or governments that do it behind closed doors just to be aware of what’s out there) that there will always be someone rushing to be “first” so the potential for it to be rushed and something go horrifically wrong is greater than it should be with such sensitive things. I usually think of the above in terms of AI, but the same could be said of this for sure. We have no true fail safe in place and all it takes is a momentary lapse in judgement and it could all be over…
I find it’s a weird conundrum where you can go from saving people and stopping cancer (yay) to it going too far and killing the entire human race and possibly other/all life as well. Science has never been one to pause and wonder if they should – if there is something to be solved, they will try to solve it. The potential for good is great, but I think the potential for bad is greater and that does worry me
Whether it’s from something gone horribly wrong to people making designer babies and starting to decide “what is the preferred trait” going down a path similar to eugenics, or the issue that people in better incomes would have access to this where the poor may not and furthering the divide and potentially segmenting the human race into separate species ultimately. It’s a tricky road for sure…
I think about this stuff too… It’s not brilliant. Why oh why nobody stepped through the GMO discussion and elarned the lessons from this plus all the usual basics of dealing with contagious diseases and pandemics I don’t know. It’s not as if there aren’t enough books and stuff on the subject. I guess people are stupified by novelty and greed.
Beautiful article!
https://youtu.be/Vu9cWMQ9sWg
Hey Bob, I love reading your stuff as much as the others, but predictions for 2019 should be posted at the beginning of the year not half-way through it. By the time we get to prediction #10 it will almost be 2020 !
But the predictions will be more accurate.
@Jason Black – Bob said, these aren’t predictions for 2019. They are predictions for what the next few years will look like … because, he said, he won’t be giving predictions in 2020, 2021, etc. Therefore if he finishes by June, so what?
@John C – CRISPR is a powerful tool. It can do great wonders, and it can create horrific nightmares. As an analogy, Carl Sagan wondered at the fact humanity gained knowledge of rocketry, and immediately had to choose between using this knowledge for scientific exploration (space-faring probes, and even people) or using this knowledge to terrorize and kill other humans (ICBMs with WMDs). He noted that humanity chose to do both, and openly wished we would simply stick to the former goal and abandon the latter.
And even if used well, though, I have to wonder what may happen 5, 10 years down the road. Or … what happens when the altered genes are passed on to children? Again, this is while merely focusing on people doing deliberately good things with the tech. Don’t forget, there’s a whole other side of the story to keep in mind.
You know, I’m sure most citizens of Pompeii thought Vesuvius was a beautiful mountain. Frankly, I can’t help but think of Ian Malcom.
As Richard Fernandez noted, the novel Jurassic Park – and the first film – was overtly about dinosaurs, but more covertly it was a warning against arrogance and hubris and a lack of humility. Chrichton’s theme was, people with lots of money and power and book-smarts will try to control complex living systems, and the enterprise will end in disaster. With CRISPR, with VC money flowing and Wall Street investing, it won’t be, “Let’s take it slow and watch out for second-order and third-order surprises,” no, it’ll be “hold my beer.”
And frankly, CRISPR editing might not even cause a pandemic. Instead, it could simply allow fertile ground for some unrelated or harmless germ to mutate into something worse.
@trashtalk – you bring up a good point. For all the decades of protests about GMOs, why aren’t the same people warning about CRISPR?
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PSA: use this character → ← for spacing between paragraphs.
What bothers me most is the lack of rounded authoritative view of CRISPR and related technologies such as GMO. The thing is the underlying strategic issues are the same. Some things are just to dangerous to have people running their mouths off plus there is the copycat issue. I would like to think the playing everything cool routine is part of a strategic solution. I hope it’s not to give bandits a free rein.
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Speaking of enterprise the finale of Star Trek Discovery touched on this issue of promising technologies being so beyond our abilities to manage them that they were deliberately placed out of reach and the whole thing covered with a blanket of silence. If you had the choice of allowing a million to die so you could save a million what would you do? If you knew you personally would die but a million would be saved what would you do? Thankfully none of us had to live through WWII but these were the kinds of decisions made in the heat of war fighting the Nazis. as we speak many hundreds of people are causing massive civil disruption London to put the fight against climate change on the agenda. Many are actively placing themselves in risk of punishment or jail for this. Some are calling them heroes placing themselves at risk to save the planet and save us all. Charlotte Church of all people has given her support and said she will be joining them.
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Perhaps there is hope decency will prevail?
@T bloop, nice attempt. You made the biggest mistake – you tried to predict Cringely. There is no understanding this man and his sporadic posting schedule. He does what he wants when he wants to. Any attempt to see logic in this chaos would be folly.
Out of curiosity, how do people create accounts with images? I subscribed awhile back and get emails, but don’t see any option to log in or update my account in any way. I feel out of the loop and fear my age/computer illiteracy may be showing.
@Jerome – Good point. On the other hand, Bob probably saw my prediction, and that can alter his choice of when to publish (both consciously and subconsciously). Kinda a play on
(wups, didn’t mean to hit that button)
… Goodhart’s Law, which notes the phenomenon that giving attention and importance to a certain number has the effect of making that number useless, because various actors start trying to influence the number artificially (one example would be the inflation rate; another would be a website’s SEO score).
It could be if we put too much attention on the post span, Bob may go long or short just to mess with us, or treat it as his own goal rather than his previous M.O., or whatever.
@Neil – images are set up with Gravatar. It’s a way of tying an image to your email address, and then any site which uses Gravatar (as many wordpress blogs do) will show that image. Click the big, blue “Create your own Gravatar” button on this page, and that’ll do. I think you’ll end up also having a WordPress account (since WP acquired G), but no biggie.
@Chris Rampson – like this?
@trashtalk – on the notion of dropping the pizza from orbit (spoken just like Ripley), check out this essay about cooking a steak by dropping it from orbit.
