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Amazon To Provide Drone Hunters With Target Practice In Cambridge, UK
A year ago, in the latest attempt to distract from his company's inability to generate profit, Amazon's Jeff Bezos revealed his latest breathless vision for the latest marketing gimmick future in the form of Amazon Prime Air: a fleet of unmanned delivery drones bringing customers the goods they ordered or, as the case may be, didn't order. Immediately in the aftermath of this announcement, a just as breathless ad hoc group of drone hunters was conceived, and patiently waited for the announcement from Bezos where said Prime Air Drones would be tested so they too could test their sharpshooting skills. As of today they are in luck, because as the FT reports, Amazon has picked one of the intellectual capitals of the Old World, UK's university town Cambridge, as the place where it will test its fleet of unmanned delivery drones.
Amazon is advertising a series of jobs at Evi Technologies, a Cambridge-based start-up acquired by Amazon two years ago, related to its Prime Air project, which suggests the US tech conglomerate is ploughing ahead with the concept.
The company is looking for engineers and experts to conduct flight tests of the autonomous drones, seeking candidates with at least five years of “aviation experience, either civilian or military, with either manned or unmanned aviation”.
Amazon may be hoping to tap into the experience of Britain’s major defence contractors, such as BAE Systems, which have built drones for military purposes.
The group is also looking to expand the team Evi Technologies, which started life as an artificial intelligence company that specialises in “natural language” technologies, with voice recognition becoming a standard feature of many Amazon devices. Earlier this month it launched Echo, a speaker that can be operated using spoken controls.
Meanwhile, Amazon is on a hiring spree:
In September the company said it was opening new offices in east London, among the so-called Silicon Roundabout cluster of tech start-ups. The office in Principal Place, a 15-storey tower, will provide capacity for more than 5,000 employees once it is completed in 2016.
In October, it also said it would create 1,000 new permanent jobs at its “fulfilment centres”, enormous warehouses where it stores goods and fills orders, across eight locations in the UK. Amazon says it has spent £1bn on its UK operations to date
Indeed, this is not surprising: as we showed a few weeks ago when Amazon reported abysmal earnings, while the company's global revenue growth is tumbling, at least its eagerness to hire every part-time worker in the world is proceeding as planned.
Hopefully some of these part-time workers know how to insulate the Prime Drone with a bulletproof vest: it will surely need it.
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Fightthepower!
Yep... Git out yer 50 cal pellet guns you Limey rednecks!
Free Skeet.
..better pattern than a BMG.
(except if you just happen to have a Ma Duece and a whole bunch of linked ammo).
Nahh... With the high price of ammo,, here's the way to go!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFkGUC7Bo5U
Of course it's still really hard to find any ammo for it..
www.dronehunt.com for sale.... anyone??
You know where to find me...
I am dissppointed in you guys, you aren't thinking with your heads. Guns are noisy and illegal in towns.
Here is the sporting answer!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgZ5EmXJbkc
Amazon is already bogged down by its overly generous free returns policy for Prime members. This may be the straw that breaks the drones back.
So tell me, what is Amazon going to do to get clearance for the Manthong ATZ?
Jeff Bezos is a moron.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI7pPVJTeSY
Shoot them all out of the sky. The use of drones continues to escalate, meanwhile the average American is too dumbed down, playing useless time sinks that get them no where in life.
'Cause sometimes you just can't get Joan Rivers: A Retrospective or Caribbean Cooking Tips fast enough.
I'm excited at the prospect of shooting one of these fuckers down and opening up the package and finding a nice expensive watch or mother's day pearls kinda thing.
Why shoot? I give it about a week before the hackers crack it.
Shooting might damage the watch.
Ever see pics of the nets they used to capture passenger pigeons by the basket full?
Yes, then there's that too.
Because if you have a choice shooting is always more fun?
That is hard to argue against.
At least this will be good for a few laughs, as these damn fool things crash into school buses, windows, whatever.
Some things just scream stoopid!
If broken drones can do for Amazon what a broken exchange does for equity prices, well then I'm loading up on Amazon shares.
This is good for anything up to 600 yds and under 21 mph, first shot every time.
Can run and fire it through your smart phone
http://tracking-point.com/precision-guided-firearms
No need to shoot. A windy day or a good rain storm will do it. Lots of radio interence could do it too. Plus, they have never mentioned that the radio systems won't penetrate through buildings. Without a series of radio beacons to jump the signal from location to location and act as a relay system, this whole thing is a non issue and simply a marketing ploy. I've been flying radio control planes for years and now multi rotors and can tell you for a fact that going behind a tree when your out there at the edge of your transmission range will end in a disaster. These things have a range of a few blocks at best, a little farther if it's a clear line of sight. From a stand point of actually flying these things....it's a joke to even consider it ever being real. And as far as target practice goes....if you can't hit that thing you best not play with guns. Go to the trap range and get in some real target practice.
GPS.
