World's Most-Isolated City Lures NASA Talent in Hunt for Resources Tech (bloomberg.com) 17
It was a video of a waving robot that attracted NASA to the world's most isolated city. Engineers at Woodside Petroleum Ltd. in Perth, Australia, were just "messing around" teaching a toy robot to wave when they filmed it, Chief Technology Officer Shaun Gregory told a conference recently, but NASA liked what it saw. From a report: The U.S. space agency got in touch, and the two are now studying how to use robot technology to tackle problems in remote and difficult locations. This sort of collaboration represents exactly what Australia's largest state is trying to achieve. With some of the world's biggest resource companies operating in the region, the state aims to become a hot spot for developing technology to help miners and oil explorers cut costs and boost efficiency. "Western Australia has the opportunity to cement a place as the world's epicenter of resources technology and innovation," Mike Henry, the incoming chief executive officer of mining giant BHP Group, said at the inaugural Resources Technology Showcase in Perth last week. "Whether its autonomous haulage, robotics, drones, big data or artificial intelligence, we're changing the way we work."
The waving robot industry will never be the same (Score:3)
I betcha!
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I can't tell, was this meant to be funny? A Troll , or are you serious.
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I am serious. Why are we helping the oil industry? And why do the rich elite keep buying gargantuan vacation homes? I mean, didn't they sign the Paris Accord?
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Why are we helping the oil industry? Aren't they bad? Climate change. And why did the Obamas just purchase yesterday a $14 million 8,000 sqft house on 30 acres in Martha's Vineyard? They already have a 7000 sqft house in DC. Doesn't anyone care about climate change, or only Greta?
Remember, the same people who tell you to suck it up and ride the bus fly in private jets to climate change conferences.
$14 million? Funny how that works when his job only paid $400k/year. And it's not like he had a real job before or after that to put away money.
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Not Greta.
Got me. (Score:2)
Stupid me, was lured by the clickbait.
Why FFS should Perth qualify as the worlds most isolated city ?!?
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Where is the world’s most remote city? [theguardian.com]
Then there is Perth, with a metropolitan area of more than two million people, way on the other side of the outback from Sydney, 2,045 miles away. Geographically it’s actually closer to East Timor (1,731 miles) and Jakarta, Indonesia (1,865 miles). There’s no city of comparable size anywhere in the world that’s so remote.
Perth is so isolated that it is quicker, easier and cheaper to fly to Bali then to fly to the east coast. To drive to the east coast, you would cross the Nullarbor Plain, the world’s largest single exposure of limestone bedrock. It is a long, straight and desolate drive,” says Lacy Gow, a family mediator from Perth. “That being said, there are few reasons to leave Perth if you love sunshine, sand and delicious food and wine.”
Not saying I agree, just that someone once felt strong enough to write it down.
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The same article noted that "Honolulu, Hawaii ... is more than 2,300 miles from San Francisco, the nearest major city." So if distance to the nearest city is the measure of remoteness, Sydney isn't the remotest. The important phrase appears to be "no city of comparable size," which is silly. I don't think anyone would regard Honolulu as not being a city. A third of a million people is nothing to sneeze at.
A long, straight harmless drive. (Score:2)
Try Yakutsk in Siberia!
Same, except that road is the *only* road, and consists entirely of mud so deep that trucks tip, and mosquitoes, for half the year between literally colder than Antarctica and almost Death Valley hot.
No, you can't drive other ways, unless you have a turbo tree cutter or something.
Also, it is the gold standard for the most miserable shithole on the planet. :)
It's A Journalistic Trope (Score:2)
Most isolated city? Wouldn't that be Yakutsk? (Score:2)
There are highways to Perth all year, yes?
Well, Yakutsk needs *everything* to be flown in for all of spring and fall. It is right smack in the middle of siberia, and that is when the only road leading to it is one big truck-tipping mud bath full of mosquitoes. And that is the only time when weather is actually bearable.
It holds the record for the coldest place on earth, beating even Antarctica once, with -78 degrees Celsius, but can easily go above 40ÂC in the summer.
Perth is easy to reach by compariso
World's most isolated city? (Score:1)
Really? What about Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia. More isolated than that? Or Vladivostok?
But "Jobs" (Score:1)
Mining is Australia's jobs saviour, according to the people who recently re-elected an incompetent, scandal-ridden government because the other major party were going to introduce climate measures. These measures would "cost all Australians all their jobs" (right Pauline?).
Well, the mining industry is automating people out of employment a lot faster than the alternate government would have. This is on top of the casualisation of the workforce to lower job security and wages.
On a related note, safety standar
Not just click bait (Score:2)
Holy fuck, have we really fallen this far?
Don't answer that.