I feared as much! I guessed trying to create a cooking pizza by falling from orbit would be a difficult problem. Now we know why plus all the details and working out! I tried calculating how fast a pizza would need to travel to create an explosion as large as a nuclear bomb. I may have got my calculations wrong but this produced nothing useful.
@trashtalk – actually, there’s a what-if essay for that, too! https://what-if.xkcd.com/20/
Speaking of particle showers and star systems exploding Morn1415 has some amazing videos.
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How small is small.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEDN–lPcT8
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I actually prefer this video which begins small and expands to galactic scale.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEHCCsFFIuY
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If you want to get your brain around how big is big and the predictive power of mathematics and relativity theory…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgNDao7m41M
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I’m sure many or all have you have watched these. If you haven’t they are well worth watching. Pour yourself a fresh cup of tea or coffee and take a moment. as a wrecking balls screws up the planet with ignorance and greed and a 16 year old girl is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and nations culture burns we can all take a moment to enjoy perspective and value the place we call home…
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LKghv11Q7Q
@trashtalk Quite possibly the most genuine thing ever posted to this blog. Minus the black hole mathematics, these should be required viewing for everyone on Earth. Gives you some perspective and a reminder to stop the needless squabbling; From mineservers to politics, none of this matters. Learn to enjoy your time spent rather than spend your fleeting moments arguing over things that will all be forgotten in the grand scheme of existence…
@Zen: It’s precisely this attitude that has created most of the problems in the world today: A whole planet full of people saying “Welp, the planet is doomed anyway, so we might as well just forget about planning for the future and try to entertain ourselves as much as possible rather than trying to build a sustainable future for our children and children’s children”. If you don’t want your life to stand for anything and think that your own pleasure is the greatest good, you can choose to think that way, but don’t prescribe that same way of thinking for everyone else.
All the credit goes to Morn. He has some amazing videos on his channel. I’m just passing them on in the hope people find some uplifting enjoyment from them. I’m a flawed hypocrite myself so can’t judge.
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Today I managed to show one of my captive clients some of these videos. As things turned out a very close relative of his is a quantum physicist and mathematician. Synchronicity does my head in at times… We also discussed other stuff which was more work related. I may write some of today up for my work blog which some clients have said they missed. What I find funny, and I notice this more with some clients than others, is how clients often love chatting about things which involve brain activity such as explaining an issue or venting a frustration while looking at decent eyecandy in various states of undress without necessarily needing to go through with the whole routine. I quite like this. Chatting away then a minor diversion while a client says I have a lovely pair then giving me a feel before meandering around to where we left off. As you do.
Oh, I don’t believe it. One click in my other browser window and I’m staring at an article on synchronicity.
Synchronicity? … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8976fuIqCo
A somewhat more serious take: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHCHEykUxP4
Where is prediction six or has Cringely gone on a six strike? There’s nothing to be ashamed about. It’s only a number between five and seven. I don’t see what all the fuss is about.
Is it just me, or does this look rather like the iconic Saturn V launch footage?
https://gfycat.com/dimwittedvalidisabellineshrike
Created as a clip from this webcast: https://youtu.be/TXMGu2d8c8g?t=1192
Germane to our previous discussion, high school students are experimenting with CRISPR-CAS9 (partnering with MIT and NASA).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3mQx87teNU
@trashtalk
Maybe it’s like that Monty Python skit about the Bruces … “There is NO prediction number six!” … (and no pooftah’s)
http://dmdb.org/lyrics/bruces.html
A little. Mind you given my job everything begins looking like a Saturn V launch if I stare enough. I know Stalin wasn’t the go to man for a lot of things but he had a point when he said size has its own quality. Those titchy little sub-orbitals do nothing for me.
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This is all turning a bit Occupy Cringely isn’t it? I should have brought a packed lunch.
Why is 6 afraid? Because 789!
ctrl + f “mineserver”
Very observant! Being serious about six does imply going all the way. 7, 8, 9, 10, as you do.
I can’t believe it!
https://www.cringely.com/2019/05/03/prediction-6-mineservers-found-next-to-jimmy-hoffa
This site has become so stale; No one cares about Mineservers and it’s clear Bob won’t be putting a conclusion chapter on this telenovela. No one cares about Bob’s predictions. No one cares about Bob because Bob doesn’t care about them. What an unfortunate footnote to Bob’s career. You should have gone out on a more positive note…
And for anyone who says he’s not done – he’s done and you’re in denial because you’re a PBS fan. Nothing is going to bring him back to his former glory. His career is tainted by ill-gotten gains and an apparent disregard for his fans and giving them any sort of regular/reliable content nor bothering to move a conversation off his blog for their benefit. This blog is covered in cobwebs and 80% of the comments are telling Bob he’s out of touch or complaining about a Mineserver. Put a fork in this, it’s done.
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Sad but true.
@Howard and @trashtalk, you both posted at the exact same time. What’re the odds! *puts tinfoil hat on and references multi-account conspiracy board*
I knew I was pipped at the post. I actually thought this was by two people until looking again. (Talk about being boss eyed!)
Bob,
Hurry up and post another prediction or we’ll be discussing the Kennedy conspiracy next. Yipes!
The Cringely persona was always built on a posture of possessing insider knowledge and Bob’s contempt for his audience. This is a guy who used to brag about the times he humiliated know-it-all commenters on his blogs.
Now that the subject matter of tech today is way beyond his expertise (or even interest), he can’t really do the “insider knowledge” shuck & jive. The second part of that — Bob’s contempt for his own readers — means he was inevitably going to get trapped by his own performance.
Bob hears the calls from even the most loyal and gentlest of readers to sort out this mineserver conflict, but the minute he does, Robert X. Cringely ceases to exist. That’s what we’ve been watching here. That was why he posted the absurd thesis that if his customers want a Mineserver they need to shut the fuck up about a Mineserver. If they don’t, well, then it’s their own fault.
