Aug 5 – 100000 robotic lawn mowers can sing Happy Birthday to Curiosity
husqvarna.comThere'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!
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.
> 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.
The reason is marketing
Haha, yeah, just look at the second line of the grandparent comment...
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.
If they are automated, how would you know?
If a tree falls in a forest ...
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
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.
> 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.
Also, Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity and a few others may disagree. (Would Viking 1 and 2 qualify as robots?)
I'll be very concerned if Curiosity finds any mattresses up there to converse with.
It will need to find a swamp first.
Two people on HN who seem to really know where their towels are. I am delighted.
Can Curiosity really claim the title of “loneliest robot in the universe”?
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."
This reminds me of the article "What football will look like in 17776?" a short story about football from the perspective of space probes. https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football
Thanks for the link. I hadn't seen this before and enjoyed it very much.
Yeah, mars is getting pretty crowded at this point! I guess the voyager probes might be lonelier, if you count them as robots.
At least as lonely as WALL-E...
No, because a robot cannot feel loneliness yet.
Relevant xkcd... https://xkcd.com/695/
That is so sad :(
There's a fan-made version (I think from xkcdsw) with a happier ending https://i.imgur.com/VbKV9DF.jpeg
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
I absolutely love this.
Ha feels worthy of a minor plot-line out of (future) Futurama