I've been trying to research something similar to your alkaline natural substance recently. Did you ever come up with a good substance? One of the only things I can find with minimal side-effects is baking soda.
How much TV can you (and do you want to) watch in a month? Plus, with their ongoing series, you can get caught up on a show or two, but a year later and there'll be more content for the shows you watched.
I think there's gonna be alot of teenage pranks and destruction. People setting the landing spot in the water or people stealing them with nets. Not sure if much recourse unless there camera footage or gps locator.
This is the standard fear response to new technologies. Uber: how can you get in a car with a stranger? Airbnb: Even Paul Graham said "are you nuts?". Self driving cars: but what if people take advantage of it's collision avoidance abilities to walk in front? etc. etc. The fact is, most people are not malicious, life goes on anyway, and the risk of vandalism is quantifiable and included in the cost of doing business.
And in this case vandals can easily be prosecuted, since a drone is already hooked up with remote control, GPS tracking, cameras and monitoring.
I find a lot of the whole drone delivery thing pretty silly outside of some specific scenarios. Nonetheless, there is an equally silly "we must guarantee 100% reliability and security" thought." UPS does fine. They have no trouble leaving most packages at my door. They probably don't live the same thing at other doors. (Though I don't know their heuristics for such things.)
OTOH, I feel like if people today proposed that trucks leave unattended packages outside people's door, it would be dismissed as unworkable. But it happens constantly with minimal problems. There aren't as many bad people in the world as some people think.
The drones are almost certainly going to have cameras (for object avoidance) and GPS on-board in order to satisfy regulators that Amazon knows where its drones are and that they're safe. Consider Amazon's own airspace proposals linked in the FAQ of the article.
I think someone previously made the analogy of a lot of UPS trucks getting stolen. It could happen, but prosecution is probably a sufficient penalty to prevent it from being a serious issue.
Every city water utility has this same problem. Having close knowledge of the problems, I don't think this is a good solution. Many of the customers get shut off and then immediately pay their bill along with the penalties (approx 3/4). This is often cyclical with the same people getting shutoff every couple months. Appears to me to be administrative. Should have financial people show them how to budget or organize their bills to prevent getting the fees so it doesn't happen again in the long run. Another thing the article points to is a $250 fee for turning on the water. Often when the water is turned on without authorization the utility equipment is damaged. The fix can involve calling out trade workers to saw out parts of streets and sidewalks and replacing expensive brass lead-free parts. $250 would be in the neighborhood of the cost.
When regularly there's a significant probability that a person's periodic income will be less than their periodic expenses, budgeting becomes an exercise of choosing which bills not to pay.
The important reason the damaged equipment due to illegal restoration of service is problematic is same reason that public water service is important. Public water service exists to protect public health. It keeps people from dying of diseases like cholera.
Punitive policies in regard to water service put people in life threatening situations. It's poor public policy.
> I don't think this is a good solution. [...] Should have financial people show [...]
Friend, if you have a better way to solve the problem, go solve the problem. I'm sure that nothing would make the DWP folks happier than to have nobody need them anymore.
But until then, maybe consider keeping your opinion-hole closed? There are few things I find less helpful on HN than nominally smart people that come in and denigrate somebody else's solution to a problem that they have absolutely no intention of solving themselves.
"I don't think this is a good solution to this problem."
Why? Why isn't giving people money (direct to the utility, as we never hand people we help the funds) to get their water turned back on when they've gone for weeks without running water not a good solution? When you encounter someone in that situation, what would you suggest?
"Many of the customers get shut off and then immediately pay their bill along with the penalties."
That's often true, but what many people (including yourself and, oddly, staff at utilities) don't consider is that these people are often robbing Peter to pay Paul. We've got people skimping on medication and food they need in order to keep their utilities on. So, yes, they may pay as soon as the water is shut off, but there's often a trade-off.
"This is often cyclical with the same people getting shutoff every couple months. Appears to me to be administrative."
This also does happen, but talking to hundreds of families with difficulties paying their water bills, you start seeing patterns. A pattern of multiple shut-offs is usually indicative of some other deeper problem(s). There are people who are between jobs. There are people who've had their hours at work cut. There are people on fixed incomes where even the smallest fluctuation in the water bill (or another bill) can prevent them from paying in full. They pay what they can, but arrearages build up, and next thing you know, service is disconnected.
One of the things we're going to begin working with Detroit and Baltimore to do better is pick up on these signals and act. Prevention is always better than treatment.
Also, if you consider where we work (Detroit and Baltimore), these aren't exactly places teeming with amazing employment opportunities for many of the people we serve (the elderly, single parents already juggling multiple jobs, people with minimal education, etc.). Obviously, a stable job is a big part of consistently paying your bills. You can hold all the budgeting classes you want, but good luck getting people there who barely have the funds to keep their families afloat to sign up. Not having enough to make ends meet is not always the result of poor budgeting.
And yes, illegal service restoration does have the potential to damage equipment, but when your customers have to resort to that, it's indicative that your utility has failed to look after especially vulnerable customers. Detroit is especially odd with respect to indigent customers as they don't have a program to assist low-income customers with a discount or the like. Same goes for the elderly. Baltimore has a discount for the elderly, at least.
I recently started a similar service and quickly got out of it. Even though I was offering to negotiate deals for free there was lackluster interest. Buying a car from a dealership is painful it seems people still want to do it for the experience, or think they can do better themselves (paying a higher price in the process). I would like to know if these people are licensed brokers or how they will handle that in states that require it. Truecar has a decent system in place (although there are problems too) and I think it's hard to beat the out especially taking fees from both sides with a significant portion on the buyer.
A lot of places offer buying services as well, USAA offers one through Truecar, there's also Carvana as well. Truecar was close to what we paid though a little higher. It was a good jumping off point when comparing real life to MSRP/listing prices. If you haven't bought before, focus on the out the door price.
-Right now our area has a special - 10 for $1.39. Last year they had 4 for $1.00. Regular price here is $5.00 for 20 piece and around $3.50 for 10 piece. People have been buying alot more nuggets but I still see poor people like me buying the expensive burger option. I think the crumbs users are just buying the 10 piece because they don't realize the 20 piece is the same price.