There’s probably a lesson here about Vonnegut’s aphorism that we are what we pretend to be, and therefore need to be careful of what we pretend to be. A couple decades after the court case, he really became Cringely.
Please explain.
@T Bob’s contempt for his own readers – Please explain.
I can’t speak for @granville (great insights btw), but I can say from my own observations over the years that one recent example of contempt for his own readers would be the countless individuals (backers and readers alike) who have pleaded with Bob to post on the KS site and get the Mineserver conversation off this site.
It’s clearly creating a headache for everyone and Bob could solve it by posting on KS site, but he has not. If he respected and valued his readers, he would have done this for them [years ago]. They come here for his content, not his drama/baggage from elsewhere. The backers have stated they would leave if Bob moved the conversation elsewhere, so it leaves room for an ulterior motive that Bob hasn’t taken 5-10 minutes out of the past 2+ years and done just that.
Instead he continues to fuel a flame war between both sides with name calling to rile up the backers and the loyalists usually rush to Bob’s defense, though I have been noticing this defensive army getting smaller and smaller. Perhaps the glow is wearing off and people are starting to see the truth of the man who stands before them and are less eager to defend his stance. When you start blaming other people for your problems, it becomes harder to garner the support of others. Eventually you need to take a look in the mirror and own up to your missteps, something Bob refuses to do.
Just one of a number of examples where Bob shows contempt for his own readers.
Thanks, @nick@
I’d rather see non-mineserver examples, pls … I’ll wait for granville, but since (s)he lays out a pattern of behaviour for many years, established long before mineserver, then mineserver can’t be the main one
I can’t comment too much on the Cringely brand. I liked Triumph of the Nerds and only caught his meanderingly variable quality PBS blog close to the end plus I’m British so my cultural and historical perspective is different. From what I can tell almost any disaster in the US can be solved with a glossy spinning logo and five second jungle.
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How would you boys like the brand to be carried forward? I have my ideas and a fairly solid broadcasting formula. Lots of you haveskills and talents in your retirement plus younger guys do pass through Cringely blog. Perhaps a shared community project might get a Youtube show off the ground? I’m actually thinking of something different but kinda like a casual around the sofa panel show with a tone like like the serial comedy Cheers only for IT. Who do I have to get cosy with to make this happen?
Sure, that counts. Another is the example I gave — he would talk about how he “crushed” some smart ass commenter like he was Mike Tyson fighting a kid in a wheelchair. But beyond that he repeatedly gets bitchy when commenters when they point out he was factually incorrect, such as 4 years ago when he wrote a post mistaking fraudulent phone calls claiming to be from Google with actual calls from Google. It’s an all-time favorite and it’s still here:
https://www.cringely.com/2015/09/07/evil-google-waiting-on-line-one/
Matt F’ing Cutts came into the comment thread to point out his error. He admitted Cutts, probably the third or fourth most well-known Google employee at the time was “probably right” but still ranted about how it was Google’s fault.
Don’t just stop there. He doubles down:
“I agree it sounds like a boiler room operation but THEY SAY THEY ARE FROM GOOGLE.”
Meanwhile, came here to post this:
https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/06/ftc-lawsuit-ibackpack-fraud-indiegogo-kickstarter-crowdfunding/
“When complaints about the delays started piling up, Monahan allegedly started to threaten supporters. According to the FTC’s complaint, he told one customer that he knew where they lived and had their personal information. In another case, he threated to sue a person and their employer for libel and slander.
“While a small number of iBackPack funders received refunds, most have yet to see their pledges returned. The FTC is seeking refunds for those who backed the iBackPack crowdfunding campaigns and is looking for a “permanent injunction” that would prevent Monahan from ever using crowdfunding again.
“‘If you raise money by crowdfunding, you don’t have to guarantee that your idea will work,’ Andrew Smith, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement. ‘But you do have to use the money to work on your idea—or expect to hear from the FTC.’
@trashtalk — You might enjoy this from 2000.
https://annexsite.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/sarasohn-in-japan.pdf
@Terence – Great story! I love bob’s blog posts from the PBS days. That’s what got me hooked in the first place, and why I continue here today.
I got a giant chuckle out of this line:
I’ve said before, one potential positive move forward for the Cringely brand would be a YouTube series. Ideally weekly, perhaps Patreon funded. Cringely would need to be (one of) the chief personality(ies) in the show, but not necessarily be the person running the show (he might answer to someone else, or at least share influence of direction with others).
He’s certainly got video-production experience, across a few different series (still hoping to see bits of the “not in silicon valley” startup tour, someday).
The primary obstacle I see is getting the mineserver mess beyond us … and at this point, it’s chiefly an emotional landscape – not a financial one, not an economic one. Ensure a high enough % of upset voices know they are understood and empathized with, and even if no money ever changes hands it’ll likely go a long way. Also, ensure the right people understand what they did wrong – and give a frank apology – will go far.
Howard, there’s a billion avenues to go down. There’s another writer from Bob’s era who mostly focuses on nostalgia. Lots of aging boomers who tinker around with shit from the “golden era” of PC computing and Bob could likely feed them with anecdotes and edgy opinions. (I’d like to note that this is what his most successful posts here are. Judging by people who offer such information I would guess his average reader is 50+ and may even still slip into using the term “Micro$oft” once in awhile.)
The way to get around what you see as the primary obstacle has already been conceptualized too — a book from the POV of a former tech columnist who got in way over his head with his kids’ “summer project” and is now on the hook for thousands of dollars and seeing his reputation take a hit. Dan Lyons basically did the same thing with DISRUPTED (a very good, very funny book about a middle-aged man attempting to adapt to start-up culture). How’s this for publicity? He could even drop in the press release that you better buy this book because it’s the only way he knows how to climb out of this hole. In reality, I bet a majority of Mineserver backers would even accept a PDF copy in lieu of their hundred buck investment or whatever. They’re fans, after all. Or were.
