if you see one of these things take one for the team and light it on fire
oh god. in a very serious way that makes them much harder to fight. previous quadrofracts could be dealt with by use of a hammer to the mid-section. im assuming a well placed .45 round might do the trick now, but that means not getting noticed by fidobot. lets hope it has bad eyesight.
This is always where these damn thing were going and when we said it people would always say we were being killjoys and why couldn’t we “just enjoy the dancing Robots?” I guarantee these things will be deployed for “riot suppression” in only a few years.
THIS THING SHOOTS 6.5mm CREEDMOOR WHAT THE FUCK. FOR REFERENCE, THIS IS WHAT THAT ROUND LOOKS LIKE COMPARED TO A 9mm
GOOD TIME TO SHARE THE BATTERY INFO AGAIN SO YOU CAN SHUT THESE DUDES DONE
Image ID: Tweet thread from Dr Sarah Taber reads: PSA for anyone who might be dealing with robot gun dogs, from a farm robot specialist who wasn’t really looking at robot wrangling from the public safety standpoint but here we are.
I haven’t worked w police/military robotics so I can’t speak to exactly how these are built.
But I can tell you, IME roboticists can be really naive about environmental conditions: making robots sturdy enough to handle rain, dirt, & other outdoor realities.
For example! I’ve worked w a couple startups that do fruit picking robots. They build the thing, *then* call me in to figure out how to clean it.
And half the time you can’t. Bc the picking arm has all these delicate cameras & servos that can’t get wet.
Folks who build robots at this time tend to be focused on making it do cool things like see, jump, run, & somersault. So they can release teaser videos that make everybody go “wow what a fancy robot”
They tend to be less focused on actual service performance: DURABILITY.
What’s this mean?
The joints, motors, cameras, & other sensors are more exposed than they should be.
It’s easy for water, road salt, grit, etc to get in there and cripple the robot.
I mean look at this thing. That housing’s got more nooks & crannies than a dang English muffin. You think that’s watertight?
For robots that work outside, not even watertight is good enough.
Farms add surfactants (like dish soap) to sprays. They make the sprays stick to leaves & get into all the nooks & crannies of the plant.
So farm robots need surfactant-proof seals. Not just waterproof.
Otherwise after a few hours in the field, you have a mix of dew, mud, soil & grit, and whatever surfactants you put in your last pesticide
mixing together & working their way into all the robot’s delicate parts. Scratching up the cameras. Jamming up the joints & motor.
If there’s any salt or acid in the mix, it’s even worse!
Some soils have a lil salt in them, or an acidic pH. It’s actually pretty common!
The salts or H+ ions work their way into the machine & corrode the shit out of EVERYTHING.
Bye-bye expensive farm robot!
Now let’s apply this to street settings.
Water. Dirt & grit. Road salt.
Just a little salt destroys metal! Even faster if it’s mixed with water, acids, surfactants, &/or grit.
And again, dirt & grit destroy joints.
They scratch up camera lenses & otherwise interfere with sensors.
They also scratch up any corrosion-proof coatings the engineers may have put on there, & expose the metals to water, salt, & acid.
These robots look super-vulnerable to normal wear & tear.
They look even more vulnerable to a super-soaker filled with common household items like salt, vinegar, & just a lil dish soap. Maybe with a lil diatomaceous earth to bump up the scrubbing power.
If they don’t go belly-up from short circuits immediately, they’re still looking at either an expensive tear-town, clean, & rebuild (takes the robot off the street for a few days)
or it’ll go belly-up within a week or two.
Both options are REALLY expensive & frustrating for own
Especially if they get hit with water/salt/acid/grit/soaps ASAP the moment they hit the street again.
Then the robots wind up spending more time in the shop on life support than actually doing their job.
That’s actually a pretty common outcome for automation!
Everyone gets excited about this fancy new machine that’s going to replace people. Then in real life it turns out to be broken all the time, can’t do shit, it’s a giant money pit, & eventually the sponsors give up.
idk just some thoughts on outdoor automation from someone who buries the corpses of failed robots for a living
it’s just really funny to me that these are supposed to be scary but probably can’t stand up to a water balloon full of pickle juice
On this day, 25 March 1939, the German Nazi government brought in a tougher new law forcibly conscripting all 10 to 18-year-olds into the Hitler Youth. But despite years spent trying to mould “national socialist” youths, thousands of working class young people formed gangs known as the “Edelweiss Pirates” to socialise and organise their own fun activities. They began to get into fights with Hitler Youth patrols and when the war started they conducted sabotage, slacked at work and began to help Jewish people, deserters and POWs. Some became partisans and launched armed attacks on Nazi officials. Some of them were executed, but many survived the war, where young workers slacking off continued to be a problem for the Allied occupiers.
We tell their story in our podcast episode 4, available on every major podcast app or our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/04/04/wch4-anti-nazi-youth-movements-in-world-war-ii/
Pictured: a group of Edelweiss Pirates https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1949413145243826/?type=3
Meatcleaver Massacre has been released on Blu-ray via Scream Factory.
Limited to 1,500, it’s available for $26.98 exclusively from Shout Factory.
The 1977 supernatural slasher marks the only effort from director Evan Lee (his only credit). Keith Burns and Ray Atherton wrote the script. Larry Justin, Bob Mead, Robert Clark, and James Habif star, with Christopher Lee as the host.
The disc includes both the original 77-minute cut, known as The Hollywood Meatcleaver Massacre, and the 85-minute theatrical version, which features the Christopher Lee intro and intro. The only special feature is the trailer.
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