GPS will only tell the operator where it is and give them the ability to send it to locations. Video transmitters can't penetrate buildings and somebody has to land that thing and to do that they will need to be "connected" by radio to see and fly. I have an RC plane that has GPS. I can send it out on "missions" to 8 different waypoints. I can flip a switch and it will come home and circle overhead until I manually land it. As long as nothing gets in it's way and I have radio contact with it, it works. Key point: You have to maintain radio contact. Regardles of whether it will fly by itself. These guys are planning on landing in peoples driveways or at their front door. Somebody will have to manually do that. And if theres a chain link fence in the front yard, once they go below that to land......game over. A chain link fence scrambles radio signals big time.
By the time these are up and running they will have overhaed radio signals via a larger drone like the ones planned on for internet in remote areas.
Order a book on Amazon
and once the drone arrives...
THOW A MESH OF COPPER WIRE ON IT!!!
THE CONNECTION IS GONE AND YOU CAN STRIP THE DRONE FOR PARTS AND SELL THEM ON EBAY!!!
You and I think alike.
MY new drone :)
http://www.flexmail.eu/dyn/tpl_attributes/user_images/user_356_images/TE...
In America it doesn't work that way. The camera will show whos is throwing the wire
You will be branded a 'Drone Terrorist' and placed on a no fly list.
The NSA will buy the stuff on E-Bay, the CIA will tap into all your friends and the local SWAT team will surround your home with their tanks and bazookas and force you out so they can slam you in the dirt and hog tie you.
Then you will go to prison and be placed in solitary confinement because you have violent tendencies to drones.
In other words, you are fucked :)
@Cherry picker
You forgot to mention the SWAT team will shoot your family dog...
How hard would it be to catch one of those things and sell it for parts?
Order some emergency condoms, wait with a net, in a mask, and WHAM. Then email Amazon and tell them they ruined your evening, and you want your money back.
Cambridge, breeding ground for toff insane Hong Kong based psychopathic banker hooker murderer types
I don't know about you, but there is too much noise and camera infiltration as it is, never mind these mechanical buzzards flying around and just wait till some jet engine sucks one of them in during take off or landing and 2o0 people hit the dirt...permanently
Everyone will be pointing fingers.
We can't wait a day to get a gizmo?
Stop it now. Just because we 'can' doesn't make it 'right'. It is my airspace they will be encroaching as well. I wonder if a can of Raid will stop one of these suckers.
Words like "evolving" are used to describe Amazon's business model, a better word might be undefined. Regardless Amazon rolls on. Pointing towards gaining synergy as they continue to buy companies, some unproven. The revenues from these companies add to their growth but still no profits exist.
Does this growth mask a weakness at their core? If they are indeed a distribution company their stock should be trading at around 18 times earnings. When you look for a P/E ratio on Amazon you find NA because the company makes no money. Another key weakness is that new competition can now cheaply and easily replicate the most profitable parts of Amazon and cherry pick much of their future potential. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, it is only a question of time. More on why Amazon is not the answer in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2013/10/amazon-not-answer.html
What's the most effective way to eliminate these things from the sky? Is there an anti-drone heat seeking drone? Or is the old fashioned shotgun the best tool?
It's a circle my friend, high tech is developed to defeat low tech, then in turn low tech is again used to defeat high tech, full circle.
9 little lead balls of 00 buck will fuck that thing's day up!
Can a battery powered helicopter actually transport a 5lb package 1 mile without incurring a ridiculous expense?
Maybe but if it can't that's kind of all that matters.
Quite. My thoughts as well.
DavidC
It could deliver one of these, but then it might not get back to headquarters.
http://www.amazon.com/Aftermath-Kavia-Elite-Sport-Slingshot/dp/B0041G9SOI
So self driving cars and robots delivering packages.., drop it down a notch and make big bucks, replacing UPS drivers awesome..
anybody want to buy MY IPO so i can retire
I thought they banned firearms in jolly ol' England?
Or, can you still get shotguns, with a special-super-hard-to-come-by license?
All you would really need is a good slingshot.
How will we know the 'good' drones from the totalitarian police state drones?
I say we shoot 'em all down.
good citizen, all drones are peace loving ... and you will accept them
now bend over and spread your cheeks
sarc.
the drone wars, Samsung wins http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2756847/Who-goes-Samsung-...
Lead or Steel Shot? Can't wait to bag-me my first drone...
This is all progressing toward drones replacing cops. Got that, cush State fat licking goons? You're going away too.
hes testing it in England because that gunless society is the only place with a chance in hell of this type of delivery system working.
I realize I'm speaking to the blow-shit-up crowd around here, but I prefer the quieter, simpler solutions to things that annoy me. I've been thinking of taking up falconeering lately.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhDG_WBIQgc
Drone vs Drone.....2 drones go up, only one returns.....
New market opportunity being born for a simple "hunter / killer drone"...
You also have to wonder what the liability is on these delivery drones....my dogs would go after it in a split second
AMAZON BUYS REAPER DRONES coming with a package for you SOON !!!
fuck the NWO
I reckon the simplest, cheapest way to down a drone would be to throw a bogroll at it to tangle up the propellers . No damage to the package. obscures the camera view.
Anyone who shoots would most likely pierce the package, and defeat the point....
[tip from my son !]
Cambridge is going hot.
Pull!