Lyons reinvented himself, but he then he wanted to reinvent himself. He also likes to write. Bob’s book on IBM is really bad — about the opposite of “a very good, very funny book.” Outside of this blog, it’s the only new thing he’s released in years.
Before Howard grabs all the credit you may wish to double check who was on the case first. It is irritating watching men crab credit. I have my anecdotes including stories Cringely has previously covered only I know what the news is behind the news. Cringely and other journalists report what they are told by men who have a career or financial stake in making an impression and take too much at face value. This is partly why I’m tripping Howard up before he gets too carried away.
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Granvilles idea has legs. Not as nice as my legs and nowhere near as seductive as my legs but still legs.
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I expect a book will really be done for the marketing. It could be a hit with the right pitch but mostly about brand rebuilding and marketing. It may cover compensating Mineserver backers and expenses to intially fund a Youtube but I would treat this as a bonus not a certainty. The Cringely persona is worth something but the community of experience and sense of being part of something is where the real assets are. A lot of older men especially hate change and can lecture which isn’t smart which is why any show needs careful direction and a good mix. Most of the work is in planning the format. The biggest expenses will be appearance fees and expenses. Studio costs in this day and age are nearly free by comparison. Another problem is location. I can easily travel to NY or Monaco. (Monoco is preferred for a lot of reasons.) I have no idea how you guys view this because none of you have ever brought the subject up. Cringely is outside of Silicon Valley but the NW US and Florida have their own share of talent. Exactly how much logistics versus location is an issue is something is a discussion of itself.
@trashtalk you like to jump on the sexism bandwagon…A LOT. I don’t doubt it exists, it 100% does and is gross and shouldn’t, but you call it out in places I don’t always think it’s called for. It’s VERY common in this blog (and the internet at large) for the person commenting to only do a call out the person in the post above them, otherwise it’d be cluttered with a series of @name1, @name2, etc… and no one really cares that much.
I was going to say “I imagine you’ve done the same yourself” but looked at this blog entry as a sample and see that you tend to not mention anyone, you just start talking to the world at large and never call anyone out directly; Your method is like the opposite side of the spectrum and gives everyone and no one credit all at once.
Regardless, roles reversed, if Howard HAD been the person to bring it up first (which we agree he wasn’t), and granville had given you credit for it, I don’t think you’d be knocking down doors to call out the injustice of the situation, nor would he. In fact, if he had, I imagine you’d have a snide remark that he should chill out and that men don’t always need to get credit whenever women get a nod for a good idea. I’ve noticed you have this double standard, but I try to not mention it, even though others have.
Sexism exists and it sucks, but I don’t think this was an example of that, just a byproduct of how commenting in blogs works in general. I don’t think you need to keep finding places to read into things and trying to make it a bigger deal than it is to create a platform to speak on the injustice of the world, but this is all coming from the perspective of a man, so what do I know.
What would I grab credit for? Why would I need to? I’m confused … so here’s me in a nutshell: I love Bob’s writing, and have read him for probably 17 years. I used to listen to the MP3 of his PBS articles (in, as he called it, his “sexy, sexy voice”). I, too, was once a pizza delivery specialist. I want the mineserver mess fully buried, and think YouTube + Patreon (or similar) is his future.
Also …
… isn’t this the sort of claim of insider knowledge that everyone blames Bob for using to inflate his credibility? … which brings me back to my allegation from April 11 😉
At any rate, I’m confused … and I suspect @trashtalk is, too. Ah well, it happens. On to important matters.
The community – what Bob used to call “The Tribe” back in the PBS days – is an asset, to be true. That said, the mineserver mess fucked up the community so royally it’s just not the same as it was before. I believe it can be once again, but about 12 months after the final time the words “mineserver” and minecraft” are uttered. Not the last time they’re uttered, but long after that.
To my mind, a big asset is Bob taking the long view, thanks to his knowledge and experience. He’s seen firsthand what the tech world looked like in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s. He also has a good idea of what it looked like in the 60s, 50s, 40s, and before. Using the long view he can see patterns that are tougher for younger folk, and completely invisible to millennials.
Moreover, he has also seen what “the future” was expected to be in each of those decades (such as the AT&T ads that @b highlighted in the previous thread), and can point out how differently it turned out than was predicted. This is indeed a different and useful asset.
Another big asset is, he knows where credit is due for various innovations and trends, and can call people out when they try to take credit / self-promote after the fact (the Sarason story is one example, Triumph of the Nerds is a bigger example).
A few examples of what I believe Cringely could turn into: TMRO … Binging with Babish … Ten Minute Bible Hour … watch a few episodes of these (especially: compare the earliest episodes to more recent ones) to see how it could go, and how it could grow (this is not to be overlooked: it doesn’t have to be perfect at episode 1).
When I said I knew the news behind the news I meant it. It’s a limited spread of stories. They are not new and slowly decaying. Cringely may believe he was listening to insiders but I have the inside view of the inside view. I’m not making a big song and dance about it just pointing out some things aren’t entirely what they seem. You also have to be awarethat Cringely writes about stuff he doesn’t do stuff. This is an important distinction. There are also hidden threads to stories where the actual original work which needs to be credited is somewhere else about 2-3 steps removed. As for giving credit I do give credit and much more in the past except there is a big trend certainly outside of academia and the quality media to push first and maybe give credit later which is a difficult trend to fight.
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There’s a difference between having a formula and all the other working out and skill to deliver it than simply saying Cringely should do Youtube. I have actually articulated a lot more than anyone else on this so no I am not bandwagonning.
