The Feds Accidentally Mailed Part of A $350K Drone To Some College Kid 157
Jason Koebler (3528235) writes "A Redditor got more than he bargained for in the mail today: He was accidentally mailed parts to a $350,000 environment and wildlife monitoring drone owned by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration. 'We sent a set of about eight boxes for this one aircraft system, and one was misdelivered by UPS. We're working with UPS to find it,' the federal agency says."
Stupid headline (Score:5, Insightful)
The Feds Accidentally Mailed Part of A $350K Drone To Some College Kid
More like "UPS Unloads Extra Box containing Drone Parts at Some College Kid's House". The box was not addressed to him by the Feds. They do enough stupid things without ascribing UPS mistakes to them.
Re:Stupid headline (Score:5, Insightful)
If theft is what you're worried about, I'd take USPS over UPS or FedEx any day. The Post Office consider mail theft to be Serious Business.
Good Grief (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a non-story: UPS mis-delivers a non-classified package from to government to some college student who decided to whore for 15 minutes of fame.
Done.
Next...
Re:Good Grief (Score:2, Insightful)
Both of you are wrong, actually.
He posted on Reddit because he was trying to get into contact with NOAA, which is apparently difficult to do (when he contacted them directly, they didn't provide any means for him to get it to them; perhaps not even aware of what he was talking about.)
Furthermore, it was addressed to him, even had his fucking name on it. That makes him well within his rights to open it, especially when he was actually EXPECTING a big package.
Re:wait... what??? (Score:3, Insightful)
It isn't just the cost of the base hardware that could theoretically function in that capacity, it's fitting it all together, custom designing and building components where necessary then going through the necessary testing (range, quality, flight control, durability, etc) and refinement processes. You could build Google Glass for $100 too if you don't care about having a horribly clunky, heavy, unreliable device with a cumbersome user experience.
Just because you can come up with a cheap parts list to theoretically cobble the functionality together doesn't mean it is going to result in a product that will be fit-for-purpose.