Singapore releases the robot hounds to enforce social distancing in parks Singapore is trialing robot dogs to enforce social distancing in its parks, to assist the national coronavirus-control effort. As outlined by GovTech Singapore, the nation’s digital advancement agency, the beast is a Boston Dynamics Spot device that’s been programmed to roam a 3km stretch in the River Plains section of Bishan- …
The example scenario has already been designed and simulated in a Black Mirror of Metalhead horror.
Berkerley University modelled it, wearing the mask and some basic distancing and you've cured it. Just like Asia has.
https://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~dekai/mirror/masksim/
These robots things are marketing, I saw one in a hotel in Singapore, a hotel room delivery robot, and they said its only for show. It will only deliver around the lobby. You're supposed to be impressed with Singapore's Hi-Tech'ness but its a bit of show. They have lots of cheap labor and use that, not the robots.
They'll have Malaysia workers slapping people silly if they refuse to wear masks.
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Hawaii has zero new cases a day now. I expect the Republican Supreme Court, to try to force Hawaii's borders to be opened to infected Republican States and try to undermine their quarantine. Republicans look desperate to keep the plague going till election time.
People would be better than robots here, if you see someone without a mask, saying "you're sheep it only kills 1% of the population", slap them silly, that 1% could be one of your loved family members, and its likely 2% not 1.
If bad actors* like Hannity or a Laura Ingrahams, or Kavanaugh or Betsy Devos, or Trump or Ron DeSantis, or Brian Kemp, weren't undermining quarantine, you'd expect a rapid fall off of cases over May. Instead they're managing to sustain it at 25k a day, i.e. they're killing about 500 people a day unnecessarily by undermining quarantine with their lying partisan shit.
So 31*500/2 = 7750, so they're shit is responsible for about ~8k deaths in May, and about 15-16k deaths each month they manage to sustain it after that.
* Fox News pundits are bad faith actors.
Here's Tucker Carlson admitting it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNineSEoxjQ&feature=youtu.be
It's an act. If you see them trying to undermine quarantine protocols, someone has scripted that opinion piece for them. If you're a Fox New viewer realize you're being played.
Also can I make a simple suggestion here. Dems need to introduce mail-in ballot drop points at voting stations, so that people can "mail" their mail-in ballot and get it stamped at the polling station.
In effect they're per-completing their ballots at home, same as a normal mail-in ballot, and not on the machines, and the drop off at the post office is replaced with a drop off at a voting station.
They may as well introduce drive-thru drop off too. Drive in, Drop the mail-in ballot off, its stamped and put into the ballot box in front of them, drive on.
Why?
1. Well Trump has spiked the mail-in ballot option. He's put a puppet into the USPS, the head is not a postmaster, he's a partisan Trump donor:
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-taps-top-republican-fundraiser-to-lead-us-postal-service-2020-5
2. The Republican Supreme Court has ruled in the Wisconsin case that ballots that the post office received, but failed to stamp with the date (due to lack of staff due to Covid19), could not be counted. The Republican Supreme Court, literally just wiped thousands of votes off the ballot, forcing more in-place voting and likely more deaths.
So all Trump has to do to spike the mail-in vote, is to get his buddy in USPS to close post offices near elections in Democrat districts at the last minute wiping out a lot of mail-in ballots in those districts. The ballots won't be stamped, and so won't be counted. They already know which target districts to block, they had that for 'Red Map' Gerrymandering.
Hence you need to take some steps:
a. Spread voting dates and allocate age ranges to each dates. So that over 65s vote on a different day to under 30s. Keeping infected groups away from vulnerable group during voting. Give them more time to vote, more days, split the voting groups by age.
b. Allow mail-in ballot drops at voting stations. People should be made aware of Republican plans here, so they know that Trump can undermine the USPS. If they are not sure if their mail-in ballot will arrive, they can do the drop off.
c. This also undermine the Republican lie that mail-in is all fraud and all fraud against Republicans. Since someone dropping off 100 ballots in one go, is suspicious, and if those ballots turned out to be fraudulent it would be traceable back to them.
d. You need to realize that this is not enough. Republican States like Florida and Ohio will intentionally run risky elections intended to cause deaths as a means to suppressing those election. Do not be surprised when this happens. Do not be surprised when the Republican Supreme Court backs them regardless of the death toll they cause, see point 2.
Trump has a meeting, they plot their bad deeds, and he gets a boner telling you the crime they're about to do, by pre-emptively accusing his opponents of it. Trump just said "Dems are trying to steal the election". He's telling you what he's about to do. Look for his boner statements.