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I’m not handing over stories or a show package without a sound proposal and NDA on the table. I’m not actually that interested because the pressure just saying if something is on I’m in. That’s it.
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Another issue is Cringely and loads of you guys are far to US-centric. Sorry but I cannot support this. Unless you can develop a more international view and sense of give and take nobody will get my cooperation with anything.
Why wait for Bob? Why not start your own? You certainly have a strong mind for what you want to see happen.
@T
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I’ve considered it on and off for a few years. I’m not sure I have the confidence or whatever. The format I have in mind is pretty adaptable so there’s no pressure. Much like Cringely I regard myself as retired. Not completely but more my own boss if this makes sense. Just drifting while the escort work brings money in and I figure out the whys and hows of what next.
Howard, it’s a bit different to take “the long view” when you’re 66 years old. Bob isn’t taking the long-view, unless you mean a childish hope it will all blow over if he ignores it, pokes it with a stick and then tries setting it on fire inside his living room.
To the critique that Bob, and we by extension, are too US-centric … we don’t know how to not be. Honestly, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Might as well try to ask you to give parenting advice from a consistently masculine point of view *. You’d try, and get it right sometimes, but it would be a losing battle. Stick with what you’re good at.
It’s a common complaint that Americans are too focused on America and not enough on other countries (for example, the old joke: what do you call someone who speaks 3 languages? Tri-lingual. Two languages? Bi-lingual. One language: American). But it’s not as fair as it sounds. America is what it is, and it’s wise – necessary even – for people in other countries to pay attention to America, and speak English. It’s far more rare, though, to find for example a Polish person who’s fully on top of the political situation in Singapore, or a Yemeni who can discuss the finer points of problems in Belize, or a Peruvian who’s fully up to speed on skirmishes in Estonia and what that means for the future of Russia. You may find them, but it’s not the norm. But they all know who Barack Obama is, Donald Trump, George Bush, Hilary Clinton.
Non-americans have a need to be abreast of America, and they have one America to focus on. But what do Americans have? Is it … Russia? Europe? MENA? Sub-saharan Africa? China? India? BRICs in general? PIIGS? Oceania (who has always been at war with Eastasia)?
Or hey, just pick a language … but: there’s no one non-English language that’s most important. French? Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese? Traditional or simplified glyphs?)? Russian? Arabic? Farsi? Non-americans find a need to speak English, and choosing English will do very well for them (always helps to add more of course; that’s not the point). But here again: you won’t often find a Portuguese speaker learning Farsi, or a Malayam speaker learning whatever the hell the Irish tongue is called (Gaelic?). Yet Americans are ridiculed for their lack of perspective.
It’s just a bit more complicated than that. Hell, Americans are busy trying to learn how to speak gen-z and write using hieroglyphic emoji.
* I’m assuming you’re a lady … let’s please avoid the SJW trap of assuming gender = bad
@B, it’s okay, we’ve flat out asked @trashtalk whether she was a female (because I used to think she was a man) and she put any mystery to rest and has told us she’s a woman, so you’re in the clear (2018 Census Survey asked it here).
Additionally, I enjoyed your post. Well said!
Re: “JosephMay 9, 2019
@B, it’s okay, we’ve flat out asked @trashtalk whether she was a female…”
Perhaps the better question is when.
Wow. The gaslighting and misogyny on here. Staggering ignorance.
“mi·sog·y·ny – dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.”
Ummm, what now @trashtalk? What above shows any of that? If anything I think YOU’RE VERY quick to put down men and sow seeds of contempt whereas nearly any time anyone talks to or about you directly, you take offense and think it’s on the basis of your sex. You need to take a step back and not always assume the worst in everyone around you; You’re making unnecessary conflict where there was none.
In the coming weeks when I show my dislike for you, know that it has nothing to do with your gender but is entirely based on how you present yourself on this forum.
I think I underestimated the average age of Bob’s fans.
@Ronc “Perhaps the better question is when.”
I don’t follow. if you mean when was this asked, it was June 10th, 2018, as linked above (and here: https://www.cringely.com/2018/05/21/cloud-computing-may-finally-end-the-productivity-paradox/). Please let me know if you mean something else.
I assumed “when” meant something else … but explaining it kinda takes the bite out of the humour.
Before excusing American-centric media read a few books on American exceptionalism and multi-polar international governance and male privilege. I know this policy areas fairly well and the pile of twaddle I read making excuses and fingerpointing and procrastination was a classic retread. A big oh shucks puppy eye look for business as usual. Seriously? Gys? Read the memo.
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I don’t especially care if XYZ has a hate on or not. Much like the dating game he just factored himself out and there’s plenty more fish in the sea.
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Just level the fuck up.
@Howard You have trashtalk pegged as being Cringely. I have her pegged as a gen-z’er, because I have NO idea what she is saying. Perhaps we’re both right and it’s not Bob, but one of Bob’s kids (Bob + Gen-z = Trashtalk?).
@trashtalk What in the world are you trying to say? I’m pretty sure I don’t care because you seem to be upset and finger pointing again, taking no responsibility yourself, but in an attempt to come to a mutual understanding, I’m offering you a chance to rephrase your stance in plain English. If you truly care about making change you’ll stop trying to be clever, speaking in code, and just say what you god damn mean so people can understand you. You can’t be mad at people not listening to you if you aren’t clear in your intent.
And for the record, my statement here would be the same if you were a man or a woman, so stop trying to make that a thing right now. No one was making it a thing except you, though I’m starting to get the impression people are taking jabs at it being a thing because you won’t drop it/leave it alone.
Three Mile Island is shutting down. The border wall crowdfund is experiencing allegations of misuse of funds.
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Will Cringely complete his predictions? Will Cringely produce receipts for these alleged Mineservers?
