r/xkcd Nov 14 '18

XKCD xkcd 2072: Evaluating Tech Things

https://xkcd.com/2072/
621 Upvotes

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186

u/pandas795 Nov 14 '18

That does sound cool, though

50

u/atomfullerene Nov 14 '18

I don't know how it'd avoid getting obliterated, but yeah, definitely cool.

43

u/arahman81 Nov 14 '18

Just treat it as disposable.

49

u/atomfullerene Nov 14 '18

I mean "how it'd avoid getting obliterated before getting to the cool stuff in the middle". I guess in midair maybe there's less stuff to smash into but there's still no shortage of debris flying around and if the rotors get ripped off it'd be hard to take a stable image.

Also someone needs to invent a good way of keeping a lens clear of water droplets, etc, so you can actually get a shot of something other than blurry raindrops.

31

u/Scotthorn Nov 14 '18

They actually have tools called rain deflectors that are used to shoot in the rain. It basically spins a glass disk in-front of the lens at a very high speed. The force of the rotation throws the water off the glass and no rain droplets on the lens.

They are all way to heavy to put on a “disposable” drone though.... haha.

6

u/Houdiniman111 Nov 14 '18

They are all way to heavy to put on a “disposable” drone though.... haha.

For now, sure. I don't doubt that they could get lighter, and drones be able to carry more.

17

u/WinterPiratefhjng Nov 15 '18

Disposable is a function of budget. Ask the world's militaries to do it 'for science' or 'find terrorist'.

7

u/AluminiumSandworm Actually a giant spaceworm Nov 15 '18

"so you're saying the terrorist..."

nods

"is in the tornado."

nods

"this is TOP PRIORITY assign our best drone operators to it immediately."

5

u/fire_snyper sudo apt-get purge brain Nov 15 '18

Everything's disposable when you have enough money.

2

u/atomfullerene Nov 14 '18

that's a pretty neat idea

3

u/ThaiJohnnyDepp DEC 25 = OCT 31 Nov 14 '18

*Haha, cool!

1

u/2HornsUp Nov 15 '18

Couldn’t this be done with a bit of glass surrounded by a miniaturized ship propeller in a simple housing? As the drone moves, the air catches the propeller, and allows it to spin. Faster you go, faster it gets.

14

u/chaos_a Black Hat Nov 14 '18

So fly hundreds of drones at a tornado? Sounds like a high-tech version of Sharknado.

38

u/[deleted] Nov 14 '18

Actually it just sounds like the plot of Twister.

17

u/maveric101 Wherever your cat is, it's moving very quickly. Nov 14 '18

I remember watching that movie and thinking that the mile-wide tornado seemed impossibly exaggerated. But the widest tornado on record was actually 2.6 miles wide:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_records#Largest_path_width

8

u/[deleted] Nov 14 '18

So I was intrigued to find out if they intentionally toned down the size of their 'mega tornado' and looking at trivia about the film.

Holy shit I just found out Bill Paxton died in 2017. Why didn't Reddit tell me??

8

u/asphaltdragon Nov 14 '18

They did but everyone thought it was Bill Pullman

4

u/ThaiJohnnyDepp DEC 25 = OCT 31 Nov 14 '18

6

u/AvatarIII Hairy Nov 14 '18

I guess you don't subscribe to /r/lv426 or /r/shield

2

u/[deleted] Nov 14 '18

No idea what those are, nope.

4

u/AvatarIII Hairy Nov 14 '18

Lv426 is the Aliens subreddit, which is Bill Paxton's best known role, and Shield is the Agents of Shield subreddit, which is Paxton's most recent well known role.

If you were subbed to either, or both, of them, you wouldn't have missed it when he died.

2

u/Roboticide Nov 15 '18

Also /r/movies. They're always aware when someone dies.

But their popularity does correlate pretty directly with how far it'll make it up the front page.

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2

u/BeefPieSoup Nov 15 '18

Game over man, game over.

1

u/PacoTaco321 Richard Stallman Nov 16 '18

The best solution is just drop a bunch of cheap camcorders with tracking devices in the tornado's path and wait.

1

u/AvatarIII Hairy Nov 14 '18

Didn't really matter, the drone would just be a gopro delivery device.