The size of these vehicles is certainly absurd, but flying packages with drones that consume most of their energy to fight gravity does not seem particularly efficient either, (e.g. compared to small road electric vehicles with the same payload, which would have its own practical problems).
This might be news to some people, but there are other modes of transportation / delivery than 2-ton cars. "2-ton cars vs. flying drones" is a false dichotomy.
And I live in such a lovely city. I can bike anywhere so quickly, so easily. Scooters & micromobility are abundant. But so many people (so many roommates over time) make a habit of ordering delivery, on such a regular basis. It's unfathomable to me: both the negative impact in general, and particularly here where it's so close & pleasant to go walk or bike around. It's such a huge expense to the world, and such a great enriching activity, getting a little walkabout.
Speaking as someone who just goes downstairs and makes a sandwich, or who takes some to work, ordering lunch seems absurd to me. Is it that cheap in the US / do you earn that much? Food culture is so weird over there.
At least a delivery vehicle is amortizing by delivering multiple lunches to multiple people in a single trip. When someone drives themselves to lunch, they’re using a 2-ton vehicle for a single lunch.
Delivery vehicles for packages aren’t traveling very far between stops. A 2 ton vehicle dropping off 200 packages on a 100 mile delivery route is averaging 0.5 miles per package and 0.125 kWh where a drone might need to fly 15 miles each way per packages = 30 miles to and from some central hub to do those same routes. Drones are light, but 0.125 kWh to fly 30 miles seems unlikely.
Food delivery might be a better comparison, but 2 pizzas and a 2 liter soda is heavy enough to need a fairly massive drone.
Single meal delivery as an institution is wildly inefficient. The absurd inefficiency of the car as delivery vehicle does not make drones a meaningfully wiser choice.
For every proposed technology, we need desperately to ask: does this really make ecological sense?
Delivering necessities (e.g. medicine) to a remote township with a drone makes sense. Drone-drop pizzas do not.
That's because it is absurd. The same way any convenience is absurd.
Most of the deliveries around the world are done by motorbikes though, not only that but they are done not one at a time but in big chunks. Which is not absurd and pretty good.
Quick tangential question: I watched a few seconds that video and was immediately struck by how Mark sounds so....YouTube'ey? What is it about his intonation and narration style that is so distinctly YouTube? I don't watch enough YouTube to get a sense for whether it's distinct to him or to an entire class of popular channels. Every sentence or two is a "quip" - it's loud and sing-song'y. Lots of phrases seem to end on a rising tone (my parents used to call this "upspeak?" because it sounds like you're asking a question? all the time?).
TLDR: They use various ways of emphasizing words and adding variety to speech. It's almost exclusively done in videos where it's just a face talking to camera to try to make it attention grabbing.
They use Jon Stewart's Daily Show as a pre- YouTube example of someone using the same techniques for the same reasons.
This is an interesting observation. I had a similar observation about tik tok influencer speak, though it’s not the same style as YouTube speak. There is a distinct shared way of speaking I’ve just called the tik tok accent (not talking about the AI voiceover). It’s something I’ve noticed mostly with female influencers, where they talk in a lower, quieter voice, that feels both like they are educating as well as perhaps infantilizing the listener. It’s difficult to describe precisely but definitely a shared phenomenon.
It's awful. I was impressed by the video and the technology, but the presentation style is irritating.
I felt especially sorry for the people working at the Rwanda site just trying to do their jobs efficiently, while he mucks about being fake-excited about everything. There's almost an air of "smile and nod and hope he goes away soon" about it
> I cut my finger making lunch?
So I placed an order for some bandaids a couple minutes ago?
And now they're four seconds away!
That is a nearly silent drone system that can deliver a package from the sky?
Right to my backyard in as little as two minutes?
With dinner plate accuracy!
Where else do people talk like this? What motivates this kind of speech?
My totally made up backstory for why this is is from bad editing in the early days of chopping up multiple takes where the edit does not happen on natural sentence endings so those intonations happen at unnatural places. it then became a thing and now is done in normal delivery as a style to be emulated.
Can’t say for sure where it comes from. But upspeak and it’s tangential culture does more psychic damage to me than advertising, “bad ux”, dubious business models, and most of the other common gripes on here
Mark Rober is one of the big-name youtubers that so many other youtubers try to emulate, so whatever his reasons are, the reason it sounds so "youtubey" is probably because it's how Mark Rober talks in his videos.
Essentially its a learned affectation to come off as approachable and unthreatening (see also Jimmy Fallon) to garner views. Read a "boring" technical article at Ars or watch this guy fumble around and be silly and give these practiced big smiles? A lot of people would rather watch a 20-30 minute video that's entertaining and lower information than read a 5 minute article thats denser.
Essentially this is blogspam in video form and it makes a lot of people very wealthy, so its not going away anytime soon.
As someone who loves the arts, but can't get into youtube personality culture, its just so crazy to me people watch these things. They're a bit infantlizing to me. "Oh you want to learn about these drones? Instead of proper sources here's some guy who will pretend to be your friend and do silly comedic things for you while explaining it to you on the 5th grade level." Umm ok.
The most positive thing I can say is that there are people out there who can't read well (or read English at all) or can't learn from reading well, so these videos can be seen as helping a vulnerable demographic in an accessibility-like way. It may also attract younger people who otherwise would never read an Ars or Hackaday or HN (or whomever) article because these outlets are just not super accessible to them (unknown site to them, written on a too low level, etc). And that these video personalities could be a stepping stone into better and deeper media.