@T April 16, 2019 at 9:54 am: “So far it’s been 12 days since the last prediction. I expect # 6 should drop before the 20th, maybe a day or two later (20th would be 16 days, already the high end of the bell curve).
My money is on tomorrow. Any takers?”
Sad I didn’t take this bet! Goodness, Bob where ARE you?!? You’re not just ignoring Mineserver backers but your readers now too? This is getting ridiculous.
Mineserver LLC
Santa Rosa, CA
This is a family project. Dad (Bob Cringely) is a legendary Silicon Valley insider and VC on this project. Mom (Mary Alyce Cringely) is the family admin/goddess. Technical leadership, assembly, testing and shipping is done by Channing Cringely (13), Cole Cringely (11), and Fallon Cringely (9). Don’t mess with Fallon.
This was in 2015. Has Channing graduated by now? Can we get an update or least the t-shirts?
Since we’re in the topic of long-term predictions, it may be interesting to look at Bob’s predictions from a decade ago.
This happens to be the first post I can find in the blog, a predictions post from December 2008. Obviously it’s wholly unfair to grade these too closely, but it’s still interesting to see what the future looked like then, and contrast it to today.
https://www.cringely.com/2008/12/16/surviving-2009/
@Howard “Since we’re in the topic of long-term predictions, it may be interesting to look at Bob’s predictions from a decade ago.”
At this point I’d just settle for Bob saying something at all. This silence is deafening!
True dat. It’s clear that we, the Tribe, ran out of things to talk about some time ago. Myself included. 😎
With that in mind, I can’t help but consider the shape of the Falcon 9 rocket … and then, the New Shepard rocket.
Mmm hmm.
Tim Urban, of Wait But Why, did guest commentary on a SpaceX webcast once, and wrote about his experience. He has a tangent of his piece where he explains why Blue Origin’s rocket-landing achievement, while awesome, is not nearly as awesome as SpaceX’s rocket-landing achievement.
Then he admits that Blue Origin has beat SpaceX in one aspect of modern rocketry:
Blue Origin and SpacX have different strategies as does ESA (European Space Agency) which the American-centric webosphere/manosphere tends to forget. Roscosmos have their strategies too.
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I have gone severely off Elon Musk. When he made a joke about a dog dressed up in fancy dress he triggered a few things. I was already feeling a bit put out when the first successful landing of the Falcon Heavy boosters had his team chanting “USA! USA! USA!” I didn’t like it when American audiences at the Canadian (?) Winter Olympics pulled this a decade or two before.
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If America thinks america is going to own space America has another thought coming.
@trashtalk how is you constantly putting down “USA” and telling us about how great Europe is any different than people chanting “USA! USA!”? It’s okay to have national pride and root for your home team; That doesn’t mean these people want to watch the rest of the world burn/lose, they are just proud of their country. This happens for nearly all sports/competition-based events (and I would argue the 2nd space race we’re currently in is a competition of sorts, sparking national pride, even if the leading actors are now corporations and not government bodies).
Additionally, you are constantly telling us how American-centric our views are and your response is to always tell us about how Europe is doing (where you are from/reside). You don’t tell us about China, India, Russia, etc.. So perhaps you may want to hold up a mirror before you keep lobbing stones from your glass house. I get the impression that your issue is less with our home country perspective and national pride and that you just don’t care for America that much, which is fine, you’re entitled to that, but let’s call it what it is.
@trashtalk – I understand your annoyance at how America-centric things are, in general. I’d like to assuage your concerns. A few decades from now, America won’t be running things anymore – China will be. Do you think America is too proud, too careless, too racist, too selfish? You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Come to think of it, I guess that doesn’t assuage your concerns. Be careful what you wish for.
There’s an oft-told story about Rome leaving the British Isles, around the middle of the first millennium AD. The locals had complained about Roman influence and excesses for a long time, and Rome for its own reasons was ready to leave. At first, the locals were glad – even insulting the Roman soldiers as they packed up their garrisons. Then … the locals remembered their wild, barbarian neighbors, known for brutality surpassing the Romans. “Aren’t you still going to protect us?” they asked. The Romans soldiers replied, “Nope. Not our problem anymore.” Suddenly the locals weren’t so happy to see the Romans leave.
Nah, don’t mind me. I’m just excusing the status quo, eh?
What twaddle.
@Howard I think you may be on to something and @trashtalk and Cringely may be one in the same person as you predicted. They rarely respond to anyone directly when called out and resort to lashing out when they disagree rather than discussing it like the intellectual they claim to be.
@trashtalk Note that I used a gender-neutral pronoun because unlike what I see you bringing up time and time again, this is not a comment/observation on the basis of your sex, I just think you dish it but can’t take it. You appear to have a short fuse and turn a lot of harmless conversations into arguments and I’m not really sure what value that adds.
[To me] You come across as defensive and I am less inclined to want to converse with you knowing that you seem incapable of having an intelligent back and forth separate from emotional outbursts. The sooner Bob (or you) decide to come back and post a new article the better, as I fear your popular vote is dwindling the longer we remain here without a bigger target to roast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFUMr9Ux_go
Don’t be a twat.
Though I, too, clearly perceive this site (and author) (and personal brand) (and technical acumen) as all but completely faded by this point, it WOULD greatly amuse me if he (or his family) (or appointed mercenaries) had taken up fake chat-handles so as to combat the ‘detractors’ and ‘trolls.’ It isn’t working, but it would be legitimately funny.
@Howard
Great analogy about the Romans leaving the Isles. Monty Python covered the idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7tvauOJMHo&feature=youtu.be
You guys are now so deep into your narrative fantasy you’re now using 20th Century comedy shows as evidential proof? Because, like, it’s too difficult to read a book or consult with an actual expert.
