That soul patch does date the application a bit. And I don’t recall actually getting to use your fancy-pantsy invention in real life.
And yet… the headline is accurate. What do you have issues with? What’s the bait? Where’s the clicking?
Uh, are you sure you’re not thinking of The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science? I mean, this is the blog with a female jack-hammerer as it’s mascot, and the inventor of the “Unicorn Chaser.”
Heck, they sell this Henry Flynt-inspired t-shirt in their shop:
https://shop.boingboing.net/product/Demolish-Serious-Culture
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Not only are the lawnmowers autonomous, but the headlines are self-aware.
#Run for the hills!
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I think you and I have different definitions of “lawn”. Yours appears to meet the definition of “country estate”. Mine is usable for putting. But on the toys front, it either backs off and goes in a different direction or gently pushes them to the edge of the grass, depending on mass.
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That was about my payback.
WINK! NUDGE! JEST MODE ACTIVATED!
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Are you saying you don’t believe me? I mean, this mower is not audible only a couple meters away, and even then it’s very silent (sort of like scissors clipping something) and only audible anyway if the grass has grown quite a bit.
The blades on these mowers are tiny, a couple centimeters long. Also, please consider that this mower is shaving off a couple millimeters at a time, not centimeter long grass blades. For all intents and purposes it operates completely silently. In practice it’s not an issue to leave it running all day long from a noise perspective, mostly since you just can’t even hear it (if you aren’t right next to it).
My definition is “that part of the property that I mow, to keep the deer ticks under control.” 
I live in a former 19th century factory that was converted to a house in the early twentieth. Definitely not a country estate! Outside my little green valley, it’s all built up with shopping malls, freeways, etc…
Well I believe you now, since you told me how small the blades are!
My electric mowing deck has 3 large steel blades, so it’s equivalent to three normal electric lawnmowers in so far as helicopter noises. Still dramatically quieter than the quietest gas mower I’ve ever heard, but nothing close to silent. It’s like three very large fans would sound if you were constantly feeding bales of hay into them.
Kindles are fine with 3G and wifi. Why not a robot? I fail to see why this device needs its own frequency. This is the 21st century. We know how to multiplex.
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After Cybernia that was my next thought; I must confess, I only just saw the movie in the last six months or so, when it finally came up on Netflix streaming.
And you really want somebody to be able to rootkit your lawnmower from the sidewalk with a Kindle over WiFi?
Crikey – it’s Lawnmower Deth!
see also
So it will be instead somebody with one of those plentiful $200-500 software-defined-radio boards. And they will get cheaper.
You can hack/mod people just fine without a scalpel or any invasive procedure. Practically all of the human’s I/O interfaces are located on the front and sides of the head and is usually accessible via audio-frequency programming languages, as well as electromagnetic signalling and even some pressure sensitive methods. There’s even a depreciated chemo-reception suite, but it’s documentation is ancient and highly unreliable, and its pinout seems to randomly change without warning.
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“Simple matter of voltage.”(1995, Crimson Tide)
And the hiring costs is much lower. Of course it’s not legal in wide parts of the world.
=P
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