Aug 5 – 100000 robotic lawn mowers can sing Happy Birthday to Curiosity

[happyopossum]

There's absolutely no reason to do this, and yet it's awesome and I'm glad Husqvarna is doing it.

Now I want to look at a new robomower!

[munk-a]

There is indeed absolutely no reason to do this - and I'm personally anti-lawn (I prefer a nice naturally overgrown green space outside my home). But even I can get on the "this is awesome" train.

[rootusrootus]

> Now I want to look at a new robomower!

Me too. And then I saw the price (of the higher end Husqvarna at least). Ha! Nevermind.

[micromacrofoot]

The reason is marketing

[_Adam]

Fortunately this is opt-in. Imagine being that guy managing a fleet of these things mowing a giant golf course and three times a day just stop for no reason and start singing.

[sandworm101]

If they are automated, how would you know?

[qohen]

Was anyone else expecting a lawn-mower-based version of the Floppotron[0]?

(E.g. here's the Star Wars theme[1] played by the Floppotron, from the inventor's YouTube channel[2]).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppotron

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KS02q0BUnY

[2] https://www.youtube.com/user/sh4dowww90/videos

[butz]

Sounds fun and all, but mark my words - after a year or two we will see some bug reports about lawn mowers randomly singing "Happy Birthday", and no one will know why.

[valleyer]

See also: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-man...

[Archelaos]

> the loneliest robot in the universe

No. This was and will always be Marvin the Paranoid Android getting stuck on Sqornshellous Zeta for 1.5 million years.

[squarefoot]

Also, Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity and a few others may disagree. (Would Viking 1 and 2 qualify as robots?)

[drewzero1]

I'll be very concerned if Curiosity finds any mattresses up there to converse with.

[divbzero]

Can Curiosity really claim the title of “loneliest robot in the universe”?

[sandworm101]

I'd put the voyager probes as more lonely. Not to mention any number of defunct spacecraft that are still operating out there. They don't have off switches. Somewhere out there is a space probe periodically trying to phone home only to discover we are no longer listening.

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/24/843493304/long-lost-u-s-milit...

""The oldest one I've seen is Transit 5B-5. And it launched in 1965," he says, referring to a nuclear-powered U.S. Navy navigation satellite that still circles the Earth in a polar orbit, long forgotten by all but a few amateurs interested in hearing it "sing" as it passes overhead."

[machinerychorus]

Yeah, mars is getting pretty crowded at this point! I guess the voyager probes might be lonelier, if you count them as robots.

[athenot]

At least as lonely as WALL-E...

[Banana699]

No, because a robot cannot feel loneliness yet.

[stuff4ben]

Relevant xkcd... https://xkcd.com/695/

[Dinux]

That is so sad :(

[numbers]

this is the sorta thing that makes you realize we're all human and maybe we like all these cool toys b/c they're fun

[zachruss92]

I absolutely love this.

[ck2]

Ha feels worthy of a minor plot-line out of (future) Futurama

[mlyle]

Is it just me or is your comment completely off-topic? Is there some connection that I missed?

Is it just because there's "lawnmower" in some past offtopic comment quoting a video that you felt the need to try and derail conversation here?

That's 10 minutes I'm not going to get back.