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Is this is the calibre of Cringelys readership.
I took a break from this blog and checked back today only to find that my email IS working and Bob just hasn’t posted anything new. YEESH!
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@trashtalk what’s crazier is that I come back to a new dynamic where you challenge anyone who dares speak to you? What happened to give you such a chip on your shoulder? Even the people who are daring to want to discuss with you with less hostility you blow them off and spew insults or unintelligible “cleverness” that does nothing to dissipate your anger and just fuels the general dislike that you are now getting.
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I remember when you first entered the blog you sounded like a troll and got a lot of raised eyebrows and cease and desist comments. Then we started to see the angle you brought and it was all in good fun and you had an interesting piece to add. But right now your popularity is at an all time low and you’ve backed yourself into a corner and are just swinging wildly at no one in particular. What a strange turn of events. You pulled us in only to push us away. I’m going to put my parent voice on for a second but, “I’m very disappointed in you. You’re better than this.”
Ooh, a kickstarter selling a DIY biohacking lab to the masses, so everyone from your uncle Bob to your florist Gretchen to that punk kid down the street can experiment with CRISPR.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/feles/feles-one-for-bio-imagineering
What could possibly go wrong? Politicians are criminally clueless about this.
@Howard After watching the KS video and skimming the page, I feel like this is more a “read” biology rather than “read/write” as you’re hinting at. Perhaps you just mean this is the first step to the scary inevitability of “write” biology making its way into our homes (and I see there is a CRISPR demo) but I don’t think we’re there yet (though I do think we’re closer than I’d like and that’s scary).
@trashtalk – I know you’re a fan of books, and gratefully a friend of mine pointed me to one. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle didn’t always write mysteries; history was one of his fancies, along with supernatural fads. So here’s a book: THE LAST OF THE LEGIONS and Other Tales of Long Ago, written in 1905, here thanks to Project Gutenberg. One salient excerpt from the first chapter:
Ugh, felled by WordPress filtering. Read the first chapter of that book, suffice to say. I find it telling that Boudica is a folk hero in England, and yet Doyle’s three Britons (fictitious, yes, but with true counterparts no doubt) are lost to history.
I’ll give a hat-tip to Richard Fernandez, he mentioned it in his own essay five years ago, about America’s own issues.
“For God’s sake, your excellency, put our words out of your head.” Sometimes the road to ruin lies in getting exactly what you want.
Doyle’s “three Britons” are fictitious and have no historical counterpart because that’s not how Britain broke away from central Roman control. The “revolts” of Britons were of Roman legions in Britain who hadn’t been paid. The soldiers killed the first couple of usurpers who turned out to be quite bad. Unfortunately they didn’t kill the one called Constantine III, who they declared emperor and who then immediately departed for Gaul with all of the legions from Britain he could muster. He eventually drove them to Italy where he was defeated and executed. Britain was left almost totally defenseless and that was the end, more or less, of official Roman power in Britain.
The rest of that is just bullshit from people who wanted to justify holding a colonial empire at a time when it required more and more overt violence to do so. Which is valid enough to me, I don’t care, but the origin story you’re citing is bullshit.
I thought I had walked into an episode of Mad Men for a moment.
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@granville
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Finally someone beginning to speak sense!
So what you’re saying is, we have another moabt babgof situation …
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Murder
Of
A
Beautiful
Theory
By
A
Brutal
Gang
Of
Facts
*enters tomb and brushes cobwebs out of the way*
Adventurer’s Journal, entry #209: Today I discovered the strangest place – it appears to be a lost civilization of some sort that has fallen into disrepair. What was once a thriving populous is now survived by a few gremlins huddled around the corpse of their once mighty king. From what I can tell, a few have taken it upon themselves to continue their fallen king’s crusade, but with no audience, the words fall on deaf ears. They shuffle as I approach, avoiding the light I carry with me.
Despite the scurrying, I have tried interacting with the locals only to be met with hostility. We seem to speak a different tongue and our cultures are too different to make sense of one another. I fear there is nothing for me here and that this place, and its people, are doomed to be lost and forgotten in time; They have nothing to offer the outside world and what’s more, no desire to leave.
A part of me feels pity for them, knowing they will never experience life outside of this place and that their life here holds no meaning…but then again, perhaps I feel sadness knowing that I’ll never know this level of devotion. Whatever it may be, I hope they find what they are looking for and are at peace in the end…
-Sir Greecious of the Nine, circa 2019
*seals tomb and conceals the entrance, leaving the inhabitants to their circus of the dead*
What twaddle.
What condescension.
@Explorer’s Journal
OMG. That was so funny. I love old school adventure stories and mystery too.
The twaddle here is about as entertaining as the predictions. (At least it is more frequent.)
Not all twaddles are created equal. One of these twaddles has a different id in the “inspect” mode. Did trashtalk forget to put the same email address or is she having her identity stolen again. Though @trashtalk didn’t call them out complaining, so who can be sure.
SQRL any day now
@gumshoe
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I figured people would be smart enough to figure out the first reply was an identity thief.
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I need a long hot and luxurious bubble bath. #bored
Bob
Bob v2.0
From canapes & finger foods to corporate buffets, seminar foods, grazing tables, and everything in between, you can work with your private chef to craft the ideal corporate catering menu for your needs.
Sooooo That’s it? Nothing to close out MineServer? Where are the boys?
Sheesh!
I really hope Bob comes back, at the very least to finish off his final predictions.
I’ve been a fan of his since Accidental Empires and Triumph of the Nerds. The whole Mineserver thing has been unfortunately for everyone. The really silly thing about it is that anyone who knows Bob knows that he often starts projects that never finish, so people wouldn’t be nearly as upset if he had just come out and admitted that the project was dead. Maybe there are legal reasons why he didn’t do that; I don’t know.