Essentially media is a free capitalist market and people choose their media sources, via their own biases and limitations. If they want everything explained to them via a Jimmy Fallon impersonator, then it will happen. Eventually the lowest common denominator demands questionable gimmicks and the market is more than happy to oblige.
that's not bad, upspeak is a great way to label the phonetic dancing being done. For that guy he always talks like that, something in the strong direction of salesman like. Sometimes you can go far back enough in the video history to sample their persona developing over time, eg ChrisFix videos on YouTube have undergone a more muted and normal speech pattern to the more ebullient stuff you find later.
I think the style arose out of a need to fill a 1-minute video targeted at an audience of low attention-span 13 year olds with 9 additional minutes of CONTENT! in order to meet the length requirement for monetization. If the filler CONTENT! is bombastic and sing-songey, it keeps your attention, however vapid it may be.
Also noteworthy is that Rober is a really good looking former engineer/technician. Most men I've known in the field do not have such as mediagenic appearance, but he is attractive enough that people accept him as a presenter.
nomilk|2 years ago
Seems absurd when it's put like that. This is possibly something we'll look back on and struggle to comprehend how it was ever the go-to solution.
bnegreve|2 years ago
shafyy|2 years ago
JKCalhoun|2 years ago
There was a time when ordering lunch was reserved for when you were already "on the town" shopping and the like.
Even debating what mode of transportation should be used seems to miss the larger issue and is even kind of gross to my mind.
jauntywundrkind|2 years ago
And I live in such a lovely city. I can bike anywhere so quickly, so easily. Scooters & micromobility are abundant. But so many people (so many roommates over time) make a habit of ordering delivery, on such a regular basis. It's unfathomable to me: both the negative impact in general, and particularly here where it's so close & pleasant to go walk or bike around. It's such a huge expense to the world, and such a great enriching activity, getting a little walkabout.
Cthulhu_|2 years ago
nobrains|2 years ago
dahart|2 years ago
Retric|2 years ago
Food delivery might be a better comparison, but 2 pizzas and a 2 liter soda is heavy enough to need a fairly massive drone.
paxys|2 years ago
akmittal|2 years ago
Here in India a lot of delivery services moved to electric 2 wheelers
walleeee|2 years ago
For every proposed technology, we need desperately to ask: does this really make ecological sense?
Delivering necessities (e.g. medicine) to a remote township with a drone makes sense. Drone-drop pizzas do not.
seoulmetro|2 years ago
Most of the deliveries around the world are done by motorbikes though, not only that but they are done not one at a time but in big chunks. Which is not absurd and pretty good.
RC_ITR|2 years ago
No, let's instead try to game the superlinear scaling of power to weight in helicopters!
6stringmerc|2 years ago
marcosdumay|2 years ago
But that's still hundreds of kilograms.
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
solarpunk|2 years ago
nlh|2 years ago
Where/when did this style arise?
0110101001|2 years ago
TLDR: They use various ways of emphasizing words and adding variety to speech. It's almost exclusively done in videos where it's just a face talking to camera to try to make it attention grabbing.
They use Jon Stewart's Daily Show as a pre- YouTube example of someone using the same techniques for the same reasons.
appplication|2 years ago
1a_user|2 years ago
I felt especially sorry for the people working at the Rwanda site just trying to do their jobs efficiently, while he mucks about being fake-excited about everything. There's almost an air of "smile and nod and hope he goes away soon" about it
cosmojg|2 years ago
Where else do people talk like this? What motivates this kind of speech?
dylan604|2 years ago
waldothedog|2 years ago
notatoad|2 years ago
drzaiusapelord|2 years ago
Essentially its a learned affectation to come off as approachable and unthreatening (see also Jimmy Fallon) to garner views. Read a "boring" technical article at Ars or watch this guy fumble around and be silly and give these practiced big smiles? A lot of people would rather watch a 20-30 minute video that's entertaining and lower information than read a 5 minute article thats denser.
Essentially this is blogspam in video form and it makes a lot of people very wealthy, so its not going away anytime soon.
As someone who loves the arts, but can't get into youtube personality culture, its just so crazy to me people watch these things. They're a bit infantlizing to me. "Oh you want to learn about these drones? Instead of proper sources here's some guy who will pretend to be your friend and do silly comedic things for you while explaining it to you on the 5th grade level." Umm ok.
The most positive thing I can say is that there are people out there who can't read well (or read English at all) or can't learn from reading well, so these videos can be seen as helping a vulnerable demographic in an accessibility-like way. It may also attract younger people who otherwise would never read an Ars or Hackaday or HN (or whomever) article because these outlets are just not super accessible to them (unknown site to them, written on a too low level, etc). And that these video personalities could be a stepping stone into better and deeper media.
Essentially media is a free capitalist market and people choose their media sources, via their own biases and limitations. If they want everything explained to them via a Jimmy Fallon impersonator, then it will happen. Eventually the lowest common denominator demands questionable gimmicks and the market is more than happy to oblige.
jxramos|2 years ago
VoodooJuJu|2 years ago
carabiner|2 years ago
throwaway6734|2 years ago
I've noticed this among a lot of leftist/Liberal podcasting as well (like Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein, lot of NPR presenters).
I don't understand it. it sounds unserious
ashton314|2 years ago
Semaphor|2 years ago
gniv|2 years ago
fillskills|2 years ago
Look forward to more of their successes.
amelius|2 years ago
RC_ITR|2 years ago
All the 'hover over the house and winch down the package' aspects are still vaporware.
sllabres|2 years ago