I don't know about other areas, but I've been volunteering at the polls in California for the last 18 years, and we've accepted completed absentee ballots for at least that long. In recent years, we've gotten more dropped-off 'mail in' ballots than in-person voters, and we're bound to get a *lot* more of them in November since the state decided everyone will get a mail-in ballot.
As a side note, everyone healthy who can spare the time and can safely do so should volunteer at the polls if they can. Normally most of our volunteers are senior citizens, but many of them are staying home due to the virus, so as many people as possible are needed to fill in for them. Besides that, it's an amazing education in how the voting system works behind-the-scenes.
"They have lots of cheap labor and use that, not the robots."
Yes, this. There's almost if not actually no situations where a fully mobile robot is cheaper or safer than just using a meat-sack. Those specialised situations where a "robot" is useful, it's rarely ever actually a robot. It's a remote controlled device with little to no autonomy.
In the instance in the article, the cost of that one remote controlled toy could probably employ a small army of real people with PPE.
Every one of those 15000 a month deaths is totally unnecessary. You can stop this virus dead in its track simply by not spreading it.
Each new case is a failed quarantine interaction. Someone without mask, someone spreading virus on a surface because they didn't wash their hands.
You can have no new cases today if you enforced the quarantine.
*****
But you have a Republican Supreme Court passing orders designed to spread the virus.
You have Fox New commentators claiming quarantine is caging to spread the virus.
You have Trump & Pence and their anti-face mask photo-ops spreading the virus.
You have armed militias sponsored by Republican groups trying to spread the virus.
You have Republican states opening up with increasing cases, intentionally spreading the virus.
You have Florida suppressing the official death toll numbers, and substituting a State approved lower number to help spread the virus.
Republican after Republican after Republican trying to spread the virus.
******
Meanwhile, the rest of the world did the quarantine and the virus is gone. Even Hawaii did it.
******
It's murder by Republicans to suppress the elections.
It sounds like hyperbole now, but come November as their plot becomes clear, it will be prophetic.
Two things:
1. Trump is planning for a second wave:
"Trump's aides plan to hold several events to try to persuade the public that they're ready for a likely second wave of the virus this fall"
That's the consequence of letting Republicans undermine quarantine and then open too early. You'll have a spike in Covid timed for the elections.
https://www.axios.com/trump-white-house-coronavirus-messaging-7c308086-0ef1-4c78-bd0f-df29e3048bb2.html
2. Your ventilators went to Russia. When Jared was refusing to let US States have the ventilators in April, they had already been promised to Putin back in April. Those ventilator order FEMA grabbed form the states went into the stockpile and then onto Russia. Your ventilators, the ones you'll need for this seconds spike, they went to Russia. Quid-pro-quo.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/trump-says-hes-sending-ventilators-to-russia-for-putins-coronavirus-response-but-previously-pushed-back-on-requests-from-us-governors/ar-BB13KIFN
Can you breath? Then you're in Moscow not Palm Beach.
If you don't like what I'm saying about Trump here, realize that its the unpleasant truth. Look at the Trump boner statements "Russia Russia Russia". When he accuses others of being focused on Russia, he's telling you he's focused on Russia.
In the UK, it would be a challenge to chavs in hoodies to find a way to nick Spot, tracking them down via their Faecbook video posts wouldn't be too hard though.
Possibly fitting Spot with an energised exterior as an anti molestation strategy could be amusing.
Edited to suggest mounting a BRRZZZTT! cattle prod for self defence would also be amusing.
of which there are many roaming the streets at the moment... not observing social distancing at least in this locality. If they saw one of these mechanical pooches I'm sure that they'd disable it with one of their hoodies. Even if they didn't do that they'd be fair game to the local Chav's.
I talked to a Starlink tech who'd just fished one out of a river, but he said that was pretty rare. He'd been to a few houses with the police with proof on his phone to show the bot calling from inside.
There's a lot of gps and phone-home tech there and not much of it useful for resale once you're ripped it out. All you can do is steal the pizza inside and then set it loose - and you're already on camera.
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otherwsie BIG BAD CORONAWOLF is gonna get you.
fforward the virus is gone, last-page news from Singapore, hey, it'd be great to keep them hounds in the park, cause here's a handy chart showing how the crime's fallen (and we saved so much money too, win-win!). Oh, by the way, parks are good, but streets... streets are beeeeeterrrrrrrr, no?
The movement does not look dog or mammalian like. It looks arthropodic. Think 4 legged spider or a crab. It’s the lack of flexibility mammalian legs have and that the hip action is just WRONG.
Can you tell as a scientist I’ve described a number of mutant/knockout mice with muscle/movement problems? It moves worse than a Meox2 knockout mouse which is missing muscles around the shoulders and a lot of the others have pulled out of their tendons.
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