But then again he never came out and officially announced that Nerds Season 2.0 would never happen, or that his moon shot (!!) was over, or any of the other things. They just quietly faded away and people stopped talking about them.
I’ve started and failed to finish more projects than I can even count, so I’m sympathetic. But if he’s retiring anyway, why not tie up loose ends?
Well, it looks like Bob has finished.
Bob, I started my career in IT 20 years ago and throughout that time I’ve also been reading your words of wisdom.
I just want to say thanks, it’s been great. I hope you have a happy life.
Cheerio.
Bob, your career (and this blog) are dead. Sad you decided to go out the way you did, but I’d be lying if I said I was surprised; You never were that upstanding of an individual, for better or worse, I wouldn’t expect you to start now.
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Sorry to all the backers who believed in Bob and his empty promises, only to be abandoned and ridiculed. You deserved better, but Bob had nothing better to give. A shame, but if you knew Bob you’d know this was exactly what you were getting yourself into. Lesson learned – once a con artist, always a con artist. People don’t change.
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Signing off for the last time. RIP Bob.
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Here Lies
Robert X Cringely
1953 – 2019
What twaddle.
Robert X Cringely has become the IBM of technology bloggers. How ironic…
Aw, come on, Bob’s not gone or dead… he’s just working really hard on those Mineservers!
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The Cringely boys Kickstart Mineserver™, a $99 Minecraft server
When my three sons, ages 13, 11, and 9 decided to do a summer business together I thought it could be almost anything. After all, they’ve visited three dozen tech startups with me in our RV and they’ve been surrounded by technology entrepreneurs their entire lives. What business would it be?
I just never expected a $99 Minecraft server.
It’s brilliant, really. Minecraft is hugely popular but the Minecraft hardware market is almost nonexistent. It’s not that nobody thought to do such a server but that it’s a business idea most entrepreneurs would see as not having legs. It will scale, sure, but will it endure? In a few months someone — no doubt someone in Asia — will copy the idea, sucking all the profit out of the business. But wait a minute, these are my kids and they aren’t thinking much past Christmas. Like little Steve Jobs’s they don’t care if their market is cannibalized. They just want to change the world.
So the boys named me their VC and got me started buying little embedded computer boards. They went through dozens of them looking for the right combination of price and performance. Then it was a matter of choosing the right OS, the right Minecraft multiuser server (there are several, some of them architecturally quite different though functionally identical). And they put together a package of integration features and services to make the little server dead simple to use.
They wrote a frigging API!!!
None of this happened in a vacuum. Paul Tyma and Bob Lee were especially helpful. Google those names. xBox father j allard agreed to help out, too.
The wonder of this project is not that they started it or finished it but that our technical culture has reached the point where such a thing is actually doable. Think about it: the CTO is 11!
And he even has an exit strategy. “Microsoft is crazy not to have a product in this category,” Cole said, clearly having never seen a Zune. “After Christmas maybe we’ll sell out to them.”
Nine year-old Fallon, on the other hand, wants to be Microsoft or — even better — Apple.
But I keep telling them it kind of depends on how many Mineservers™ they sell, don’t you think?
Please take a look at what my kids have done. And if you know an avid Minecraft player, or the parent of one, please send along to them the Kickstarter link, because my kids owe me a lot of money.
By Robert X. Cringely|September 29th, 2015|2015, Breaking News, entertainment, Entrepreneurshi
Link: https://www.cringely.com/2015/09/29/the-cringely-boys-kickstart-mineserver-a-99-minecraft-server/
Mr Cringely’s the-drone-feeds-the-truck idea is *brilliant*.
NYC Queens’ 98th Street runs thru our apartment complex; 1100-odd apartments in nine 6-story buildings.
Every afternoon, all afternoon, UPS & FDX & USPS trucks are sitting there, double-parked (grr), while the drivers walk packages into the buildings.
If the guys are going to be there for an hour each, why have them make a two-hour round-trip ride to a warehouse (at Teamster & NALC wages) when you can just dump more stuff onto those nice, large, flat, stationary roofs?
Moreover, if you can refresh the trucks in situ, you do not need to have more than one truck parked on 98th Street at a time, which happens almost every day.
For NYC, scaling the last mile problem down to the last fifty yards problem will do wonders for everyone.
For same day delivery – which has become the insanity de jour – drone-to-truck refresh is just the ticket.
No more will the Good Humor man run-out of my favorite flavor !!!
Cheers,
If the trucks are not moving, then eliminate them entirely and use the large flat roofs on the buildings. The delivery guy can take a cab/bus/subway to the apartment complex’s roof tops to complete the delivery or store the items on the roof until a delivery is possible.
Hey look a boomer from NYC believes the whole world is like it is for boomers in NYC.
Science fiction in my view.
With so many drones in the air who will regulate drone air traffic ?
Looks like legal nightmare too.
One accident which is unavoidable and it will become public relations nightmare too.
One of those things that look great and simple in theory but is very difficult to implement in practice.
It won’t happen any time soon if ever.
What we have now is the makings of a movie. Cringely can play the crusty old industry man leaning forwards and giving a young man advice. “Tubes, my good fellow. Tubes.” I’ll get my suspenders…
Thanks for the detailed analysis on the future of drones. I know everything is shaping up for more drone usage but I’ve always wondered about the networks required to thousands of them. They need a serious infrastructure to pull off their integration into the business world.
Not sure if this counts as a prediction or not. Not an official one, more of an observation of a market opportunity.
https://www.cringely.com/2008/12/26/the-missing-link/
11 years on, how did it turn out? In my circle, sound bars are decently popular, but it’s frankly just as common for people to just let the television audio be it, sound quality ignored altogether. But that’s just my experience. How about ‘yall?
[…] Digital Branding Web Design Marketing I, Cringely […]
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